In his recent collection of essays Questions on Wittgenstein, Rudolf Haller pauses to consider a particularly interesting problem: Was Wittgenstein a neo-Kantian? By responding negatively, Haller calls into question what might seem to some to have become virtually conventional wisdom, namely the assumption that Wittgenstein has a considerable, if unspoken, debt to the critical project of Kant, specifically the Critique of Pure Reason.

Furthermore, in focusing on the “later” Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations and Philosophical Grammar, Haller is able to bring into contrast the sharp differences in the approaches employed by each philosopher during what could be called their “mature” periods. Finally, Haller’s original question leads to a much more fundamental issue: the conflict between Kant’s “transcendental” method and Wittgenstein’s “grammatical” investigations.