The World and Language in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy by Gordon Hunnings (review)

554 BOOK REVIEWS though he had carried out a radical interpretation of Thomas Aquinas's esse in his transcendental turn. Thus, Sheehan has brilliantly shown both Rahner's indebtedness to Heidegger (especially his notion of the human person as a bivalent and kinetic being; note the parallels between Rahner's cogitative sense and Heidegger's Temporalitiit, between Rahner's agent intellect and Heidegger's Existentialitiit, between Rahner 's possible intellect and Heidegger's Faktizitiit) and Rahner's profound differences from Heidegger, especially in his understanding of being (see pp. 110-116; 280-291). Finally, Sheehan has provided the clearest exposition to date on Rahner's theory of " inner-worldly efficient causality " (pp. 244-255) . The book would have been much more helpful if an index of topics and a bibliography had been provided. There are two omissions. On p. 135, the last line should read: " Chapter VIII concludes the study by laying out the critical difference between Rahner's effort to re-establish the science of metaphysics on a transcendental base and Heidegger's attempt to overcome metaphysics." On p. 186, line 19: "In whatever way we read the content of predicate (Aquinas: quiddities) ." There are also a number of minor misprints. Strange that this book was published only in 1987, even though the research was apparently completed before 1982 (see p. 171, note 62). But its many assets will make Sheehan's work a permanent feature among the best Rahnerian studies. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. PETER c. PHAN The World and Language in Wittgenstein's Philosophy. By GORDON HUNNINGS. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1989. Pp. xiv +266. $34.50. This book will not find a place among the distinguished commentaries on Wittgenstein's work. Aiming to cover the full sweep of that work, Hunnings devotes three of his eight chapters to the Tractatus, one to the" Notes on Logical Form" (1929) and Philosophical Grammar, one to the transitional material of The Blue and Brown Books, one to writings and lectures on the philosophy of mathematics, and just two to the central themes of the later philosophy. Indeed, of the book's 256 pages of text, 193 are spent before the reader finds himself dealing with Philosophical Investigations. So there is a problem of balance. For a book of this size and scope striving to cover the whole of Wittgenstein's BOOK REVIEWS 555 thought on representation and grammar, there is too much exposition of transitional detail and too little attention to the difficult but fertile work at the heart of the mature later Wittgenstein. There are now many fine expository studies of Wittgenstein's work. This is not to say that all important matters of interpretation are settled. Indeed, there are significant areas of rival interpretation and there are varying assessments of the adequacy of Wittgenstein's views. There is contention over the degree to which his work is assimilable to the philosophical tradition. These facts suggest, not that there is no profit in further investigation of his work, but that new studies-particularly ones attempting a comprehensive survey of Wittgenstein's work from the Notebooks to On Certainty-should situate themselves in a well cultivated terrain of commentary and interpretation. But Hunning's work does little to inform prospective readers of the extent to which scholarly study of Wittgenstein's work has advanced. Eschewing a bibliography, Hunnings makes it somewhat difficult for the reader to discern his command of the scholarship. In construing the Tractatus he relies on Anscombe, Stenius, Griffin, and Black-all standard sources. But in dealing with the later philosophy and the much-debated transitional period between Wittgenstein's resumption of philosophical work in the late 1920's and the period of the Investigations, Hunnings simply does not scratch the surface of the huge body of secondary writing available to serious students of Wittgenstein's work. It would be pointless to list the important commentators whose works are ignored; suffice to say that Hunnings's book is apparently unassisted by a full scholarly command of the available literature. In this regard it suffers by comparison with A. C. Grayling's Wittgenstein in the Oxford University Press...