---
aliases:
  - certainty
  - OC
author: '[[thoughts/Wittgenstein|Ludwig Wittgenstein]]'
category: philosophy
date: '2025-09-18'
description: late wittgenstein notes on knowledge and doubt, examining hinge propositions that sit beneath justification and make inquiry possible.
id: On Certainty
modified: 2026-06-05 15:07:56 GMT-04:00
pdf: http://thatmarcusfamily.org/philosophy/Course_Websites/Readings/Wittgenstein%20On%20Certainty.pdf
posters: '[[library/posters/on-certainty.jpg]]'
status: current
subcategory: skepticism
tags:
  - philosophy
title: Über Gewißheit (OC)
translator: P. M. S. Hacker
year: 1969
authors: '[[thoughts/Wittgenstein|Ludwig Wittgenstein]]'
created: '2025-09-18'
published: '2025-09-18'
pageLayout: default
slug: library/On-Certainty
permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/library/On-Certainty.md
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full: https://aarnphm.xyz/llms-full.txt
---
_Majority of the notes for this translation of On Certainty is taken from P. M. S. Hacker’s translation of LW’s notebooks[^wiley-edition]._

[^wiley-edition]: Now, Hacker’s edition provide a more comprehensive overview of LW’s discussion on certainty with Norman Malcolm about G.E.M Moore’s _defence for common sense_ (i.e skepticism) through a more grammatical interpretation of the text, instead of Anscombe’s “first-draft” style that promotes more of the conventional _epistemic_ view of the work.

    An important outcome is Wittgenstein’s claim that all doubt is enmeshed in belief and therefore the most radical forms of doubt must be rejected since they form a contradiction within the system that expressed them

    I find Hacker’s deep exegesis of §20 follows a common pattern of “coordance over elegance”, where he _rigourously_ follows a strict rule of inference when translating Germans to English. For example the word “Sicherheit” is used consistently through 20 to 50.

<blockquote class="quotes"><p>Doubting the existence of the external world" does not mean for example doubting the existence of a planet, which later observations proved to exist. Or does Moore want to say that knowing that here is his hand is different in <em>kind</em> from the knowledge of the planet Saturn exist? Otherwise one could point out the existence of Saturn to the doubters and say that its existence has been established, and hence so does the <em>external world</em>.</p><p><em>§20</em></p></blockquote>

<blockquote class="quotes"><p>But is there an adequate answer to the skepticism of the idealist or to the assurances of the realist {to say that the sentence} "There are physical objects" is non-sense?</p><p><em>§37</em></p></blockquote>

It would be an answer to say that this assertions or its opposite is <span class="marker marker-h2">misguided</span> attempt to express something that _can’t be expressed_ in this way

For one must come to see that what presents itself initially as the expression of a difficulty, or of its solutions, _may still be completely wrong {{sidenotes[expression]: What W is saying here is that for a person whose assumptions/criticisms towards a picture to be truthful/correct, he must have some ideas that hinges on assumptions of the propositions.}}._