In this magisterial thesis I will focus on a closer inspection of Wittgenstein's work On Certainty. Wittgenstein's preoccupation throughout his entire life was language and its limits, with a variety of differences to his approach through time. Despite the fact that, as he himself has said, a limit to language cannot be properly expressed, the sharpness with which it is elucidated in his final stage of life is something to be envied. I intend to explore his relationship to language in this, final period. While several other of his works can be attributed to this time, I will focus on his On Certainty, as I believe it is a text expressing some of the most crucial ideas. With this in mind I will conduct an analysis of the historic views of certainty and some of the figures that Wittgenstein himself read or were close to him. Following this I will turn to an analysis of the use of the term by Wittgenstein himself. The difference between knowledge and certain belief will show itself as one of the core ideas of his conception, based on an idea of non-propositionality of certainty. In other words, certainty for Wittgenstein is most readily expressed in action. For Wittgenstein, the limit itself, which differentiates the use of language from action is the sole form through which we may practice philosophy. The goal of this work will be a summary of historic and some of the conceptual dimensions of the book, with which I hope to point at the direction of the form of philosophy as it shows itself in these notes.
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