In Defense of Wittgenstein’s Therapeutic Philosophy (original) (raw)
Wittgensteinian therapeutic philosophy is accused of being an uncritical philosophy. This allegation is raised by Critical Theory and specifically by Matthew Crippen. Wittgensteinian therapeutic philosophy purportedly redacts any critique towards oppressive social conditions especially the ones engendered in language itself. It therefore refrains and discourages the questioning of oppressive conditions of pressing concern. However, this accusation against Wittgensteinian therapeutic philosophy is found wanting. This research shows that Crippen and Critical Theory inadequately assess the character of Wittgensteinian therapeutic philosophy. This work argues that, on the contrary, Wittgensteinian therapeutic philosophy facilitates the endeavor of critique. It offers a paradigmatic reminder of how to do critique viz. doing a critique that is sensitive to
Related papers
"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."
Wittgenstein’s therapeutic aim reconsidered
2020
I argue that Wittgenstein’s grammatical method is a form of therapy intended to help us to escape the evasions of philosophical theory and to use our language honestly. Real solutions to the problems that trouble us in life are only possible if we can think about them clearly and truthfully.
The question whether philosophical counseling is - or should be - a therapy or not, can be cleared by discussing Gordon Baker’s therapeutic Wittgenstein-interpretation. Through Peter Hacker’s justified criticism of Baker’s reasoning, the author takes Baker’s practical intention seriously, and shows an other perspective on Wittgenstein’s way of thinking. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations are a criticism of metaphysical uses of language. Thereby, his fo- cus is on these uses, not on his own position and attitude as a describer of everyday situations and experiences. When we do so, it appears that his way of situational philosophizing is closely related to the positioning and attitude of a philosophical counselor. At the end, it is more appropriate to speak of training than of therapy.
Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy: Therapy and Self-knowledge
The following paper aims to shed light on the nature of philosophical problems. I will present the later Wittgenstein’s therapeutic method of treating philosophical confusion as a revolutionary strategy for the battle-ground of metaphysics. Wittgensteinian therapy tries to free us from the false pictures that underlie our obsessive urge to obtain ultimate answers in philosophy. The aim of my essay is to suggest that the author of the Philosophical Investigations, when describing his later philosophical activity as a ‘work on oneself’, was arguing for a transformation of the nature of philosophy; a transformation that aims at shifting Modern philosophy’s focus of interest from knowledge to self-knowledge. This shift can only be fully executed, I will argue, if the Bakerian analogy between (Freudian) psychotherapy and Wittgensteinian philosophy is rescued from its vague metaphorical status through a thorough inquiry into the true nature of this relationship. Such an investigation would illuminate the nature of philosophical problems by exploring how the subtle emergence of philosophical nonsense is indebted to a confusion of the interacting spheres of the logical and the psychological.
Psyches Therapeia: Therapeutic Dimensions in Heidegger and Wittgenstein
This article explores the philosophies of Heidegger and Wittgenstein to illustrate the thesis that philosophy is a human activity exhibiting a unity of investigative and therapeutic aims. For both philosophers, the purpose of philosophical concepts is to point toward a path of transformation rather than to explain. For both, a first step on this path is the recognition of constraining illusions, whether conventional or metaphysical. For both, such illusions are sedimented in linguistic practices, and for both, philosophical investigation is a way of emancipating thought and life from illusion by bringing what is already prereflectively understood into the light of thematic explicitness. And what both philosophers bring into thematic explicitness are aspects of the context-embeddedness and finitude of human existence. It is hoped that comparing the works of these two philosophers will unveil features of each that are more difficult to discern in the works of either considered in isolation.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.