Concordance to Wittgenstein's "Philosophische Untersuchungen" (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 365 say, philosophy's problems and their solutions are identical with its exposition (pp. 8-9). (If Wolandt makes him sound too much like Hartmann, Meder seems in danger of making him seem too much like middle-period Wittgenstein!)At any rate, the claim seems to be that not only do principle and fact coincide in the concrete subject (as Wolandt has previously pointed out), but they also coincide--necessarily--"ifphilosophy is justification on the basis of principles and if, in addition, it is supposed to justify its own activity, i.e. justification." How Meder reaches this conclusion, since all but the introduction and the last two pages are spent dealing with HOnigswald's theories of subjectivity ("Monadology"), objectivity, and time, remains a total mystery to me. The task of figuring out in detail whether Meder's interpretation or Wolandt's is the more accurate is a large one that I doubt many people will be inclined to undertake; I certainly am not. There are, however, certain shortcomings of Meder's book that should be pointed out. One of these is its bibliography, which contains a list entitled "The Writings of R. HOnigswald" and thus seems to suggest a reasonably complete listing. On closer inspection, however, we discover that it omits at least five of H6nigswald's major books including his Immanuel Kant (1924) and Philosophie und Sprache (1937). So what looks like a complete bibliography is in reality only a list of those books Meder used in writing his dissertation (but how could one write a decent dissertation on HOnigswald and omit reading five of his major works?). The list of secondary literature is incomplete and peculiar, too; for example, it includes Husserl's Experience and Judgement, a book that makes no reference at all to H6nigswald and that does not seem to be referred to at all in Meder's text (although a whole page of notes is blank in the copy I received). Perhaps it is listed because in the discussion of time Meder introduces the Husserlian terminology "protention" and "retention" (p. 104) and he may have picked it up from this book; but one wonders why, if he was writing about time, he did not also look at Husserl's Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness. All this suggests somewhat sloppily done and/or less than thorough research by Meder. In light of the above, I think that this book will be of interest and of use only to someone who is a specialist in H6nigswald's philosophy or perhaps in neo-Kantian systems in general. I would not recommend it as an introduction to the work of H6nigswald. For that purpose one would be far better off starting with H6nigswald's own "Selbsdarstellung,"4 and moving on from there to the appropriate larger works of his; and when one turns to the secondary literature, it would still be advisable to consult Wolandt first, if only to see what the interpretation is that Meder is striving to overthrow. L1NDAL. McALISTER San Diego State University Imperial Valley Campus Concordance to Wittgenstein's "Philosophische Untersuchungen." Compiled by Hans Kaal and Alastair McKinnon. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975. Pp. 596) This concordance to--yes--the Philosophical Investigations is, with the exception of its hybrid title and a seven-page introduction, entirely in German. Yet it is based on the Blackwell (third) edition and designed primarily for English-speaking readers. Would not an English concordance have been more useful? I shall remark on this later. The Concordance comprises, at a guess, some 1500 "key words," from a priori to zwingen; and every occurrence of each such word, embedded in the phrase in which it occurs in the Investigations, is listed together with a notation as to section (or page) number, and line. Thus, under Kriterium, we find fifty-three entries, the first of which reads: "was ist hier das Kriterium 4 In DeutschesystematischePhilosophienach ihren Gestaltern, ed. Hermann Schwarz (Berlin, 1931), 1 : 191-223. 366 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY daftir, dass dies ein Fehler war 51 14." The search for entries was done by computer, and, in respect of the key words listed, the concordance appears to be complete; I have...