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Words and Things: An Examination of and an Attack on Linguistic Philosophy
When Ernest Gellner was his early thirties, he took it upon himself to challenge the prevailing philosophical orthodoxy of the day, Linguistic Philosophy. Finding a powerful ally in Bertrand Russell, who provided the foreword for this book, Gellner embarked on the project that was to put him on the intellectual map. Words and Things was the first determined attempt to state the premises and operational rules of the movement. The basic charge was that Linguistic Philosophy was an aberrant, trivializing perversion of good philosophical practice, substituting, in place of honest theorizing and argument, pedantic scrutiny of intrinsically uninteresting detail. When this now-famous critique originally appeared in 1959, it created a scandal, causing a flurry of correspondence in the Times. Words and Things remains the most devastating attack on a conventional wisdom in philosophy to this day.
292 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
About the author
Ernest Gellner
56 books105 followersErnest Gellner was a prominent British-Czech philosopher, social anthropologist, and writer on nationalism.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 22, 2026
dnf-ing this because 150 pages seemed enough. i get it. you’re pissed.
“The error springs in each case from the failure to realize that thought is not bound and enslaved by any of the language games it employs, but on the contrary that a most important kind of thinking consists of reassessing our terms, reassessing the norms built into them and reassessing the co yeasts associated with them. Philosophy is generally thinking of this kind — but not only philosophy. One of the things linguistic philosophers fail to notice is that this kind of thinking — which they consider to belong to the pathology of language — is most characteristic of any kind of intellectual advance. Discoveries are very seldom, if ever, moves within a pre-established language game, but tend to be the establishment or discovery of a new kind of more satisfactory, more suggestive, more perceptive or profound language, a discovery or construction which generally follows on criticisms of preexisting ones” this could have been the final line and it was on page 48. banger nonetheless.
“The error springs in each case from the failure to realize that thought is not bound and enslaved by any of the language games it employs, but on the contrary that a most important kind of thinking consists of reassessing our terms, reassessing the norms built into them and reassessing the co yeasts associated with them. Philosophy is generally thinking of this kind — but not only philosophy. One of the things linguistic philosophers fail to notice is that this kind of thinking — which they consider to belong to the pathology of language — is most characteristic of any kind of intellectual advance. Discoveries are very seldom, if ever, moves within a pre-established language game, but tend to be the establishment or discovery of a new kind of more satisfactory, more suggestive, more perceptive or profound language, a discovery or construction which generally follows on criticisms of preexisting ones” this could have been the final line and it was on page 48. banger nonetheless.
July 4, 2015
Ryle was right that Gellner was "abusive," but the Ordinary Language School had it coming. Mixes philosophical criticism with a sociological explanation of why the Later Wittgenstein was so attractive to philosophers in the mid-twentieth century.
August 29, 2026
i have no one to talk to about this (which is for the best because if i did i dont know what i would say)
August 21, 2016
This is a thorough but convoluted argument against Wittgenstein (both early and late periods) and "Wittgensteinianism," Gellner's broadly generalized category, it seems, for everyone ever to agree, in part or wholly, with Wittgenstein. Gellner makes all his points in the first hundred pages, then goes on for another two hundred, becoming increasingly belligerent. Gilbert Ryle was right to call him abusive, and though Gellner often makes great points, the whole project suffers from extreme insensitivity and cockiness. With that said, Wittgenstein himself can be quite an agitation, and Gellner's final word on him captures my frustration with the Tractatus: "Philosophy is explicitness... That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak."
September 1, 2013
A devastating, and often humorous, critique of linguistic philosophy, particularly it's most ardent preacher - Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews