Wittgenstein On Certainty As The Basis For Knowledge

In the last days of his life,Wittgenstein concentrated on the question of certainty,and the results were collected into the manuscript of On Certainty.The direct stimulus of this thinking comes from George Edward Moore’s common sense realism response to the skepticism of the external world,which shows the depth of Wittgenstein’s criticism of this response.Wittgenstein depicted the characteristics of certainty from different angles with several clever metaphors.In general,certainty has the characteristics of fixity and rheology,independence and dependence,naturalness and sociality,passivity and compulsion.These surface contradictory characteristics are the essential characteristics of certainty,which is the unique way of describing certainty from various perspectives.The purpose of exploring certainty is to find the foundation for the rationality of human knowledge system.Knowledge,as a kind of speech expression,is the product of language games such as recognition,judgment and research.Wittgenstein divided it into grammatical knowledge and knowledge about external facts,which have a complex interweaving relationship with certainty.These views seem to portray the image of a foundationalist of knowledge,and this paper refutes the typical accusation that Wittgenstein does indeed exhibit some form of foundationalism in his Treatise On Certainty.First of all,certainty is not outside the language games,which violates Wittgenstein’s view of language that it is impossible to examine the relationship between language and the world outside of language.Understanding this point is of fundamental importance for understanding Wittgenstein’s thought of certainty,and also shakes the foundation of the interpretation of foundationalism to some extent.Secondly,as the basis of knowledge,certainty has three characteristics,namely heterogeneity,fluidity and reverse dependence,which fundamentally subverted the traditional concept of "foundation".Therefore,this paper argues that Wittgenstein is not a knowledge foundationist in On Certainty,but this does not mean that Wittgenstein believes that knowledge is groundless.The disputes dealt with in this paper belong to conceptual disputes to some extent.Through the analysis and clarification of the above problems,this paper aims to promote the understanding and emphasis of domestic Wittgenstein’s research on the important text of On Certainty.