The Genesis of ON CERTAINTY: Some Questions for Professors Anscombe and von Wright

Abstract

This paper is divided into three sections. In Section 1, I draw attention to an unresolved, but also entirely neglected, disputed between the editors of On Certainty, Professors G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, and the late Professor Norman Malcolm. That dispute concerns the history of Wittgenstein's interest in G.E. Moore's anti-sceptical Defence, with Anscombe and von Wright maintaining that Wittgenstein had "long been interested" in Moore's Defence, and Malcolm maintaining to the contrary that he only became interested in this topic during the last eighteen months of his life