ABSTRACT
The reading of Wittgenstein’s later works presents a number of difficulties. Sometimes his meaning is unclear because of the unfinished state of his writing. This is especially apparent in the notes On Certainty and certain other texts. Writings belonging to the so-called middle period may be unclear because his ideas were still in ferment; and similar points may be made about some of the notes that were taken of his lectures. But even in the most finished writings of the mature Wittgenstein there are passages whose meaning may elude us, sometimes due to over-compression. Such difficulties may sometimes be removed, as Baker and Hacker have shown, by looking at the context of these passages in earlier drafts or parallel texts. But is the later Wittgenstein hard to understand if we consider the main outlines of his thought as presented in the Investigations? Wittgenstein himself sometimes said that the difficulty of coping with his ideas would be one of will rather than understanding,1 and I believe there is much truth in this. Wittgenstein also identified certain ‘cravings’ – the craving for generality and the tendency to postulate a unified system or theory, all of which, according to him, were inimical to good philosophy.
