Wittgenstein and Philosophical Controversy

WITTGENSTEIN AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONTROVERSY 341 But these are quibbles of such aminor nature Iam almost ashamed to raise them when 1 reflect on the countless and seemingly insoluble problems of translation Bloom has resolved so sagely and so ingeniously. In the Confessions Rousseau wrote that Emile, the result of 'twenty years of meditation,' was his best work. It is no small achievement, therefore, to have made truly accessible, for the first time to the English-speaking world, the most important work of this most important author. This new translation of Emile supersedes all others, and it is so excellent that I can think of no good reason why anyone should need or even want to translate it ever again. Wittgensteinand Philosophical Controversy STUART SHANKER Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker. Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1980 The brouhaha in the English faculty at Cambridge has brought to the public's attention a struggle of truly Homeric dimensions which has been waged over the past decade in the nether world of academia. The facts of this particular episode are still far from clearl and it remains to be seen whether a blow to intellectual freedom has been struck or a triumph of academic standards achieved. What perhaps has not been fully appreciated is that this confrontation between the literary traditionalists and the modernists (structuralists? post-structuralists?) represents but a minor skirmish in the struggle between two great armies which span the disciplines of the liberal arts. Unfortunately, these armies are so vast and amorphous that it is difficult to characterize them with a mere slogan. To see this as a civil war between Cavaliers and Roundheads might not be entirely mistaken. Of coursel among the journalists the story has either blossomed into a class struggle or become a story of Anglo-Saxon intra·nsigence against foreign sedition. While it may be true that the emergent force which, prematurely perhaps, is contesting the authority of the established order has been unduly influenced by European thought, xenophobia has no place in this dispute. The seeds of this controversy are both internal and historic; indeed, some have suggested that they have been endemic to the Anglo-Saxon university as such from its inception. To be surel throughout the millenium there has often been violent and even brutal strife; but many believed that the age of harmony had finally been reached. These fond delusions have now been shattered. In simple tenns, the traditionalists see themselves as representing the established traditions of scholarly research; the progressive forces see themselves as representing the unceasing quest for scholarly innovation. They view each other as anarchists or as reactionaries; they view themselves as exacting or as exciting. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 3, SPRING 1981 0042-0247/81/0500-0341$00.00/0 <0 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS 342 STUART SHANKER Interestingly, these perceptions prove to be fairly accurate. There can be no doubt, for example, that terrible abuses have been condoned in the names of 'hermeneutics' or 'semiotics.' Nevertheless, the result when outstanding scholarship is combined with structuralist principles - such as in the work ofNorthrop Frye - is electrifying. Unfortunately, few have been brave enough, or perhaps talented enough, to try to bridge the abyss between the established methods of research and the harbingers of intellectual discovery. This makes it sound very similar to the historic battles between Authority and Science, and so in a way it is; but in another way it is not. Within each of the liberal-arts disciplines a battle is being waged between the advocates of the discipline's established methodological rules and the 'scientific' progressivists who hope to introduce the methods and theories of supposedly unrelated fields into the hitherto inviolate bastion of the discipline in question. In many cases this has led to fruitful insights, in probably just as many to worthless rubbish, and in far too many cases the argument has simply been stalled because of the monopoly which one side in the dispute enjoys. There is a case to be made for saying that just such a state exists in the field of English literature - at least, at Cambridge. What the general public has not yet learned is that the same parlous state now exists in what Moritz Schlick once called 'the Queen of all the Sciences': philosophy. There is considerable irony in this unhappy state of affairs. For many traditionalists philosophy is the Devil incarnate, the prime instigator of all the havoc ruining their gardens. To an alarming extent the malefactors can be proved to have been dabbling in philosophy. But it is only within philosophy itself that the progressivists have acquired total ascendancy over their discipline. There was, of course, an eccentric figure in the history of philosophy, possibly important, who appears to have fallen out with this development in his dotage. But, sadly, his latest writings are rather too obscure for the general public to appreciate or understand, and they are left with no alternative but to trust to the judgment of the professional philosophers, the specialists in our society who are paid to tell us what the previous specialists were telling us. Russell has the flTSt word on our subject, and while Russen in his dotage was far more querulous than any practising philosopher would care or dare to be (with the possible exception of Robert Marsh, who appears to have imbibed more than ideas at the feet of Russell), his verdict has imperceptibly emerged as the (unspoken) attitude of contemporary scientific philosophy: Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations ... which for convenience Ishall designate as WII to distinguish it from the doctrines of the Tractatus which I shall call WI, remains to me completely unintelligible. Its positive doctrines seem to me trivial and its negative doctrines, unfounded. I have not found in Wittgenstein 's Philosophical Investigations anything that seemed to me interesting and [ do not understand why a whole school finds important wisdom in its pages. Psychologically this is surprising. The earlier Wittgenstein, whom I knew WITfGENSTEIN AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONTROVERSY 343 intimatelYi was a man addicted to passionately intense thinking, profoundly aware of difficult problems of which I. like him, felt the importance, and possessed (or at least so I thought) of true philosophical genius. The later Wittgenstein, on the contrary, seems to have grown tired of serious thinking and to have invented a doctrine which would make such an activity unnecessary . I do not for one moment believe that the doctrine which has these lazy consequences is true. I realise, however, that I have an overpoweringly strong bias against it, for, if it is true, philosophy is, at best, a slight help to lexicographers , and at worst, an idle tea-table amusement. (My Philosophical Development , pp 160-1) The mind boggles that Russell could actually have written this. However, there is no point in dwelling on that; what is important is Russell's conclusion. Is it a travesty of what Wittgenstein thought, and what he was trying to do? Or is it a profound comment on philosophical ineptitude? Had Wittgenstein grown tired of serious thinking, and was the Philosophical Investigations a last desperate attempt at clarification? Could any doctrine of Wittgenstein's have 'lazy' consequences? Did Wittgenstein confuse philosophy with grammar? These are substantial questions, the material for serious critical examination. But such a pursuit lies dangerously close to the domain of that notorious pseudo-subject, the 'history of ideas.' Clearly serious philosophy can have no commerce with such an artificial enterprise. When Russell wrote this, it might have been just possible to accept his criticism. After all, the only things Wittgenstein had published during his career were the Tractatus and a short paper which he disowned. The Investigations appeared from nowhere, and it was totally unlike anything Wittgenstein had published, unlike anything that the philosophical public was accustomed to. However, the steady trickle of Wittgenstein's posthumous writings which Basil Blackwell has published over the past decade has finally put to rest Russell's crude picture of how Wittgenstein spent his mature years working on philosophy. What has emerged is a philosopher ofquite awesome productivity, one who appears to have worked incessantly, and who was able to sustain his remarkable powers of concentration right up until the time of his death. But who would be so foolhardy as to try to work through this incredible morass, in search of the threads leading up to the grand philosophical design which Wittgenstein presented in Philosophical Investigations ? Two Oxford philosophers have undertaken this prodigious task. They have produced a book which promises to be a watershed in our understanding of WII. And they have produced a book which heralds the return of serious textual criticism to contemporary philosophy. It can only be hoped that they have established the precedent whereby in future philosophers will no longer be able to enjoy their previous immunity to the demands of a sound scholarly approach to the writings of the masters. In Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker 344 STUART SHANKER have succeeded in creating three important books in one. First and foremost, their book is a commentary on the first 184 sections of the Investigations. Here they draw heavily on Wittgenstein's Nachlass in order to reconstruct the development of Wittgenstein's thought, and are thus able to clarify what are otherwise the most enigmatic passages, and to rectify the numerous mistakes which have become commonplace in interpretations of the Investigations (as often as not mistaking Wittgenstein's point for the very thing he is arguing against). Unlike standard commentaries, however, this book does not merely present a section-by-section analysis which simply piles detail upon detail, and in the process loses all sight of the trees, let alone the forest. The whole purpose of this book is to employ meticulous scholarly techniques in order both to clarify the overall design of Wittgenstein's later philosophy and, in turn, to approach the more specific topics which Wittgenstein thereby attacked. What emerges is an extremely convincing picture of the continuing development of Wittgenstein's thought to its culmination in a conception of philosophy which is radically opposed to the mainstream of contemporary philosophy's preoccupation with the regimentation of our sorrily defective 'ordinary language.' Baker and Hacker employ this careful interpretation to attack a host of the most fundamental problems in modern philosophy. Thus, interspersed throughout the commentary, they present essays which apply Wittgenstein's arguments in the sections in question to such issues as proper names, determinancy of sense, and above all else, perhaps, the whole question of trying to construct a 'theory of meaning' which exposes the rules which underlie the 'calculus' of language. In their introduction the authors admit that the whole enterprise of trying to explain in detail, as well as delineate in general, the argument of the Philosophical Investigations ... perhaps betokens lack of adequate humility rushing in (with the rest of the crowd) where the wise (if not the angels) wait. It has been suggested to us that it is too soon to embark on such a project. We were, however, emboldened by three considerations. First, the increased accessibility of the Wittgenstein Nachlass made some of our aims reasonably realistic ... Secondly, if this kind of project were delayed for another half-century or more, the intellectual milieu and philosophical atmosphere of Wittgenstein's work (in particular Frege, Russell, the Vienna Circle), already increasingly remote for our generation, will be irremediably alien ... Finally, it is not unknown ... for great philosophical insights to be lost through misunderstanding , dogmatic misinterpretation, tides of fashion, and a naive belief in progress. Although almost all Wittgenstein's philosophy bears directly upon central issues ofcurrent philosophical debate, usually negatively, much ofit is ignored, to the detriment of the resultant 'theories.' If Baker and Hacker are foolhardy, they are at least forthright. For, as this Apologia makes clear, not only do they propose to attack the prevailing interpretation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy; they also propose to apply this interpretation in a WITIGENSTEIN AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONTROVERSY 345 full-scale attack on the ruling junta of the theorists who currently hold absolute sway in philosophical circles. It is an ambitious task, perhaps even an audacious one; certainly one which promises (and deserves!) to come in for as much notoriety as the masterpiece which it strives to elucidate. This might all sound a bit too daunting for the uninitiated, which leads one to mention the third outstanding merit of the book. Throughout the work Baker and Hacker have written in a style which is both fresh and entertaining; they have relied to a considerable extent, in their interpretation, on Waismann's writings, and would appear to have inherited Waismann's renowned 'lucidity,' Perhaps the book's greatest accomplishment is that it has been written in such a way as to make it accessible to the wide reading public which is interested both in Wittgenstein 's later philosophy and in its relation to contemporary philosophy. While this is an extremely good book, it remains to be asked, is it an important book? This is as much as to ask, do these internecine battles really have any relevance for society? One is reminded here of Isaiah Berlin's cobbler, who is not to be trusted on the importance of leather. I am far too close to the industry of manufacturing ideas to pretend to be objective about their importance. Perhaps this is a matter for no less than a Berlin to address? Or perhaps a Snow? ...