Wittgenstein: Meaning and Judgement

In this important study, Michael Luntley offers a compelling reading of Wittgenstein’s account of meaning and intentionality, based upon a unifying theme in the early and later philosophies.

Rejecting readings which see a complete break between the Philosophical Investigations and the Tractatus, as well as views of Wittgenstein’s mature work which either lament or champion his anti-philosophical ‘quietism’, Luntley argues that Wittgenstein’s abiding concern was to show that the conditions for the possibility of intentionality consist not in a body of theoretical knowledge, but in perceptual knowledge, in our active capacity to ‘see things aright’.

Michael Luntley is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. His previous publications include Language, Logic and Experience (1988), Reason, Truth and Self (1995) and Contemporary Philosophy of Thought (Blackwell, 1999).