In the previous post I noted that I am completely unimpressed by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. What I know of the rest of his work, at least the Philosophical Investigations, has done little to impress me either. (Most of what I read serves to convince me more strongly that he is wrong.)
I suppose I’ve long been predisposed against Wittgenstein because of the unfortunate ways his thought is used in religious studies. In that discipline, Wittgenstein is most often quoted for sections 66-7 of the Philosophical Investigations. Here he introduces the awful analytic concept of “family resemblances,” which has given too many contemporary religionists an all-too-convenient way to defend those concepts, especially “religion” and (premodern) “Hinduism”, that interfere with our understanding more than help it. In the Investigations, referring to the concept of “game” (or rather the German Spiel), Wittgenstein tells us that there is no essential meaning underlying the concepts, only a network of interrelated meanings which he calls “family resemblances.” And I have read far too many articles and books that note how “Hinduism” and “religion” cover a range of concepts that effectively have nothing to do with one another. But then, rather than taking the logical next step and saying that those concepts are misleading and should be avoided when one is speaking precisely and carefully, they find it adequate oto say that “Hinduism” or “religion” is a family-resemblance concept, and expect that the debate is ended by waving the wand of Wittgenstein’s words.
I, on the other hand, am persuaded by Wilfred Cantwell Smith‘s refutation of this concept in What Is Scripture? (p.365-66): “the metaphor gains its plausibility from being based on a fundamental and quite ‘objective’ linkage underlying the observed diversities of a literal family: namely, the genetic commonality of blood kinship with certain genes that constitute the family (and gives rise to some resemblances).” Even if one were to substitute a different metaphor, I don’t find this “network of relationships” approach an adequate way of looking at concepts. Some concepts mislead us and deserve to be thrown out. One could just as easily look at the various phenomena which scientists once tried to describe as phlogiston and say, as these scholars do about “Hinduism” and “religion,” that phlogiston is a family-resemblance concept, thereby keeping it around. Or, one could do the far more plausible thing and recognize that phlogiston is a worthless concept, purging it from our vocabulary.
Wittgenstein often liked to complain that philosophy “bewitches” us with its supposed misuse of language. I often suspect it is Wittgenstein himself bewitching us with his romantic persona: the young philosopher wandering into stodgy turn-of-the-century Cambridge and throwing off all established convention, clad in a leather jacket, actively homosexual in post-Victorian Britain, even waving a fire poker at Karl Popper – and yet getting away with it all because even the dons were impressed by his intellect. Who wouldn’t be dazzled by such a personality? Haven’t all of us wanted at some point to be the cocky young firebrand whose ideas are so brilliant that the rules don’t apply to us anymore? One gets so infatuated by this anti-authoritarian mythos of Wittgenstein that one accepts the authoritarian tone of his philosophical writing, the way so many of his ideas are phrased as commands to be obeyed. (“Don’t think, look!”)
I am deeply tempted by such an account, explaining Wittgenstein’s appeal as all style and no substance. It seems clear to me that Wittgenstein’s personality gives his ideas more of an appeal than their intrinsic worth is likely to merit; no matter how great his thought was, nobody is going to make a movie dramatizing the life of Immanuel Kant. But that’s not to say that there’s no substance there at all. Indeed, I suspect that there must be, for the most un-Wittgenstenian of reasons: my own Hegelian tendencies. The most important philosophical truths I’ve found have been guided by the insight that great philosophers become great for a reason – and not a merely superficial reason, but an important truth that their ideas have caught hold of, something that needs to be incorporated in any future synthesis. (A similar tendency underlies my embrace of Thomas Kuhn’s perspective on authorship, asking how an intelligent person could have written apparent absurdities.) Thus I am inclined to extend the sort of charity to Wittgenstein that he never seems willing to extend to his own predecessors. There’s got to be something worthwhile in Wittgenstein; I just haven’t figured out what it is. And I fully admit I have read very little of him. Readers, you seem to like Wittgenstein a lot better than I do so far. What do you think I’m missing?
Thill said:
It’s an interesting caricature of Wittgenstein. For a great portrait of W the man and the genius, pl. read Norman Malcolm’s Memoir or Bouwsma’s memoir, or Ray Monk’s biography “Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius”.
“Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important?
What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards.”
(Philosophical Investigations, Sec. 118)
Thill said:
The full passage in Philosophical Investigations Sec. 118:
“Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand.”
119: “The results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense and of bumps that the understanding has got by running its head up against the limits of language. These bumps make us see the value of the discovery.”
129: “The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something -because it is always before one’s eyes.) The real foundations of an inquiry do not strike a man at all.”
michael reidy said:
Amod:
What on earth was Wittgenstein talking about?I think that the British Empiricist tradition largely frames the sorts of questions that he asks along with the speculations of Augustine. That is a brush as broad as an emulsion one. Now though he never made a formal study of philosophy he as the saying goes met the scholars coming home. Regular dining with Moore and Russell would amount to very high level tutorials would you agree?
Think of the sorts of problem that Locke, Hume and Berkeley gnawed on. How are concepts formed, what is experience, how do we know the external world etc. and then look at the Philosophical Investigations. They are sort of ‘cold cases’ which he is reopening and he jumps into the middle of them asking the sorts of questions that they would never think of asking. It’s lateral thinking at its best. It’s argueable that he cracked the The Strange Case of a Mind without a Body with his Private Language critique. It is seldom that a problem in philosophy is definitively laid to rest but that I think is one. Very major achievement.
Another criterion which may appeal is the lineage. Though he didn’t leave his staff and begging bowl to anyone consider such luminaries as Anscombe, Geach, Rhees, Phillips, Malcolm, Dummett etc. directly taught by him or profoundly influenced.
Amod Lele said:
No doubt the lineage is a major part of his appeal; but then likewise one’s opinion of him will depend on one’s opinion of that lineage. The folks you list are highly regarded members of the twentieth-century analytic tradition; but the only one I myself hold in high esteem is Anscombe, and that mostly for her criticisms of that tradition. On the other hand, one could also add Iris Murdoch to the list, whom I also respect, and whatever else one can say about her, she is certainly not an analytic philosopher. And there are later analytic thinkers I do respect, most notably Christine Korsgaard, who does herself cite Wittgenstein as significant. (Hmm… I just noticed that my favourite Wittgensteinians are mostly female. Coincidence? The main exception would probably be Alasdair MacIntyre.)
Could you say more about the mind-body case and the private language critique? To say that a problem has been definitively laid to rest is a very strong claim, as you note, and I’d be interested to hear your grounds.
michael reidy said:
In a curious way even though Dualism has been declared dead for ages it still has according to Dennett a fascination and there is a strong tendency for it to be smuggled in (cf.Consciousness Explained) by the more naive scientific explanations. Outside that it is hardly respectable amongst the philosophic class.
L.W.’s main attack was directed at the notion of inner ostensive definition. We have certain experiences, we attend to them and build up thereby our vocabulary, our knowledge. We note our own case in the first instance. See #291 P.I. and the beetle in the box. He destroys the credibility of this view in a million ways some of which resemble Zen koans in that to get their meaning you have to get to a new level of understanding. As well as that one’s natural resistance to the mystery of how we get concepts i.e. the notion of games, and family resemblance develop, shows the strange grip that the solitary Cartesian consciousness has on our imagination. What we do, our “forms of life” would be impossible if that solipsistic individual had to make his world. The cumulative effect of this reductio on so many fronts is a powerful aversion therapy so that now I think that there are few self-admitted dualists about.
Thill said:
“the only one I myself hold in high esteem is Anscombe, and that mostly for her criticisms of that (analytic) tradition.”
“You may not do evil,” ran her injunction, “that good may come.”…As a teenager she had converted to Roman Catholicism, a decision that was to affect her work as a moral philosopher. For her it was a prerequisite of an adequate moral philosophy that it should not deny the value of the Hebrew-Christian ethic…she attacked the majority of academic philosophers for their lack of reference to the Hebrew-Christian ethic..” (Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1313382/Professor-G-E-M-Anscombe.html)
While W admired religious commitment whose authenticity was revealed in one’s concern for actual human beings (as contrasted with dessicated abstractions such as “humanity”, “mankind”, etc), he is on record stating that he could not bring himself to believe in the dogmas of Judeo-Christianity in the way some of his students, Anscombe included, could.
I think that these students led an “intellectual double life”, not at all an unusual characteristic in philosophers.
Anscombe is an exemplar of this intellectual double life. How else could she follow the W’s methods of philosophical investigation in exploring issues such as intentionality on the one hand and on the other hand remain comfortably ensconced in the gross abuses of commonsense, science, language and logic inherent in the dogmas of Roman Catholicism?
As to her injunction “You may not do evil that good may come.”, I can only wonder how she could have reconciled this with Catholic theodicy and all the statements on God’s hideous countenancing, and even commanding, of evil in the Bible. Perhaps, the “Good Lord”, and not just Truman (Anscombe unsuccessfully opposed the conferment of an honorary degree on Truman), is the one in need of Anscombe’s injunction. One of the “justifications” of evil in Christian theodicy is that God allows evil in order to bring about a great good which outweighs that evil. I wonder if she could even bring herself to consider the “moral status” of the Good Lord’s repeat decisions to allow impacts of asteroids, meteorites, or comet fragments on earth which have wiped out millions of life forms!
Anyway, I did find hilarious the following exchange between Ayer and Anscombe. Enjoy!
“She told A J Ayer: “If you didn’t talk so quickly, people wouldn’t think you were so clever.” “If you didn’t talk so slowly,” countered Ayer, “people wouldn’t think you were so profound.”
Thill said:
“It seems clear to me that Wittgenstein’s personality gives his ideas more of an appeal than their intrinsic worth is likely to merit…”
Unlike religion, in which it is the norm to accept absurd claims on grounds of the charisma, the “luminous eyes”, the “beatific smile”, the “holy presence”, the “spiritual vibrations” and so forth of the teacher, in philosophy the charisma or the personal virtues of the philosopher has no impact on the examination of his or her ideas. In fact, in philosophy it goes in the other direction: one tends to attribute certain qualities to the philosopher on the basis of the ideas or sorts of positions he or she holds.
Of course, both forms of inferences are mistaken: the charisma or the compassion of the teacher is no guarantee of the plausibility or even intelligibility of her claims and the profundity of the philosophical ideas is no guarantee of profundity in the character or personal life of the philosopher.
Of course, it’s just an ad hominem fallacy to argue that if someone accepts W’s ideas or his methods, it must be because of the impact of his personality or the stories of his charisma.
Thill said:
It is always a good idea to read an author’s preface to his book! Here are some excerpts from W’s preface to his Philosophical Investigations relevant to the charge that he was authoritarian or impervious to criticism:
“..I have been forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book (Tractatus). I was helped to realize these mistakes by the criticism which my ideas encountered from Frank Ramsey with whom I discussed them in innumerable conversations during the last two years of his life. Even more than to this-always certain and forcible-criticism I am indebted to that which a teacher of this university, Mr. P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly practised on my thoughts.”
“It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another-but, of course, it is not likely.”
“I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own.”
Thill said:
“Of course, it’s just an ad hominem fallacy to argue that if someone accepts W’s ideas or his methods, it must be because of the impact of his personality or the stories of his charisma.”
Wait a minute! It is an inverse ad hominem fallacy to accept someone’s ideas on the basis of his or her charisma or personal qualities irrelevant to the ideas in question, but if I explain someone’s espousal of a philosopher’s ideas on the grounds that she has succumbed to the charisma of the philosopher or if I explain the influential nature of that philosopher’s ideas in terms of the charisma or force of personality of the philosopher, is this really an inverse ad hominem fallacy?
I don’t think so. It surely implies that those who have accepted the philosopher’s ideas have succumbed to an inverse ad hominem fallacy. But this need not be the case. Hence, the fallacy is that of non-sequitur. From the fact that one has accepted W’s ideas, it does not follow that one has succumbed to his charisma or the force of his personality.
Amod Lele said:
“Unlike religion, in which it is the norm to accept absurd claims on grounds of the charisma, the ‘luminous eyes’, the ‘beatific smile’, the ‘holy presence’, the ‘spiritual vibrations’ and so forth of the teacher, in philosophy the charisma or the personal virtues of the philosopher has no impact on the examination of his or her ideas.”
Stuff and nonsense, Thill. I’ve tried to give most of your claims a relatively sympathetic hearing, but this one is so ridiculous I suspect you don’t even believe it yourself. Do you really think that people are attracted to Foucault’s or Žižek’s thought only because of their content, and not also because of the charisma of the founders? What kind of empirical data do you have to establish that philosophers – empirical human beings – live in this rarefied land of pure thought where only the ideas and not the person matter? I at least hope you cease telling yourself this sort of thing when you step up to teach a class. Put a dynamic and charismatic philosophy teacher with unsophisticated ideas and a rigorous and incisive scholar with monotone delivery in front of an academic philosophy class, and guess which one’s ideas are going to spread more widely.
I suppose this claim could be read to say that true philosophy is not distracted by personal charisma, but that claim would shrink the ranks of true philosophers (including Wittgensteinians and other analytic philosophers) considerably.
Thill said:
I am entirely open to the possibility that I wrote some nonsense. After all, I am a philosopher! LOL
Let’s take another look.
First, I was not talking about the academic study of religions or professors of religion or theoreticians of religion. I was talking about religions in their popular or widely prevalent forms and practices.
Second, every undergraduate in philosophy knows that you cannot settle philosophical questions by appealing to the authority of a philosopher or her popularity. How many philosophers influenced by W appeal merely to the authority of W to settle philosophical issues?
Third, by contrast, in religion (again, not the academic study of religion) appeal to authority is the norm! When it takes the form of appeal to the authority of the founder or the teacher, it is largely based on the legends and stories of the personal qualities and deeds of the founder or teacher.
Fourth, in philosophy we hardly pay attention to the personalities and lives of the philosophers. Philosophers gain their reputation and even “personal charisma” by dint of the brilliance or controversial or bizarre nature of their ideas.
I am not denying a role for the charisma of the philosopher in philosophy. I pointed out that the charisma is created by the ideas. The “aura” of a philosopher is a function of her ideas and methods of philosophizing.
Amod Lele said:
Your description of philosophy here is a purely normative one. It is how things are supposed to be, at least according to most standard accounts. But to assume that this is the way things actually are – well, that’s a classic mistake people make in studying “religion” itself. A surprising number of credulous historians have read books of Buddhist monastic law and assumed that Buddhist monks actually lived up to these ideals (“these monks could not have owned property, since that was forbidden by the vinaya.”) While I have great disagreements with Gregory Schopen’s work, I am with him on this point. And the same applies to philosophy as it is supposed to be versus philosophy as it actually happens to be – and the latter is the subject of our present discussion. In any field of endeavour, people frequently do not do what the field’s normative standards say they are supposed to do. Philosophy does not occur among creatures of pure logical reasoning devoted entirely to the assessment of arguments – for philosophy is not done by computers. Philosophy is done by actual human beings, whose stated reasons are constantly betrayed by their actual actions.
It is, in short, quite easy to get suckered. And similarly easy to sucker – to argue for a position you don’t yourself believe, with the intent to deceive. People persuaded more by style than by content have been around since the beginning of philosophy – else the Sophists would not have had as wide a following.
Given the number of philosophers you take to be fools persuaded by bad ideas, I am genuinely startled that you would claim anything other than this. If you really believe that philosophers only gain their appeal through the power of their ideas, how do you explain the fact that Śaṅkara and Popper and Kuhn and Nāgārjuna and Marx and Anscombe appealed to so many people? Especially when you keep going and contrasting philosophy (and “religion”) to “common sense” – if all these people are bewitching us away from our natural common sense with ideas that are self-evidently false, surely we are not living in a philosophical world governed purely by the power of ideas.
(I think a similar same point applies to science, mutatis mutandis, but that’s a separate discussion. Also, I am aware that you were not speaking of the academic study of religion. That’s a moot point because I said nothing about the specious concept of “religion” itself in my earlier reply; I was focusing entirely on the discussion of philosophy. In this comment I am speaking of the study or history of religion to compare it to the history or sociology of philosophies.)
Thill said:
Well, personal charisma and the appeal of the ideas or methods are not exclusive and both may play a role. But I still think that personal charisma counts far less in philosophy than in religion.
I would be interested in any empirical data you can provide in support of your claim that in philosophy the personal charisma ,or the lack of it, of the philosopher plays a dominant role in the the adoption or rejection of his ideas.
If your theory is correct, how do you explain the fact that many philosophers have become famous and influential only posthumously? This is certainly true of W. His style, by the way, was off-putting to many people. His works do not follow the standard style of philosophical writing.
“Given the number of philosophers you take to be fools persuaded by bad ideas”
I am not aware that I have dubbed as “fools persuaded by bad ideas” any of the philosophers whose specific claims I have been criticizing. I don’t know if you are engaging in a caricature here or going by any misleading impression my criticisms may have given.
That Marx said so or Hegel said so has no bearing on the plausibility or even intelligibility of what they said. One appreciates what was said if it is intelligible and plausible. Why should one refrain from criticism if what was said by them strikes one as unintelligible or implausible? “But a Hegel or Marx couldn’t have said something absurd or unintelligible!” is just another form of the appeal to authority.
“If you really believe that philosophers only gain their appeal through the power of their ideas, how do you explain the fact that Śaṅkara and Popper and Kuhn and Nāgārjuna and Marx and Anscombe appealed to so many people?”
I have already said that bizarre or strange ideas, e.g., Berkeley, Sankara, etc., can have their own appeal. Apart from the inveterate irrationality in human beings, there may be social factors which may add to the appeal of strange or bizarre ideas. If you can persuade even intelligent people to believe that a dead human beings can come back to life or that a human being is God, you can certainly persuade them to accept bizarre philosophical ideas!
The fact that some ideas are striking or interesting does not imply that they are plausible. The idea that nothing exists is certainly a striking one, but which person in their (common) senses would believe that? We can have books and philosophy conferences on that “theme”, but that doesn’t show its plausibility. Think of all the prodigious intellectual effort wasted on the doctrine of the Trinity! Does this “distinguished history” make the doctrine any less absurd? Who in their (common) senses would believe that the selfsame entity is also three different entities?
I find it consistent to hold that a) philosophers become famous due to their original and/ or striking or interesting ideas, and b) Many of these ideas are mistaken, implausible, or even absurd.
Some reflection on the track record of human unreason or irrationality, the history of ideas not excepted, should show the consistency of a) and b).
Thill said:
And, of course, we must take care to avoid the “all or nothing” fallacy in approaching any thinker. The admixture of the plausible and the implausible, the profound and the absurd is only to be expected although their respective proportions or degrees may vary from thinker to thinker.
Thill said:
Certainly, my reading of biographical literature on W increased my admiration for him, but this plays no role in my use of some of his approaches to philosophical questions or philosophy itself. I do have my disagreements with some of W’s views, particularly on religion and science.
Since you accord a dominant role to the charisma or qualities of the person of the philosopher in the process of acceptance of his or her views, would it not be correct to infer from your espousal of the ideas of Hegel, Santideva, Nagarjuna, etc., that you were primarily influenced by accounts of their personalities and lives?
I remain nonplussed as to what were the charismatic elements in Hegel and Nagarjuna’s personalities which compelled your assent to their philosophical doctrines, or in the case of the latter, “non-doctrines”.
Amod Lele said:
How do you square a belief in the “inveterate irrationality of human beings” with a belief in “common sense”? I’m curious. Are you saying that the only thing that makes “common sense” common to humans is its potentiality or possibility, but that most people’s inherent irrationality prevents it from being actual?
Thill said:
“Inveterate” does not exclude the possibility of change. The clarity and perception of commonsense, (and this is capable of including “sciencesense” or scientific knowledge) that astonishing endowment of our ordinary mind, can be temporarily or recurrently distorted not only by certain emotions, aversions, and desires, but also by certain irrational patterns of abstract thought and belief (philosophy, religion, politics,etc) which are fed by those emotions, aversions,and desires. These emotions, aversions, and desires are in their turn nourished or inflamed by those patterns of abstract thought and belief.
I think the best solution is to return to or fall back on the native clarity of commonsense and the quiescence of the ordinary mind by overcoming the stranglehold not only of those specific emotions and desires, but also of those irrational patterns of abstract thought and belief.
Thill said:
This is a great question, Amod. It certainly deserves careful investigation. For now, I think that my use of “inveterate” is incorrect. If irrationality in human beings were “inveterate”, we wouldn’t notice it or make an issue of it. We notice it and make an issue of it only because it stands in stark contrast to commonsense.
I have increasingly come to view commonsense, in the sense I have clarified in earlier responses, with an awe bordering on religious worship! It is my version of “Buddha Mind”! LOL As an inherent and astonishing faculty of illumination of our “ordinary mind”, it remains immune to occlusion even in many cases of irrationality and pathology and is certainly the “gold lining” in those dark clouds.
JimWilton said:
Thill and Amod, your disagreement seems quite narrow. Thill seems to think it possible to address philosophical thought in the abstract and views the virtue or non-virtue of the philosopher’s life as largely irrelevant. Amod, by using the provocative word “charisma” seems to agree that a philosopher’s life should be irrelevant to an understanding of his or her thought — but merely makes the point that students of philosophy are human and influenced by non-logical factors.
If the goal of philosophy is to discover truth, why shouldn’t a philosopher’s life be the principal criterion on which he or she is judged? Or is philosophy just about playing intellectual games? If philosophy has any practical significance and real meaning for how we live our lives (as I believe it has potential to have), then doesn’t how the philosopher’s life is lived have intense relevance?
To put it bluntly, can we save time and dispense with reading Mein Kampf (other than perhaps as an exercise in studying psychological aberration)?
Amod Lele said:
Thanks for this, Jim. You are right and I began to start thinking of this point as the conversation with Thill progressed. If philosophy is genuine wisdom and not merely a bunch of trifling games played by pedantic intellectuals, then it should have a genuine effect on one’s conduct of life – so that if a given life is conducted well or poorly, that is relevant to the assessment of the philosophy. So, while I do think some of the admiration for Wittgenstein comes out of his romantic persona, the question is not merely whether that persona is a distraction – it is also whether that persona is worthy of emulation.
JimWilton said:
Thanks Amod. The situation I was most thinking of is the graduate student at Harvard who committed suicide a few weeks ago after finishing his dissertation.
Did you read about that? Is his dissertation worth reading? Why did no one in his classes speak to him? Did his professors know what he was going through?
I don’t at all think that philosophy is a game. I just think that the journey has to engage our hearts as much as our minds.
michael reidy said:
This might be of interest. From the 70’s. Bryan Magee talking to Bernard Williams about ‘the spell of linguistic philosophy’.http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/11/bernard-williams-on-the-spell-of-linguistic-philosophy.html#more
Thill said:
Michael and/or Amod,
You might enjoy the discussion between Bernard Williams and Alfred Ayer on commonsense, philosophy, and science. The discussion is available in several segments on youtube. Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbCrEA2nCqw&feature=related
skholiast said:
thanks for this, Thill.
michael reidy said:
Amod:
I recall reading that a lot of students cut L.W.’s classes. They called it the toothache class (my toothache versus your toothache – how do I know etc.) and the spectacle of him agonising, grasping, doing it right there, extreme thinking, before them was hard to take. He had devotees of course but he was trying in the extreme.
Amod Lele said:
Charismatic personalities cut multiple ways. There’s little denying that many Americans – very likely most of them – were held transfixed by George W. Bush’s speech on September 11, finding in its tone and delivery the solid reassurance they needed. I watched the same speech and found it a forgettable piece of pablum. But it’s their reaction that is an indicator of Bush’s charisma, not mine.
Tom O'Shea said:
For what it’s worth, I think Wittgenstein was the most interesting and important philosopher of the twentieth century, and his philosophy is a work of genuis.
If you have come to his ideas through their uptake in religious studies then that might explain why he strikes you as a shallow thinker: unfortunately, in nominally ‘Wittgensteinian’ philosophy of religion at least, he is reduced to a bunch of half-digested concepts (Sprachspiel, family resemblence, some vague appeal to ‘social practice,’ etc.) that give a false picture of his thought and methodology.
I’d highly recommend both Marie McGinn’s ‘Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations’ and Ray Monk’s philosophical biography of Wittgenstein as places to start if you want to know why he is such a powerful intellectual influence on so many thinkers.
Amod Lele said:
Thanks, Tom. As I note, I haven’t only come to him through religious studies – I quickly read On Certainty before writing the previous post after Thill’s comments, and had read the first part of the Investigations before that. But certainly a lot of what I’ve heard has been through his RS reception, and I freely admit that my study of him beyond that is very limited.
And that’s a big reason why I ended the post the way I did. That, and the fact that almost everyone I engage with seems impressed by Wittgenstein, at least online – including not only worthy opponents like Thill, but also people like you and Michael and Skholiast, with whom I see eye-to-eye much of the time. And while I don’t care for most of the major thinkers Wittgenstein is usually cited as influencing, he is a big deal for certain thinkers – MacIntyre, Korsgaard, Murdoch – whom I do respect deeply.
So the references are helpful. Something to add to the reading list…
skholiast said:
Amod,
Quite a thread you have going here already. I will second the recommendation of Monk’s L.W. biography. This book helped me clarify my intuition that for all the hoopla about ‘early’ and ‘late’ L.W., there is a very deep continuity between these phases.
I think I see what you mean about the abuse of the language-game concept, and in fact this was one aspect of his thinking that, when I knew it only by reputation, kept me away from him. Later on, I saw the applicability of this, but I actually think (1) it is not the most important of LW’s contributions) and (2) it is not infrequently mis-applied or shallowly applied. I rather like your phlogiston example, though I have to admit, I would be very interested in a revisionary history of science that took exactly the tack you describe!
Now I’ll cop to having fallen in love with Wittgenstein, and so in some sense having been ‘bewitched’ as you describe it. It wasn’t the leather jacket or the bad manners, and I rather suspect I’d have found him a difficult person and he might dismiss me as philosophically negligible. But LW was one of the most serious thinkers I ever came across– maybe Kierkegaard, Augustine, and Simone Weil are his equals. You will immediately note that this list is of religious thinkers. LW famously remarked that “I am not a religious man, but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.” His emphasis upon bewitchment is an instance of this– every real insight, for LW, is in some measure an insight into oneself. It’s not justthat one revises one’s opinion; one sees that one has been mistaken, and why. This might seem to be a rather fine hair to split, but it makes all the difference in the world.
Aside from Monk’s biography, I commend Cavell’s The Claim of Reason and Harrison & Hanna’s Word & World. Neither of these are primarily engaged with exegetical work on Wittgenstein (though there is some of this) but they are philosophizing in a Wittgenstinian key, so to speak.
I am very interested in this apparent snag between us. My guess is it points to some divergent assumptions we are each of us working from, but also to the opportunity for real eventual understanding, not just of each other but of ‘the thing itself.’
Amod Lele said:
Ah, thanks, Skholiast. You are pointing to a side of Wittgenstein which I know less but which does interest me more. Let me start by moving beyond that word “religion,” which I despise for reasons I won’t bore you (or myself!) with again. I think there are at least two ways Wittgenstein can be called “religious” and it’s worth picking apart. I know there is a mystical tendency in Wittgenstein, since Iris Murdoch emphasizes it so heavily. (You’ve read Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, I presume? Or at least some of her other nonfiction? If not, good God man, get to it immediately. Trust me, you will love every word.) But you’re pointing to another one, particularly interesting to me: that Wittgenstein also has a strong interest in self-improvement, self-cultivation, self-transformation. That’s a much bigger deal to me. Moreover, connecting it to the rest of Wittgenstein, it does seem like it may be intimately connected with practice, and life beyond mere debate and argument. (Thus elevating him well beyond lesser thinkers like Rorty, for whom the purpose of philosophy, and maybe even life, seems to be pure logorrhea.)
I suppose my biggest concern with Wittgenstein’s value side is the way he treats ethics as ineffable – this strikes me as leading right to Thrasymachus, where one cannot debate the good but only fight about it, effectively making it so that might makes right.
But you are probably right that our different evaluations of Wittgenstein point to deeper differences. I suspect this has something to do with your much greater sympathy for Speculative Realism/OOO, for example. Just to muddy things up a bit more, Heidegger may be in there too. While I generally have more respect for Heidegger than for Wittgenstein, I’ll also admit that I’m not especially fond of either – or really of most Western philosophy between about 1900 and 1980, except Gadamer, and Freud if you count him. Between Nietzsche and MacIntyre just seems like a philosophical dark age to me.
TStockmann said:
I’m not sure if you’re interested, but I came to your site by googling “Against Wittgenstein” and found this thread. A few observations:
The issue of whether an attractive personal story should affect “philosophy” (itself a very clear illustration of family resemblances within collective abstracts) opens up the continuing question of why we’re philosophizing. It’s perhaps telling that a superficial matter like Wittgenstein’s choice of transgressive leather jacket or the not-very-novel novelty of homosexuality in his Oxbridge set merited your mention, and not (to my mind) more significant transgressions such as giving away one of Europe’s largest fortune or his notion of his patriotic duty towards the Austro-Hungarian Empire during WWI. Funny question, since the personality of Socrates, for instance, is still the central structuring factor to many of the language games within the term “philosophy.” How significant should it be to our reading of the Crito that Socrates (or “Socrates” of the Phaedo) actually does drink the hemlock? For that matter, does biography matter- or narrative, regardless of factional accuracy? Or, since you appreciate Nietzsche, wit and style? After all, analytical ethics and Thrasymachus are not the only choices.
One problem for philosophers is that if you accept the position of late Wittgenstein, it tends to dissolve most of the canon of philosophy that came before him. There’s no point in agonizing through Spinoza, Kant or Hegel unless you have an obsessive need to apply the linguistic analysis knowing that (in your late-Wittgensteinian terms) it will all dissolve in the end. Confession: it was encountering the Blue and Brown Books in my required Philosophical Writing course that enabled me to drop my philosophy major as being fully satisfied. It reminds me of a literary scholar, Mark Schorer, who spend his professional life becoming the leading expert in his time on Sinclair Lewis, and later (if I’m remembering correctly) decided that Lewis hadn’t been worth the bother. Another problem is that it tends to dissolve implicit claims of authority of the field and of philosophers. One contemporary French philosopher has refused to discuss Wittgensteinians beyond calling them simply “mechant.” If someone can make the apparently solid cudgels of prose with which you hoped to effect ideological change crumble with dry-rot, they are not your friend.
I’m interested in your description of how scholars of religion use the “family resemblance” to simply sidestep analysis of religion or Hinduism and then apparently go blithely about using the term as if it were unitary and sensible. As far as I can tell, this is the opposite of what should happen – the tension and distinction between the difference uses of the term aren’t supposed to be buried, but displayed. I tend to think of what Wittgenstein can do in technical discussions as being analogous with what Orwell is trying to do with “Politics of the English Language” in everyday discourse, because errors resulting from the craving for generality are rarely random.
Finally, to pile on the current “Wittgenstein was autistic” meme in a slightly different way, I’d say that in modern psychological terms, the collection of traits that suggest that his orientations were introversion and non-affiliative, that much of the reason for his ethics being “ineffable” was that they were internally generated and checked (not to deny a genealogy of his morals), and the reason other ethicists effing talk about it is that their sources and audience are more transparently communal – another alternative to Thrasymachus and not incidentally what i think Plato is actually demonstrating in Gorgias – or for that matter, in the now-famous story of Wittgenstein’s poker.
Amod Lele said:
Thanks for your long and thoughtful comment, TStockmann. I’m definitely interested. Welcome to the blog and I hope you’ll stick around. I don’t have time to respond at length right now, but a couple short thoughts in reply:
You are right to be interested in my use of these biographical details and not the ones you mention – especially since I hadn’t even heard of the latter. They don’t really circulate nearly as much.
What comes in your second paragraph is important, and I think you’ve hit on a very significant reason why I tend to be hostile to Wittgenstein – and much 20th-century philosophy with him. He is a canonical figure for those too full of themselves to think they need to read anything written before. In that way he presents the same sophomoric appeal as Ayn Rand: you now know the truth and you’re done, you don’t have to bother with any of that rubbish that was believed by everyone on the planet for thousands of years because it was all figured out by one guy in a leather jacket.
michael reidy said:
It has to be recollected that Wittgenstein’s Tractatus was considered by him at the time to be a satisfactory round-up and solution of outstanding problems. Job done, mission accomplished etc., go home, what’s for tea mum. I don’t believe he was that sanguine about Philosophical Investigations however his challenge to the empiricist forms of dualism is powerful as I mentioned. The trouble is that Dualism mutates or to mix a metaphor that I don’t fully understand, it is a permanent lodger in our noetic DNA. So just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water a Great White Shark in the form of David Chalmers, genius surfer boy, turns up with Zombies who may have all the consciousness but none of the feelings of you and I. All this is promoted on the basis that my head doesn’t explode when I think it.
Then there is the Dennetesque fear of Dualism that is so extreme that he denies consciousness altogether. To conclude in the best traditions of Oxbridge Phil:
“If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
michael reidy said:
Thill:
I think that what has been established for Thill is that commonsense is common to Thill-minded people. Thomas Reid would not be in that club. Bradley, Berkeley, Plato, Aristotle and many other luminaries would not be in that club. So who would want to be in a club that would not have them as members? Is it a waste of time to pay any serious attention to these thinkers or ought they to be studied as salutary warnings and intellectual buoys that mark the reefs and sandbars of the mind?
Thill said:
MR: I don’t understand your comment other than the whiff of self-styled superiority over commonsense which it exudes. Apparently, you have not read my clarification of what “commonsense”
means. It is not identical to “vulgar opinion”. Even William Hazlitt made that point in an essay. It is absurd to claim that philosophers, or anyone for that matter, however erudite, have no need of commonsense. How do you think they manage to get by in the world at all? Surely not by dint of their metaphysical speculations!
Commonsense is not a “club” you can decide to belong or not to belong.
Thill said:
Apparently, membership in the “commonsense club” depends on your decrees! How do you figure that Thomas Reid and Aristotle don’t belong in that “club”? Reid wrote extensively on commonsense and used it as the standard in terms of which to reject Humean skepticism and theory of the self. Are you aware of Aristotle’s rudimentary concept of commonsense? He called it “sensus communis”. In Aristotle’s sketchy and limitedview, it underlies perceptual functions.
michael reidy said:
Thill:
Thomas Reid reserved his strictures about commonsense to belief in the external world, free will and metaphysical matters of that sort. He also held to a belief in God and the Argument from Design things which would perhaps place him outside suitable membership in your book. Berkeley and Bradley would be sure of your black ball for uncertainty about the existence of the external world. Aristotle had curious ideas about plants having souls and substance and matter; things which as theoretical entities with existence status hovering over nonentity as the eye of commonsense would see it.
If philosophy begins with wonder, commonsense begins and ends with complacency.
Thill said:
“If philosophy begins with wonder, commonsense begins and ends with complacency.”
Even to exercise your capacity to wonder at anything, you must rely on your commonsense!!!
Thill said:
“If philosophy begins with wonder, commonsense begins and ends with complacency.”
MR, here’s my retort to your “punchline”:
If philosophy begins and ends with doubt, commonsense begins and ends with confidence even if it graciously heeds philosophical doubt on the way!
Thill said:
MR, a catalog of philosophical beliefs inconsistent with commonsense and science does not impose any burden of defense on either of them. It would be a case of “philosopher-centrism” to think otherwise.
Reid, in fact, thought that belief in a God-designer of the laws of nature was consistent with commonsense. Whether it is so is an important philosophical problem.
Speaking of the relevance of the lives of philosophers to their ideas, I am sure Berkeley and Bradley amply demonstrated in their daily lives and in their eagerness to have their ideas published and publicized their sincere “uncertainty” about the existence of the external world!
“Philosophy begins in wonder.” What does this worn out cliche mean? What do philosophers wonder at? Why? What does their philosophizing do in the end to their alleged initial wonder?
What can be more wondrous than commonsense and its effortless comprehension of the innumerable distinctions in language and the world?