This is the first of two volumes containing the proceedings of the 32

Literature

Artaud, Antonin 1979: “L’Arve et l’Aume: Tentative anti-grammaticale contre Lewis Carroll”. In: Œuvres complètes d’Antonin Artaud, vol. 9. Paris: Gallimard, 133-146.

Baker, Gordon (ed.) 2003: The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle. London: Routledge. (VW)

Carnap, Rudolf 1959: “The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language”, translated by Arthur Pap. In: Ayer, A. J. (ed.): Logical Positivism. New York: Free Press, 60-81.

Conant, James 2002: “The Method of the Tractatus”. In: Reck, Erich. H. (ed.): From Frege to Wittgenstein: Perspectives on Early Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: OUP, 374-462.

Diamond, Cora 1991: The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Diamond, Cora 2000: “Ethics, imagination and the method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus”. In: Crary, Alice / Read, Rupert (eds.): The New Wittgenstein. London: Routledge, 149-173.

Dummett, Michael 1981: Frege: Philosophy of Language. 2^nd Edition. London: Duckworth.

Hacker, P. M. S. 2001: Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Heidegger, Martin 1962: Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell.

Heidegger, Martin 1977: Sein und Zeit, edited by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann. In: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

Heidegger, Martin 1998: “What is Metaphysics?”, translated by David Farrell Krell. In: Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill. Cambridge: CUP, 82-96.

Heidegger, Martin 1998a: “Postscript to ‘What is Metaphysics?’”, translated by William McNeill. In: Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill. Cambridge: CUP, 231-238.

Keicher, Peter 1998: “Untersuchungen zu Wittgensteins ‘Diktat für Schlick’”. In Krüger, Wilhelm / Pichler, Alois (eds.): Arbeiten zu Wittgenstein. Bergen: Working Papers from the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, 43-90.

Keicher, Peter 1999: “‘Eine Insel des Seins umspült vom unendlichen Meer des Nichts’. Wittgensteins Bemerkungen zu Heidegger”. In: Meixner, Uwe / Simons, Peter (eds.): Metaphysics in the Post-Metaphysical Age: Papers of the 22nd International Wittgenstein Symposium, vol. 1. Kirchberg am Wechsel: Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 298-304.

Koder, Johannes 1993: “Verzeichnis der Schriften Ludwig Wittgensteins im Nachlaß Rudolf und Elisabeth Koder”. Mitteilungen aus dem Brenner-Archiv 12, 52-54.

Lee, Desmond (ed.) 1980: Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1930-1932. Oxford: Blackwell. (WL)

McGuinness, Brian (ed.) 1979: Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations recorded by Friedrich Waismann, translated by Joachim Schulte and Brian McGuinness. Oxford: Blackwell. (WVC)

McGuinness, Brian / Ascher, Maria Concetta / Pfersmann, Otto (eds.) 1996: Wittgenstein: Familienbriefe. Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky. (FB)

McGuinness, Brian 2002: Approaches to Wittgenstein: Collected papers. London: Routledge.

Monk, Ray 1990: Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. London: Jonathan Cape.

Murray, Michael 1978: “Ludwig Wittgenstein: On Heidegger on Being and Dread”. In: Murray, Michael (ed.): Heidegger and Modern Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 80-83.

Rentsch, Thomas 2003: Heidegger und Wittgenstein: Existential- und Sprachanalysen zu den Grundlagen philosophischer Anthropologie. 2^nd Edition. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

Rorty, Richard 1991: Essays on Heidegger and others: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Cambridge: CUP.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1933: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 2^nd Edition, trans. by C. K. Ogden. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Wittgenstein. Ludwig 1993: “A Lecture on Ethics”, edited with the assistance of Rush Rhees. In: Klagge, J. C. / Nordmann, Alfred (eds.): Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951. Indianapolis: Hackett, 36-44. (LE)

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1998: Culture and Value: A Selection from the Posthumous Remains. 2^nd Edition, edited by G. H. von Wright in collaboration with Heikki Nyman, revised edition of the text by Alois Pichler, translated by Peter Winch. Oxford: Blackwell. (CV)

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 2000: Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition. Oxford: OUP. (MSS & TSS)

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 2007: Lecture on Ethics: Introduction, Interpretation and Complete Text, edited by Edoardo Zamuner, E. Valentina Di Lascio and David Levy, with notes by Ilse Somavilla. Macerata: Quodlibet. (LE 2007)

* ^* The following lecture is a short excerpt from a much longer essay entitled ‘Grammar and Necessity’ to be published in the extensively revised 2^nd edition of Baker, G. P. / Hacker, P. M. S. 2009: Wittgenstein – Rules, Grammar and Necessity. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 241-370.

1 ^ Dostoevsky 1955, in: Magarshak, 137.

2 ^ It has been suggested that ‘the philosophical problem of necessity is twofold: what is its source and how do we recognize it’ (Dummett 1959, 327). Nothing could be further removed from Wittgenstein’s approach to the multifaceted problem. For he aimed to undermine these very questions, to show that once the logico-grammatical features of these various types of proposition is correctly understood, these puzzles will dissolve.

3 ^ In the Tractatus Wittgenstein argued that equations are not really propositions at all.

4 ^ See: Russell, Bertrand 1984, chap. IX.

5 ^ One might be tempted to go so far as to say that a false arithmetical formula is a nonsense. Since 25 × 25 is 625, since the two expressions ‘25 × 25’ and ‘625’ are intersubstitutable, since they mean the same in extra-mathematical contexts, ‘25 × 25 = 624’ patently makes no sense, any more than ‘red is lighter than pink’ makes sense. In both cases, the obtaining of an internal relation is denied. But internal relations are logically constitutive of their relata – and the result of denying that they obtain is nonsense.

It is striking that Wittgenstein did not go down this road. Instead he remarked ‘Well, this “meaningless” road has now been trodden so often that it has become muddy and one cannot see one’s way clearly; it needs rolling’ (LFM 92). Instead he examined what one can and cannot do with a false arithmetical proposition.

6 ^ ‘Finitism and behaviourism are as alike as two eggs’, he remarked, ‘The same absurdities, and the same kind of answers. Both sides of such disputes are based on a particular kind of misunderstanding – which arises from gazing at a particular form of words and forgetting to ask what’s done with it’ (LFM 111).

‘Brouwer talks of a range of propositions for which the law of excluded middle does not hold … [But what] Brouwer has actually discovered [is] something which it is misleading to call a proposition. He has not discovered a proposition, but something having the appearance of a proposition’ (AWL 140).

‘Intuitionism is all bosh – entirely’ he said to his pupils (LFM 237).

1 ^ Throughout I shall use the translation and numbering of the third edition, Oxford: Blackwell, 1978.

2 ^ The motley is emphasized in Hacking 2009 and in Hacking 2000.

3 ^ Kreisel 1958, 158.

4 ^ Ambrose 1959, Dummett 1959.

5 ^ Dummett 1978, 300f.

6 ^ ‘Soames ascribes theses to Wittgenstein, despite Wittgenstein’s explicit insistence that he propounded none’, followed by a citation of PI §128. In Hacker 2006, 129.

7 ^ Hilbert / Cohn-Vossen 1952, 6-8.

8 ^ In the numeration of the revised edition, we have I-§§1-3; I-§§113-118; IV-§§8-9; VII-§§39-40. I do not mean to imply that these passages do not have application elsewhere in the texts.

9 ^ Kripke 1982.

10 ^ Bloor 1983. Bloor continued this theme with for example his 1997.

11 ^ Or possibly precede. See Hacking 1985. This largely recapitulates some ideas presented in my doctoral dissertation Proof, Cambridge 1962.

12 ^ These observations parallel, in a different key, Mary Hesse’s (1969). In her terminology, working out the number of school lunches is one of the ramifications of arithmetic.

13 ^ It is seldom noticed that Goodman and Kripke mesh less well together than is sometimes thought. See Hacking 1993.

14 ^ Kripke does not put things in this way, with good reason preferring to contrast normative and descriptive accounts of dispositions to speak in certain ways. See: Kripke 1982, 37.

15 ^ Hacking 2007.

16 ^ Cf. Bloor 1983. The example goes back to my reading, about 1960, of J. E. Littlewood’s charming A Mathematician’s Miscellany, London: Methuen, 1953.

17 ^ Ayer 1946, 85.

18 ^ Quine 1936.

19 ^ The material in this and the next section is developed at much greater length in Hacking 2009. References will be found in that paper.

20 ^ Russell 1946, 84. Kant’s question is stated in Kant 1929, 56 (B 20).

21 ^ Russell 1946, 85.

22 ^ To repeat, if the axes of traditional problematization of mathematics are (a) the a priori and (b) necessity, then (a) is Kantian, while (b) is mediaeval. This is a subtext, I suppose, of my 1973 lecture, ‘Proof and Eternal Truths’, reprinted in Hacking 2002.

23 ^ Detlefsen 1998, 181.

24 ^ Whitehead 1925, 28.

25 ^ Wittgenstein 1976, 77.

26 ^ Eg. RFM IV §21; VII §72. Also Wittgenstein 1976, 195.

27 ^ See Siegmund-Schultze 2004.

28 ^ The metaphor of by-products was first used in Hacking 1979.

29 ^ Of course old ones persist. RFM III §33 (iii): ‘But what about p p? I see in it a degenerate proposition, which is on the side of truth.’

30 ^ He did mention it in scare quotes, as in RFM V §41: ‘Concepts which occur in “necessary” propositions must also occur and have a meaning in non-necessary ones.’ This is importantly connected to Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the applications of mathematics.

31 ^ Lakatos 1970. I showed in Hacking 2000, §§ 7-8, that Lakatos and Wittgenstein complement each other more than one would expect, or, indeed, more than either of them would have liked.

32 ^ This is, perhaps, a one-sentence summary of Hacking 2000.

33 ^ Dummett 1978a, 170.

34 ^ „Der Effekt des Beweises sei, so meine ich, dass der Mensch sich in die neue Regel hineinstürzt.“ (One may question whether the sei is correctly translated as ‘is’.)

35 ^ For an earlier way of coming at these issues, see Hacking 2002a.

1 ^ See e.g. RFM, PI §122-125, §193.

1 ^ Neben den Arbeiten Blumenbergs wurde die Diskussion um die Rolle der Metaphern in der Philosophie im deutschsprachigen Raum durch die hermeneutisch orientierten Arbeiten Paul Ricœurs (dt. 1986) oder Ernesto Grassis (Grassi 1992) weitergeführt. Die Rezeption des Dekonstruktivismus im deutschsprachigen Raum wurde wesentlich von Anselm Haverkamp befördert (vgl. Haverkamp 1998 und Haverkamp 2007).

2 ^ Diesen Vorgang konstatieren auch Heidegger und Derrida, die den „normal-philosophischen“ Metapherngebrauch als ausschließlich der Metaphysik zugehörig begreifen.

3 ^ Vgl. dazu bes. Müller 2005, 236ff. und zusammenfassend 239 „Letztlich hat Blumenberg keine einheitliche kulturanthropologische Theorie aufgestellt, sondern vielmehr versucht, seine metaphorologischen und phänomenologischen Untersuchungen anthropologisch zu fundieren.“

4 ^ Blumenberg hat 1957 eine erste größere begriffsgeschichtliche Studie der Metapher des Lichts gewidmet, ohne freilich dabei auf Wittgenstein einzugehen (Blumenberg 2001b).

5 ^ Diese Bemerkungen stehen in folgendem Kontext:

11 Verbirg dein Antlitz vor meinen Sünden, und tilge alle meine Missetat.

12 Schaffe in mir, Gott, ein reines Herz, und gib mir einen neuen, beständigen Geist.

13 Verwirf mich nicht von deinem Angesicht, und nimm deinen Heiligen Geist nicht von mir.

14 Erfreue mich wieder mit deiner Hilfe, und mit einem willigen Geist rüste mich aus.

(zit. nach der Lutherbibel, rev. Standardausgabe 1984)

Die Veranlassung für Psalm 51, den vierten Bußpsalm, ist Davids heimtückischer Mordauftrag gegen Uria den Hethiter, seinen Feldherrn und zugleich Gatte Batsebas. David lässt Uria beseitigen, um Batseba zur Frau nehmen zu können. Erst als der Weise Nathan ihm ein Gleichnis vorträgt, erkennt David seine Schuld (vgl. Samuel II, 11–12). – Zu Wittensteins Lektüre des AT vgl. auch den Hinweis auf die (Buß)Psalmen-Lektüre in der Notiz vom 20.2.1937 in Denkbewegungen (Wittgenstein 1997a, 85).

6 ^ Somavilla stützt ihren Befund mit einem Beleg aus MS 107, 156: „Kann noch immer nicht ordentlich, oder gar nicht, arbeiten. Die philosophische Gegend meines Gehirns liegt noch immer im Dunkeln. Und erst wenn da wieder das Licht angezündet wird geht die Arbeit wieder an.“

7 ^ Ich zitiere nach der revidierten Luther-Übersetzung von 1912.

8 ^ Vgl. 1 Kor 13:

8 Die Liebe höret nimmer auf, so doch die Weissagungen aufhören werden und die Sprachen aufhören werden und die Erkenntnis aufhören wird.

9 Denn unser Wissen ist Stückwerk, und unser Weissagen ist Stückwerk.

10 Wenn aber kommen wird das Vollkommene, so wird das Stückwerk aufhören.

[…]

12 Wir sehen jetzt durch einen Spiegel in einem dunkeln Wort; dann aber von Angesicht zu Angesicht. Jetzt erkenne ich's stückweise; dann aber werde ich erkennen, gleichwie ich erkannt bin.

13 Nun aber bleibt Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe, diese drei; aber die Liebe ist die größte unter ihnen.

9 ^ Dies betrifft insbesondere die Lehre von der Gnadenwahl, die Paulus in Römer 9 knapp darlegt.

10 ^ Blumenberg hat bei seiner Ausarbeitung des Begriffs der „absoluten Metapher“ in seinen Paradigmen (1960) gewiss nicht an Wittgenstein gedacht; er bezog sich vor allem auf Cassirer, Heidegger und Husserl. Vgl. Heidenreich (2005), bes. S. 95–105.

1 ^ Consider also Rorty’s key recent Wittgensteinian opponents, my fellow ‘new Wittgensteinians’ Alice Crary and James Conant. The whole tenor of Conant’s critique of Rorty, and the crucial closing sentence of Crary’s “Wittgenstein and political philosophy” (in our (2000)), make very clear that Crary and Conant consider themselves to be united with Rorty in his political liberalism, even as they are divided from him over Wittgenstein.

2 ^ I am thinking here particularly of Nigel Pleasants and Phil Hutchinson.

3 ^ This need not be a contradiction in terms. In my view, a perfectionist project that openly favours some conceptions of the good above others (e.g. that favours ‘high’ culture) can be perfectly compatible with a truly egalitarian distribution of material goods among an entire population, etc.

4 ^ Such as e.g. the class described in the (to my mind) unpleasant scenario via which Rawls first details how the difference principle might play out in his ‘just’ society, on p.78 of Rawls’s (1971).

5 ^ Similarly, Wittgenstein has his serious attractions, at least superficially for Rawlsian liberals (for those impressed by Rawls’s founding assumption, interrogated below, that “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions”). Take for instance the following quotes, from “Philosophy” from the Big Typescript (p.171 and p.181): “THE GOAL [OF PHILOSOPHY]: THE TRANSPARENCY OF ARGUMENTS. JUSTICE.” “Our only task is to be just. That is, we must only point out and resolve the injustices of philosophy, and not posit new parties—and creeds.”

6 ^ See for instance James Conant’s piece in Philosophical Investigations, “On Wittgenstein” (2001), for the deep differences between their two approaches.

7 ^ See especially the opening paragraph of this paper of Dreben’s.

8 ^ Page numbers in the body of the text. Is there a clear-sighted glimpse in Cavell of the liberal apologia for inequality (injustice?) in Rawls, at p.108 of his text?: “We know what the original position has prepared us for, what the liberal veil has disclosed: the scene of our lives. The public circumstances in which I live, in which I participate and from which I profit, are ones I consent to. They are ones with an uncertain measure of injustice, of inequalities of liberty and of goods that are not minimal, of delays in reform that are not inevitable.”

9 ^ As suggested below: this is especially dangerous in that it removes future generations from (the conversation of) justice.

10 ^ I am not certain that I understand Cavell’s meaning here, but it certainly seems an outright endorsement of elitism as well as inegalitarianism. (Cf. also p.103, p.108). This is very disappointing, given the apparent clarity of the parenthesis about what the fundamental problem with the difference principle surely is.

11 ^ I return in the section on “Honesty”, below to just how strong a way into what is wrong with Rawls this idea contains the germ of.

12 ^ Contested in my “Three strikes against the difference principle”, forthcoming.

13 ^ Contested in my “How ought to think of our relationship to future generations?”, forthcoming, and also in the section of the present paper immediately following this one. (Nor does Cavell contest the opening sentences of A theory of justice, considered in “Is justice the first virtue of social institutions?”, below.)

14 ^ See my “Is the difference principle exploitative of persons?”, forthcoming, joint-authored with Phil Hutchinson.

15 ^ See my “Wittgenstein and greens on ‘progress’”, forthcoming.

16 ^ Here I am thinking especially of the later Gordon Baker’s reading of Wittgenstein.

17 ^ On p.106, Cavell rightly points out that Rawls himself is a utopian thinker in A theory of justice. It is this point of course which has prompted Sen’s recent magisterial response to Rawls, The idea of justice (2009). My point is that Rawls is, by contrast, not utopian enough.

18 ^ For development of this theme, see again my “How ought to think of our relationship to future generations?”, forthcoming.

19 ^ Cf. PI 308.

20 ^ Compare here Wittgenstein’s oft-repeated nonsense-riddle, “What time is it on the Sun?” The Sun determines our time calculations…

21 ^ I am thinking here for instance of the closing sentences of PI 258.

22 ^ See John Foster’s The sustainability mirage (2008).

23 ^ The point might also be put in this way. The concept of agreement involved in Wittgenstein’s idea of ‘agreement in opinions’ (see PI 240-2) is basically the ordinary concept of agreement. Agreement to make (say) a real contract. But by hypothesis there is no real contract, in contractarianism. The hypothetical contract: can it be compared to (what Wittgenstein calls) agreement in judgements? In form of life? Well: not very easily. For where such agreement is not present then it is not present, and one cannot pretend one’s way around that. Agreement over fairness is not like agreement over colour-concepts. It is dangerously mythical to pretend otherwise.

24 ^ For detailed argument to this conclusion, see my “The difference principle is not action-guiding”, forthcoming.

25 ^ For explication, see the work of Richard Wilkinson and Marshall Sahlins.

26 ^ A view developed in my “On Rawls’s failure to preserve genuine (freedom of) religion”, forthcoming; this paper is previewed in the part of my Philosophy for Life (2007) on ‘Religion’.

27 ^ This perhaps was a moral flaw in Wittgenstein the man.

28 ^ For development of this line of thought, see once again my “How ought to think of our relationship to future generations?”, forthcoming.

29 ^ Enough to ensure that we as a species win the ‘climate war’, for instance. As Winston Churchill once remarked: ‘It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.’