This book is called Wittgenstein on Other Minds, but it could have also been called Wittgenstein on Understanding or perhaps Wittgenstein on Understanding Others. In philosophy, the so-called problem of other minds is often understood as a problem in epistemology about how we can know what anybody else is thinking or feeling, although as Anita Avramides states, ‘there is little agreement either about the problem or the solution to it’ (Avramides 2019, § 1).

At its solipsistic extreme, the alleged problem is that of knowing that other minds exist at all. How can I know that other ‘people’ are not actually automata or even mere figments of my imagination, perhaps the work of some Cartesian demon who can deceive me about anything except for the fact that I, myself, exist? While the young Wittgenstein may have fallen prey to such doubt, in his later work, Wittgenstein showed all of these worries to be spurious, not because we can know that other minds exist but because it ordinarily makes no sense to doubt such things. ‘Other people have minds’ is neither true nor false but, rather, a rule of grammar or ‘hinge’ that enables us to make truth-apt statements about the mental lives of others, claims that need to proceed by way of interpretation.

So, while there is no genuine philosophical problem of other minds, for the later Wittgenstein, this does not entail that there are no real-life difficulties in understanding others and, indeed, even ourselves (for self-understanding is not a matter of introspecting an inner theatre of the mind to which we have privileged access). In his private life, Wittgenstein's pessimism regarding the possibility of understanding others was unmatched. This was not on the grounds of its being in principle impossible to understand anybody but because it is in practice very difficult to do so, arguably even in our own case. The difficulty is not an abstract metaphysical or even epistemological one but rather an everyday psychological and sociological one. This is what Marie McGinn refers to as ‘the real problem of others’ (McGinn 2022, 19–48). As McGinn puts it, ‘Wittgenstein is deeply opposed to the idea that our everyday doubts about others amount to a way of “living scepticism” or reveal a truth in the sceptic's image of our metaphysical separation’ (McGinn 2022, viii).