On Certainty: Some Remarks on the New Edition

Peter Hacker

On Wednesday November 26 2025 the Nordic Wittgenstein Society is happy to host Peter Hacker for the second Nordic Wittgenstein Lecture. 

Peter Hacker is Emeritus Fellow at St John’s College, Oxford (UK). He is known as a preeminent Wittgenstein scholar, and the author of numerous publications on Wittgenstein, philosophy, human nature, neuroscience and the human mind (see here for a full list of publications. Besides his own work, he is known for the analytic commentaries on the Philosophical Investigations together with Gordon P. Baker and the 2009 translation of the Philosophical Investigations with Joachim Schulte. His new edition and translation of On Certainty was recently published (2025), and will serve as the background of his talk.

In his talk, Hacker will comment on the new edition of On Certainty and the questions it raises for Wittgenstein scholarship. Among the topics he will touch upon are:

• Wittgenstein’s limited remarks about the use of ‘to know’ and the contrast between ‘I know’ and ‘He knows’. These are now superseded by Oswald Hanfling’s and Alan White’s analyses.
• Wittgenstein’s surprising lack of interest in the relations between being certain and being sure; between the certainty of things and the certainty of people; between making something certain and making certain that something is so.
• The relation between knowledge and certainty, between being certain and feeling certain, between making certain and knowing for certain.
• Wittgenstein’s powerful criticisms of Moore’s proof of the existence of the external world as well as his analysis of doubt and its limits.
• The similarity between propositions of one’s world-picture (noetic framework) and grammatical propositions.
• Confusions between kinds of certainty and degrees of certainty, as well as confusions about hinges.

The Lecture will take place in ZOOM on November 26 2025, 4–6 pm CET.  Please join us at: https://aboakademi.zoom.us/j/68544392354

The event will be hosted and chaired by Camilla Kronqvist and introduced by Prof. Hanne Appelqvist, the chair or Nordic Wittgenstein Society.