Abstract
Kripke's monumental work on Wittgenstein made it possible to think about the global structure of Philosophical Investigations (P.I.) and to suppose the existence of systematic thinking in that book by emphasizing the importance of so called rule following considerations for later Wittgenstein. On the other hand, however, Kripke's work seems to have misled us to a wrong assumption that the central theme in these considerations is not the concept of rules but that of meaning. I learned from my past systematic investigation of Wittgenstein's texts, including both P.I. and his other texts that reveal us the specific contexts in which his huge considerations concerning rules were conducted in 1930's and 1940's, that the problems concerning rules play the central role in the formation of matured philosophy of later Wittgenstein exhibited in P.I. In this paper, I would like to show 1) Wittgenstein faced not one but three problems concerning the concept of 'rules of a language game' in the initial 188 sections of P.I., one of which is the paradox of rules, 2) he solved these problems in §§ 198-243 of P.I. by presenting a new concept of 'following a rule', which is supposed to be prior to any explicit rules with respect to both existence and meaning, 3) 'following a rule' is a generic name for primitive linguistic practices such as counting or ordering, out of which all our linguistic practices or language games are constructed, 4) according to Wittgenstein's new understanding of human linguistic practices based on the concept of 'following a rule', any forms of Platonism as well as formalism in mathematics cannot be correct.
