Kripke's Wittgenstein: Meaning, Rules and Scepticism

The present book explores Kripke’s novel reading of Wittgenstein offered in his celebrated book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language(1982), as well as the crucial objections to it from over fifteen philosophers. Having introduced the basic notions on which Kripke’s Wittgenstein builds his sceptical challenge, the book concentrates on different aspects of the “sceptical argument,” which Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein. It then elucidates the sort of “sceptical solution” that Kripke takes Wittgenstein to be offering as an alternative view to classical realism. An investigation of how a similar sceptical problem arises in the case of attributions of sensations, as well as the sort of special problem, which according to Kripke’s Wittgenstein appears in the traditional model of dealing with the problem of other minds, ends the book’s explanation of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s view. The book then focuses on the chief responses to Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein offered by those prominent philosophers who have deeply engaged in the topic since the 80s, including John McDowell, Christopher Peacocke, Gordon Bake and Peter Hacker, Simon Blackburn, Colin McGinn, Crispin Wright, Paul Boghossian, Scott Soames, Noam Chomsky, Paul Horwich, Hannah Ginsborg, George Wilson, Philip Pettit and Barry Stroud.