Wittgenstein and Gadamer

The book focuses on how Wittgenstein and Gadamer treat language in their accounts of language as game and their major writings on the subject - Philosophical Investigations and Truth and Method, respectively. Chris Lawn goes on to offer a critique of Wittgenstein's account of linguistic rules, drawing upon Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, particularly his emphasis upon tradition, temporality, historicality and novelty. The text demonstrates how paying attention to such elements - excluded by Wittgenstein's conception of rules - in fact strengthens Wittgenstein's position from a hermeneutical perspective. Finally, Wittgenstein and Gadamer investigates the possibility of connection between Wittgenstein's focus upon lexical particularity and Gadamer's greater concern for the universal and the general. A groundbreaking work of post-analytic philosophy, Wittgenstein and Gadamer brings the work of two major modern philosophers in to dialogue. It is required reading for anyone studying or researching the work o

f either philosopher, or the philosophy of language more generally. [Publisher's text].

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