The False Prison: A Study in the Development of Wittgenstein's Philosophy (review)

468 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:3JULY t990 happening of truth, which, instead of being created by men, addresses them, though not "in their capacity as separate, but as existing in the mode of [being-with]" (240. Determining the extent to which this position goes beyond Heidegger's later views requires a more detailed examination than Olafson provides of the socio-historical anchoring of being in the later works. Further, it remains an open question whether this position is preferable to the ontologically more individualist one found in Being and Time. Nonetheless, Olafson's book, because it offers a superb analysis of Being and Time, identifies key questions about Heidegger's thought in general, gives an illuminating discussion of the earlier and later texts pertinent to these questions, and attempts an original resolution of them, is an important, first-rate contribution to the literature on Heidegger. THEODORE R. SCHATZKI University of Kenttucky David Pears. The FalsePrison: A Study in theDevelopment of Wittgenstein'sPhilosophy. Vol. i and Vol. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1987 and 1988. Pp. viii and ix + 54 t (total). $34.5o; $39.5o. Pears's study of the continuity in change in Wittgenstein's philosophizing marks an importance contribution to our understanding of a thinker whose importance is only matched by the oblique character of his writings. Long ago K. T. Fann and Peter Winch were maintaining that the roots of Wittgenstein's later philosophy were already clearly present in his pre-Traaatus writings; whereas I myself was busily pointing out parallels between the early Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer's The Work/as W///and Representation. Now after Pears's meticulous, if highly selective, study of Wittgenstein's intense lifelong preoccupation with a set of problems turning upon solipsism, the relation of the self to the world, the possibility of private ownership of sense data and the like we are finally in a position to see the philosophical significance of much of what had been previously rightly conjectured about his development. Thus, while Pears would hardly claim to be writing history of philosophy, his work is of the utmost significance for historians of philosophy concerned with Wittgenstein or the development of so-called analytic philosophy. From the start, Pears emphasizes, Wittgenstein's attitude to philosophy was radically different from that of Bertrand Russell. The picture that emerges from his study is one of a fundamentally confused Russell changing his mind about the basis of our knowledge of the ego from acquaintance' to description in the mere matter of a year. Moreover, Russell's view that solipsism was an empirical claim seemed to betray a lack of a sense that there was a "depth" to philosophical problems connected to their quasitranscendental character on Wittgenstein's view. Pears is at his best in tracing the conceptual character of Wittgenstein's philosophical perplexities. Furthermore, anyone who has labored over the problem of just how to express Wittgenstein's positions and BOOK REVIEWS 469 attitudes trenchantly and succinctly will only be delighted and astonished at the eloquence and sophistication of Pears's felicitous formulations. In addition, judicious, systematic questioning makes it possible to follow his dense, rigorous reconstructions of Wittgenstein's train of thought with remarkable ease--but it should be emphasized that The FalsePrison is hardly a book for beginners. Needless to say, historians of philosophy will have quibbles with Pears. Why, for example, does he concentrate upon comparing and contrasting Wittgenstcin with Hume when Mach or Quine would be much more to the point? Why does hc persist in employing categories so broad and undifferentiated as to be clich6d, such as "Kantian" or "Platonist"? Why is there not even a single mention of Heinrich Hertz or Ludwig Boltzmann in the course of discussing Wittgcnstein's atomism? Why is there no mention of Otto Weininger's interesting views about solipsism alongside those of Schopcnhauer ? Above all, why is there no discussion of Wittgenstein's relation to pragmatism? Let me briefly sketch the point of two of these questions. With respect to "Platonism," Pears opposes Russell's "Platonist" view of logic with what he rightly takes to be Wittgenstein's "Aristotelian" view of the subject. However, Russell...