"Remarkable how well Bouwsma understood Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems and how intelligently he was able to recount Wittgenstein's discussions. The bits about sensation are especially good. And the asides about the other philosophers--e.g. Dewey, Russell, Anscombe--are, while not frivolous, gossipy and titillating." --Riley Wallihan, Western Oregon University

"Remarkable how well Bouwsma understood Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems and how intelligently he was able to recount Wittgenstein's discussions. The bits about sensation are especially good. And the asides about the other philosophers--e.g. Dewey, Russell, Anscombe--are, while not frivolous, gossipy and titillating." --Riley Wallihan, Western Oregon University

O. K. Bouwsma, one of America's foremost Wittgensteinians, was also an extraordinarily dedicated and effective teacher. The present collection, assembled posthumously from his papers, includes twelve essays, all but one previously unpublished and all characterized by the humor, common sense, and wisdom that marked his classroom lectures.

Ranging in subject matter from topics in Wittgenstein to Descartes to aesthetics, the pieces all show the influence of Wittgenstein. Some of the questions they raise deal with the traditional and historical background of twentieth-century philosophy--"Am I dreaming?" "Is what I see real?" "Are there material objects?"--while others relate to considerations peculiar to thinkers today, for example, "What is Wittgenstein doing in his writing?" "What does philosophy have to do with language?"

Bouwsma wants first to understand the philosophical questions--to unknit the knit eyebrows it produces. Accordingly, his major concern is how we as thinkers, readers, writers, and speakers, separate what we understand from what we do not understand: hence his consideration, in the opening essay, of "a new sensibility in the matter of our language." Always approaching the subject as a practical problem rather than as an abstract, theoretical issue, these essays demonstrate, with patience and wit, ways to achieve clarity on puzzles long thought intractable.

In "Without Proof or Evidence" O. K. Bouwsma weaves through the central topics of Western religion: the rationality of religious belief, the nature of Christianity, the promise of eternal life, the definition of faith, and proofs of the existence of God. When he works with the problems of Descartes or Moore or Wittgenstein, surveying the marketplace of language in which we all have commerce, he has the familiarity of an experienced trader. But in his work with the problems of Anselm or Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, in which the Scriptures move between background and foreground, there is another dimension, a concern with whether the Scriptures have been properly understood, what such an understanding might be, and how it affects someone who so understands them.