“With regard to the last article in the volume…”– A note on Rush Rhees and “The Study of Philosophy” in Without Answers

Abstract

Based on material from Rush Rhees’ Nachlass, this article reconstructs, in PART I, the circumstances that motivated Rhees to include “The Study of Philosophy” as the concluding chapter of his 1969 publication Without Answers. As originally conceived, this chapter was longer than the version that eventually appeared in print. The reconstruction references the correspondence between Rhees and the editor of Without Answers, Dewi Z. Phillips. It outlines the central ideas of “The Study of Philosophy”, including Rhees’ clarifications of Wittgenstein’s call to “Go the bloody hard way”. The original, somewhat longer version of the chapter is reproduced in PART II of the article. It consists of two text extracts from two letters to Maurice O’C. Drury from July and September 1963. Drury’s “intermediate” letter to Rhees from August 1963 is also reproduced. This article is also a “narrative” about the way one of Wittgenstein’s editor’s experiences being edited and published via an editor.