Wittgenstein and the Social Sciences: Action, Ideology and Justice

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.

Wittgenstein: The Philosopher and His Works

Introduction to the anthology Wittgenstein: the Philosopher and his Works, a wide-ranging collection of essays containing eighteen original articles by authors representing some of the most important recent work on Wittgenstein. It deals with questions pertaining to both the interpretation and application of Wittgenstein’s thought and the editing of his works. Regarding the latter, it also addresses issues concerning scholarly electronic publishing. The collection is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction which lays out the content and arguments of each contribution. Contributors: Knut Erik Tranøy, Lars Hertzberg, Georg Henrik von Wright, Marie McGinn, Cora Diamond, James Conant, David G. Stern, Eike von Savigny, P.M.S. Hacker, Hans-Johann Glock, Allan Janik, Kristóf Nyíri, Antonia Soulez, Brian McGuinness, Anthony Kenny, Joachim Schulte, Herbert Hrachovec, Cameron McEwen.

The Sociological Review, 1976

Wittgenstein: Issues and Debates, 2010

Introduction that this volume derives from the Proceedings of a Congress on Wittgenstein held in Nancy in 2007 and entitled 'Philosophie et pratique de la philosophie'. It contains seven wide-ranging papers from an international gathering of speakers, although we are told that 'some papers from specialist [sic.] on Wittgenstein were additionally included in the publication'. We are not informed which 'additional' papers these are. Neither are we directly told anything about the authors of the papers (1), although a quick on-line

Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization -- Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 3rd Ed 686p(2017)

The aim of the 17 original papers here is to summarize and analyze Wittgenstein's thought. At the time these were being written, the Oxford/Intelex CDROM ($2040 on Amazon but available thru interlibrary loan and steeply discounted on the net) with 20,000 some pages of W's nachlass was not yet available, and only those fluent in German and willing to find and slog thru the incomplete Cornell microfilm were able to examine it. To this day it much of it remains untranslated from the German typescripts and handwritten manuscripts. I note this at the outset as W's untranslated or unpublished writings often shed crucial light on his thought and few to this day have made substantial use of them. In addition there are huge problems with translation of his early 20 th century Viennese German into modern English. One must be a master of English, German, and Wittgenstein in order to do this and very few are up to it. Several of the current authors note unfortunate translation errors in the only available English editions and I have seen similar comments countless times. As is well known, W's thought changed dramatically between the publication of the Tractatus (TLP) in 1922 and the Philosophical Investigations (1953). The continuity or lack thereof between his early and late work is the subject of a vast literature and is taken up here by several authors. Ishiguro on the picture theory and Mounce on the logical system in TLP are good, but for me the endless discussions of exactly how he was mistaken in his early work is of as little interest as the mistakes in most previous philosophy. Ammereller on Intentionality is a good, if prosaic, summary of (mostly) the early and middle W on belief and interpretation which, like virtually everyone, totally fails to give an adequate overview of W's pioneering work. In giving the general outline of our innate evolutionary psychology (i.e., roughly our personality) and showing how this describes behavior, W represents a major milestone in human thought. There are unmistakeable indications of this even in his early writings (e.g., see p 40, 49-58 here) and it has been documented by Hacker (e.g., see his paper in The New Wittgenstein) and others but without any comprehensive account in book form to date (but watch for a new book by Daniele Moyal-Sharrock in 2017). Overall a good book for introducing W to a general philosophical audience but now very dated by the recent work of Hacker, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Coliva, Hutto, Read and others. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle 59p(2016). For all my articles on Wittgenstein and Searle see my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 662p (2016). All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX Suicide by Democracy: an Obituary for America and the World (2018) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQVWV9C

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.

Philosophy, 1997

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.

The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 2nd Edition Michael Starks, 2019

The aim of the 17 original papers here is to summarize and analyze Wittgenstein's thought. At the time these were being written, the Oxford/Intelex CDROM ($2040 on Amazon but available thru interlibrary loan and steeply discounted on the net) with 20,000 some pages of W's nachlass, as well as the various online versions of the nachlass, were not yet available, and only those fluent in German and willing to find and slog thru the incomplete Cornell microfilm were able to examine it. To this day, much of it remains untranslated from the German typescripts and handwritten manuscripts. I note this at the outset as W's untranslated or unpublished writings often shed crucial light on his thought and few to this day have made substantial use of them. In addition, there are huge problems with translation of his early 20th century Viennese German into modern English. One must be a master of English, German, and Wittgenstein in order to do this and very few are up to it. Several of the current authors note unfortunate translation errors in the only available English editions and I have seen similar comments countless times. As is well known, W's thought changed dramatically between the publication of the Tractatus (TLP) in 1922 and the Philosophical Investigations (1953). The continuity or lack thereof between his early and late work is the subject of a vast literature and is taken up here by several authors. Ishiguro on the picture theory and Mounce on the logical system in TLP are good, but for me the endless discussions of exactly how he was mistaken in his early work is of as little interest as the mistakes in most previous philosophy. Ammereller on Intentionality is a good, if prosaic, summary of (mostly) the early and middle W on belief and interpretation which, like virtually everyone, totally fails to give an adequate overview of W's pioneering work. In giving the general outline of our innate evolutionary psychology (i.e., roughly our personality) and showing how this describes behavior, W represents a major milestone in human thought. There are unmistakeable indications of this even in his early writings (e.g., see p 40, 49-58 here) and it has been documented by Hacker (e.g., see his paper in The New Wittgenstein) and others but without any comprehensive account in book form to date (but see the many recent writings of Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Coliva etc.). Overall a good book for introducing W to a general philosophical audience but now very dated by the recent work of Hacker, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Coliva, Hutto, Read and others. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) ,The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019).

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