Wittgenstein and the Social Sciences. Robert Vinten

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СКАЧАТЬ my own views in his discussion of ‘therapeutic scepticism.’ In the work of mine that he cites, ‘Leave Everything as It Is: A Critique of Marxist Interpretations of Wittgenstein,’ I neither emphasize the notion of therapy in Wittgenstein (I do not present a therapeutic reading of Wittgenstein) and nor do I subscribe to a form of philosophical scepticism. My work is mentioned briefly in the second chapter of Temelini’s book under the heading of ‘strong contextualism’ and Temelini argues that the thinkers discussed under that heading either think that we are ‘thoroughly determined by conventions’ or that we are ‘at the mercy of autonomous, radically contingent, and historically variable conventions operating largely out of our control.’⁸⁷ I do not in fact believe either of these things and the passage that he quotes from my work in order to justify making his claims does not justify him in making the claim that I am a ‘strong contextualist’. What I said in my paper ‘Leave Everything as It Is’, which Temelini cites, was that Wittgenstein and Marx were both ‘sensitive to the importance of (social) context’.⁸⁸ However, it does not follow from this that I believe that ‘individuals […] are thoroughly determined by conventions’ or that individuals are ‘at the mercy of autonomous, radically contingent, and historically variable conventions operating largely out of our control’, as Temelini suggests. So, one problem with Temelini’s work is that he misrepresents the work of several of the philosophers he labels ‘therapeutic sceptics’, including my own work.

Another criticism that can be made of Temelini’s book is that where he does interpret people correctly he does not always put a finger on a problem with their work. For example, Temelini takes it to be a problem with interpretations of Wittgenstein’s work that they interpret him as not being a realist. However, if we look at Wittgenstein’s later work we see that he regularly objects to realist ‘theories’ in philosophy, and with good reason. For example, in the Blue Book, Wittgenstein tells us that ‘the trouble with the realist is always that he does not solve but skip[s]‌ the difficulties which his adversaries see’ and he claims that realists fail to see ‘troublesome feature[s] in our grammar’.⁸⁹ In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein says that ‘this is what disputes between idealists, solipsists and realists look like. The one party attacks the normal form of expression as if they were attacking an assertion; the others defend it as if they were stating facts recognized by every reasonable human being’⁹⁰ and in On Certainty Wittgenstein says that the realist’s claim that ‘there are physical objects’ is ‘a misfiring attempt to express what cannot be expressed like that. And that is does misfire can be shown.’⁹¹ Feminist Wittgensteinians, such as Peg O’Connor, are on firm ground when they interpret Wittgenstein as presenting realism as confused and she makes a good (Wittgenstein-inspired) case that the moral realism of Nicholas Sturgeon is a confused response to Gilbert Harman’s (confused) antirealism.⁹²

Perhaps the problem with non-realist views in Temelini’s mind is that they either leave us with an ‘anything goes’ relativism, or they leave us unable to make claims to truth or knowledge. However, Wittgensteinians might very well say that it is the various forms of realism that leave us in a confused position and that realism does not do what it sets out to do, that is, ground our knowledge claims. What we need to do is to return from the metaphysical position of realism to the rough ground of our ordinary lives, where we regularly say that moral claims are true and argue with each other about moral issues on the assumption that there are better or worse stances to take up and standards by which we can make judgements. O’Connor certainly claims that we do have standards,⁹³ that we can have moral knowledge,⁹⁴ and that we can have better or worse answers to conflicts.⁹⁵ Temelini does not tackle these arguments and so it seems that he is not in a good position to object to interpretations of Wittgenstein on the basis of them being non-realist.⁹⁶

      0.3Wittgenstein, the Radical

      Wittgenstein’s way of philosophising represented a break with traditional ways of philosophising. Traditional philosophers thought of themselves as constructing metaphysical systems, or as adding to our stock of knowledge, or as doing something continuous with science. Wittgenstein presented us with a radically new way of doing philosophy.

      I will argue in this book that Wittgenstein’s radical philosophy could also be useful in developing the radical politics and social theory that we need around the world now. It is a mistake to view Wittgenstein’s philosophy as conservative and Marxist critics of Wittgenstein are wrong to think that there are deep tensions between Wittgensteinian philosophy and radical left-wing politics. We face enormous threats from climate change, rising authoritarianism, bigotry, and war. Wittgenstein’s philosophy is useful in challenging the dominant liberalism of today, which does not seem to be up to the task of rising to those challenges, and in developing a clearer, more radical alternative to it. It can help us to get clearer about the nature of disagreements, about what justice requires, and about the justifications given for various forms of society. Wittgenstein himself may not have been a radical in his politics but his philosophy can help radicals to get clearer in their political thought.

¹L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, revised 4th edition by P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

²L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, Oxford: Blackwell, 1969.

³L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London: Routledge, 1961.

⁴In the Tractatus Wittgenstein says that philosophy ‘is not one of the natural sciences’ (4.111) and that it ‘aims at the logical clarification of thoughts’ (4.112). He says of psychology that it ‘is no more closely related to philosophy than any other natural science’ (4.1121). In the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein says that ‘our considerations must not be scientific ones […] And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. All explanation must disappear’ (PI §109).

⁵I should be clear here that Wittgenstein was not wholly opposed to science. He was deeply interested in engineering, mathematics, and psychology and thought that valuable work was done in all of the various scientific disciplines. The scientism that he was opposed to is the tendency to think that scientific knowledge is a superior kind of knowledge, such that it should be extended into all areas of life (see Hans-Johann Glock’s A Wittgenstein Dictionary, where he talks about scientism as ‘the imperialist tendencies of scientific thinking which result from the idea that science is the measure of all things’ (H.-J. Glock, A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, p. 341)).

⁶From Maria Baghramian’s recent book about relativism (M. Baghramian, Relativism, Abingdon: Routledge, 2004).

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