WAB: "Fragments" |
The following contribution is an excerpt (pp. 1-10, "Introduction") from a draft version of Anat Biletzki: (Over)Interpreting Wittgenstein, Synthese Library: Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science vol. 319, Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003. This title is available to purchase from Kluwer Academic Publishers (Springer). Please go to Springer for further details and online ordering. Publication on WAB's website with kind permission from the author and Springer (2005.6.16).
Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in 1889 and died in 1951. In his lifetime he published only one book (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and had, to the best of his hesitant production proclivities, finished a second (Philosophical Investigations) at the time of his death. This does not imply that he wrote scantly; on the contrary, he wrote (tens of) thousands of notes, incorporating them into typescripts and manuscripts that have been occupying archivists, diarists, editors, commentators, interpreters and translators for the large part of the past five decades. He corresponded with several colleagues, friends and philosophers and, from 1930 onwards, conducted a long series of meetings (variously called and described as classes or seminars) at Cambridge University, all of which have been minutely recorded and reported on. We are, therefore, faced with thousands of pages of philosophical writings – grist for the interpreter’s mill.
This is not to say that the interpretive project – or, to be precise, the project of interpreting Wittgenstein – began vis à vis this cumulative Nachlass. We mark the starting point of the “project” in 1922 when Bertrand Russell appended his Introduction to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which was published that year in English (having been published in the original German in 1921). This introduction did not function merely as an introduction; it purported to explain to the reader what it was that Wittgenstein was up to in what seemed to Russell to be a potentially enigmatic book. Such explaining was the first step taken publicly in interpreting Wittgenstein. Yet not only was this step not a definitive, unequivocally accepted, summary step, it was rather the first step in what can today be seen as a thousand step trek in pursuit of the interpretation of Wittgenstein. The story of this trek, the lay of the land, is what I will try to tell.
Mine is not an account of the immense volume of writings on Wittgenstein; nor is it a summing up. If accounting or sums are the reader’s interest he or she will do well to turn to other sources. First, there are some excellent bibliographies listing in orderly, chronological or categorical form the thousands of articles and books written on Wittgenstein in the past eighty years.1 One can then carry out a “statistical” inquiry and be able to report on interesting phenomena having to do with the number and type of texts which play a part in the quantitative game. Thus, for instance, one can summarize this research with the following exemplary points: in the 1920s there were a number of tracts written on Wittgenstein,2 in the 1930s some more, in the 1940s a little less, the 1950s saw the beginning of a real flow, and then the deluge. Or – the distribution of texts in different languages is almost equally split down the middle between English and non-English texts. Or – of the hundreds of books (as opposed to articles) listed in the Harvard University library in 2001, ascertained under the subject heading “Wittgenstein”, so-and-so deal with the early Wittgenstein, such-and-such have to do with the later, and the rest are not partial to either. This sort of quantitative analysis is not to be shrugged off or laughed at for it can afford the serious historian of ideas basic generalizations which can then be analyzed further for the purpose of understanding the interpretive project. Indeed, I will be using such generalizations in order to step up on them, as the first rung in the ladder we’re climbing, on the way to hopefully deeper insights into the project. I do, however, attempt to distinguish between the accounting per se – including its sums – and the use to which I will put it. Shortly I will try to make that use explicit.
Secondly, playing the game of generalization, one can peruse several anthologies of articles on Wittgenstein which range from the very ambitious and quite instrumental many-volume sets3 to the focused, one-topic one-volume texts bringing together a number of usually influential, oft-times familial, articles.4 In the middle, between over-all surveillance and specific expertise, we find one-volume anthologies which aspire to closure while eschewing the mass volume of many volumes.5 I call the former ambitious for good reason: theirs is no smaller a task than to provide the reader with a comprehensive bird’s eye view of what has been done on Wittgenstein in all of the subjects on which something has indeed been done. The question of comprehensiveness, i.e., of covering all pertinent areas of Wittgensteinian interest, is obviously related to the anthologizer’s own interpretation of Wittgenstein or, at the least, his or her idea of what interpretations and which interpreters are legitimately to be included.6 The problem of “who to include” in anthologies does not, however, become any smaller at the other extreme, that of anthologies dedicated to one Wittgensteinian issue, one Wittgensteinian question, one Wittgensteinian subject. Here it is again the editor’s prerogative to anthologize those articles which seem germane to the issue at hand; such prerogative is itself a factor in making the editor an interpreter. Still, the accountant of Wittgensteinian interpretation may take these points into consideration while generalizing on these anthologies and, at any rate, these generalizations are not quantitative or statistical ones. They are more to the tune of a gathering – a brave attempt to see what everyone or anyone has said about Wittgenstein.
Why has this story not been told? Let us suppose, for a moment, that we are philosophers and that we do philosophy. I will, in the sequel, be intensely involved in addressing that supposition – the question of what philosophy is or what it means to do philosophy – via Wittgenstein, or, more precisely, via Wittgenstein interpretation. It is a question of no small import, and it is, indeed, sometimes considered the question of greatest import in Wittgenstein interpretation: what did Wittgenstein tell us about doing philosophy? But, for the moment, I treat this question as a disciplinarian question and I surmise that those interested in Wittgenstein are philosophers who are a part of the official, academic, socially and institutionally recognized discipline of philosophy. And I go on to ask why it is that philosophers, in that very banal sense of “philosophers”, have not told this story. There have been some tangentially germane accounts – of Wittgenstein’s influence on and connection to practitioners in this or that subject area or disciplinary partition, such as logic, or phenomenology, or ethics, or aesthetics, but these fall far short of any satisfactory (historical or developmental) narrative. Closest in aspiration and mood to such a project is P.M.S. Hacker’s recent Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy, in that it tries “to paint a picture of the evolution of analytic philosophy in the twentieth century” and “to tell the tale of Wittgenstein’s influence upon that history.”8 But Hacker’s enterprise is oriented to one – albeit astonishingly variegated – wave in the oceans of Wittgenstein interpretation, the analytic one. What about other streams, rivers, ponds, lakes of readings? And if we also add to philosophers some sub-groups such as historians of philosophy, we could ask about them as well: why is it that historians of philosophy, be it even contemporary philosophy, have not told the story of Wittgenstein interpretation?9
A very specific example can make the question all the more perspicuous. There is, in Wittgenstein folklore, the matter of the “Private Language Argument”, sometimes called the PLA. Interpreting the private language argument of the Philosophical Investigations has taken the time, effort, energy, ink and space of almost every philosopher who has written on Wittgenstein, or at least, if we wish to be very exact, every philosopher who has worked on the later Wittgenstein. No matter where one posits the first, original exposition of the PLA by a Wittgenstein interpreter10 one can then go on to survey tens of articles and chapters in books, not to mention passing mention in notes and texts, where the PLA is broached and discussed. The PLA is pinpointed as beginning at section 243 (or earlier, or later), as ending at section 315 (or earlier, or later), as connecting to other sections (222, or 202, or others), as being in the context of Wittgenstein’s discussion of language as social (or communitarian or rule-dependent or behavioral). It is analyzed, variously, as premising certain propositions and leading to a conclusion, or, alternatively, premising other propositions and leading to other conclusions, or even as not doing any of the above, as not even being an argument. These are just a few of the (more common) interpretations of Wittgenstein’s PLA. While engaging in such interpretation the interpreter is wont to address other interpretations, argue with them, expose their misunderstandings. Some interpreters will go to the trouble of comparing some other interpreters, with the specific aim in mind of unearthing their weaknesses and shortcomings, all in order to buttress a “new” interpretation. Some will even provide a (partial) history of what has gone before in the interpretation of the PLA, again with the express purpose of providing a background to newer dealings in PLA interpretation. This last venue is the nearest that philosophers, that is to say, interpretive philosophers, get to something akin to what I will be trying to perform grosso modo in this book. For these philosophers and interpreters are engaged in the philosophical project of interpreting a great philosopher; their object is to decipher what it was that Wittgenstein was saying or meaning (about PLA). Some, who style themselves philosophers more than interpreters, will go on to ask whether what he was saying was right or wrong; in other words, they may perhaps dare to evaluate his argument, agree with it, disagree with it, raise it to pedestal-status, demean it as unworthy. Whatever their interpretive or philosophical enterprise, these philosophers are not concerned to tell a story, but rather to do philosophy. Even those who tell a partial story, that last bunch that may at times engage in some looking-back account of what has been done before they came on the interpretive scene, do so for the purpose of providing a foil for their own interpretation. That looking-back account is harnessed not in the service of story-telling but rather as a staircase leading to the top landing expressed in a new interpretation. The story of the PLA has not yet been told.11
Put differently I would venture that telling the story of Wittgenstein interpretation is not considered doing philosophy. Why then is it relevant, or interesting, or important for the doing of philosophy? It is, in its way, a meta-story, a story about several other stories, but one that does not amalgamate them into a set of competing stories with the aim of finding the winner. It also does not pretend to tell all the stories which have abounded on the philosophical stage. The story of Wittgenstein interpretation tries to make sense of a philosophical project which has taken the time and heart of the philosophical community – perhaps of only a part, yet a very vociferous part, of that community – for the better part of this century. But what do I mean by “making sense”?
So what does it mean to say that I should like to make sense of the philosophical community’s project of interpreting Wittgenstein? What is the intention behind telling the story – plot and all – of Wittgenstein interpretation? I view this question as subsisting on two levels of engagement with the history of ideas. The first level is that of “making sense of” as seeing the interpretive undertaking as a project of understanding Wittgenstein – his words, his intentions, his arguments, his theories, his moves, his (self-) rebuttals, his trajectories. There is, at first blush, nothing extraordinary in Wittgenstein interpretation as opposed to, say, Plato interpretation, or Kant interpretation, or Hume, or Descartes, or Hobbes. Each of these great thinkers, like so many others, is an object of interpretation; more precisely, and shortly to be distinguished, their work is up for interpretation.13 Additionally, each of these great thinkers, like so many others, is susceptible to various and clearly different interpretations. The scope of difference, the variety of interpretations, is what makes Wittgenstein, to my mind, an outstanding and unique object of interpretation. When speaking of Plato or Kant, the philosophical interpretive tradition usually exhibits some modicum of consensus regarding their philosophy. This, of course, does not preclude disagreement and argument clothed in the garb of “the right interpretation” vs. “mis-readings”. But, by and large, when confronted with even apparently opposed interpretations of these philosophers, we can point to general mainstream versions of their thought that can encompass (perhaps almost) all interpretations. Thus Plato is hero of the forms and it would be a foolhardy interpreter who would paint him in materialist color. Hume is a skeptic who cannot ever be fit into absolutist terms. Descartes earns the name of “rationalist” even by those who investigate his theories of the senses. And on and on, the canon of philosophy presents an accepted view of great thinkers – a view which is nevertheless broad enough to house continuing publication and research into these classical thinkers’ ideas.14
Wittgenstein is different. In merely seventy-five years his writings (whether scarce or abundant) have been treated to wildly conflicting readings perpetrated by philosopher-interpreters who have claimed a correct understanding through these diverse and sometimes outright contradictory interpretations.15 So pervasive is this multiplicity of readings, so characteristic of Wittgenstein interpretation is this variety of expositions, that we find one of the recognized authorities of this project, G.H. von Wright, making the following, very odd, statement. “I have sometimes thought that what makes a man's work classic is often just this multiplicity [of possible interpretations] which invites and at the same time resists our craving for a clear understanding.”16 Odd for two reasons: first, and elusive, though somewhat understandable, is the criterion of the “classic” as residing in a multiplicity of interpretations. Secondly, there is the ambiguous tone of the statement – as if there is something to be celebrated in a “multiplicity of possible interpretations” when such multiplicity goes in the face of understanding, yea, even clear understanding. The first level of “making sense” which we are now exploring – the idea that interpretations aim at supplying one with a better understanding of the interpreted – is then doubly enhanced. To begin with, and clearly so, each and every interpretation is an attempt at understanding Wittgenstein. But more important for the story-teller, the interpretive project as a whole, i.e., the multiplicity of interpretations, their dialogue, their (historical and conceptual) development, their hierarchies, their popularity (and lack of such), and their mutual influence on one another, is the grand opus of understanding Wittgenstein. The story I wish to tell is the story of this project in its unfolding layers.
But let me be very explicit. I do not pretend to offer an interpretation, one interpretation, a new or different interpretation of Wittgenstein in any way distinct from any extant interpretation of the last seventy-five years. Rather I wish to set out the story of Wittgenstein interpretation as a story in its own right. Hopefully, “the narrative will bring out the significance of the material as interpretation alone will not.”17 Whether it abets the understanding of Wittgenstein is to be assessed at the end of the project, if at all. It purports only to throw light on the philosophical project of interpreting Wittgenstein and thus to understand it, rather than Wittgenstein, better. This is a study in the (very contemporary) history of ideas and makes, as yet, no clear statement about the contribution of the history of ideas to the ideas themselves. The phenomenon to be investigated is that of philosophical interpretation in general, and Wittgenstein interpretation in particular. Yes, this is a philosophical phenomenon in the grandiose sense of being a conceptual trek. That, however, leads me to the second level of “making sense” of Wittgenstein interpretation.
The second level of “making sense” is likely to be seen as a sociological undertaking, or one of (quite recent) intellectual history – as opposed to the history of ideas – for I wish to make sense of the dealings (but definitely philosophical, interpretive dealings) in Wittgenstein of a community at large: the philosophical community. Admittedly, this may be perceived as a less philosophical undertaking, but it deserves a different sort of attention. For the question now becomes – what makes a philosophical community so vehemently active, together and apart, in the interpretation of one philosopher, and how can this intensive activity be explained? Now, completely eschewing psychological and sociological themes in the explanations to be entertained might not be possible, but such directions will, hopefully, be constrained. Talk of factors like hero worship, institutional tensions, or personal hang-ups is tempting when one encounters the intensity and acrimoniousness that arises within the Wittgensteinian “crowd”. And in these times of intellectual angst, having to do with the contextualizing and historicizing of every intellectual endeavor, it may even seem legitimate to expose these psychological and sociological phenomena as good explanations of the interpretive project. So I may be obstinately anachronistic when I say that I am adamant in searching for the philosophical bent behind philosophical interpretations – even if they be described as the activities of a philosophical community.
In following the moves made by the philosophical community one can adopt an onion-peeling stance and view the succession of interpretations available to us over the larger part of this century as an attempt to get to the core of what Wittgenstein was about. Not wanting to be banal and chronological, this stance does, nevertheless, track down a progression of Wittgenstein interpretations that move from less correct, or astute, or insightful, or understanding, readings to those that seem to better hit the mark. This strategy of recounting the story of Wittgenstein interpretations is risky, for it makes the story-teller seem to have a clear idea of the “right interpretation”, and the right direction to that right interpretation, of Wittgenstein. So I hasten to add that, even in this position of supposedly unearthing the deep core of Wittgenstein interpretation, I shall try to refrain from a subjective insistence on the “correct Wittgenstein”. Rather, what I shall be pursuing is the Wittgensteinian community’s sense of itself as exposing Wittgenstein. In this sense, there is a developmental dialogue going on among Wittgenstein interpreters; they argue with one another, they assail one another, they learn from one another, they internalize one another’s insights. In other words, Wittgenstein interpretation is an evolving enterprise with the object of development being the “real” Wittgenstein. In that sense, again, there is a story to be told.
Another meta-interpretive pattern adopts a historical – as opposed to a purely chronological – perspective, having to do with philosophy at large in the twentieth century. This way of telling the story of Wittgenstein interpretation looks outward, from the somewhat insular Wittgenstein-studies community to the turns and twists of the philosophical community as a whole during the larger part of this century. In broad strokes we can identify a move from explicit and implicit metaphysics (which I will, in the sequel, unify with a just-as-clear-cut anti-metaphysics), through a focus on language, and on to the postmodernist persuasion so much with us today.18 Wittgenstein interpretation was undoubtedly “metaphysical” to begin with, even when Wittgenstein was portrayed by some philosophers, holding to anti-metaphysical agendas, as promoting an anti-metaphysical philosophy. Just as clearly, Wittgenstein interpretation, right from the beginning, and one may say right till the end – or right till the present time – could not but focus on questions of language that give the moving engine to any Wittgensteinian thought. Less obviously, but not surprisingly, the interpretations that have sprung up in the past two decades have either been “postmodern” interpretations or have, at the least, been hugely associative of postmodernist thought, jargon, and ideology. Since the story to be told has a beginning and a progression in (some sort of) time, heroes, and a plot, there is a sense in which this way of telling the story becomes emblematic of telling the (hi)story of ideas of this century. We don’t harbor the illusion that the story of Wittgenstein interpretation includes all the details or complexities of philosophy in the twentieth century, or that it can be a comprehensive summary of the whole. I do make the claim, however, that this story reflects the grand moves of the philosophical community during the turmoil of this century and that understanding the moves of the smaller, Wittgensteinian community involves situating it in the framework of the overall, philosophical culture. This is a philosophical contextualizing, not a sociological or psychological one.
Still, and notwithstanding the rejection of sociological and psychological depictions of the Wittgensteinian community, the telling of this story as a philosophical, or philosophically unfolding story, if you will, leads to asking the “how” and “why” questions I noted above: Why the intensity? Why the vehemence? Wherefrom the communitarianism and ideology of accredited “Wittgensteinians”? How is a certain, specific philosophical community created? How does it create itself? How does it perceive itself? And finally – how does Wittgenstein (as opposed to, say, Russell, or Leibniz, or Aristotle) become a culture hero? In seeking to answer these questions one has no choice but to desist from doing “pure” philosophy (as conceptual analysis), and even to distance oneself from telling a purely philosophical story. In telling this para-philosophical story one becomes an anthropologist of sorts (for want of a better, disciplinarian epithet) and, more specifically, an anthropologist of, as it were, philosophical culture. I do not pretend to be an anthropologist, but I do believe that, in the quest to understand both Wittgenstein and the project of Wittgenstein interpretation – understanding them in the deep sense of placing them in a significant philosophical place and time – such anthropology must be done. It is to this anthropology that I turn in the last part of the book, utilizing the twin constructs of “fashion” and “idolatry” to try to make sense of the phenomenon of Wittgenstein interpretation.
Time, heroes and plot were mobilized above in labeling this book a story of Wittgenstein interpretation. But we are all – from the earliest stages of childhood to the highest-brow business of narratology – apprised of the knowledge that, above and beyond plot (in the wide sense of the term, as a sense-making plot), a good story has a moral to it, in Clifford Geertz’s words: “grand recits with a plot and a moral.” Whether this one does will depend on that last part of the book: where the map of Wittgenstein interpretation has guided us is no answer to the question of whereto, in the future, it may still lead us.
Anat Biletzki: (Over)Interpreting Wittgenstein
Introduction
This is how philosophers should salute each other: “Take your time!”
(Culture and Value 80)
(Culture and Value 80)
WHAT THIS IS NOT
Rarely has a philosopher received so much attention; rarely has a philosopher received such variegated attention. Rarely has a philosopher been so highly revered and so mightily condemned. Rarely has a philosopher been so acclaimed, both within the philosophical community and outside, in the intellectual community at large. And rarely has a philosopher been so widely interpreted.Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in 1889 and died in 1951. In his lifetime he published only one book (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and had, to the best of his hesitant production proclivities, finished a second (Philosophical Investigations) at the time of his death. This does not imply that he wrote scantly; on the contrary, he wrote (tens of) thousands of notes, incorporating them into typescripts and manuscripts that have been occupying archivists, diarists, editors, commentators, interpreters and translators for the large part of the past five decades. He corresponded with several colleagues, friends and philosophers and, from 1930 onwards, conducted a long series of meetings (variously called and described as classes or seminars) at Cambridge University, all of which have been minutely recorded and reported on. We are, therefore, faced with thousands of pages of philosophical writings – grist for the interpreter’s mill.
This is not to say that the interpretive project – or, to be precise, the project of interpreting Wittgenstein – began vis à vis this cumulative Nachlass. We mark the starting point of the “project” in 1922 when Bertrand Russell appended his Introduction to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which was published that year in English (having been published in the original German in 1921). This introduction did not function merely as an introduction; it purported to explain to the reader what it was that Wittgenstein was up to in what seemed to Russell to be a potentially enigmatic book. Such explaining was the first step taken publicly in interpreting Wittgenstein. Yet not only was this step not a definitive, unequivocally accepted, summary step, it was rather the first step in what can today be seen as a thousand step trek in pursuit of the interpretation of Wittgenstein. The story of this trek, the lay of the land, is what I will try to tell.
Mine is not an account of the immense volume of writings on Wittgenstein; nor is it a summing up. If accounting or sums are the reader’s interest he or she will do well to turn to other sources. First, there are some excellent bibliographies listing in orderly, chronological or categorical form the thousands of articles and books written on Wittgenstein in the past eighty years.1 One can then carry out a “statistical” inquiry and be able to report on interesting phenomena having to do with the number and type of texts which play a part in the quantitative game. Thus, for instance, one can summarize this research with the following exemplary points: in the 1920s there were a number of tracts written on Wittgenstein,2 in the 1930s some more, in the 1940s a little less, the 1950s saw the beginning of a real flow, and then the deluge. Or – the distribution of texts in different languages is almost equally split down the middle between English and non-English texts. Or – of the hundreds of books (as opposed to articles) listed in the Harvard University library in 2001, ascertained under the subject heading “Wittgenstein”, so-and-so deal with the early Wittgenstein, such-and-such have to do with the later, and the rest are not partial to either. This sort of quantitative analysis is not to be shrugged off or laughed at for it can afford the serious historian of ideas basic generalizations which can then be analyzed further for the purpose of understanding the interpretive project. Indeed, I will be using such generalizations in order to step up on them, as the first rung in the ladder we’re climbing, on the way to hopefully deeper insights into the project. I do, however, attempt to distinguish between the accounting per se – including its sums – and the use to which I will put it. Shortly I will try to make that use explicit.
Secondly, playing the game of generalization, one can peruse several anthologies of articles on Wittgenstein which range from the very ambitious and quite instrumental many-volume sets3 to the focused, one-topic one-volume texts bringing together a number of usually influential, oft-times familial, articles.4 In the middle, between over-all surveillance and specific expertise, we find one-volume anthologies which aspire to closure while eschewing the mass volume of many volumes.5 I call the former ambitious for good reason: theirs is no smaller a task than to provide the reader with a comprehensive bird’s eye view of what has been done on Wittgenstein in all of the subjects on which something has indeed been done. The question of comprehensiveness, i.e., of covering all pertinent areas of Wittgensteinian interest, is obviously related to the anthologizer’s own interpretation of Wittgenstein or, at the least, his or her idea of what interpretations and which interpreters are legitimately to be included.6 The problem of “who to include” in anthologies does not, however, become any smaller at the other extreme, that of anthologies dedicated to one Wittgensteinian issue, one Wittgensteinian question, one Wittgensteinian subject. Here it is again the editor’s prerogative to anthologize those articles which seem germane to the issue at hand; such prerogative is itself a factor in making the editor an interpreter. Still, the accountant of Wittgensteinian interpretation may take these points into consideration while generalizing on these anthologies and, at any rate, these generalizations are not quantitative or statistical ones. They are more to the tune of a gathering – a brave attempt to see what everyone or anyone has said about Wittgenstein.
WHAT THIS IS
In what follows I do not want to anthologize, summarize, or do accounts. I want to tell the story of Wittgenstein interpretation.7 Like all stories this one has a plot, heroes, and a time element. (It might even have a moral.) Admittedly, the story cannot be told without amassing a huge amount of data. But if we were to stop at data we would not be telling a story, we would be accounting or doing sums. We might even be reporting – reportage involving two of the above threesome, heroes and time. In order for reportage to attain the story-telling level plot must be brought in. By “plot” I refer to that construct which gives meaning to the whole – the crux which moves us from data and reportage to a story that makes sense. This is not to say that the crux is one-dimensional, i.e. that it can be formulated as one point of explanation which might provide the reader (of this book, or of Wittgenstein, or of the many others on Wittgenstein) with an over-riding or instantaneous understanding of the interpretive project. Neither is it two-dimensional in the sense of a series of interpretations each following in the steps of the other and supplying us with a line – perhaps a chronological line which can be traced as beginning with one interpretation and ending with another, with all others in-between – making sense of the way from the first to the last. Plots need not be simplistic. On the contrary, a good story is one which can take into account (now in a different sense of accounting) various directions being taken by its heroes; it can take into consideration various levels of motivations leading its heroes on their paths; it can peruse various branches, with their separate leaves and fruits, growing out of common roots; and finally, it can tolerate side-issues and sub-texts which have to do with the main plot, though this toleration is a tension that I will be concerned to highlight and perhaps dismiss. In other words, the story I want to tell is meant to provide an overview of Wittgenstein interpretation in the last seventy five years without succumbing either to a merely chronological listing of all that has been done or to a haphazard choice of some of what has been done. It is, therefore, a story about interpretation, with a plot, desiring to make sense of what has been done by interpreters, who are the story’s heroes, great or small.Why has this story not been told? Let us suppose, for a moment, that we are philosophers and that we do philosophy. I will, in the sequel, be intensely involved in addressing that supposition – the question of what philosophy is or what it means to do philosophy – via Wittgenstein, or, more precisely, via Wittgenstein interpretation. It is a question of no small import, and it is, indeed, sometimes considered the question of greatest import in Wittgenstein interpretation: what did Wittgenstein tell us about doing philosophy? But, for the moment, I treat this question as a disciplinarian question and I surmise that those interested in Wittgenstein are philosophers who are a part of the official, academic, socially and institutionally recognized discipline of philosophy. And I go on to ask why it is that philosophers, in that very banal sense of “philosophers”, have not told this story. There have been some tangentially germane accounts – of Wittgenstein’s influence on and connection to practitioners in this or that subject area or disciplinary partition, such as logic, or phenomenology, or ethics, or aesthetics, but these fall far short of any satisfactory (historical or developmental) narrative. Closest in aspiration and mood to such a project is P.M.S. Hacker’s recent Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy, in that it tries “to paint a picture of the evolution of analytic philosophy in the twentieth century” and “to tell the tale of Wittgenstein’s influence upon that history.”8 But Hacker’s enterprise is oriented to one – albeit astonishingly variegated – wave in the oceans of Wittgenstein interpretation, the analytic one. What about other streams, rivers, ponds, lakes of readings? And if we also add to philosophers some sub-groups such as historians of philosophy, we could ask about them as well: why is it that historians of philosophy, be it even contemporary philosophy, have not told the story of Wittgenstein interpretation?9
A very specific example can make the question all the more perspicuous. There is, in Wittgenstein folklore, the matter of the “Private Language Argument”, sometimes called the PLA. Interpreting the private language argument of the Philosophical Investigations has taken the time, effort, energy, ink and space of almost every philosopher who has written on Wittgenstein, or at least, if we wish to be very exact, every philosopher who has worked on the later Wittgenstein. No matter where one posits the first, original exposition of the PLA by a Wittgenstein interpreter10 one can then go on to survey tens of articles and chapters in books, not to mention passing mention in notes and texts, where the PLA is broached and discussed. The PLA is pinpointed as beginning at section 243 (or earlier, or later), as ending at section 315 (or earlier, or later), as connecting to other sections (222, or 202, or others), as being in the context of Wittgenstein’s discussion of language as social (or communitarian or rule-dependent or behavioral). It is analyzed, variously, as premising certain propositions and leading to a conclusion, or, alternatively, premising other propositions and leading to other conclusions, or even as not doing any of the above, as not even being an argument. These are just a few of the (more common) interpretations of Wittgenstein’s PLA. While engaging in such interpretation the interpreter is wont to address other interpretations, argue with them, expose their misunderstandings. Some interpreters will go to the trouble of comparing some other interpreters, with the specific aim in mind of unearthing their weaknesses and shortcomings, all in order to buttress a “new” interpretation. Some will even provide a (partial) history of what has gone before in the interpretation of the PLA, again with the express purpose of providing a background to newer dealings in PLA interpretation. This last venue is the nearest that philosophers, that is to say, interpretive philosophers, get to something akin to what I will be trying to perform grosso modo in this book. For these philosophers and interpreters are engaged in the philosophical project of interpreting a great philosopher; their object is to decipher what it was that Wittgenstein was saying or meaning (about PLA). Some, who style themselves philosophers more than interpreters, will go on to ask whether what he was saying was right or wrong; in other words, they may perhaps dare to evaluate his argument, agree with it, disagree with it, raise it to pedestal-status, demean it as unworthy. Whatever their interpretive or philosophical enterprise, these philosophers are not concerned to tell a story, but rather to do philosophy. Even those who tell a partial story, that last bunch that may at times engage in some looking-back account of what has been done before they came on the interpretive scene, do so for the purpose of providing a foil for their own interpretation. That looking-back account is harnessed not in the service of story-telling but rather as a staircase leading to the top landing expressed in a new interpretation. The story of the PLA has not yet been told.11
Put differently I would venture that telling the story of Wittgenstein interpretation is not considered doing philosophy. Why then is it relevant, or interesting, or important for the doing of philosophy? It is, in its way, a meta-story, a story about several other stories, but one that does not amalgamate them into a set of competing stories with the aim of finding the winner. It also does not pretend to tell all the stories which have abounded on the philosophical stage. The story of Wittgenstein interpretation tries to make sense of a philosophical project which has taken the time and heart of the philosophical community – perhaps of only a part, yet a very vociferous part, of that community – for the better part of this century. But what do I mean by “making sense”?
MAKING SENSE
Before answering that last, crucial question I must digress. So many catchwords in our current philosophical terminology (some may call it jargon) are either Wittgensteinian in origin (i.e., first introduced to the philosophical community by Wittgenstein in his writings12) – e.g., language-games, forms of life, say/show, etc., or Wittgensteinian in ambience – e.g., meaning as use, language as picture, logical form etc. In my story I walk a thin line of writing about Wittgenstein, and more so about Wittgenstein interpretations, while refraining from being Wittgensteinian. This involves adopting an external viewpoint on both the Wittgenstein oeuvre and the interpretations of Wittgenstein and attempting, from that (supposedly or hopefully possible) vantage, to understand these interpretations. This also involves sticking strictly, and perhaps somewhat artificially, to common usage of words that does not become, inadvertently and perhaps even naturally, in this Wittgensteinian context, Wittgensteinian. In other words, again, in those places where famously Wittgensteinian terms crop up in my discussion, as “making sense” does above, I will be harshly self-constrained in trying to not go the Wittgensteinian way. More to the point – when I say, and ask about the meaning of, “making sense” I do not point, intentionally or otherwise, to the Wittgensteinian question of what it means to make sense. I ask it bluntly and with no theoretical underpinnings.So what does it mean to say that I should like to make sense of the philosophical community’s project of interpreting Wittgenstein? What is the intention behind telling the story – plot and all – of Wittgenstein interpretation? I view this question as subsisting on two levels of engagement with the history of ideas. The first level is that of “making sense of” as seeing the interpretive undertaking as a project of understanding Wittgenstein – his words, his intentions, his arguments, his theories, his moves, his (self-) rebuttals, his trajectories. There is, at first blush, nothing extraordinary in Wittgenstein interpretation as opposed to, say, Plato interpretation, or Kant interpretation, or Hume, or Descartes, or Hobbes. Each of these great thinkers, like so many others, is an object of interpretation; more precisely, and shortly to be distinguished, their work is up for interpretation.13 Additionally, each of these great thinkers, like so many others, is susceptible to various and clearly different interpretations. The scope of difference, the variety of interpretations, is what makes Wittgenstein, to my mind, an outstanding and unique object of interpretation. When speaking of Plato or Kant, the philosophical interpretive tradition usually exhibits some modicum of consensus regarding their philosophy. This, of course, does not preclude disagreement and argument clothed in the garb of “the right interpretation” vs. “mis-readings”. But, by and large, when confronted with even apparently opposed interpretations of these philosophers, we can point to general mainstream versions of their thought that can encompass (perhaps almost) all interpretations. Thus Plato is hero of the forms and it would be a foolhardy interpreter who would paint him in materialist color. Hume is a skeptic who cannot ever be fit into absolutist terms. Descartes earns the name of “rationalist” even by those who investigate his theories of the senses. And on and on, the canon of philosophy presents an accepted view of great thinkers – a view which is nevertheless broad enough to house continuing publication and research into these classical thinkers’ ideas.14
Wittgenstein is different. In merely seventy-five years his writings (whether scarce or abundant) have been treated to wildly conflicting readings perpetrated by philosopher-interpreters who have claimed a correct understanding through these diverse and sometimes outright contradictory interpretations.15 So pervasive is this multiplicity of readings, so characteristic of Wittgenstein interpretation is this variety of expositions, that we find one of the recognized authorities of this project, G.H. von Wright, making the following, very odd, statement. “I have sometimes thought that what makes a man's work classic is often just this multiplicity [of possible interpretations] which invites and at the same time resists our craving for a clear understanding.”16 Odd for two reasons: first, and elusive, though somewhat understandable, is the criterion of the “classic” as residing in a multiplicity of interpretations. Secondly, there is the ambiguous tone of the statement – as if there is something to be celebrated in a “multiplicity of possible interpretations” when such multiplicity goes in the face of understanding, yea, even clear understanding. The first level of “making sense” which we are now exploring – the idea that interpretations aim at supplying one with a better understanding of the interpreted – is then doubly enhanced. To begin with, and clearly so, each and every interpretation is an attempt at understanding Wittgenstein. But more important for the story-teller, the interpretive project as a whole, i.e., the multiplicity of interpretations, their dialogue, their (historical and conceptual) development, their hierarchies, their popularity (and lack of such), and their mutual influence on one another, is the grand opus of understanding Wittgenstein. The story I wish to tell is the story of this project in its unfolding layers.
But let me be very explicit. I do not pretend to offer an interpretation, one interpretation, a new or different interpretation of Wittgenstein in any way distinct from any extant interpretation of the last seventy-five years. Rather I wish to set out the story of Wittgenstein interpretation as a story in its own right. Hopefully, “the narrative will bring out the significance of the material as interpretation alone will not.”17 Whether it abets the understanding of Wittgenstein is to be assessed at the end of the project, if at all. It purports only to throw light on the philosophical project of interpreting Wittgenstein and thus to understand it, rather than Wittgenstein, better. This is a study in the (very contemporary) history of ideas and makes, as yet, no clear statement about the contribution of the history of ideas to the ideas themselves. The phenomenon to be investigated is that of philosophical interpretation in general, and Wittgenstein interpretation in particular. Yes, this is a philosophical phenomenon in the grandiose sense of being a conceptual trek. That, however, leads me to the second level of “making sense” of Wittgenstein interpretation.
The second level of “making sense” is likely to be seen as a sociological undertaking, or one of (quite recent) intellectual history – as opposed to the history of ideas – for I wish to make sense of the dealings (but definitely philosophical, interpretive dealings) in Wittgenstein of a community at large: the philosophical community. Admittedly, this may be perceived as a less philosophical undertaking, but it deserves a different sort of attention. For the question now becomes – what makes a philosophical community so vehemently active, together and apart, in the interpretation of one philosopher, and how can this intensive activity be explained? Now, completely eschewing psychological and sociological themes in the explanations to be entertained might not be possible, but such directions will, hopefully, be constrained. Talk of factors like hero worship, institutional tensions, or personal hang-ups is tempting when one encounters the intensity and acrimoniousness that arises within the Wittgensteinian “crowd”. And in these times of intellectual angst, having to do with the contextualizing and historicizing of every intellectual endeavor, it may even seem legitimate to expose these psychological and sociological phenomena as good explanations of the interpretive project. So I may be obstinately anachronistic when I say that I am adamant in searching for the philosophical bent behind philosophical interpretations – even if they be described as the activities of a philosophical community.
PHILOSOPHICAL STORIES
In what way, then, can we tell the story of this community without invoking the sociology of the whole and the psychology of its members? Very simply (but not simplistically), by telling of the development of philosophical moves, trends, schools, mainstreams, and marginalities, as such. Two varieties of such development, one methodical and the other historical, will attract us, both pointing to tendencies of philosophical interpretive assignations, rather than sociological or psychological ones.In following the moves made by the philosophical community one can adopt an onion-peeling stance and view the succession of interpretations available to us over the larger part of this century as an attempt to get to the core of what Wittgenstein was about. Not wanting to be banal and chronological, this stance does, nevertheless, track down a progression of Wittgenstein interpretations that move from less correct, or astute, or insightful, or understanding, readings to those that seem to better hit the mark. This strategy of recounting the story of Wittgenstein interpretations is risky, for it makes the story-teller seem to have a clear idea of the “right interpretation”, and the right direction to that right interpretation, of Wittgenstein. So I hasten to add that, even in this position of supposedly unearthing the deep core of Wittgenstein interpretation, I shall try to refrain from a subjective insistence on the “correct Wittgenstein”. Rather, what I shall be pursuing is the Wittgensteinian community’s sense of itself as exposing Wittgenstein. In this sense, there is a developmental dialogue going on among Wittgenstein interpreters; they argue with one another, they assail one another, they learn from one another, they internalize one another’s insights. In other words, Wittgenstein interpretation is an evolving enterprise with the object of development being the “real” Wittgenstein. In that sense, again, there is a story to be told.
Another meta-interpretive pattern adopts a historical – as opposed to a purely chronological – perspective, having to do with philosophy at large in the twentieth century. This way of telling the story of Wittgenstein interpretation looks outward, from the somewhat insular Wittgenstein-studies community to the turns and twists of the philosophical community as a whole during the larger part of this century. In broad strokes we can identify a move from explicit and implicit metaphysics (which I will, in the sequel, unify with a just-as-clear-cut anti-metaphysics), through a focus on language, and on to the postmodernist persuasion so much with us today.18 Wittgenstein interpretation was undoubtedly “metaphysical” to begin with, even when Wittgenstein was portrayed by some philosophers, holding to anti-metaphysical agendas, as promoting an anti-metaphysical philosophy. Just as clearly, Wittgenstein interpretation, right from the beginning, and one may say right till the end – or right till the present time – could not but focus on questions of language that give the moving engine to any Wittgensteinian thought. Less obviously, but not surprisingly, the interpretations that have sprung up in the past two decades have either been “postmodern” interpretations or have, at the least, been hugely associative of postmodernist thought, jargon, and ideology. Since the story to be told has a beginning and a progression in (some sort of) time, heroes, and a plot, there is a sense in which this way of telling the story becomes emblematic of telling the (hi)story of ideas of this century. We don’t harbor the illusion that the story of Wittgenstein interpretation includes all the details or complexities of philosophy in the twentieth century, or that it can be a comprehensive summary of the whole. I do make the claim, however, that this story reflects the grand moves of the philosophical community during the turmoil of this century and that understanding the moves of the smaller, Wittgensteinian community involves situating it in the framework of the overall, philosophical culture. This is a philosophical contextualizing, not a sociological or psychological one.
Still, and notwithstanding the rejection of sociological and psychological depictions of the Wittgensteinian community, the telling of this story as a philosophical, or philosophically unfolding story, if you will, leads to asking the “how” and “why” questions I noted above: Why the intensity? Why the vehemence? Wherefrom the communitarianism and ideology of accredited “Wittgensteinians”? How is a certain, specific philosophical community created? How does it create itself? How does it perceive itself? And finally – how does Wittgenstein (as opposed to, say, Russell, or Leibniz, or Aristotle) become a culture hero? In seeking to answer these questions one has no choice but to desist from doing “pure” philosophy (as conceptual analysis), and even to distance oneself from telling a purely philosophical story. In telling this para-philosophical story one becomes an anthropologist of sorts (for want of a better, disciplinarian epithet) and, more specifically, an anthropologist of, as it were, philosophical culture. I do not pretend to be an anthropologist, but I do believe that, in the quest to understand both Wittgenstein and the project of Wittgenstein interpretation – understanding them in the deep sense of placing them in a significant philosophical place and time – such anthropology must be done. It is to this anthropology that I turn in the last part of the book, utilizing the twin constructs of “fashion” and “idolatry” to try to make sense of the phenomenon of Wittgenstein interpretation.
Time, heroes and plot were mobilized above in labeling this book a story of Wittgenstein interpretation. But we are all – from the earliest stages of childhood to the highest-brow business of narratology – apprised of the knowledge that, above and beyond plot (in the wide sense of the term, as a sense-making plot), a good story has a moral to it, in Clifford Geertz’s words: “grand recits with a plot and a moral.” Whether this one does will depend on that last part of the book: where the map of Wittgenstein interpretation has guided us is no answer to the question of whereto, in the future, it may still lead us.
| 1 | At the rate of publication of secondary literature on Wittgenstein no bibliography can be up-to-date. Still relevant, however, are F. Lapointe, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 1980; V.A. Shanker and S.G. Shanker, A Wittgenstein Bibliography, 1986; G. Gabel, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Comprehensive Bibliography of International Theses and Dissertations, 1988; G. Frongia and B. McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Bibliographical Guide, 1990; Peter Philipp, Bibliographie zur Wittgenstein-Literatur, 1996. | |
| 2 | Such quantitative research must, of course, be well-defined in the terminology of research methods. For example, the adage “on Wittgenstein” should be clarified. Does any text that mentions Wittgenstein merit inclusion in the research? Or does Wittgenstein have to be the obvious object and focus of the text? And what about chapters in books, footnotes that refer to Wittgenstein, or use of Wittgensteinian catchwords (“language-games”, “form of life”, “language as use”)? These difficulties must be addressed before one can begin to sum up the on-Wittgenstein oeuvre. | |
| 3 | The two outstanding anthologies are S.G. Shanker, Ludwig Wittgenstein: Critical Assessments, Vol. 1-5, and John V. Canfield, The Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Vol. 1-15. | |
| 4 | E.g., I.M. Copi and R.W. Beard, (eds.,) Essays on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus; R.L. Arrington and H.-J. Glock, (eds.,) Wittgenstein and Quine; G. Pitcher, (ed.), Wittgenstein, The Philosophical Investigations: A Collection of Critical Essays. | |
| 5 | E.g., N. Block, (ed.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein; A.P. Griffiths, (ed.), Wittgenstein: Centenary Essays; G. Vesey, (ed.), Understanding Wittgenstein; P. Winch, (ed.), Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein. | |
| 6 | I will have more to say on the question of interpretation in general and “legitimate interpretation” in particular in Part One. | |
| 7 | The term “story”, with the concomitant threesome (plot, hero, time), is taken from the study of narrative. See especially Paul Ricouer’s analysis of narrative, as propounded in Time and narrative. | |
| 8 | P.M.S. Hacker, Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth-century Analytic Philosophy, p. ix, x. | |
| 9 | The doing of interpretation does, sometimes, rare times, involve a certain recounting of past doings, but this is rarely a story of interpretation; at most it may be a chapter in the story. AsSuch are, e.g., George Williamson, “Recent Canadian Work on Wittgenstein: 1980-1989,” and: David Stern, “Review Essay: Recent Work on Wittgenstein, 1980-1990,” which are this side of story-telling, as opposed to purely bibliographical listings and reportage. | |
| 10 | See, especially Canfield, The Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Vol. 9, – The Private Language Argument, N.Y.: Garland Pub., 1986. | |
| 11 | A very partial story does subsist in David Stern’s “Review Essay: Recent Work on Wittgenstein, 1980-1990,” in Section 2: Recent Work on Rule-Following. | |
| 12 | And I do not here engage in the explicit historical game of finding the real origin, i.e., of looking into the question of whether Wittgenstein was the first, really the first, to use the word, or phrase, or expression. When I say Wittgensteinian in origin I speak of a consensual recognition of the Wittgensteinian use as being at a crucial, first junction. | |
| 13 | In Part I I will address the issues of interpretation: what is interpretation as differentiated from analysis and application, what are the limits of interpretation, what is legitimate interpretation, and what is, most emphatically, overinterpretation. | |
| 14 | Nevertheless, two philosophers that compete with Wittgenstein in their “vulnerability” to extremes of inconsistent interpretations are Rousseau and Nietzsche. | |
| 15 | C.W.K. Mundle puts it sharply, when referring to only one instance of such inconsistency, Pitcher’s anthology (Wittgenstein, The Philosophical Investigations): “If, in some future age, a philosopher should come across Pitcher’s anthology but not Wittgenstein’s book, he would … infer that if the authors of these essays are discussing a single book called ‘The Philosophical Investigations’, they must be referring to different editions involving radical revisions.” A Critique of Lingustic Philosophy, p.4. | |
| 16 | Von Wright, “A Biographical Sketch,” in Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, p. 20. | |
| 17 | Letter from Alfred Kazin to his son Michael Kazin, in 1984, quoted in Dissent magazine, Fall 1998. | |
| 18 | I do not intend to go into the nuances and intricacies of hyper-exact labels of the philosophical and cultural milieus we inhabit – especially in academia. That there are now philosophical schools espousing postpostmodernism, or that postmodernism is now considered passé by some pedants, is not relevant to my intentionally broad labeling. |