"This Is Simply What I Do": Wittgenstein and Oakeshott on the Practices of Individual Agency (original) (raw)
Related papers
Polity, 2004
Wittgensteih often used examples of strange and unfamiliar forms of life to unsettle our assumptions. For example, he wrote: "What reply could I make to the adults of a tribe who believe that people sometimes go to the moon (perhaps that is how they interpret their dreams)?") These examples raise the implicit question, What would it be like to encounter such people? Would we be able, as Wittgenstein put it, to "find our feet" with them?2 Many of the essays in the two helpful, stimulating volumes under review raise a related question: What is it like to meet-or be-Wittgensteinians? One version of that question asks what attitude we ought to take toward our own form of life. Ought we to take the pragmatist view that our form of life is a solid if unjustified ground for our arguments and judgments, or the deconstructivist view that our form of life is inevitably shot through with contradictions, aporias, and instabilities? It is this question that the nine essays in The Legacy of Wittgenstein address. 3 Similarly, ought we to interpret Wittgenstein as a conservative, grounding meaning in the brute given of our cultural tradition,4 as a relativist claiming that forms of life cannot be criticized from the outside, 5 as a tolerance-promoting skeptic, 6 or as a perfectionist liberal?7 What consequences for our own ideas and actions 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainly, trans.
Wittgenstein and the Use of Words and Language: A Critical Presentation (Policyinstitute.net, 2021)
Policyinstitute.net, 2021
This presentation will introduce the works of L. Wittgenstein with regard to words and, more generally, language, in concise form. The influential philosopher considers Human language to be isomorphic with reality, when the meaning of words is determined by shared rules within societal groups, and the expressions of communication are based on facts. There are shortcomings to Wittgenstein's work. While he incorporates context, he neglects tautologies and contradictions. Moreover, his theses are manifestations of a collectivist era and do not genuinely apply to more individualist social groups. Furthermore, Wittgenstein does not fully solve the problem of gaps in group-interactive perception. Lastly, he does not sufficiently incorporate the fields of theory, theology, and the like.
Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy
2020
Overcoming Over-Reliance on ' The Bedrock'?: On PI 217 279 Contents x Contents 10 The Anti-' Private-Language' Considerations as a Fraternal and Freeing Ethic: Towards a Re-Reading of PI 284-309 11 Conclusion: (A) Liberating Philosophy 327 Bibliography Index A human being is imprisoned in a room, if the door is unlocked but opens inwards; he, however, never gets the idea of pulling instead of pushing against it. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (C&V) If there is a book that I have in me that really ' captures' what I have to say about and to offer from Wittgenstein, it is this book. This book is, if you will, my life's work on his work. This book has been the hardest to write of anything I've yet written. Close-reading Wittgenstein's work imposes on one a great discipline. But it's also been the most joyful because, I think, of the great freedom I have found in the vision of Wittgenstein's way of working that has come to me in the long course of writing this book. This book is inspired and informed above all by the later Gordon Baker's method, including as taken up by Katherine Morris. In a way, its inspiration goes back to listening to Baker's joint lectures with Hacker at Oxford from 1986 onward-and realising with shock and interest that they no longer agreed so much, because Baker was moving away from the ' Baker-and-Hacker' vision. This book is also deeply inspired by my teachers Cora Diamond and James Conant, 1 and more generally by the project of reading Wittgenstein's oeuvre resolutely, a project that I sought to help focus, by putting together The New Wittgenstein (TNW) (2000) collection, two decades ago now, for, while I am closer to Baker than to anyone else in terms of my thinking on the later Wittgenstein (as can be seen from the amount I quote and reference his book in this book, second only to the amount I use Philosophical Investigations (PI) (1958) itself), and while I find deeply encouraging the extent to which his vision of Wittgenstein's method overlaps or coincides with the project of reading resolutely Wittgenstein's later work, I believe, following Wittgenstein himself, that the later Wittgenstein can only be understood properly against the background of the early Wittgenstein, properly and sympathetically understood: and making the latter available in this way is probably the greatest achievement of Diamond, Conant et al. 2 Preface and Acknowledgements xii Preface and Acknowledgements More briefly, the late Stanley Cavell was also my teacher, and I owe a signal debt to him too, I hope. His name is found less in these pages than those of Conant and Diamond, let alone Baker, but this is perhaps because of how very close I am to him in certain key respects; it is as if his attitude to Wittgenstein almost saturates some of my thinking. I'll highlight one example here which is important methodologically in what follows: Cavell's emphasis on Wittgenstein seeing ' proof' is as much a ' literary' as a logical category. The task of convincing others of something is intrinsically aesthetic; this is not an inessentiality or something to be regretted. I have also been influenced more recently by the fascinating work of Hannes Nykanen and Joel Backstrom. As I was creating the orientation to Wittgenstein's work to be found herein, it was a joy to discover that they were creating a somewhat similar orientation. In particular, there is a profound point of connection between my conception and theirs, in the emphasis throughout this book on the 2nd person as an alternative to the clapped-out debate between ' subjective' and ' objective' approaches to philosophy, and in the cognate emphasis that develops increasingly through the text below on (liberatory) philosophy as ethics, an ethics of relationality. This book has been profoundly influenced by the work that Phil Hutchinson and I have co-published together over the past 15 or so years. Much of this is referred to, and on occasion quoted, throughout the book. The book also reflects much work that we undertook together and had hoped to publish together, but in the end did not. This applies primarily to parts of Chapters 1-3 and also to the portion of Chapter 4 on 122 (a small portion of which is reworked from our published paper " Towards a perspicuous presentation of ' perspicuous presentation'" (Hutchinson & Read 2008)). My debt to Phil Hutchinson is immense, the most immense of all; it is not calculable by me. Deep gratitude also to those who read my manuscript in full, and provided wonderful, at times transformative commentary on it: especially Katherine Morris, Andrew Norris, Duncan Richter, Ryan Dawson, and three anonymous referees. 3 Deep gratitude also to my PhD students across the years who have worked with me on this material, especially Joshua Smith and Anton Leodolter, with whom I have walked a soteriological and ethical-aesthetic path of reading Wittgenstein. This book includes a reworking of some previously published material that I sole-authored: Early in Chapter 4, the treatment of ordinary use is based loosely on a small part of my chapter " Ordinary/ everyday language" (Read 2010a), which is here heavily revised. Within Chapter 5, the treatment of 133 is based loosely on part of my paper " The real philosophical discovery" (Read 1995), which is here heavily revised.
The Influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein in Political Theory
This dissertation is inspired by the small but growing number of political and social theorists whose works have been highly influenced by the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein.These authors developed their theories at least in part by taking Wittgenstein’s thought to have normative implications on methodological and substantive issues in political and social theory. The aim of this dissertation is to narrate and analyse the influence of Wittgenstein in political theory as a contribution to the intellectual history of twentieth century political thought. To that end, Hanna Pitkin’s “Wittgenstein and Justice” and James Tully’s “Public Philosophy in a New Key” present an exemplary (in both senses of the word) pair of works that allow us to compare contrasting approaches to using Wittgenstein’s ideas and methods. The dissertation begins with an introductory chapter that sets out the main problem: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s influence in political theory is fairly under-narrated and under-analysed, especially in a dissertation-length project. The purpose of this chapter is to give a brief historical overview of this identified gap in the literature. The second chapter provides a brief introduction to the concepts and methods of Wittgenstein’s later work, as well as an explanation of some of his basic philosophical commitments since the “Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus”. The third chapter is an exposition and analysis of Hanna Pitkin’s social thought in Wittgenstein and Justice. I show how Pitkin built her social theory by taking Peter Winch’s and J. L. Austin’s methodological work to complement and expand the fundamental ontological and epistemological precepts she draws from Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. The fourth chapter is an exposition and analysis of Pitkin’s political thought in “Wittgenstein and Justice”. I show how she built her political theory by taking Wittgenstein’s ontology to flesh out and expand the fundamental political values she draws from Kant and Arendt. The dissertation continues with James Tully. The fifth chapter is an exposition and analysis of James Tully’s social thought in “Public Philosophy in a New Key”. I show how the social theory of James Tully is primarily inspired by the post-structuralist works of Michel Foucault and the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The sixth chapter is an exposition and analysis of James Tully’s political thought in “Public Philosophy in a New Key”. I show how Tully’s belief that the role of public philosophy is to address public affairs cashes out in i) critical surveys of practices and languages that set the context of practical social and political problems and their proposed solutions, and ii) historical or genealogical surveys that place those languages and practices in their larger contexts in order to see how forms of subjectivity are shaped by historically specific trends in thought and action. I end the dissertation with a concluding chapter that compares my findings about Pitkin and Tully under the light of Wittgenstein’s anti-theoretical commitments and his beliefs regarding the second-order nature of philosophy. I argue that Pitkin, in sailing too close the modernist wind, takes a narrower view of the political than Wittgenstein’s social ontology might suggest. And therefore, Tully’s work, by being more resolutely anti-theoretical and anti-foundational, is more consonant with Wittgenstein’s ethos. My final evaluation of Pitkin’s and Tully’s Wittgensteinian political theories will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of their diverging approaches, while holding on to the caveat that we need not agree with everything Wittgenstein has laid out in order to find something useful from him that can help in our work.
In a well-known critique of Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas claims that her turn to Kant’s Third Critique for a conception of political judgment is symptomatic of her refusal to provide a “cognitive foundation” for politics. Wittgenstein’s reflections on logical necessity and judgment can help illuminate what is at stake in Kantian aesthetic judgments as a model for judging politically. Wittgenstein allows us to see the limits of thinking about Arendt’s turn to Kant in terms of the difference between determinative versus reflective judgments, that is, judgments that are based on the rule-governed application of concepts to particulars and judgments in which concepts are lacking. Wittgenstein’s account of rule-following as haunted by the specter of the “logical must” and the figure of “the machine as symbol” offers a window into our tendency to sublime all valid judgments as necessarily guided by super-concepts. By providing us with a more elastic understanding of concepts rather than the difference between a concept-guided and a non-concept guided practice of judging, Wittgenstein enables us to question the strict division between aesthetic and empirical judging that is at the heart of the democratic theory debate on judgment in Arendt’s work. Keywords: Wittgenstein; Hannah Arendt; empirical judgment; aesthetic judgment; persuasion; charm; necessity.
"Abstract [Excerpted From Editor's Introduction] Matthew Crippen takes this up in a Marcusian critique of Wittgenstein that attends, among other things, to the place of silence in that discourse. Referring to Horkheimer’s citation of the Latin aphorism that silence is consent, Crippen is critical of Wittgenstein’s admonition that we must pass over in silence those matters of which we cannot speak. This raises fascinating questions for critical theory that Crippen explores particularly with reference to Marcuse’s concept of one-dimensionality. To the extent that Wittgenstein’s philosophy is “therapeutic,” it may effectively contain dissent by “helping” dissenters become “well-adjusted.” Marcuse, of course, was particularly concerned with the power of Total States— and particularly those engendered by advanced industrial capitalism—to contain dissent precisely by using therapeutic techniques to maintain adjustment. Bringing Marcuse and Wittgenstein together here has particularly explosive possibilities. In the context of a Total State, transformation depends on the possibility of calling the State into question from the inside (since “total” States systematically eliminate “outsides”). This is the point at which Wittgenstein’s silence becomes most intriguing. What is it, we must ask, that we cannot say? Silence may be (as Martin Luther King, Jr. said) more than consent: there comes a time when silence is betrayal. But this is one of many places where it pays to look at what is done as much as what is said. What game, we might ask, is Wittgenstein playing? And, more to the point, what is the field of play that joins Wittgenstein and Marcuse? John Cage famously said “I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need it...” Crippen begins a process (via Wittgenstein) of putting poetry into play that has important implications for the public work of philosophers."
A New Style of Thinking: Hanna Pitkin's Wittgenstein
Polity, vol 55, no. 3, 2023
Hanna Pitkin's 1972 book, Wittgenstein and Justice, inaugurated serious work on Wittgenstein in political theory and contributed in novel ways to existing conversations about his relevance to thinkers concerned with broader questions of social organization. Although one can quibble with her particular readings of Wittgenstein, Pitkin’s book stimulated new approaches within social science. She did this not so much by offering a normative political reading of his philosophy, as some critics charge, but by drawing out the capacity for critique in his self-described “new style of thinking.” It is this critical style, I argue, that drew the “small-d” democratic theorist Pitkin to Wittgenstein, rather than any normative conclusions about how things really are (e.g., always in flux) or how language really works (e.g., as a tool), as it might at first appear.
The Review of Politics, 2020
There are three complementary and interwoven strands of argument composing this elegant book. One is an exploration of the relationship between political inquiry and philosophy as shaped by realist and mentalist modes of representationalism. The second is a compelling reading of Wittgenstein across his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations, and On Certainty. The third strand is a claim about conventional realism and its implications for social inquiry, ontology, epistemology, and our appreciation of first-order practices (e.g., political, religious, scientific). What distinguishes John Gunnell's work on Wittgenstein is the way he conceives of this orientation to language and philosophy as a mode of social inquiry unto itself. That is, Gunnell labors to present Wittgenstein as speaking to issues in social and political science as directly and as critically as possible. The reading of Wittgenstein's writings is contentious, but close, detailed, and substantial. The central problem addressed in the introduction is political and social science's turn away from the investigation of first-order political and social practices and toward the second-and third-order discourses of philosophy, the philosophy of science, and the social sciences for epistemological and ontological tools and cognitive authority. In this horizontal move toward philosophy, political and social inquiry became enamored with representationalism, or questions about how the mind encounters reality (mentalism) or how reality is impressed on the mind (realism). Mentalism is predicated on the claim that there is an occult space called "mind" wherein prelinguistic thought or a private language of thought resides. Realism carries with it the Kantian framework whereby our apprehension of reality, what we call the world, conforms to the contours of a priori, transcendental categories. Both traditions carry with them a sense that we can never know reality directly. Reality, conceived uniformly, is a mirror image produced by mental processes or a mental image represented in language. Theorists and political scientists make this detour into representational philosophy because it holds out the promise of an epistemic authority that can fulfill "the practical goal of affecting political life" (6). The structure of the first four chapters of the volume is designed to illuminate the challenge Wittgenstein and conventional realism pose to representational realism and mentalism. This contrast is set out in the first chapter and is anchored in the logical and temporal priority of "first-order practices" that "present the world." Second-order metapractices, such as political science and philosophy, entail general but representational claims about the nature and organization of reality. This includes the internal relation of theory to facts and the dichotomy that Gunnell, vis-à-vis Wittgenstein, wishes to challenge between "nature" and "conventional nature" or between the realm of REVIEWS 123