ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of keyconcepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book aims to offer a comprehensive critique of the thought of Wittgenstein from a standpoint which recognizes him to be, both in his earlier and his later thinking, a systematic philosophical thinker of immense consequence and originality. The governing slant of Wittgenstein's philosophy may further, as Stenius and many others have recognized, be compared with that of Kant, and may be called 'transcendental', in one of the many senses of that obscure, somewhat tendentious term. The simple objects and relationships of the Tractatus are remote from the concrete complexities of the empirical world, so too are the simple villagers or tribesmen who inhabit his model cosmos. Wittgenstein's analyses of speech through simple language-games are further related to his later treatment of logical and mathematical principles that were given such an unquestionable, if tautological, status in Tractatus.
