Wittgenstein and Gadamer

Chris Lawn focuses on how Wittgenstein and Gadamer treat language in their accounts of language as game and their major writings on the subject - Philosophical Investigations and Truth and Method, respectively. He goes on to give a critique of Wittgenstein's account of linguistic rules, drawing upon Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, particularly his emphasis upon tradition, temporality, historicality and novelty. The book demonstrates how paying attention to such elements - excluded by Wittgenstein's conception of rules - in fact strengthens Wittgenstein's position from a hermeneutical perspective. Finally, Wittgenstein and Gadamer investigates the possibility of connection between Wittgenstein's focus upon lexical particularity and Gadamer's greater concern for the universal and the general.