Abstract

The title of this book is taken from one of Wittgenstein's own images. In Philosophical Investigations §18, Wittgenstein writes: "Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods." Ackerman maintains that this image gives us the clue to seeing Wittgenstein's thought as a whole. The two periods of Wittgenstein's thinking are nowhere near as opposed as scholars are wont to make out. They differ only in that whereas in his first period Wittgenstein identified the whole city with one quarter of it, the "severely regular Levittown of the Tractatus," in his second he realized that the city contained many other quarters as well. Ackerman's aim is to show how the broader view of Wittgenstein's later period grows out of the earlier one, and how it preserves the teachings of the Tractatus.