Abstract

This book is a fine example of Alfred Schutz's dictum, cited as a motto to the introduction, that "we feel strongly that it is sometimes more important for the cause of philosophy to find out where the ideas of great masters coalesce than where they differ." Wittgenstein has become, perhaps in spite of himself and even in ways he would abhor, one of those "great masters," and Gier has set himself the task of charting the interconnections and intersections between Wittgenstein's philosophical project and the work principally of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, the focus being predominantly on the later Wittgenstein, but with substantial side-excursions into Wittgenstein's early work and the sources of Wittgenstein's way. The main purpose of the book is dialectical and comparative, exposition being kept to a minimum. While the lack of exposition makes the book rather inaccessible to beginners, to those who know the paradigmatic texts it is most enjoyable and illuminating, and by its extensive citation of both primary and secondary literature--the book has a marvelous bibliography--it functions as a welcome synthesis of a hitherto rather dispersed mass of materials.