WAB: "Fragments" | The following contribution is an excerpt (pp. 187-198, "Idolatry and Fashion") 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).

Anat Biletzki: (Over)Interpreting Wittgenstein

Chapter 12: Idolatry and Fashion

“During the period since 1914 three philosophies have successively dominated the British philosophical world…first that of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, second that of the Logical Positivists, and third that of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.”¹ This estimate of importance is how things looked to Russell in 1959. But forty years later Peter Hacker summarizes things differently: “…[I]n the last twenty-five years…mainstream Anglophone philosophy, partly under the influence of Quine, has increasingly moved away from Wittgenstein’s ideas.”² Variegated, indeed contradictory estimates of Wittgenstein’s influence proliferate.³ And not only of his philosophical influence, witness Rubinstein’s comment that “If Wittgenstein’s star has dimmed a bit in philosophy, there is a growing curiosity about his work among behavioral scientists.”⁴ These are all post-facto estimates; but such appraisals began to surface in earlier times, concurrent to Wittgenstein’s teaching. Here is a symptomatic one:

Thus wrote O. K. Bouwsma in his notes (for a class on prophecy).⁵ But before evaluating this type of grandiose testimonial, let us engage in some vignettes.⁶

For the past twenty-five years the town of Kirchberg in Austria has played host to the annual Wittgenstein Symposium, a large scale conference (anywhere between two hundred and five hundred people) devoted to work on Wittgenstein (along with a yearly “theme” not necessarily having to do with the hero).⁷ Scholars from all over the world gather for a week of presentations – plenary sessions and tens of simultaneous lecture sessions – along with the regular, routine events of such international conferences, such as receptions, parties, speeches by local notables, etc. Also regular and routine are the academic conversations (on Wittgenstein, or on any other philosophical topic under the sun and the local Linde tree) carried on during a conference week. And as is done in other conferences which host hundreds of speakers from abroad, the organizers of the conference invite the participants, every year, to a local “tour” of the area. Except that, in this case, the Wittgenstein “tourist” is not taken to a regular, routine hike in the woods or a climb over mountains in the Austrian Alps; instead, the Wittgenstein tourist is directed along a footpath, above the town of Trattenbach, where Wittgenstein took his daily walks. At irregular intervals along the walk one meets a bench upon which he (and, we surmise, other unknown travelers) sat down to rest; a small plaque where (we surmise) he stopped to write some notes; another spot where he looked out over the Austrian scenery. And listening in on the participants of the tour one can hear snippets of conversation: “This is where he probably thought up the comment on…”, or “I wonder if those cigarette butts are his” (said about brand new remnants of Marlboro), or “Such skies make one think so much more spiritually; no wonder he was a religious man”. One gets the feeling that, were we to put out a tourist album of this area of Austria, it would appropriately be called “In the Footsteps of Wittgenstein”…

Across the ocean, in April of 1998, the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science held a conference on “Early Analytic Philosophy”, which, although officially addressing the questions put by Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein, quite immediately progressed, or is it collapsed, to the now-so-with-us debate over the status of nonsense in Wittgenstein.⁸ In our telling of this interpretive confabulation, as a stage in the interpretive road, we perceived a nuanced evolution of the concept of nonsense arising from complex readings. But at the Boston Colloquium the debate was almost a debacle – with two sides clearly and unequivocally defined as geographic and ideological sides. Things were so crystalline, in fact, that the event has been referred to by many of the “spectators” as the “Wittgenstein slugfest”. On one side were the representatives of what we have termed “reasonable meta-readings” – David Pears and Peter Hacker,⁹ from the U.K.; on the other side were the “nonsense crowd” from America - Cora Diamond, Peter Hylton, and Juliet Floyd (with Warren Goldfarb and Thomas Ricketts rooting from the wings). One could, one should perhaps, say that the moderator, ostensibly objective in most fighting matches, was Burton Dreben of Boston, considered by some to be the intellectual father, and definitely the motivating teacher, of the nonsense crowd.¹⁰ Reports have it, however, that in spite of Dreben’s well-known adherence to one side of the debate, it was his feisty and certainly honorable moderation that kept the debate on a cultured path and a civil tone. For, as soon became clear, this was not an ordinary academic conference in which participants read articles and voiced their interpretive positions on neutral texts. It was a war of interpretation – but is this interpretation of a text, or of some texts, or of a philosophical oeuvre, or even of a philosopher, or of an idol? What could be the interests, or motivations for the battle, or, for that matter, its spoils? As regards the vehemence and the intensity of the struggle, one need only think of a comment made by Jaakko Hintikka as he walked out of the session (without waiting for its conclusion): “I couldn’t take what they were doing to Wittgenstein.” Further evidence of the cultural and community-based status of this philosophical event – an event which, in other non-Wittgensteinian contexts would probably have gone unnoticed, as do most academic conferences – is the article written by Vera Hofmann and published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in June of 1998. Innocently titled “Wittgenstein’s Ladder; On the Sense and Nonsense of Early Analytic Philosophy”, this report of a philosophical and scholarly happening merited publication in a popular newspaper precisely because the cultural, rather than the philosophical or scholastic, rank of its hero was so lofty.

A short digression – to the story of another session, at another conference, with poignant crossings reflecting the intersections on our map of interpretations. In December of 1999, at the convening of the American Philosophical Association, two heroes of interpretation, Cora Diamond and James Conant, chaired by a third, Hilary Putnam, presented a typical, fourth station, exegetical reading of Wittgenstein. In the ensuing question-and-answer period another hero, a decidedly un-Wittgensteinian hero, Cornel West (of cultural and political notoriety) asked a naïve-sounding question: What significance has all this exegetical and analytical nitpicking? Or, more blatantly, what ethical or moral implications can we draw from such minute (not to mention petty) dealings in such esoteric texts? This was a dumbfounding question, whether meant to elicit serious self-reflection (of the heroes of interpretation) or simply to stump. And it was left to Putnam (after other less successful attempts at satisfactory replies) to save the (Wittgensteinian) day by stating clearly and forcefully that after Wittgenstein – that is to say, after we (of the philosophical community) have understood and properly used Wittgenstein – ethics can never be the same! But notice the significance of this for the teller of interpretive stories: after eighty years of interpretation, through the sometimes calm, sometimes turbulent interpretive seas, having ingested both standard and non-standard readings on Wittgensteinian ethics, having moved ethics from inside the Wittgensteinian system to its defining framework, interpreters of Wittgenstein are seen to be using him (as an idol?) in response to “real” ethical questioners. This is interpretation taken to new venues indeed.

Then there are the stories of philosophy departments. The notorious historical stories tell of the Cambridge disciples, the students and friends who had the luck, the honor, the fortune, to hear Wittgenstein’s seminars. While the stories about Wittgenstein as a teacher, as a fascinating character, as of problematic temperament are well-known, it is incumbent upon us to reflect, rather, on the characteristics of a philosophical community which was willing to countenance such eccentricity (and to ask whether it is only, and always, the mark of genius that excuses such behavior). For, by the time his teachings started to infiltrate into American philosophy departments, they were everywhere heralded as the works of a “hero”.¹¹ Paul Benacerraf tells the (now amusing, but at the time troubling) story of the Princeton philosophy department, which, in the 1950s, with Norman Malcolm’s arrival on the scene, from Cornell University which was recognized Wittgenstein territory, split into the “for” and “against” (Wittgenstein, of course), or, from a different perspective, into those doing real philosophy (good, strict, well-argued analytic philosophy) and those going off on the wild (Wittgensteinian) path.¹² Hilary Putnam recounts that the Harvard department was rife, for thirty years, with controversy – not between professors, but between the professors’ graduate students – as to how to read and interpret Wittgenstein.¹³ Looking through schedules and syllabi of philosophy departments one encounters departments that offer absolutely no classes on Wittgenstein for years on end; others will have at least one Wittgenstein seminar during every school term. The same kind of (negative or positive) consistency would not be found for Plato, Aristotle, or Kant.

And finally, the story of the literary inheritance, with the related story of the editorial endeavors and struggles as regards the Nachlass. The three trustees of the Wittgenstein literary estate, Henrik von Wright, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Rush Rhees, along with several former students and acquaintances, had and have, at their disposal, tens of thousands of pages of manuscripts, typescripts and notes, all of which function as a repository for Wittgensteinian texts, with that word – “texts” – being, itself, conditioned by editorial criteria of appropriateness, coherence, comprehensiveness, and authenticity. The texts have been variously edited in order to produce, over the past fifty years, volumes of Wittgenstein’s “writings”. Given this variety (of sources and editors), and based on the ironic fact that Wittgenstein published only one book (the Tractatus) in his lifetime, controversy over the correctness (correctness involving choice of material, accuracy of translation, order of presentation, relevance of appropriation, and fit of data) of any edited product was more than expected; it has become an attendant profession to the work of interpretation. Not surprisingly, therefore, we have been offered the putatively authoritative – since appointed by Wittgenstein – version with which to begin the editorial saga in von Wright’s report: “The Wittgenstein Papers” (1982). Beyond reports, however, there were immediately criticism, rebukes, and recriminations, all revolving around the “troubled history” of Wittgensteinian editorship. These ranged from the relatively factual chronicles (again, von Wright’s “The Troubled History of Part II of the Investigations”, 1992), to the more critical or appreciative renditions (such as Stern’s “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy”, 1996,¹⁴ or Savickey’s “Wittgenstein’s ‘Nachlass”, 1998) of the editorial “events”, and finally to acrimonious accusations of unsound, perhaps even ignoble, editorial policy.¹⁵

These are all tales of and within one certain discipline, or profession, or community at work – the world of philosophy. Casting our net farther we engage with less “disciplined” contexts and phenomena, which harbor other yarns.¹⁶ Some striking ones deserve mention (and if we were writing a book in cultural studies, rather than in intellectual/philosophical history, we could, and would, elaborate on more). In 1993 Derek Jarman released his movie “Wittgenstein” which weaves together a tantalizing tapestry of Wittgenstein’s life, work, thoughts, and personality. It is not fiction, but neither is it a documentary. When contracted to write the script Terry Eagleton, an accomplished Wittgenstein interpreter,¹⁷ but also, perhaps more so, a cultural critic, produced a “story” that did not pass muster with Jarman, the director. The ensuing development, however, was not one of rancor or estrangement, but rather collaboration which produced an intriguing work of philosophical art, or artistic philosophy.¹⁸ But let us not rejoice at a happy end of philosophy and art doing well together; let us not suppose that acting at Cavell’s behest (of putting style and content together) necessarily carries positive results. The final production received mixed responses, the most poignant of which was a philosopher’s comment that the movie was frustrating – if you hadn’t known Wittgenstein before seeing the movie, you couldn’t understand it or him; if you had, you wouldn’t accept it or its Wittgenstein.¹⁹

In the movie “Wittgenstein”, the personal is the philosophical. Part of the personal is Wittgenstein’s homosexuality, which is attended to as a significant factor in his biography and therefore, given the movie’s ideology, in his thought. We have made little, in our story of interpretation, of this part of the narrative.²⁰ But it is not to be wondered at that, on the cultural (rather than strictly philosophical) stage, Wittgenstein is a hero in Gay and Queer Studies. This is the flip side of the Bartley coin – instead of using Wittgenstein’s sexual orientation in the interpretation of his philosophical texts, his philosophical persona is mobilized to advance theories and ideologies which are currently evolving. From the reportage style of Gay Men and Women Who Enriched the World,²¹ with Wittgenstein joining a long list of heroes and heroines (whose heroism is not unambiguously diagnosed), we progress (or descend?) to ideological research. Notice the neutrally titled graduate course “Studies in Recent Literary and Cultural Theory” when it is given its more exact elaboration: “Signs/Sex/Machines: Theories of Representation/Computation/Sexuality”. If one thinks that sense can be made of the admixture of “theories of representation, theories of (queer) sexuality, and theories of computation”, then one will not be surprised to encounter Wittgenstein, “the decidedly queer philosopher”, as one of the four men who make up the (human) axis of the course (the others being “the queer mathematician and ‘father’ of theoretical computer science Alan M. Turing; the (if not queer than at least strange) mathematician and ‘inventor’ of cybernetics Norbert Wiener; and Sigmund Freud”). No less sincere, but oft-times more philosophically grounded, are readings of Wittgenstein inhabiting feminist studies, ranging from concretely political Lesbian agendas,²² to very theoretical analyses within political epistemology.²³

And again, we have traversed the plains of cultural interpretations – from interpretations of the Wittgensteinian texts in their cultural context to (pseudo-) interpretations of Wittgenstein in cultural interests – only to arrive at obvious and intentional cultural use of Wittgenstein. Thus, for example, the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign presents a course in and on creative writing - Creating Wittgensteinian Literary Art: Preface to A Form of Fiction – which purports to develop a new style, philosofiction, based on the question “If Ludwig Wittgenstein had written fiction, what would it look like?” and predicated on that question as “the inspiration for a project which seeks to establish a new style in fiction-writing that is both explicitly Wittgensteinian in its form and content, with the express purpose of developing a pedagogical style of literature.” While this project amalgamates Wittgenstein’s views on literature and aesthetics (mostly from Culture and Value, but also from what can be drawn out of the Investigations) with Tolstoy on the same, it is not abashed in its educational aims – of teaching, explicitly and concretely, how to write philosopfiction. But this, of course, is not new: Wittgenstein has been used for educational purposes, per se, from the early 1970s.²⁴

What we can try to identify, besides, or before, the multiplicity of such uses, are not uses at all but rather bona fide interpretations. The many articles trying to make sense of his words on learning a language, on how we learn a language, on how children learn a language, or on learning in general are legitimate, and common, paths in the enterprise of interpretation (of Wittgenstein on meaning, or on human action, or on intentional acts); these fit, all too well, into the stations of mainline interpretations. Then there are half-way houses – erudite philosophical interpretations mobilized for insightful analysis in other disciplines. Two noteworthy examples can illuminate the delicate, yet wide, maneuverings of such niche-readings. In Wittgenstein: Philosophy, Postmodernism, Pedagogy (1999), Peters and Marshall recruit the whole gamut: Wittgenstein’s modernistic cultural and philosophical environment, his postmodern “associations”, and his philosophy of the self to extrapolate to both their own reading of his philo-psychological make-up and its implications for the philosophy of education. We see, in such recent works, a taking to account of all (or most) points of our interpretive maps: mainline readings, non-standard issues, and motivational use. Differently conceived is Shanker’s Wittgenstein’s Remarks on the Foundations of AI (1998) - which could almost have made it into (the aftermath of) our chapter on interpretations of Wittgenstein on mathematics, or into certain offshoots of the third station of mainline interpretations. Of his reasons for writing this book Shanker testifies: “First and foremost was simply my desire to deepen my understanding of Wittgenstein’s later writings…My next goal was to understand the evolution, and thence the nature, of AI.” The connection between the two inheres in Wittgenstein’s preoccupation with the mechanist ideas which underlie AI, and, consequentially, in the relevance that Wittgenstein’s remarks have “for the future of cognitive science”. And Shanker is not a neutral interpreter here; he has an agenda. “…If cognitive science is to succeed in explaining a human being’s socioaffective, cognitive and linguistic development, it has to restore the focus onto an agent’s social interactions, and away from that of a self-modifying computer program.” Can use and interpretation of Wittgenstein be more inextricably correlated?²⁵

These interpretive uses are, however, to be contrasted, quite surely, with, for example, (usually simplistic) stories of Wittgenstein as a teacher, which are then used to develop this or that philosophy of education,²⁶ or the (usually more complex) use of his thoughts, which are more or less relevant to education, in the enunciation of educational theories.²⁷ And if it is categorical use that we have arrived at, presupposing a popular, standard interpretation of an almost mythological Wittgenstein, then mention (but no more) can be made of Wittgenstein for (not on) developmental psychology,²⁸ or psychiatry,²⁹ Wittgenstein for literary criticism,³⁰ Wittgenstein for art criticism,³¹ Wittgenstein for multimedia,³² even Wittgenstein for sport,³³ or Wittgenstein as a name for poems and experimental fiction.³⁴ A veritable cultural icon.

Ask the man – or woman – on the street about Wittgenstein and chances are they have never heard of him. Ask the man – or woman – on the intellectual street about Wittgenstein and chances are they will nod in puzzled hero worship, having heard, for instance, about great philosophers such as Popper and Wittgenstein at each others throats with pokers.³⁵ Ask the man – or woman – on the philosophical street and chances are split, between the declaration that Wittgenstein is the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century or the accusation of the greatest fraud in philosophical history. There is seldom, in philosophical corridors, an indifferent reply in any context having to do with Wittgenstein. “It is not easy to draw the exact line between attributing value and conferring absolute value, between not being indifferent and leading a life of total devotion, but when that line is crossed an idol is erected and an idolatrous life is being led.”³⁶ The stories we have told in this last chapter give off a whiff of, at worst, idolatry; at best, they point to the philosophical community’s proclivity for fashion.³⁷ Between best and worst there should be “reasonable” gradations. But notice the semantics of the community: An interpreter such as Bartley, whom we have positioned on the edge, perhaps even over the edge, of legitimate interpretation, concerned to highlight his objectivity, tells us that “No one…will doubt my respect for Ludwig Wittgenstein. Yet…this study has not been written by a disciple.” Disciples adhere to holy men. And if Bartley can be excused on grounds of metaphoric stylistics – disciples merely adhere to tenets of teachers, not to consecrated beliefs – we can turn, instead, to Anthony Kenny, one of the outstanding representatives of the “reasonable bunch”. Kenny is fond of telling the story of Wittgenstein’s inheritors and inheritance. The three “chosen” students who were bequeathed the whole of Wittgenstein’s literary estate were Henrik von Wright, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Rush Rhees. But this was not merely a literary or even a personal inheritance; rather it was an ideatic one – with von Wright entrusted with the logical, Anscombe with the metaphysical, and Rhees with the mystical. Since these are veritable lines of inheritance it is then incumbent upon the select few, or perhaps the community as a whole, to vouchsafe these lines; whereupon it is now clear – and these things are made clear by a nebulous, amorphous consensus within a followers’ community – that the second generation of inheritors, loyally continuing the conceptual divisions, are, respectively, Peter Hacker, Anthony Kenny, and Cora Diamond…If this is not idolatry, then it is monarchical hero worship.

And the story we have told throughout this book? It is, as advertised to begin with, a story, and not necessarily the story. It is a grand-narrative, trying to cover the main points of encounter with Wittgenstein traveled by the philosophical community in its capacity as an interpretive community (are there, should there be, any other philosophical capacities?). Like any story, unquestionably like any grand-narrative, it has a point – the motif of overinterpretation. Does it also have a moral?

There are good interpretations and bad interpretations; some say there are correct interpretations and incorrect interpretations; there are interesting interpretations and dull ones; there are fruitful interpretations and dead-ends. But what is overinterpretation? Why would we want to stop interpreting? Admittedly, we could answer (impulsively perhaps) that we wouldn’t; and thereby forgo the possibility, yea, the very conceivability, of overinterpretation.³⁸ Alternatively, we could point to the detrimental character of a community so immersed in the interpretation of a thinker that it is led to manifestations of idolatry and hero worship. Still another angle however, more in tune with a positive conception of endlessly productive interpretation, is the one now afforded to Wittgensteinian scholars via the electronic version of the Nachlass at the University of Bergen.³⁹ The availability of the whole of the corpus, in the formats of several editorial options, opens up possibilities of interpretation that may serve not only as a new repository of texts to be interpreted but perhaps also as a corrective of former fashionable interpretations (standard or otherwise). There is, perhaps, a paradox of (over)interpretation here, for it is precisely the very real potentiality of more readings, based on multitudinous original manuscripts and strictly controlled editorial work, that opens up the avenue to what we’ve termed legitimate interpretation at its best. Moreover, such interpretive enterprises may expose earlier, ambitious representations of Wittgenstein as less true to the “facts”, by taking a detailed textual path to understanding him. Do these future possibilities of interpretation then counterbalance the fear of overinterpretation?

In answer let us reiterate two natural responses that may seem, in a somewhat traditional (is it more reasonable?) stance, to separate the two Wittgensteins, at least those two, as early interpreters did. We may then find that the question of overinterpretation is answered differently for different Wittgensteins; we might even use this question for differentiating overinterpretation of the early vs. the later.

Interpreting Wittgenstein, especially the early Wittgenstein, can and should continue to tax traditional philosophers – traditional, or should we say modern, only in the sense of wanting to get to the bottom of a problem or a dilemma.⁴⁰ It is this motivation which has led to various interpretations, but can this be termed overinterpretation? We asked, early on, if overinterpretation is any different from too much interpretation? And then, is there such a thing as too much interpretation? Interpretation of the Tractatus is an exercise in reading something out of a text, of unearthing meanings there to be unearthed, of exposing something hidden. Overinterpretation, if such there be, might involve, in this case, reading into the text; that is, compelling the text to say something we assume must be there. Thus the text is made to fit the philosophical desiderata of the interpreter (such as the ascription of realist ideas), or methodological constraints (such as the assumption of consistency). Furthermore, and here current practice is proliferate, interpretation may take the form of reconciling the many Wittgensteins, providing the links between them, and explaining the progressions from one to the other. In a certain sense this is a methodological motivation, biased, again, by a presupposition of the consistency (or desire to explain the inconsistency) in one philosopher’s work. This type of interpretation has led to readings of the Tractatus emphasizing its anti-realism, its ethical framework, its religious underpinnings, its skeptical implications – all in the hope of making it a harbinger of the later Wittgenstein. This could have been called overinterpretation only in the sense of being overly conditioned by considerations supposedly external to the text itself. It is when these considerations are recognized as determinedly legitimate, as inhering in the profound reading of the text itself, that overinterpretation becomes a misnomer. Not for naught do we see the “new” Wittgenstein, whether really new or not, as an interpretive phenomenon, gaining a foothold and then some more in the philosophical Wittgensteinian community. Too much interpretation, likewise, is a misnomer for honest undertakings to unearth a comprehensive view – of logic, of language, of the world – promised in the Tractatus. One must admit that crucial passages of the Tractatus remain as obscurely mesmerizing today as they were when first written and read – nonsense, denial of philosophical propositions, and absence of doctrine being cases in point. Consequently, a variety of interpretations should be encouraged and welcomed, particularly with the advent of additional textual evidence. As Burton Dreben has put it, there is a text and there is a tradition of reading the text; if this is not a real doing of philosophy then it is the no-less-real doing of the history of philosophy. If our aim is to understand Wittgenstein, interpretation of the Tractatus, being a legitimate tool for better understanding, can almost never be overinterpretation.

What about understanding Wittgenstein, he of the Investigations, and of the multifarious writings now available – truly understanding in Wittgensteinian terms? This means, as has become clear in the aftermath of standard interpretations, in these times of therapeutic interpretation, that we must embrace the liberating, or disastrous, consequences of the utter negation of external standpoints from which to explain, estimate, or judge. It means, further, that we must realize that this negation does not, in and of itself, conduce to any additional epistemic consequences; rather, any such talk is illusory, and proper therapy must convince, and release us, of our illusions. But, as the anti-relativist has always said to the relativist, so the anti-therapist might rejoin: isn’t such therapy self-refuting? Or – differently put, and somehow reminiscent of the Tractatus quandary – isn’t any word we say about therapy, as interpreters of Wittgenstein, illusory as well?⁴¹

Does this quest for understanding not preclude interpretation and make it, almost by definition, overinterpretation? That sometimes seems to be part of the current vogue, most often in the case of the later Wittgenstein, at least in words and (continental, or is it postmodern?) style, if not in deeds. If, however, it is deeds that we are after we must take notice of where interpreters have gone, not only what they have said, in the wake of the later Wittgenstein: to cognitive science, to empirical linguistics, or to extra-philosophical disciplines. But are these the only two options – continentalism or scientism – left to the interpreter of the later Wittgenstein?

A modicum of back-tracking might be useful, at this point, in order to refrain from such negativity (if continentalism or scientism be deemed negative). On one level, the therapeutic reading itself points an accusing finger at interpretations that look for theses, theories, arguments or metaphilosophy in the Investigations, branding them indeed as misinterpretations or overinterpretations. On another level, the work done in reading Wittgenstein at face value (only describing, only reminding) is, in itself, such a work of minutae. And on still a third level, perhaps it is precisely because of the tension between the former levels that the text is afforded the label of “great work”, even canon. This is related to metaphilosophy in the very mundane sense of metaphilosophy being about philosophy: the Investigations, and ultimately all of Wittgenstein's thought, was from the very beginning (self-)touted as calling for a change, and veritably changing, the activity of philosophy.

But can we say that philosophy, as a whole, has changed; or should we admit that only certain philosophers have got caught up in knots? Perhaps calling this kind of activity “knots” is an uncalled-for brand of negativity. We can, instead, count the tens, maybe hundreds, of pages still devoted to single sections of the Investigations and view them as current developmental fruits of the standard, and very reasonable, interpretations (of, e.g., Baker and Hacker). Such reading can then be assessed as additional attempts to read Wittgenstein, yet again, and to make sense of his philosophy via his philosophy.⁴² This means accrediting so much close reading done on single sections of the Investigations as a return to Wittgenstein, performed by changing the activity of philosophy in the reading itself. Paradoxically, this type of overinterpretation, so much interpretation, is not interpretation; it may really be a doing of philosophy as Wittgenstein would have us do it.⁴³ Indeed, new electronic editions of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, and the brave new world of academic work on the internet, may supply the new readings which conduce to such doing.⁴⁴

Nevertheless, and in spite of our good intentions, a last word of caution is in order: perhaps to stay faithful to Wittgenstein we must resist interpreting him. Perhaps this means that Wittgenstein, especially the later Wittgenstein, if taken seriously, is to be read, savored, and left alone. Perhaps understanding Wittgenstein consists of doing philosophy in the way he prescribed, that is to say, doing nothing traditionally philosophical. Interpretation itself, when looked at as a philosophical doing, harbors the very dangers of all traditional philosophy, that is to say, the danger of misunderstanding. Perhaps all we ever needed to do, in looking for a moral of the story, was to heed Wittgenstein himself:

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1		Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development, p. 216.
2		Hacker, Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth-century Analytic Philosophy, p. 3.
3		See, e.g., on the “positive” side, J. Findlay, Wittgenstein: A Critique and H.G. von Wright, Wittgenstein; on the “negative” side, A. Kenny, The Legacy of Wittgenstein; and estimating the estimates, see A.C. Grayling, “Wittgenstein’s Influence: Meaning, Mind and Method,” in *Wittgenstein Centenary Essays**, ed. A. Phillips Griffiths.
4		David Rubinstein, “Wittgenstein and Social Science.”
5		Quoted in the Introduction by J.L. Craft and Ronald E. Hustwit to O.K. Bouwsma, Wittgenstein: Conversations – 1949-1951.
6		“Vignettes” are always at risk of being gossip, and academic gossip is no less trite than other versions. Gossip has no external point to it. These stories are meant to serve as evidence in the issue of idolatry, thus (hopefully) escaping the status of gossip.
7		The Wittgenstein Symposia began in 1976 and has taken place annually ever since. In 1990 and 1991 the symposium was cancelled because of the problematic, invited speaker, Peter Singer. The Austrian authorities (church, etc.) refused to support the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society in its invitation and the leaders of the organization became involved in an acrimonious debate which resulted in cancellation of the symposium in 1990 and the almost-disintegration of the Society, with resignations and changes of personnel. The symposium was re-instated in 1992.
8		See Ch. 5 – “The Fourth Station: Taking Nonsense Seriously”.
9		See Ch. 4 – “The Third Station: Reasonable Meta-readings”.
10		See the historical notes of the fourth and fifth stations of mainline interpretations.
11		See Morton White, The Age of Analysis: Twentieth Century Philosophers.
12		Benacerraf, “Paul Ziff, 1958-1960: A Reminiscence”, in *Language, Mind and Art**, ed. D. Jamieson, pp. 1-7.
13		During course on “Interpreting Wittgenstein”, autumn, 1999.
14		D. Stern, “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy,” in *The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein**, eds. H. Sluga and D. Stern, pp. 442-476. See also Stern, “New Evidence Concerning the Construction // the Troubled History // of Part I of the Investigations”, pp. 789-795.
15		See the journalistic report, available to a wide public, by Evelyn Toynton in The Atlantic Monthly, June 1997, “The Wittgenstein Controversy”. See also the very scathing accusations against Anscombe and Rhees in Jaakko Hintikka’s “The Curious case of the Trinity Scrolls”. “Scholarly editing might not at first sight seem to be a school for scandal,” he says, and then goes on to elaborate on the scandals, surmising that explanations can be found in “the career of Professors Anscombe and Rhees”. Among other stories, we encounter the sad tale of (mis)translation, and consequent misinterpretation, of “the only language I understand” into “the language only I understand” in the discussion of solipsism (its point being Anscombe’s omission of credit to Hintikka’s correct translation). See above, Chapter 4 – “The Third Station: Reasonable Meta-Readings”.
16		But see, still well within the discipline, Laurence Goldstein’s “Wittgenstein's Ph. D Viva--A Re-Creation,” wherein is enacted the scene of Wittgenstein’s viva with submission of the Tractatus as a PhD dissertation. The context – being a prestigious disciplinary journal – paradoxically allows for such “wayward” philosophical discussion.
17		T. Eagleton, “Wittgenstein’s Friends,” and “My Wittgenstein,” in *The Eagleton Reader**, ed. Stephen Regan. See also Michael Peters & James Marshall, “Terry Eagleton: Wittgenstein as Philosophical Modernist (and Postmodernist)”, in *Wittgenstein: Philosophy, Postmodernism, Pedagogy**.
18		Terry Eagleton and Derek Jarman, Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagleton Script, The Derek Jarman Film.
19		But see, e.g., Tracy Bowell, “Making Manifest: Viewing Wittgenstein's Philosophy through Derek Jarman's Lens,” who sees the movie as a Wittgensteinian movie in its use of the saying/showing distinction.
20		And, indeed, we do not indulge here in the raging debate within Women’s Studies, Gay Studies, Gender Studies, and Philosophy departments over the pertinence of sexual orientation to philosophical interpretation.
21		Tom Cowan, Thomas Dale, eds., Gay Men and Women Who Enriched the World.
22		E. g., W. Lee-Hampshire, “Spilling All Over the ‘Wide Fields of Our Passions’: Frye, Butler, Wittgenstein and the Context(s) of Attention, Intention, and Identity (Or: From Arm Wrestling Duck to Abject Being to Lesbian Feminist)”.
23		E. g., W. Lee–Hampshire, “The Sound of Little Hummingbird Wings: A Wittgensteinian Investigation of Forms of Life as Forms of Power”; P. Garavaso, “The Quine/Wittgenstein Controversy: Any Role for Feminist Empiricism in It?”; N. Scheman, ed., Re-Reading the Canon: Feminist Interpretations of Wittgenstein.
24		See J. L. Green, “Wittgenstein’s Influence on Philosophy of Education”.
25		For a different, call it more positive, attitude to Wittgenstein on machine consciousness, see J.C. Nyiri, “Wittgenstein and the Problem of Machine Consciousness,” in *Wittgenstein in Focus – Im Brennpunkt: Wittgenstein**, eds. B. McGuinness and R. Haller.
26		E.g., W. Rest, “Über Wittgensteins Worterbuch fur Volksschulen”; W.W. Bartley, “Theory of Language and Philosophy of Science as Instruments of Educational Reform; Wittgenstein and Popper as Austrian Schoolteachers,” in *Methodological and Historical Essay in the Natural and Social Sciences**, eds. R. S. Cohen et al.
27		E.g., K. Prange, “Können, Üben, Wissen. Zur Problematik des Lernens in der Sprachphilosophie Ludwig Wittgensteins”; N. Michel, Eine Grundlegung der Pädagogik in der Frühphilosophie Ludwig Wittgensteins; K. Brose, Sprachspiel und Kindersprache. Studien zu Wittgensteins ‘Philosophische Untersuchungen’; J.D. Marshall, “Wittgenstein on Rules: Implications for Authority and Discipline in Education”; D. Stenhouse, Active Philosophy in Education: Paradigms and Language Games; K. Brose, Wittgenstein als Sprachphilosoph und Pädagoge. Grundlagen zu einer Philosophie der Kindersprache; Walter C. Okshevsky, “Wittgenstein and Siegel on Rationality and Criticalness,” in Philosophy of Education, 1991, eds. Margret Buchmann and Robert E. Flouden; P. Smeyers, “Some Radical Consequences for Educational Research from a Wittgensteinian Point of View, or Does Almost Anything Go?”; M. S. Katz, “Wittgenstein, Smeyers, and Educational Research”.
28		See M. Chapman and R.A. Dixon, eds., Meaning and the Growth of Understanding. Wittgenstein’s Significance for Developmental Psychology; K. Brose, Wittgenstein als Sprachphilosoph und Pädagoge.
29		L.A. Sass, The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber, and the Schizophrenic Mind. Sass is aware of his use of Wittgenstein and proceeds, in a more recent article, to "take Wittgenstein and his thought as the object of analysis", i.e. as an object of psychiatric interpretation, in "Deep Disquietudes: Reflections on Wittgenstein as Antiphilosopher," Klagge, ed., *Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy**.
30		See Susan Brill, Wittgenstein and Critical Theory. Also M. Perloff, Wittgenstein’s Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary.
31		See, e.g., the chapter on Cindy Sherman in Steven Shaviro, The Doom Patrols: A Theoretical Fiction About Postmodernism (The Serpent’s Tail, 1997). A philosophical use which travels beyond “standard” interpretation, by independently interpreting Wittgenstein on and for aesthetics, is to be found in G. Hagberg, Art as Language. And see also Allen and Turvey, eds., Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts.
32		George Coates’s production of “Wittgenstein: On Mars” is a theatrical, multimedia piece produced with the aim of “bringing Wittgenstein’s ideas to life onstage”; in that sense it is not far removed from Jarman’s project in the film “Wittgenstein” but, in another sense, it uses Wittgenstein (and the idea of bacterial life on Mars) to promote Coates’s innovative work.
33		S.K. Wertz, “Is Sport Unique? A Question of Definability”.
34		William R. Elton, Wittgenstein’s Trousers: Poems; David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress; Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein’s Nephew.
35		The literary and journalistic talents that make philosophers into culture heroes outside the philosophical community is evidenced in D. Edmonds and J. Eidinow, Wittgenstein's Poker: The story of a 10-minute argument between two great philosophers.
36		M. Halbertal, A. Margalit, Idolatry, p. 246.
37		Of particular poignancy to the author of this book is Putnam’s “Let’s Stop Using the Notion of ‘Idolatry’”, where, in a dissimilar context, Putnam provides a Wittgensteinian (as in Wittgensteinian style and way of presentation) diatribe against the very current use of the term “idolatry”.
38		The constant appearance of new books, all involved in gathering additional articles, serves as testimony to this "natural" proclivity for still more interpretation. This phenomenon shows no sign of abating. See, e.g., some forthcoming titles such as Post-Analytic Tractatus (ed. Barry Stocker), The Third Wittgenstein (ed. Daniele Moyal-Sharrock), Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religion (ed. D.Z. Phillips), Wittgenstein and Scepticism (ed. Denis McManus).
39		Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition, Vol. 1-4.
40		I use “traditional” and “modern” here as opposed to postmodern denials of criteria for judgement and interpretation.
41		This strikes us as faintly parallel to N. Garver’s argument in “Form of Life in Wittgenstein's Later Work” - that the concept “form of life” has been overinterpreted (in our sense), made too much of, to the point of becoming an essentialistic concept with (unwarranted) philosophical implications leading to relativism.
42		See, e.g., Von Savigny, Wittgensteins "Philosophische Untersuchungen". Ein Kommentar für Leser, for an illustration of such reading/commentary.
43		I owe this insight, and this somewhat positive turn, to Andrew Lugg’s important project of rereading, yet again, sections 1-133 of the Investigations, and to his (unintentionally ironic) comment that “the Investigations has to be appreciated in the spirit of Wittgenstein himself, and we must resist the temptation to overinterpret and overstructure his remarks,” exactly while doing so much interpretation. Andrew Lugg, Wittgenstein’s Investigations 1-133: A Guide and Interpretation.
44		The exponential development of digital transcription, encoding, and distribution of Wittgensteinian "texts" is a phenomenon to be reckoned with in future (and perhaps already current) interpretive projects. Our story stops on the brink of this cultural/academic unfolding with the realization that it may house conceptual implications for the very meaning of "interpretation", for the very activity we have been trying to understand. For preliminary acquaintance with the proliferation of electronic resources see especially the website of the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (http://helmer.hit.uib.no/wab/), with its comprehensive Wittgenstein Portal (http://www.wittgenstein-portal.com/); or the electronic editions of Wittgenstein's Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition (Oxford University Press) and the Wittgenstein titles in the Past Masters series published by InteLex.

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