Unfortunately,
Internet Explorer 11 will no longer play the video I have added to this
Essay. As far as I can tell, it plays as intended in other Browsers.
However, if you have
Privacy Badger [PB] installed, they won't play in Google Chrome unless you
disable PB for this site.
[Having said that,
it will play in IE11 if you have
upgraded to Windows 10. It looks like the problem is with Windows 7 and earlier
versions of that operating system.]
If you are using Internet Explorer 10 (or later), you might find some of the
links I have used won't work properly unless you switch to 'Compatibility View'
(in the Tools Menu); for IE11 select 'Compatibility View Settings' and add this
site (anti-dialectics.co.uk). Microsoft's browser,
Edge, automatically
renders these links compatible; Windows 10 does likewise.
However, if you are using Windows 10,
IE11 and Edge unfortunately appear to colour these links
somewhat erratically. They are meant to be mid-blue, but those two browsers
render them intermittently light blue, yellow, purple and red!
Firefox and Chrome reproduce them correctly.
Several browsers also
appear to underline these links erratically. Many are underscored boldly in
black, others more lightly in blue! They are all meant to be the latter.
(1) In an earlier
version of this Essay, whenever I
quoted or cited Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations I linked to an
on-line PDF of the second edition, even
though I had invariably quoted from the 2009, Fourth Edition. However,
the aforementioned PDF left much to be desired; its page numbering was wrong in places and several passages
were
unreadable. But, at the time it was the only on-line version I knew of. However,
one of my readers contacted me in 2023 and sent me a link to a PDF of
Wittgenstein (2009),
to which I have now linked throughout this work.
(2) In
Section (5) below
I am responding to a number of objections raised against an earlier version
of this Essay, which response won't be of interest to most readers. However, in
those sections I have added new evidence about the relationship between Sraffa
and Wittgenstein that isn't to be found anywhere else in this Essay; for example,
here, here and
here. Most readers will find that material of genuine interest.
Since writing this
Essay, I have discovered three excellent articles whose conclusions largely
mirror several of my own:
Vinten (2013),
Adam (2014) and
Gakis (2015).
Finally, anyone
interested in the work of the late Guy Robinson will be pleased to know that (with
the permission of his son) I have posted Guy's unpublished Essays at this site.
They can be accessed
here.
Update
15/03/17: In this update, among other things, I have added
additional comments amounting to just under a thousand words devoted to
Wittgenstein's opinion of Spengler. In an earlier update in February, I also added several comments
about Alan Turing's left-wing political leanings
as well as a few thoughts about
Wittgenstein's early -- and decidedly odd -- infatuation with
Rabindranath Tagore.
Update
21/04/17: I have just received a copy of Eagleton (2016), which itself presents a
rather weak case for the defence (that Wittgenstein was a leftist), and,
oddly enough, an even weaker attempt to show that
he was also a conservative of some sort! To that end, Eagleton largely
(and predictably) relies on the presumed influence that Spengler's work had on Wittgenstein.
I have now added some negative comments
about Eagleton's highly dubious conclusions.
Update
01/05/17: I have just added a few
comments about Frank Ramsey and corrected a few errors and typos.
Update
10/07/17: I have now added several comments
about a relevant passage about Wittgenstein that Oxford Philosopher, A. W.
Moore, published in his recent book on Metaphysics -- i.e., Moore (2013).
Update 30/07/18:
I have just added a few more comments
about Engelmann (2013), Sraffa and Voloshinov.
Update 03/04/19:
This Essay has now been re-written. I have added just over a thousand words of new material
and corrected a number of errors and typos. I have also clarified my argument.
Update 23/08/19:
I have just re-written this Essay, adding another thousand words of new material.
I have also corrected a few errors and typos, clarifying my argument in
places.
Update 13/03/20:
Once more, I have re-written this Essay, adding about eight hundred words of new
material. I have also corrected several typos, added a few links and clarified
my argument.
Update 08/11/22:
I have just clarified my argument in places and corrected a few errors and
typos, adding approximately a thousand words of new material.
Update 04/09/23: I am now in the process of
adding a few comments about a
lecture on Wittgenstein delivered at Swansea University (in June 2022) by Ray
Monk, since several of his remarks impact on what I have had to say about
Wittgenstein and religion. I have also added a link to a video of that lecture.
In a future re-write, I
will rectify someimportant omissions (concerning Wittgenstein and
religion) by adding a discussion of a handful of recent books and articles that
were ignored in earlier versions of this Essay. Among other publications this will include
the following works: Atkinson (2009),
DeAngelis (2007), Gorlée (2021), Hollingsworth (2018), Horgan (2018),
(McCutcheon (2001),
McGuinness (1966), Mulhall (2011), Sontag (2000),
Tyler (2011) and Weeks (1993). At least four of the latter were published
several years after I began work on this Essay, so their omission is, I
hope, understandable.
Less excusable,
however, is the absence of any discussion of Wittgenstein (1929/2014) or
Wittgenstein (1970) -- although the latter is briefly mentioned, twice! Those
glaring omissions will also be rectified.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Several readers have complained about the number of
links I have included in these Essays because they say it makes them very difficult
to read. Of course, 'Dialectical Materialists', should any read this Essay(!), can hardly lodge that complaint since they
believe everything is interconnected, and that must surely apply to work that attempts to debunk that
very idea. However, to those who find they do make these Essays
difficult to read, I say this: ignore them -- unless you want to access
further supporting evidence and argument for a particular point, or a certain
topic fires your interest.
Others wonder why I have included links to subjects
or issues that are part of common knowledge (such as recent Presidents of the
USA, UK Prime Ministers, the names of rivers and mountains, films, or certain words
that are in common usage). I have done so for the following reason: my Essays
are read all over the world and by people from all 'walks of life', so I can't
assume that topics which are part of common knowledge in 'the west' are equally
well-known across the planet -- or, indeed, by those who haven't had the benefit
of the sort of education that is generally available in the 'advanced economies',
or any at
all. Many of my readers also struggle with English, so any help I can give them
I will continue to provide.
Finally, several of the aforementioned links
connect to
web-pages that regularly change their
URLs, or which vanish from the
Internet altogether. While I try to update these links when it becomes apparent
that they have changed or have disappeared, I cannot possibly keep on top of
this all the time. I would greatly appreciate it, therefore, if readers
informed me
of any dead links they happen to notice.
In general, links to 'Haloscan'
no longer seem to work, so readers needn't tell me about them! Links to
RevForum, RevLeft, Socialist Unity and The North Star also appear to have died.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
As of December 2023, this Essay is just under 90,500 words
long. A
briefsummary of some of its main ideas can be accessed
here.
The material below does not represent my
final view of any of the issues raised; it is merely 'work in progress'.
If
your Firewall/Browser has a pop-up blocker, you will need to press the "Ctrl"
key at the same time or these and the other links here won't work!
I have
adjusted the font size used at this site to ensure that even those with impaired
vision can read what I have to say. However, if the text is still either too big
or too small for you, please adjust your browser settings!
Over a decade ago I published
an Essay
which, among other things, sought to show that Wittgenstein's political opinions
weren't just left-of-centre, they were further to the left -- and thus
were far more radical -- than any other major philosopher's had been since Marx
himself.
It
wasn't aimed at trying to show that Wittgenstein was an activist or even a
political theorist, merely at countering the view that (i) He was a
conservative mystic, and hence that (ii) His work is either of limited, or
possibly even of no, interest to
Marxists.
[The reason why this is important will
be explained in the Conclusion.]
Recently,
a few benighted individuals over at RevLeft have sought to denigrate the
case I had previously built in favour of rejecting the above, and, as a result, they
criticised the
conclusions they thought I had reached. As we will see, those individuals
misconstrued both the purpose of that Essay and its results.
In order to underline, and perhaps
clarify, those conclusions -- as well as demonstrate where these individuals have
gone astray -- I thought it would be useful to re-publish much of that material and
incorporate the considerable body of evidence I had omitted or
which has only come to light in the meantime.
Section Two
presents this evidence, among which are the following main points:
(1) The vast majority of Wittgenstein's
friends and pupils were leading communist activists or theorists. I have spent
a considerable amount of space and time establishing their Marxist credentials in order to show that they
weren't just
run-of-the-mill leftists;
(2) There are clear links between
Wittgenstein and
Voloshinov's work -- a connection not previously noticed before by
anyone;
(3) Wittgenstein made several unambiguous comments
about the gains that workers had made as a result of
the Russian Revolution (as he perceived things);
(4) Wittgenstein twice expressed a
desire to
go and live in Russia (in 1922 and 1935);
(5) In Wittgenstein's published and
unpublished work there are many direct and indirect references to Marx, Engels
and Hegel --
many of which have hitherto been almost totally ignored;
(6) Wittgenstein had more than a passing familiarity with Dialectical
Materialism [DM]; indeed, he endorsed several of its core ideas -- this included
a
rejection of the so-called 'Law of Identity' [LOI], an acknowledgment that
'contradictions' could be used to explain motion and change, the social nature
of language and thought, and an appeal to Engels's 'First Law', the change of 'quantity into quality';
(7) As is well known, Wittgenstein
engaged in protracted and highly influential discussions with
Piero
Sraffa, the importance of which is now only just becoming apparent, and as new
evidence from the Sraffa archives comes to light;
(8) Philosophers in the
former USSR viewed Wittgenstein as afriend of the Soviet Union who showed a keen
interest in Marxist Philosophy;
(9) An
officially-sanctionedand widely used Soviet Philosophy textbook,
published in the mid-1930s, received Wittgenstein's early work positively,
which salient fact no one seems to have noticed before.
This section will also challenge:
(10) The almost universal idea
adopted by the left that Wittgenstein's philosophy is a conservative
phenomenon, and, as such, rationalises the status quo -- by (a)
leaving "everything as it is", and (b) appealing to ordinary language and
'commonsense';
(11) The widely held view that
Wittgenstein was a mystic. I have presented original evidence and
argument to account for his brief dalliance with mystical ideas during
WW1 and for a decade or so after, as well as presenting a completely
novel explanation for this odd turn of events.
Section Thee
summarises Marx's negative view of Philosophy, which is something that
the vast majority of his so-called followers studiously ignore (again, for
reasons that are explored
here), as well his comments
about, and which concern the significance of,
the social nature of language.
Section Four
briefly outlines Wittgenstein's new approach to Philosophy and the reasons he
gave for adopting it.
Also in Sections Three and Four I will
further explore the clear parallels that exist between the thought of Marx,
Engels, Hegel and Wittgenstein -- including, once again, his criticism of the
LOI, his belief that 'contradictions' can be used to explain motion and change,
his appeal to Engels's 'First Law', and his belief that language is an
anthropological phenomenon,
connected with, and based upon, collective labour and social practice.
Section Five
examines the incredibly thin
reasons the aforementioned critics have advanced for rejecting the conclusions I
reached in that earlier Essay.
In the
Conclusion
I add a few closing remarks, and try to explain why this subject isn't merely of
academic interest.
Appendix A shows how
Wittgenstein's method (as it had been interpreted by
Friedrich Waismann) can be used to dissolve 'philosophical problems'.
[The reason why the last two Appendices
have been included will become clear as this Essay proceeds.]
Some might wonder why I am bothering to
devote an entire Essay to this topic in view of the irrelevant nature of the
opinions advanced by the 'benighted' comrades over at RevLeft -- especially in
view of the fact that they plainly know very little about Wittgenstein's work,
and probably care even less. However, the Forum to which they contribute is perhaps
the most widely read venue of its kind on the far-left; as such, what they have
to say has the potential to mislead many younger comrades. Naturally, those who
are familiar with Wittgenstein's work won't be misled in this way.
A few years after the above was first written, RevLeft went into terminal decline, and is now
almost totally defunct -- not that this Essay had anything to do with that! I
have left this material in this Essay since it deals with objections that are
still prevalent on the far left.
I had in fact intended to expand my
earlier Essay on Wittgenstein; this just gave me the impetus I needed.
Finally, while I was researching and
writing this Essay, I made a series of discoveries about the relation between
Wittgenstein, Marx, Engels, Hegel, Gramsci and Sraffa, the extent
of which I too had hitherto been almost totally unaware. This was partly because much
of this new material has come to light only recently (some of which I still
haven't been able to consult or process to any great extent), and partly because
my extremely hostile opposition to anything that originated with Hegel
blinded me to these very clear links.
Hence, this Essay definitely represents
'work in progress', which I will no doubt be revisiting and revising many times over the next
few years.
Most revolutionaries tend to
regard Analytic
Philosophy as a
conservative or
ideological affectation, with Wittgenstein's work viewed perhaps as a
particularly pernicious example of one or both. This perspective has largely
been motivated by the widely held opinion that Wittgenstein was a bourgeois, or
even a conservative theorist, an opinion further compounded by the belief that
he was also a mystic.1
This Essay
will attempt to counter both of those (by now) clichéd reactions, as well as a few more
beside.
It
is important to point out at the start that I won't be considering the
criticisms of
Ordinary Language
Philosophy [OLP] advanced by
Ernest
Gellner in his egregious book, Words and Things, about which
Wittgenstein expert David Stern had this to say:
"While Gellner's critique, largely composed of shoddy rhetoric, insinuation and
personal abuse, created considerable controversy, it was dismissed by the
philosophical establishment at the time. However, his caricature of Wittgenstein
was enormously attractive to those who needed a convenient rationale for
dismissing him. It has since become conventional wisdom in many quarters, and
especially among social scientists, and is certainly part of the reason why a
relatively small number of social scientists on the left have taken a serious
interest in Wittgenstein." [Quoted from
here.]
Any who
still think Gellner's attack is in any way accurate or reliable should
consult
this detailed critique -- or the shorter version reproduced in Uschanov
(2002) --, and then perhaps think again.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Wittgenstein
was born into one of the
richest families in Austria on the 26th of April 1889. After his initial
education, he enrolled as a student at the Manchester College of Technology in
1908 [Sterrett (2005), Monk (1990)]. As a result of his studies he became
interested in the
foundations of mathematics, and, following upon advice given to him by
Frege he
went to study with
Bertrand
Russell at the University of Cambridge in 1911. It soon became apparent to
Russell that Wittgenstein was a genius who would make the next major advance in Philosophy
-- or, so he told one of Wittgenstein's sisters. Indeed, Wittgenstein had soon
surpassed his teachers and was doing original research within a year, work that
would later form the core of his first book, the path-breaking,
Tractatus. He gave away his massive inheritance, and when WW1 broke out,
volunteered to fight for the
Austro-Hungarian army.
After the war, he became a teacher in Austria and for a few years he worked as a gardener in a
monastery. Here is part of W. W. Bartley's summary of the time
Wittgenstein spent at that monastery (in 1926):
"The
monastery no longer exists...; yet some of the old retainers still remain,
and a few remember Wittgenstein as 'a very good and industrious gardener -- and
as a left-winger'." [Bartley (1988), p.116. Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis added. (Bartley was the first biographer to
reveal Wittgenstein's homosexuality, to the great anger of many of his
rightwing, religious pupils and 'disciples'.)]
So,
according to this source, theonly two things these "retainers" (i.e.,
workers) thought worthy of mentioning nearly fifty years later was that
Wittgenstein was good at his job and that he was a "left-winger". For these
to be the only details they recalled he must have stood out as someone with
forthright left-wing opinions -- as well as being a highly proficient gardener,
of course.
Indeed, a few years earlier,
in 1922, he wrote to his
friend, Paul Engelmann, and expressed a desire to go and live in the USSR:
"The idea of a
possible flight to Russia which we talked about keeps haunting me." [Engelmann
(1967), pp.52-53. Cf., pp.58-59, where, a few years later, Wittgenstein repeats
his intention to go and live in Russia -- but this time, Stalin's USSR.]
That was
written within five years of the 1917 Revolution, as the
Civil
War there was drawing to a close. A "left-winger" who wanted to go and live
in revolutionary Russia in the throes of a Civil War -- these are hardly the
actions, or intentions, of a conservative (small "c" or capital "C")!
John Moran
had this to say about the above proposal:
"About two years
later he sent the same friend some newspaper clippings of prize-winning poems by
workers, urging him to preserve them. In 1937 he wrote him again that he might
go to Russia." [Moran (1972), quoted from
here.]
[I will
return to this topic, and to John Moran's article,
later.]
After
attending several meetings and seminars held with members of the
Vienna
Circle -- a group of philosophers almost entirely composed of
socialists and Marxists -- in the late 1920s, he returned to Cambridge
University in 1929.
As
we are about to discover, the overwhelming majority of his friends, and many of
his pupils, were prominent Marxists -- e.g.,
Piero Sraffa,
Maurice Dobb, Nicholas Bakhtin (who was the
older brother of
Mikhail
Bakhtin, founder member of the
Bakhtin Circle,
and colleague of
Valentin Voloshinov -- more on this later, too),
George Thomson,
Maurice Cornforth,
David Hayden-Guest (or Haden-Guest -- there
appear to be two different spellings of his name), Alister
Watson,
Roy and Fania Pascal, Allen Cameron Jackson,
John
Cornford, George Paul, Douglas Gasking, and
Rush Rhees. Either that or they were socialists of one sort or another.
[Cf., Monk (1990), pp.343, 348; Rhees (1984), pp.x, 48; Cornish (1999),
pp.40-87, and Sheehan (1993), pp.303, 343.]
Moreover, in
the 1930s, Wittgenstein's college at Cambridge,
Trinity Hall, was home to the infamous
Cambridge
Five ring of Soviet Spies -- four of whom have since been identified --,
all of whom lived in close proximity to Wittgenstein.
[On this see
Cornish, op cit, Chapter Two. Cornish concludes from the evidence he has
amassed that Wittgenstein was the chief Soviet Spy Recruiter at Cambridge, but I
am far from convinced about this. Not only does it seem to run counter to what
we know about Wittgenstein's character, and with what
he had to say about the Communist Party itself, KGB files released since
have so far failed to confirm this hypothesis.]
Wittgenstein
was also a member of the exclusive "Cambridge
Apostles", as were the aforementioned spies and many of the other Cambridge
communists. He also lived for a time in the same hostel as the leading spy,
Anthony
Blunt. [Cornish, op cit, p.45.]
Hence, in
the Cambridge of the 1930s, Wittgenstein was surrounded on every side by
socialists, communists and other assorted "ultra-lefts". In addition to those
mentioned above,
Frank
Ramsey's two sisters, Lettuce and Margaret, were both left-wingers, the
latter of whom was a Communist Party member and pupil of Wittgenstein's.
Margaret Ramsey later married George Paul -- also a left-wing pupil of
Wittgenstein's who subsequently emigrated to Australia to take up an academic
post at Melbourne University.2
About Ramsey
himself (who was a major influence on Wittgenstein), he had this to say:
"Ramsey
was a
bourgeois thinker. I.e., he thought with the aim of clearing up the
affairs of some particular community. He did not reflect on the essence of the
state -- or at least he did not like doing so -- but on how this state
might reasonable [sic] be organized. The idea that this state might not be the
only possible one partly disquieted him and partly bored him. He wanted to get
down as quickly as possible to reflecting on the foundations -- of this
state. This was what he was good at & what really interested him; whereas real
philosophical reflection disquieted him and he put its result (if it had one) on
one side as trivial." [Wittgenstein (1998), p.24e; this comes from a note dated
01/11/1931. Italic emphases in the original. Bold added.]
From the
above we may conclude at least three things:
(1)
Wittgenstein linked criticism of the state with whether or not a given
individual was a "bourgeois thinker". Hardly the comment one would expect from a
conservative (capital "c", or otherwise).
(2)
Wittgenstein connected philosophical
criticism with political criticism -- in direct contradiction to those
who conclude he thought that philosophy 'leaves everything as it is' --
more on that
later, too.
(3)
Wittgenstein discussed politics with his friends. [Why it is important to
underline this point will also become apparent later on in this Essay.]3
Returning to
Wittgenstein's friends at Cambridge, we read the following:
"The main forces responsible for recruiting young men at
Cambridge into the party were
James
Klugmann, John Cornford, aided by their
lieutenant, Sam Fisher. Fisher said that Klugmann was the 'the archrecruiter,
who roped them in by the score at Trinity' [i.e., Wittgenstein's college -- RL]. At
one time, Fisher said, there were fifty Communist Party members in that one
college...." [Penrose and Freeman (1988), quoted in Cornish, op cit,
pp.46-47. Link added. (I haven't yet been able to check this source.)]
And, this is
what the poet,
Julian Bell
(nephew of
Virginia
Wolff, and who was probably Blunt's lover at Cambridge), had to say in a
letter to the New
Statesman:
"[I]n the Cambridge
that I first knew, in 1929 and 1930, the central subject of ordinary intelligent
conversation was poetry.... By the end of 1933 we have arrived at a situation in
which almost the only subject of discussion is contemporary politics, and in
which a very large majority of the more intelligent undergraduates are
Communists, or almost Communists." [Quoted in Cornish, op cit, p.47.]
It is worth
noting that Bell was a self-described Marxist who gave his life fighting for the
Republic in the Spanish Civil War. At one point, he planned to write a PhD
thesis on Wittgenstein, but that apparently came to nothing. [Cornish, op cit,
p.47.] In addition, Bell wrote a famous poem about Wittgenstein (reproduced in
Wittgenstein (2012), pp.173-79). Would a Marxist plan to write a PhD, or
compose a poem, about a conservative?
A couple of
lines stand out:
"Ludwig refrain from
laying down the law?
"Dickens a master,
Milton playing tricks,
"The King supreme in
English politics." [Wittgenstein
(2012), p.174.]
"The King supreme in English politics" clearly
refers to Wittgenstein, indicating he was well known for this very reason
(otherwise why call him "The King supreme in English politics"?), and hardly suggests he was
a-political, as many seem to suggest.
We also read
the following:
"All four Cambridge
volunteers who fell in that war [The Spanish Civil War -- RL] had some
association with Wittgenstein: John Cornford and David Guest were critical of
him,
Ivor Hickman was a candid friend, who respected Wittgenstein but was not in
awe of him." [Ibid., p.179. Link added.]
Four
fervent leftists, prepared to die for the cause, all associated with a...,
conservative?
If you
believe that, I have a nice degree from Trump University to sell you.
Ray Monk
also records Wittgenstein's relationship with Communist Party member,
George Thomson:
"George Thomson, for
example, who knew Wittgenstein well during the 1930s, speaks of Wittgenstein's
'growing political awareness' during those years, and says that although he did
not discuss politics very often with Wittgenstein, he did so 'enough to show
that he kept himself informed about current events. He was alive to the evils of
unemployment and fascism and the growing danger of war'. Thomson adds, in
relation to Wittgenstein's attitude to Marxism: 'He was opposed to it in theory,
but supported it in practice'. [We will see later what this 'support'
actually amounted to -- RL.] This chimes with a remark Wittgenstein made to Rowland Hutt
(a close friend of Skinner's [this is Francis Skinner, Wittgenstein's lover --
more on him later, too -- RL] who came to know Wittgenstein in 1934): 'I am a
communist at heart'....
There is no doubt that during the
political upheavals of the mid-1930s Wittgenstein's sympathies were with the
working class and the unemployed, and that his allegiance, broadly speaking, was
with the left." [Monk (1990), p.343.]
Cornish
describes a meeting he had with Allen Jackson, one of Wittgenstein's former
pupils (mentioned earlier):
"In 1978...I visited one of Wittgenstein's former pupils in
the 1930s, the retired Professor of Philosophy at
Monash
University, A. C. Jackson (himself a leading
Australian left-wing academic) at Queenscliff in Victoria and asked him some
questions about his recollections of Wittgenstein. He assured me that
Wittgenstein's politics were ultra-left-wing and that he had a strong sympathy
for Stalin [we
will also see later what this 'sympathy' amounted
to -- RL] and the Soviet Union. Jackson is in any case on record in print
elsewhere saying that Wittgenstein was 'a bit of a Stalinist' [this is according
to John Moran; more on that later, too -- RL], although his testimony to me was
rather more emphatic than this suggests." [Cornish, op cit, p.49. Links
added.]
Ray Monk
adds the following details:
"...[E]ven after the show trials of 1936, the worsening of relations between
Russia and the West and the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, Wittgenstein still
continued to express his sympathies with the Soviet regime -- so much so that he
was taken by some of his students at Cambridge to be a 'Stalinist'.... But at
the time when most people saw only the tyranny of Stalin's rule, Wittgenstein
emphasised the problems with which Stalin had to deal and the scale of his
achievement in dealing with them. On the eve of the Second World War he asserted
to Drury [this is Maurice O'Connor Drury,
another pupil of Wittgenstein's; more about him later -- RL] that England and
France between them would not be able to defeat Hitler's Germany; they would
need the support of Russia. He told Drury: 'People have accused Stalin of having
betrayed the Russian Revolution. But they have no idea of the problems that
Stalin had to deal with and the dangers he saw threatening Russia.'" [Monk,
op cit, p.354. Link added.]
Although
Monk finally rejects the epithet "Stalinist" applied to Wittgenstein, it is easy
to see why he was viewed that way by friends and pupils alike. Indeed, Cornish
adds the following comment about Monk's rejection of this term:
"Douglas Gasking, a former Wittgenstein student and Communist Party member, said
to me, in response to my enquiry about Wittgenstein's politics, that he was 'of
the left'. What a Cambridge Communist Party veteran like Gasking might consider
to count as 'of the left', of course, is likely to be considerably more to the
left than an uninformed reader would gather from reading Monk's 'broadly
speaking' qualification.
"The 'Stalinist'
label was applied to Wittgenstein by left-wing and Communist students in a
notably left-wing university whose alumni were to form the most successful spy
ring known to history. The difference between being merely 'left-wing' and
'Stalinist' at Cambridge was quite clear. Politics at Cambridge was a very
serious business. Everyone was left-wing; not everyone was a Stalinist. The
'Stalinist' label, then, is something whose implications need to be pondered
very carefully, for Wittgenstein's Cambridge disciples were to colonise
philosophy departments across the English-speaking world.
"George Paul, for example, who married Frank Ramsey's Communist sister,
Margaret, greatly advanced the Communist cause in Australian universities, from
1939 to 1945.... Douglas Gasking and Allen Jackson, his successors at Melbourne
and both students of Wittgenstein's, were also left-wingers. Gasking, who rose
to the Chair, described himself as 'an old Bolshevik Wittgensteinian', and had
been a Communist Party member at Cambridge. Selwyn Grave, the Australian
philosopher/historian...writes of Jackson, 'His sympathies were markedly leftist
and he came under public notice for them.' [Cornish is here quoting Grave's
book, A History of Philosophy in Australia, University of Queensland
Press, 1984, p.83. I have not yet been able to check this source -- RL.] Indeed,
he was publicly named by the Victorian Royal Commission investigating the
Communist Party." [Cornish, op cit, pp.50-51. Italics in the
original.]
Cornish then
reveals that, unsurprisingly, the UK
Special
Branch had been monitoring Wittgenstein's residence (intercepting mail,
etc.), which he shared with Maurice Dobb at Frostlake Cottage, Malting Lane,
Cambridge, as early as 1929 (op cit, p.51).4
He
continues:
"That so many of
Wittgenstein's companions, students, etc. were Marxists, given the atmosphere of
the times, is hardly surprising. The problem is not that they were Marxists, but
rather that, of a Trinity population of fifty or so Communist undergraduates, at
least one of his students -- Watson -- turned out to be a spy while others of
his students established the Communist Party in Cambridge, served as its
secretaries, converted some of the famous group of three Cambridge spies and
gave their lives for the party in Spain. It was his students -- Bell, Cornforth,
Haden-Guest, and Cornford -- who formed the nucleus of the whole Trinity College
Communist explosion." [Cornish, op cit, p.52.]
Another of
Wittgenstein's associates was Maurice Dobb, a leading Marxist economist and
theorist. As noted earlier, Dobb and Wittgenstein shared lodgings for a while in
the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Cornish adds
these thoughts about Dobb:
"[L]et us consider the Cambridge Marxist, Maurice Dobb. Wittgenstein returned to
Cambridge on 18 January 1929 and stayed in an attic room of
John
Maynard Keynes, the economist. Skidelsky, Keynes's
biographer, writes:
'Complaining that he "was not born to live permanently with a clergyman", Keynes
gave Wittgenstein notice to quit on 2 February [in other words, he was only
able to tolerate Wittgenstein for just over 2 weeks! -- RL]; Wittgenstein
moved in with Frank Ramsey and his wife, then with Maurice Dobb....' [Cornish is
here quoting Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, Vol. 2, Macmillan,
1992, p.292. I haven't yet been able to check this source -- RL.]
"Dobb, then, did not merely attend Wittgenstein's lectures, at one stage they
shared a dwelling.
"Now Costello, who
examined Special Branch files on the visit of
Bukharin to Cambridge, writes:
'Special Branch reports on the revolutionary leader's visit indicate how by 1921
the
MI5
Registry contained some bulky files on Cambridge scientists who were potential
targets of, and sympathizers with, the Soviet Union. The records that have come
to light show that elaborate measures were in place to monitor the activities of
Needham
and his cohorts, especially Maurice Dobb, who had been identified as a longtime
member of the Communist faction of the Union of Scientific Workers. Dobb was
already the university's leading spokesman for the new vision of the classless,
scientifically run society that was to hypnotise the third wave of Cambridge
undergraduate recruits to Marxism in the years to come.'" [Cornish, op cit,
pp.62-63; quoting Costello (1988), p.162. (In fact, this quotation appears on
pp.164-65 in the UK edition.) Links added; quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site.]5
Costello,
continues:
"Until the end of his life, Maurice Dobb steadfastly played communism's
John
the Baptist, preaching the Decline of Capitalism
to successive generations of undergraduates. In 1965, when I attended his
classes, he was white-haired and weary after nearly a half century in his self
appointed role. But he still mustered the persuasive enthusiasm of the true
convert who was also an inspiring teacher.... Dobb was a patient
teacher and this made him a highly effective spokesman for Marxism. Although he
was often suspected of being a Soviet agent, he was always able to defend
himself by pointing to the openness of his communism....
"Dobb was not a
simple ideologue, propagandist, or undercover agent. He studiously avoided
activities that could have led to his prosecution or being turned out of his
Cambridge teaching position.... Given the intellectual environment in which he
operated, his unswerving loyalty to Moscow, and the scores of committee
positions he held in such front organizations as the Union of Scientific Workers
and the Society for Cultural Relations, Maurice Dobb was one of the
Comintern's
most influential assets in Britain.... Counterintelligence officers were keeping close watch on Dobb and his Cambridge
associates." [Costello, op cit, pp.165-66. Links added; several
paragraphs merged.]
So,
Wittgenstein wasn't lodged with justany old run-of-the-mill communist,
but one of the more important names in the Party, an individual who was near the very
top of Special Branch and MI5's watch list. According to what we read in
Costello's account, this must have meant that MI5 and Special Branch were also
monitoring Wittgenstein, which, once again, hardly suggests Wittgenstein was a
conservative.
We can also
see why one of the leading figures in the Bolshevik Party, Nikolai Bukharin,
chose to visit Cambridge University in the early 1930s. There is no evidence
that Bukharin met Wittgenstein, but, given what we have seen above (and will see
below), it wouldn't be at all surprising if he had.
Wittgenstein
was also a close friend of Nicholas Bakhtin. Fania Pascal noted the following
about the relationship between these two:
"[A]nother intimate friend of Wittgenstein's [was] Dr Nicholas Bachtin (sic)....
'Wittgenstein loved Bachtin' (sic) Constance, Bachtin's widow, told me. From her I
heard of the interminable discussions that went on between the two men.... Nicholas Bachtin
(sic), an exile from the Russian Revolution but by the outbreak of
the second World War a fiery communist, was an inspired teacher and lecturer....
What I do know...is that Wittgenstein loved Bachtin (sic)...and never dropped him as
he easily did others." [Pascal (1984), p.14. Paragraphs merged.]
As noted
earlier, another close friend of Wittgenstein's was the classical scholar,
George Derwent Thomson. Costello adds the following comment about him:
"A prime mover of Marxism in the Apostles emerges from the
membership lists, and the subsequent record of his professional career, as being
a contemporary of Blunt's from King's College: Alister Douglas Watson. And he
was aided and abetted by a senior Apostle who was his mentor: George Derwent
Thompson (sic). A classical scholar in 1922, who became an Apostle in 1924 and a
fellow of King's in 1927, Thompson (sic) nursed a 'hatred of capitalism'.
"Thompson's (sic) Marxism deepened when he taught at Galway University. An
'inspiring' teacher and editor of a two-volume edition of Aeschylus's
Orestia,
he left Cambridge in 1937 to be professor of Greek at Birmingham University --
where he was the organizer of the Communist party for many years. Significantly,
Birmingham [where the Bakhtin's had also moved, and whom Fania Pascal tells us
Wittgenstein visited regularly -- RL], a centre for industrial and scientific
research, emerges from later MI5 reports as being second only to Cambridge as a
haven for academic communism. Thompson's (sic) proselytizing before and during
World War II helped ensure that Britain's premier 'red-brick' university became
a haven for émigré physicist
Klaus Fuchs
as well as
Alan Nunn
May, both of whom were to supply atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.
Thompson's (sic) Marxism and Poetry (1946) made him the best-known
British classicist behind the Iron Curtain." [Costello, op cit, p.191.
Links added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site.]
Once again,
Wittgenstein's friends weren't pale pink, lukewarmcommunists.
Indeed, the two universities he frequented (Cambridge and Birmingham) were
the leading academic centres of communist activity in the UK.
The last two
friends of Wittgenstein's I want to mention are Roy and Fania Pascal (née
Polianovska), the latter of whom taught both Wittgenstein and Francis Skinner
Russian. This is what Costello had to say about Roy Pascal (who had translated
Marx and Engels's The German Ideology into English):
"Pascal was second only to his mentor, Maurice Dobb, in promoting the communist
cause at Cambridge. In particular, he was responsible for converting George
Derwent Thompson (sic) from Marxist to zealous Communist.... Pascal had also
been a friend and influence on Blunt since 1929, when they were both graduates
in the Modern Languages Faculty....
"...Pascal was a fervent communist. His vigorously expressed politics alarmed
some of the
Pembroke [College] dons, who argued that he was
an unsuitable candidate for a fellowship. But he was elected despite their
objections to join Dobb as a senior member of the college. By now he was also a
lodger at Dobb's small house in Chesterton Lane. Known as 'Red House', it was the epicentre of Comintern activity at Cambridge.
Here Dobb worked as a tireless propagandist of the Communist cause. He was a
founding member and Cambridge organizer of the Society for Cultural Relations
and the League Against Imperialism but he maintained links with the Marxist
scientists at the
Cavendish Laboratory. The 'Red House'...had been under frequent surveillance
by MI5 since the mid-twenties." [Costello, op cit, pp.197-98. Links
added; some paragraphs merged.]
So, both
Wittgenstein and Pascal had lodged with Dobb.
Costello
also had
this to say about Fania Pascal:
"[Roy] Pascal's pivotal role in the Cambridge Communist network owed as much to
his marriage to Feiga 'Fanya' Polianovska as it did to his association with
Dobb.... 'Fanya' was a dedicated Marxist whose revolutionary ardour was born of
her experience of pogroms.... That the Russians granted her an exit visa to
study in Berlin [where she met her future husband -- RL] raises the presumption
that her postgraduate work was not confined to philosophy....
"The Pascals assumed
a pivotal role in the proselytizing activities of the Cambridge cell. Pascal
spread the Marxist gospel in the Modern Languages Faculty and canvassed support
from the left-wing members of the History Faculty for a series of Marxist
histories under his own editorship.... Pascal was the standard-bearer of a
fervent brand of intellectual communism that he took with him to Birmingham
University in 1939 on his appointment as professor of German....
'[Costello is here
quoting Roy Pascal's academic friend and fellow communist, Professor Harry Ferns
-- RL] Fanya was the iron in her husband's political soul. She also had all the
right qualifications for a full-fledged Comintern agent, as evidence by her
activities at Cambridge. Fanya became an activist with the Cambridge branch of
the Anglo-Soviet Society, and was soon elected to the committee of an
organisation that was one of the principal links between the university and the
Comintern in Moscow.' [Quotation marks added.]
"Professor Fern's most startling revelation was that just six weeks before
Pascal's death in 1977, 'Roy told me he had once been approached by Soviet
intelligence, not to work for them but to recommend young people whom they might
approach'.... Whether or not Pascal actually became one of the Soviets' Cambridge talent
scouts, the significance of the approach is that it shows the high degree of
trust and confidence Pascal enjoyed...." [Costello, op cit, pp.198-99.
Some paragraphs merged.]
Yet again we
see that Wittgenstein's friends were hardly insignificant,part-time communists on the fringe of the movement.
Moving on
now to those whom Wittgenstein taught: David Hayden-Guest was another of
Wittgenstein's pupils who, as we have seen, fought on the Republican side in Spain where he was
later shot and killed. Here is what he thought about Wittgenstein (recorded in a
letter):
"I am attending a
course of lectures and 'Conversation classes' in philosophy given by the great
Wittgenstein...." [Quoted in Cornish, op cit, p.66.]
Maurice
Cornforth had this to say about Hayden-Guest:
"I first met David
when he came to Cambridge in the Autumn of 1929. I had arrived at the same time,
and it wasn't long before we met.... In the same
year...the Viennese philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, also turned up at
Cambridge. Wittgenstein immediately caused an upheaval in the circles of students (and
lecturers) who were studying philosophy. He proceeded to tear all our
preconceived ideas to pieces.... A circle of young
students very quickly formed around him, and both David and I belonged to that
circle...." [Cornish, op cit, p.66. Cornish is here quoting C.
Haden-Guest, David Guest. A Scientist Fights for Freedom (1911-1938). A
Memoir, Lawrence and Wishart, 1939, pp.95-96, a source I haven't yet been
able to check. Paragraphs merged.]
As a result,
Guest moved to Gottingen to further his studies, but he returned to Cambridge a
died-in-the-wool communist. Cornforth describes his homecoming:
"He
marched into Hall with a hammer and sickle emblem displayed in his coat. I well remember too
how David came into a meeting of the Cambridge Moral Science Club...with a copy
of Lenin's
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. He was bubbling over with excitement
about it, and kept reading passages aloud, especially those parts which deal
with the class basis of philosophy.... I went straight home and read the book,
and thereupon decided to join the Communist Party.... [We] both joined at
the same time, just after the final exams of 1931." [Haden-Guest,
op cit, pp.97-98. Link added. Paragraphs merged.]
We also read
the following:
"Guest, along with Maurice Cornforth, James Klugmann, John Cornford...,
John
Lehmann (the poet and associate of Isherwood and Auden) and four or five
others established a Communist cell at Cambridge University. By 1935, it had
risen to 25 members and then jumped to about 150 across the whole university
soon after. Trinity College alone had 12 members and weekly meetings in the
students' rooms. This reflected a conscious drive by the Communist Party to orientate some of
its work towards students. In 1932, the Communist Party Federation of Student
Societies (FSS) was established, under the watchful eye of
Dave
Springhall, YCL [Young Communist League -- RL] national organiser.
"Initially the FSS had about twenty organizations affiliated, including at the
LSE (a Marxist Society was established in 1931), Oxford (the October Club,
established 1932) and the universities of London, Reading, Durham, Leeds,
Manchester and Cambridge (where there was a long-established student Socialist
Society). The Federation of Student Societies journal was the 'The Student
Vanguard'. It was during this period of the early 1930s, that enthusiasm for the
party secured the election of
Philip
Toynbee
as the Communist Party's first Oxford Union President...and a Communist MP for
the Cardiff University constituency." [Quoted from
here; accessed 19/05/2016. Quotation marks altered
to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added;
several paragraphs
merged.]
[For more on
Guest, see Sheehan (1993), pp.345-50, and Levy (1939).]
Maurice
Cornforth went on to become the leading communist philosopher in the UK,
and member of the Central Committee of the British Communist Party.6
Costello
adds this comment about Guest:
"[Guy]
Burgess
[one of the 'Cambridge Five' spy ring -- RL] got to know David
Haden-Guest, the son of a labour MP, and fellow Trinity undergraduate, who
became his guide to dialectical materialism. Haden-Guest was a socialist when he
abandoned his study of philosophy under Wittgenstein early in 1932 to spend two
terms at the University of Goettingen (sic). When he returned from Germany that
autumn, after a spell of imprisonment for taking part in a demonstration against
the Nazi party, Haden-Guest was a militant communist. Burgess was sufficiently
impressed by such personal dedication to spend much of his second year
reconciling his own historical theories to the dialectical materialism of
Haden-Guest's copy of Lenin's
The State and Revolution. Burgess insisted that his conversion was
'intellectual and theoretical' rather than an emotional issue of faith. His
Marxism was not of the 'Damascus
Road' intensity that inspired Haden-Guest's willingness to die for
his political beliefs on the
Ebro
front of the Spanish Civil War....
"His [Guest's] arrest
and imprisonment in Germany...endowed him with a reputation for action that made
him the leading Communist proselytizer of the generation that came up in 1930.
Among those Haden-Guest helped convert to communism [was]...Maurice Cornforth."
[Costello, op cit, pp.203, 218. Links added. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Hayden-Guest
and Cornforth went on to found the Town Branch of the Communist Party in
Cambridge, later a University section. Once again, we see that those around
Wittgenstein weren't common-or-garden, half-hearted, wishy-washycommunists.
Another of
Wittgenstein's pupils was John Cornford, about whom Cornish had this to say:
"Cornford, like David Haden-Guest, was one of the legendary Cambridge Communists
of the thirties. He was the son of Trinity College philosopher
F. M. Cornford.... John Cornford succeeded Haden-Guest as Party
secretary...and like Haden-Guest, he too died in Spain for the Party." [Cornish,
op cit, p.68. Link added.]
Costello
adds:
"'Now, with my Party, I stand all alone,' John Cornford had written before going
into action as commander of the English Battalion of the International Brigade
in Spain. On a rocky ridge above the Spanish village of Lopera on the
Cordoba
front, December 28, 1936, he made the ultimate
sacrifice to his political commitments." [Costello, op cit, p.267. Link
added.]
Earlier,
Costello had described Cornford in the following terms:
"John Cornford was
the outstanding left-wing leader of the 1933 freshman intake.... The son of
Francis Cornford, a Trinity classics don whose wife was grand-daughter of
Charles Darwin.... John Cornford had become a Marxist at Stowe School before he
won an open history scholarship to Trinity at the age of seventeen in 1932. After two terms at the London School of Economics editing the Student
Vanguard and taking time off to become a Communist with the Labour Research
group, Cornford arrived in Cambridge. In his black shirt and dirty raincoat he
cultivated the image of an austere party official tirelessly labouring for the
revolution by organizing and recruiting new members. He injected a new sense of
purpose into the Marxist membership of the two-hundred strong Cambridge
Socialist Society, eventually effecting a Communist takeover by ousting the more
moderate Labour supporters." [Costello, op cit, p.226. Paragraphs
merged.]
Another
pupil of Wittgenstein's was the gifted mathematician, Alister Watson; as noted
above he, too, was a Soviet spy.
Peter Wright (a former MI5 agent whom UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher,
tried to
silence in the mid-1980s) had this to say about Watson:
"One name stood out
beyond all others: Alister Watson.... He was a...fervent Marxist at Cambridge in
the 1930s, an Apostle, and a close friend of Blunt and Burgess.... At Cambridge, Watson
was an ardent Marxist; indeed, many of those I interviewed described him as the
'high priest' of Marxist theory among the Apostles.... He was drawn to
Das Kapital as others are drawn to the Bible and, like a preacher
manqué, he began to proselytize the creed among
his friends...." [Wright (1987), pp.251-52. Links added. Paragraphs merged.]
Cornish
notes that Blunt later acknowledged that Watson had been his instructor in
Marxism, adding:
"In 1929, Wittgenstein's endless discussions with fellow Apostle Watson had
prompted John Maynard Keynes to write in a letter 'Ludwig is beginning, I think,
to persecute poor Alister a little.' Wittgenstein...found Watson to be a student
of sufficient interest to justify a large investment of his time. Watson's
relationship with Wittgenstein was long-standing, his name featuring in reports
of those attending Wittgenstein's lectures in the 1930s. (He also introduced
Alan Turing
to Wittgenstein.) If Wright is correct about the dates, Watson became a spy
while a student of Wittgenstein's." [Cornish, op cit, pp.69-70.]
Watson and
Wittgenstein corresponded for many years (on this see Wittgenstein (2012)).
Costello adds:
"[Watson's] restless intellect was increasingly focused on
the works of Karl Marx, and he began attending the meetings of the
Moral Sciences Society
and the
Heretics.
This brought one of the brightest Cambridge mathematicians of
his generation into contact with
J. D.
Bernal and his followers.... Under the guise of
'investigative Marxism,' Watson quickly became the most articulate proselytizer
of Marxist faith among the Apostles. 'To be a dialectical materialist means to
think of things and our ideas of them, not as static, rigid, eternal entities,
but as changing, developing, interacting,' Watson wrote in an incisive defense
of the Marxist approach published in the 1934 Cambridge Review."
[Costello, op cit, p.193. Links added.]
Yet again,
we see those around Wittgenstein weren't half-hearted, lukewarm individuals
on margins of UK communism.
Concerning
Turing himself, we read the following in a letter he sent
to his mother (dated 26/05/1933):
"Am thinking of going
to Russia some time in the vac[ation] but have not yet quite made up my mind. I
have joined an organisation called the 'Anti-War Council'. Politically rather
communist. Its programme is principally to organize strikes amongst
munitions and chemical workers when government [sic] intend to go to war."
[Hodges (1983), p.71. Bold emphasis added.]
Hodges adds:
"For a short time,
Anti-War Councils sprung up across Britain and united pacifists, communists and
internationalists against a national war. Selective strikes had, in fact,
prevented the British government from intervening on the Polish side against the
Soviet Union in 1920." [Ibid., p.72.]
Hodges
notes, however, that Turing wasn't in fact a died-in-the-wool communist, but
was, if anything at that time mildly anti-Soviet (ibid., pp.72-73), but it is
equally clear that he was still "of the left" (p.73), at least in the early-, to
mid-1930s when he knew Wittgenstein (pp.152-54). Finally, in
1945 he voted for the Labour Party (p.307), when that party was more
left-wing than it has ever been, at least until the leadership of
Jeremy
Corbyn. In a lecture he gave in 2003,
Hodges added these thoughts:
"Yet Alan Turing had not been a rebel against his class or
his school. In his upper-middle-class environment, dominated by the suffocating
ideology of the Public School, he had neither complied nor rebelled; he had
largely withdrawn into a scientific world of his own. There was, however, a
moment in 1933 when the Anti-War student movement at Cambridge articulated the
change that had taken place since the world of Duty plunged to disaster in 1914,
and at twenty-one, Turing joined it and placed himself clearly on the modernist
side. His contemporaries were insisting on deciding for themselves what to fight
for, and the emergent left-liberal side decided not to fight for that old chant
of Duty: 'King and Country.' 'Blatant militarist propaganda', Turing called a
cinema recruiting film called 'Our Fighting Navy.' Ten years later, Alan Turing
was to be seen by his WRNS assistants 'prancing' in his Bletchley Park hut at
the news of the sinking of the
Scharnhorst by that very Navy. Of course, the 1933 enlightenment had
coincided with the one development that made war justifiable to the enlightened:
the transformation of Europe's strongest industrial power into the aggressive
engine of murderous fascism.
"The young Alan Turing was well aware of the shock of Nazi
Germany, and it was obvious where his sympathies lay. When visiting Germany in
1934, Turing's travelling companion was surprised to see how naturally a German
socialist seemed to confide in him. Later, he was immediate in his response to
the 1938 wave of persecution, and sponsored a young Jewish refugee. But in the
intellectual context of the 1930s, dominated by the question of Communist party
policy, Alan Turing's 1933 political engagement was short-lived; he was regarded
as 'not a political person.' Alister Watson, who introduced him to Wittgenstein,
was a Communist party member, as was also the young Robin Gandy who later became
his student and closest friend. Others of Alan Turing's friends were fully
engaged with political and economic issues. But for Alan Turing, it was the
'phoney' that attracted his scorn rather than political opposition; the
compromises and alliances of political action were alien to him." [Quoted from
here; accessed 26/12/2016. Link added.]
Finally, we
read the following on the
PBS news
website:
"He [Turing] also shared the left-leaning views of many of
his Kings College compatriots, who included economists John Maynard Keynes and
Arthur Cecil Pigou. Though Turing joined the Anti-War Movement in 1933, he
never got deeply involved in politics. But watching Hitler’s rise to power in
the late 1930s scared him, Hodges said, and it spurred his interest in
cryptography, which would later help Great Britain in the war." [Quoted from
here; accessed 26/12/2016. Link added.]
So, as we have seen, practically every single one
of Wittgenstein's friends and prominent pupils were either communists or
leftists of some sort. None of them were fringe members or political
dabblers. Indeed, many were leading figures in the Communist Party. I have
yet to find one (from the 1930s) who was a conservative.
[Right-wingers,
Anscombe
and Geach, arrived on
the scene in the 1940s.]
We turn now to Wittgenstein's view of the former USSR [fSU],
alongside
some of his political and socialist opinions.
Rush Rhees,
a Trotskyist in the 1930s and one of Wittgenstein's pupils (who later became
arguably his closest friend), had this to say about the latter's attitude to the
fSU:
"Towards
the end of the 1939-45 war we wondered how people of the different countries
of Europe could find a normal life again. Again and again Wittgenstein would say
'the important thing is the people have work'. He would have said this in 1935
as well, although there were none the problems of 'reconstruction' then. He
thought that the new regime in Russia did provide work for the mass of the
people.... He also thought it would be terrible if society were ridden by 'class
distinctions'....
"[Added
in a footnote -- RL]: When I said the 'rule by bureaucracy' in Russia was
bringing in class distinctions there, he told me 'If anything could destroy
my sympathy with the Russian regime, it would be the growth of class
distinctions.'
"If Wittgenstein
felt sympathy with anything important in Marx, I think it was Marx's faith in
the proletariat: the importance of manual labour in the overthrow of capitalism
and in the character of the 'non-capitalist' society there would be then.
Marx's statements about this are cut and crossed by what he writes of the
'historical task' of the proletariat and by his suggestions that science, which
transforms the world, is working for them. But when he shows the degradation of
the workers under capitalism giving one example after another, he writes with
the force of someone fighting against it. This sense of fighting may have seemed
to Wittgenstein to show in the vitality of the Russian workers -- to judge from
such reports as reached us. It may have been part of what 'he believes the
regime in Russia stands for'. [We will see later where this phrase originated --
RL.]" [Rhees (1984), pp.204-07. Bold emphases added.]
In the early
1970s, Professor John Moran published (in the New Left Review)a
ground-breaking article, 'Wittgenstein
and Russia'.7
Among other
things, Moran revealed
that Wittgenstein
had read Marx (although, from the comments recorded earlier it is
patently obvious that Wittgenstein was very familiar with Marx's work), and
probably also Engels's writings (indeed, as we will see). Rush Rhees responded to
several questions Moran sent him; here is Moran's summary of the answers he
received:
"The
first opening into Wittgenstein's acquaintance with Marx came from Rush
Rhees who made a generous effort, apparently much against his inclination, to
deal with questions from a rather trying inquisitor.... What was important about
Wittgenstein was what he said and wrote. My inquiries pertained, of course, to
what Wittgenstein said and wrote -- about Marx, Communism, Russia; in practice
Rhees did not entirely disagree that this was part of what Wittgenstein said and
wrote. It is from Rhees's account of his own disagreements with Wittgenstein
about Russia that we first get some indication of what it might mean to say
Wittgenstein was a 'Stalinist'.
"Rhees wrote two
rather lengthy letters in response to inquiries.
On Wittgenstein's acquaintance with Marx he had evidence only that he had
read part of the first
volume of Capital, though he may also have read other works. He
doubted that he knew anything of Engels. 'Wittgenstein was familiar with the
"tenets" of what was written about as Dialectical Materialism in the 1930s.'Much of this familiarity may have come from frequent discussions of related
ideas with Marxist friends rather than direct reading of Marx.
"According to Rhees,
Wittgenstein
'used to speak with disgust of Marx's phrase
"congealed labour time".' Relative to this phrase, 'Wittgenstein said he could
imagine that many people would find Marx an infuriating writer to read.' Rhees
twice emphasized that Wittgenstein regarded not Marx's views, but 'the way he
wrote', for instance 'the sentences and similes...he uses' as infuriating. He
commented however that this sort of thing was not superficial but extremely
important for Wittgenstein.
"As against Rhees
himself, who 'found the Marxist (or dialectical materialist) notion of "a
developing reality" weird and incomprehensible' apart from such matters as
developments in the structure of the earth's crust,
Wittgenstein was quick to suggest that it could be given a good sense. For
example, as the methods of showing 'what is so' develop, so too does the meaning
of the expression 'what is so'; accordingly it can be said that '"reality" has
meant something different at different stages in the development of science'.
Rhees thought he intended this not as exegesis of Marx but as an account of what
he considered sound in Marx's idea.
"Further, according to Rhees,
Wittgenstein thought
Marx's conception of history
and society were not religious but scientific
in attitude. Especially concerning history, it seemed to him Marx never
thought future events depended on a great deal that was unknown to him. Rhees
knew, and thought Wittgenstein also knew, passages from Marx contrary to the
interpretation he attributed to Wittgenstein, but he thought he knew 'something
of what Wittgenstein meant there'. From conversations with him when he was
preparing the text, Rhees gathered that Wittgenstein had Marxist ideas in
mind when he used the phrase 'transition from
quantity to quality' with apparent approval
(Investigations,
§284)." [Moran
(1972). Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases alone added.]
"Look at a stone and
imagine it having sensations. -- One says to oneself: How could one so much as
get the idea of ascribing a sensation to a thing? One might as
well ascribe it to a number! -- And now look at a wriggling fly, and at once
these difficulties vanish, and pain seems able to get a foothold here,
where before everything was, so to speak, too smooth for it.
"And so, too, a corpse seems to us quite inaccessible to
pain. -- Our attitude to what is alive and to what is dead is not the same. All
our reactions are different. -- If someone says, 'That cannot simply come from
the fact that living beings move in such-and-such ways and dead ones don't',
then I want to suggest to him that this is a case of the transition 'from
quantity to quality'." [Wittgenstein
(2009), §284, p.104e. [This links to a PDF.] Italic
emphases in the original; bold added.]
"If we imagine any non-living body cut
up into smaller and smaller portions, at first no qualitative change occurs. But
this has a limit: if we succeed, as by evaporation, in obtaining the separate
molecules in the free state, then it is true that we can usually divide these
still further, yet only with a complete change of quality. The molecule is
decomposed into its separate atoms, which have quite different properties from
those of the molecule. In the case of molecules composed of various chemical
elements, atoms or molecules of these elements themselves make their appearance
in the place of the compound molecule; in the case of molecules of elements, the
free atoms appear, which exert quite distinct qualitative effects: the free
atoms of nascent oxygen are easily able to effect what the atoms of atmospheric
oxygen, bound together in the molecule, can never achieve.
"But the molecule is also qualitatively different from the mass of the body to
which it belongs. It can carry out movements independently of this mass and
while the latter remains apparently at rest, e.g. heat oscillations; by means of
a change of position and of connection with neighbouring molecules it can change
the body into an
allotrope
or a different state of aggregation.
"Thus we see that the purely quantitative operation of division has a limit at
which it becomes transformed into a qualitative difference: the mass consists
solely of molecules, but it is something essentially different from the
molecule, just as the latter is different from the atom. It is this difference
that is the basis for the separation of mechanics, as the science of heavenly
and terrestrial masses, from physics, as the mechanics of the molecule, and from
chemistry, as the physics of the atom." [Engels (1954), p.64. Link added.]
According to
Elizabeth Anscombe, this wasn't a one-off on Wittgenstein's part, either:
"I don't know of Wittgenstein's having read Marx. He used
sometimes to reflect on the well known phrase 'transition from quantity to
quality'." [Quoted from
here.]
Indeed,
we read the following in a note
Wittgenstein wrote, dated 14/07/1948:
"I think it is an
important [and] remarkable fact, that a musical theme, if it is played at very
different tempi, changes its character. Transition from quantity to quality."
[Wittgenstein (1998), p.84e. Bold emphasis added.]
"But you can't allow
a contradiction to stand! [Wittgenstein is here reporting the words of an
interlocutor; I only add this comment since some readers seem to think this
records his own views! -- RL.] -- Why not?...
"It might for
example be said of an object in motion that it existed and did not exist in this
place; change might be expressed by means of contradiction." [Wittgenstein
(1978), p.370. Bold emphasis added.]8
"[A]s soon as we consider things in their motion, their
change, their life, their reciprocal influence…[t]hen we immediately become
involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a contradiction; even simple
mechanical change of place can only come about through a body being both in one
place and in another place at one and the same moment of time, being in one and
the same place and also not in it. And the continual assertion and simultaneous
solution of this contradiction is precisely what motion is." [Engels
(1976), p.152.]
Or, this
from Lenin:
"Motion is a contradiction, a unity of contradictions."
[Lenin (1961),
p.256.]
"Movement is the presence of a body in a
definite place at a given moment and in another place at another, subsequent
moment -- such is the objection which
Chernov repeats (see his
Philosophical Studies) in the wake of all the 'metaphysical'
opponents of Hegel.
This objection is incorrect: (1) it describes the
result of motion, but not motion itself; (2) it does not show,
it does not contain in itself the possibility of motion; (3) it depicts
motion as a sum, as a concatenation of states of rest, that is to say,
the (dialectical) contradiction is not removed by it, but only concealed,
shifted, screened, covered over." [Ibid.,
p.257. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Paragraphs merged.]
Or, even
these from Hegel himself:
"Contradiction is the
very moving principle of the world: and it is ridiculous to say that
contradiction is unthinkable. The only thing correct in that statement is that
contradiction is not the end of the matter, but cancels itself. But
contradiction, when cancelled, does not leave abstract identity; for that is
itself only one side of the contrariety. The proximate result of opposition
(when realised as contradiction) is the Ground, which contains identity as well
as difference superseded and deposited to elements in the completer notion."
[Hegel (1975), p.174;
Essence as Ground of Existence, §119.]
"If we wish to make motion clear to
ourselves, we say that the body is in one place and then it goes to another;
because it moves, it is no longer in the first, but yet not in the second; were
it in either it would be at rest. Where then is it? If we say that it is between
both, this is to convey nothing at all, for were it between both, it would be in
a place, and this presents the same difficulty. But movement means to be in this
place and not to be in it, and thus to be in both alike; this is the continuity
of space and time which first makes motion possible.
Zeno,
in the deduction made by him, brought both these points into forcible
opposition. The discretion of space and time we also uphold, but there must also
be granted to them the over-stepping of limits, i.e. the exhibition of limits as
not being, or as being divided periods of time, which are also not divided. In
our ordinary ideas we find the same determinations as those on which the
dialectic of Zeno rests; we arrive at saying, though unwillingly, that in one
period two distances of space are traversed, but we do not say that the quicker
comprehends two moments of time in one; for that we fix a definite space. But in
order that the slower may lose its precedence, it must be said that it loses its
advantage of a moment of time, and indirectly the moment of space." [Hegel
(1995),
pp.273-74; partially quoted in Lenin (1961),
p.257. The editors of Lenin's text have clearly used a slightly different
translation.]
"[B]ut contradiction is the root of all
movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction
within it that it moves, has an urge and activity." [Hegel (1999),
p.439,
§956.]9
Even though
I have subjected these passages to
destructive criticism
(ironically using Wittgenstein'smethod to that end!), given what we know about the discussions
Wittgenstein had with his communist friends (about
DM, etc.), we can perhaps see
from where he drew inspiration for the above passage -- i.e., from
Engels or Lenin, directly or indirectly -- or, of course, from Hegel himself
(whom we know he had read).
"Take the puzzlement
over 'the rose is red'. The puzzle was solved by introducing two signs:
'=' and 'ε'. We say then 'don't imagine "rose" and "red" are the same'."
[Wittgenstein (1993b), p.310; "ε" is
the sign for set membership. Bold emphasis added.]
Compare that
with Engels:
"Abstract identity (a=a; and negatively,
a cannot be simultaneously equal and unequal to a) is likewise
inapplicable in organic nature. The plant, the animal, every cell is at every
moment of its life identical with itself and yet becoming distinct from
itself.... The fact that identity contains difference within itself is expressed
in every sentence, where the predicate is necessarily different from the
subject; the lily is a plant, the rose is red,
where, either in the subject or in the predicate there is something that is not
covered by the predicate or the subject…. That from the outset identity with
itself requires difference from everything else as its complement, is
self-evident." [Engels
(1954), pp.214-15.
Italic emphases in the original; bold emphasis added.]
Or, with
Hegel:
"The interpretation
of the judgment, according to which it is assumed to be merely subjective, as if
we ascribed a predicate to a subject is contradicted by the decidedly
objective expression of the judgment.
The rose
is red; Gold is a metal. It is not by us that something is
first ascribed to them. A judgment is however distinguished from a proposition.
The latter contains a statement about the subject, which does not stand to it in
any universal relationship, but expresses some single action, or some state, or
the like. Thus, 'Caesar was born at Rome in such and such a year waged war in
Gaul for ten years, crossed the Rubicon, etc.', are propositions, but not
judgments. Again it is absurd to say that such statements as 'I slept well last
night' or 'Present arms!' may be turned into the form of a judgment. 'A carriage
is passing by' should be a judgment, and a subjective one at best, only if it
were doubtful, whether the passing object was a carriage, or whether it and not
rather the point of observation was in motion: in short, only if it were desired
to specify a conception which was still short of appropriate specification....
"The abstract terms of the judgement, 'The individual is the
universal', present the subject (as negatively self-relating) as what is
immediately concrete, while the predicate is what is
abstract, indeterminate, in short the universal. But the two elements are
connected together by an 'is': and thus the predicate (in its universality) must
also contain the speciality of the subject, must, in short, have particularity:
and so is realised the identity between subject and predicate; which being thus
unaffected by this difference in form, is the content." [Hegel (1975),
pp.233-34, §§167-169. Italic emphasis in
the original. Bold emphasis added.]
"2.
The immediate pure enunciation of the positive judgment is, therefore, the
proposition: the individual is universal.
"This enunciation must not be put in the form: A is
B; for A and B are entirely formless and consequently meaningless
names; the judgment as such, however, and therefore even the judgment of
existence, has Notion determinations for its extremes. A is B can
represent any mere proposition
just as well as a judgment. But in every judgment, even in those with a
more richly determined form, there is asserted the proposition having this
specific content: the individual is universal; inasmuch, namely, as
every judgment is also in general an abstract judgment. With the negative
judgment, how far it likewise comes under this expression, we shall deal
presently. If no heed is given to the fact that in every judgment -- at least,
to begin with, every positive judgment, the assertion is made that the
individual is a universal, this is partly because the determinate form
whereby subject and predicate are distinguished is overlooked -- the judgment
being supposed to be nothing but the relation of two notions-and partly,
probably, because the rest of the content of the judgment, Gaius is
learned, or the rose is red,
floats before the mind which is busy with the representation of Gaius,
etc., and does not reflect on the form although such content at least as the
logical Gaius who has usually to be dragged in as an example, is a much
less interesting content and, indeed, is expressly chosen as uninteresting in
order not to divert attention from the form to itself." [Hegel (1999),
p.632. (I have used the online version here.)
Italic emphases in the original. Bold emphasis added.]
The
significance of this is quite plain: Wittgenstein used the very same sentence
as Engels and Hegel (no irony intended) in his attempt to resolve this
'problem'. A sheer coincidence?
Then there
is this passage from Engels:
"To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated,
are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects
of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely
irreconcilable antitheses." [Engels
(1976), p.26.]
Compare the
above with this comment of Wittgenstein's (in his discussion of Augustine's
puzzle over the measuring of time):
"Someone who is engaged in measuring time will not be bothered by this problem.
He will use language and not notice the problem at all. In his hands, we might
say, language is soft and pliable; in the hands of others -- philosophers --
it suddenly becomes hard and stiff and begins to display difficulties.
Philosophers as it were freeze language and make it rigid." [Manuscript
219, quoted in Kenny (1984b), p.53. Bold emphasis added.]
Is this just another coincidence?
The above
passages confirm that (i) Wittgenstein had read Marx, and (ii) It is
highly likely he had read Engels, too -- in view of the fact that (a) Marx
himself was largely ignorant of DM,
and (b) There are striking similarities between certain aspects of Engels's work
and his own --, and (iii) We
already know he had
read Hegel.10
Wittgenstein's unorthodox view of contradictions isn't the only area where it
seems clear he was echoing ideas we normally associate with Hegel and DM;
indeed, he also held 'non-standard' views about the so-called 'Law
of Identity' [LOI]:
"Roughly speaking, to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and
to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing at all.
"Thus I do not write 'f(a,b).a = b', but 'f(a,a)' (or
'f(b,b)'); and not 'f(a,b).~a
= b', but 'f(a,b)'....
[Wittgenstein
explains what he is doing with this comment: "Identity of object I express by
identity of sign, and not by using a sign for identity. Difference of objects I
express by difference of sign." (5.53, p.105.) -- RL.]
"'A thing is
identical with itself.' -- There is no finer example of a useless sentence....
It is as if in our imagination we put a thing into its own shape and saw that it
fitted." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§216,
p.91e.
(This links to a PDF.)]
"The law of identity,
for example, seemed to be of fundamental importance. But now the proposition
that this 'law' is nonsense has taken over this importance." [Wittgenstein
(1993a), p.169.]
I can think of very few Analytic Philosophers (who
haven't already been influenced by Hegel and/or Wittgenstein), if any, who
would argue this way. But, none of this isn't surprising given what we know of the
opinions aired by Wittgenstein's communist friends, and the books he read.11
It is also
worth pointing out that the passages quoted above (from Wittgenstein (1972) --
the Tractatus) were drawn from his early work. Indeed, we read the following in
a letter Wittgenstein sent to Bertrand Russell (dated October 1913):
"But just now I am
so troubled with identity...." [Wittgenstein (1979b), p.125.
Italic emphasis in the original.]
We also read
this from another note (dated 29/11/1914):
"I believe that it
would be possible wholly to exclude the sign of identity from our notation and
always to indicate identity merely by the identity of the signs.... By means of this
notation the pseudo-proposition (x)x = a or the like would lose all appearance
of justification." [Ibid, p.34e. Paragraphs merged.]12
These were
written ten or so before his
fellow workers had described him as a "left winger"; hence it is no surprise
to find that even in these early days he was beginning to question the
LOI.
And, here
are two revealing passages from Manuscript 213:
"That
everything is in flux must be inherent in
the contact between language and reality. Or better: That everything is in flux
must be inherent in language.... When it is said
that 'everything is in flux' we feel that we are hindered in pinning down the
actual -- actual reality." [Wittgenstein (2013), p.314e. Bold emphasis added.
Paragraphs merged.]
"We are bringing
words back from their metaphysical to their normal use in language. (The man who
said that one cannot step into the same river twice was wrong; one
can step into the same river twice). And this is what the
solution to all philosophical difficulties looks like. Our answers, if they are
correct, must be ordinary and trivial." [Ibid., p.304e.
Italic emphasis in the original. Paragraphs merged.]
This
suggests that Wittgenstein had studied
Heraclitus, or had read those parts of Hegel where he discusses universal
change and Heraclitus -- or, indeed, he had discussed this with his
Marxist, dialectician
friends.
Moran
continues (still in relation to Rhees's response to his questions):
"On the
subject of Communism and being human, however, 'Wittgenstein would have
said, and did say, that being a member of the Communist Party did queer things
to people, very often. And in some cases I am sure he would have agreed that
they cease to be human beings.' While Wittgenstein did not use the word, Rhees
thought one might speak of 'alienation' here -- though not in Marx's sense.
Noting that it was especially important to Wittgenstein that what a man does and
thinks should 'come from himself', Rhees suggests that CP [Communist Party --
RL] membership would tend to destroy 'individual judgment and character' with
the result that 'nothing comes from the man himself'.
'On political questions, from 1939 onwards anyway, Wittgenstein was generally
sympathetic with the Russian communists. The British communists generally
got on his nerves. (As the Russian communists might have if he had been living
in Russia).'
"Rhees adds that he
laughingly said his feeling toward Communism and Communists was along the lines
of an old joke about not being anti-Semitic but just being unable to stand the
Jews. More seriously, said Rhees, he thought a philosopher should not be
'committed to any doctrine in the way in which one would be in joining the
Communist Party, for instance'. Rhees's elaboration of this suggests
Wittgenstein thought such commitment irrevocable, thus incompatible with his
requirement that a philosopher always be ready to question his suppositions; or
that one could not be a philosopher and for example a CP member at the same
time. The stricture on such commitments apparently has special application to
philosophers.
'...loathed Stalinism
from 1937 onwards (or earlier) and I used to disagree with Wittgenstein’s
judgments on Russia on this account. In those years I was reading a good deal of
Trotskyist literature. And I said to Wittgenstein that as far as I could see
there were marked class distinctions growing in Russia or already there. He
said to me once (about 1945) that if there really were class distinctions being
established there, he would no longer feel disposed to Russia as he was. I
think the evidence of anti-Semitism would have shocked him too, for he thought
the economic and social changes had dissolved that entirely.'
"Several elements of this paragraph deserve to be singled out
briefly. It confirms that
Wittgenstein's 'Stalinism' was at least in part a pro-Russian attitude. It
suggests further that: his attitude in some way contrasted with 'Trotskyism'; he
was pro-Russian because he considered Russian policy at least favourable to
elimination of classes;
he may have
thought Russia already had a classless society; he thought anti-Semitism at
any rate had economic and social roots and could be eliminated by economic and
social changes. It suggests then that he did not think 'man's inhumanity to man'
was attributable to some static 'human nature' or to 'man in general'.
"A great deal of course remains unclear. For example, Wittgenstein and Rhees
might not have agreed on what would count as evidence for the existence and
development of class distinctions; we have no explicit consideration of how a
supposed classless society within a single country might relate to class
structures in the world at large, nor is the question of 'dictatorship of the
proletariat' mentioned." [Op
cit.
Bold emphases added.]
Rhees
tells us that at one point he (Rhees) contemplated joining the
RCP (this was the 1940s
Trotskyist Party, not that more recent
right-wing joke of the
same name, now, mercifully,
defunct),
and sought Wittgenstein's advice. [Some of the comments above in fact reflect
the advice he was finally given.]
This is hardly something one would ask of a
conservative. [Cf., Rhees (1984), pp.200-09.]
In 1932,
Wittgenstein and his close friend,
M. O'C. Drury,
visited Jarrow (a town in the North East of England that
had all but
been destroyed by unemployment -- by 1933 unemployment there was just short of
73% -- and was the starting point of the famous, CP-inspired,
Jarrow March):
"I spent some months
in Newcastle, and together with a group of unemployed shipyard workers we had
repaired a derelict building and turned it into a social club for the
neighbourhood. We had also started a boot-repairing workshop, a carpenter's shop
and a canteen where cheap meals could be had at cost price. When this was under
way, Wittgenstein came up to Newcastle to visit me. I took him down to Jarrow,
where there was almost complete unemployment. The shipyard there had been closed
for several years. The shops were mostly boarded up, and the whole area had a
terrible air of dereliction. Wittgenstein:
Sraffa is right: the only thing possible in a situation like this is to get
all these people running in one direction." [Drury (1984), p.122. Bold
emphasis added. Paragraphs merged.]
Which is an
odd thing for an alleged conservative (large or small "c") to have said -- i.e.,
quoting a noted Marxist to the effect that workers need to get organised!
Perhaps more significantly this comment confirms, once again, that Wittgenstein discussed
politics with Sraffa.
T. P. Uschanov
also records the following highly pertinent fact:
"In November 1940 Wittgenstein made his only public political statement when
he supported a communist Students' Convention held in Cambridge." [Quoted
from
here, referencing Flowers (1999),
pp.142-43, which records the reminiscences of Theodore Redpath, another of
Wittgenstein's pupils. Bold emphasis added.]
Once
again, this would be a decidedly odd thing for an alleged conservative (small
"c" or capital "C") to have done, especially given the
political line coming out of Moscow throughout 1940.13
More importantly, as far as we know, this was the only
(public) political stance Wittgenstein took in his
entire life. The fact that he chose to do so on behalf of young communists
at a time when communism was a dirty word (because of the
Hitler-Stalin
pact) confirms the view of him held by the vast majority of his friends,
colleagues and acquaintances: that his political opinions were to the left,
and not just slightly to the left.
Brian McGuinness
(Wittgenstein's other biographer) sums up his conclusions about Wittgenstein's
political views in the 1930s in the following terms:
"[Wittgenstein's] sympathies in the
Thirties (and, as we will see, throughout the war) were with the Left. So were
his associations: returned to Cambridge in 1929, he took up again with the
Apostles, by now largely a left-wing group. He lodged with the leading left-wing
economist [Maurice Dobb -- RL] who was their most active senior member (some now
think him their spymaster). Of four Cambridge men to die in the Spanish Civil
War, three were, if not disciples, at least pupils or associates of
Wittgenstein. His great friend [Francis Skinner -- RL], also tried to enlist
despite a game [i.e., crippled -- RL] leg (and we may be sure he did it with
Wittgenstein's approval). The Marxists, of course, criticised Wittgenstein's
philosophy (confining themselves usually to that of the Tractatus) and he
was critical of theirs -- principally of it being a philosophy at all; but they
had attended his classes and had breathed his air. He, for his part, began (with
Skinner) to study Russian. His teacher was Fania Pascal, she too wife of a
Marxist and active in the British Soviet Friendship Society. Wittgenstein learnt
the language well and had clearly retained a nostalgia for Russia formed in the
first war -- a nostalgia for the Russia of Tolstoy perhaps, but it led him to
visit the Russia of Stalin and even to think of settling there. The atmosphere
of Stalinism contained something that attracted him: a total destruction of
early twentieth-century social forms was required (he thought) if there was to
be any improvement. 'Die Leidenschaft verspricht etwas' ['Passion
does not want to wait' --
Nietzsche;
full quote below -- RL], he said to Waismann: the passion that infused society
there meant that some good would come from it. Again: Wittgenstein accepts the
dark and terrible side of things. A Russian leader acts because he must: Lenin
(here Wittgenstein repeated a cliché of the time) was like a man who had seized
the wheel from a drunk (Lenin's
philosophy was of course piffle). Fania Pascal had the impression that the
sufferings of so many in the Russia of the 20s and 30s were accepted by
Wittgenstein as an accompaniment, relatively unimportant, of the affirmation of
a new society. Misery there would have been anyway: now at least it was for a
purpose. His attitude toward the Russia of Lenin and Stalin mirrors his dismay
at the total unemployment and dejection of 30s Jarrow (where Drury worked): the
only solution, he said, is to get these people all running in the same
direction. He seems to have thought that this had happened in Russia, and it is
perhaps equally important for understanding his attitudes that he thought it
would not happen in England.
"When the
Pascals moved to Birmingham, they
found Wittgenstein a frequent visitor: the Vice-Chancellor was a Cambridge
friend (a former polar explorer) but Wittgenstein belonged to a strongly
left-wing circle there. He belonged not as one active politically, but as a
friend: yet for him that required a coincidence in approach to judgements of
value. George Thomson and Nicholas Bachtin (brother of Michael) were his closest
friends, the one a leading Marxist interpreter of antiquity, the other a former
White Russian officer now a Communist, both men of
remarkable literary gifts.... There and not in Trinity he found his friends.
Though he did not applaud their ideology or their political activity when they
went in for it, his sympathies lay with them and he shared their dislikes."
[McGuinness (1999), pp.139-40. Links added.]
The passage
(quoting Nietzsche) alluded to above is the following:
"Wittgenstein: What
should be given to the Americans? Surely not our half-rotten culture. The
Americans have no culture yet. From us, however, they have nothing to learn.
"Russell's 'What
I Believe'? Absolutely not a 'harmless thing'.
"Russia: The passion
is promising. Our waffle on the other hand, is powerless." [Waismann (1979),
p.142. This records a conversation he had with members of the Vienna Circle on
January 1st, 1931. Link added.]
Rhees and Monk note that when
Wittgenstein visited Russia in the Autumn of 1935 he met with
Sophia Yanovskaya.Fania Pascal informs us that she had
taught Wittgenstein Russian, so the conversation between Wittgenstein and
Yanovskaya was probably held in that language. [Rhees (1984), pp.13-14.] Indeed, Rhees
reports that in the interview Wittgenstein had with the Russian Ambassador, Maisky
--
who had arranged permission for the visit --they both spoke in Russian. [Ibid.,
p.126.]
Yanovskaya apparently advised
Wittgenstein to "read more Hegel"; that implies he
had already read some, which, as we are about to see, was indeed the
case. [Monk (1990), p.351, and Rhees (1984), p.209.] This is
confirmed by Drury, who records the following conversation with
Wittgenstein:
"Wittgenstein: Kantand
Berkeley
seem to me to be very deep thinkers.
"Drury: What about Hegel?
"Wittgenstein: No, I don't think I would
get on with Hegel. Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things
which look different are really the same. Whereas my interest is in showing that
things which look the same are really different." [Drury (1984), p.157. Links
added.]
"When I told him I
had read a certain amount of Nietzsche and asked what he thought of his general
world view, he said that he didn't think there was much 'consolation' to be had
from it -- it was 'too shallow'. Hegel he said he had hardly read at all, but
from what he had
read he thought Hegel 'had nose' -- he was struck,
for instance, by Hegel's denial of the so-called 'law of contradiction'.
That denial, indeed, could well have appealed to Wittgenstein's love of paradox,
which came out from time to time on various occasions." [Redpath (1999),
pp.18-19. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"Almost all of
Wittgenstein's energies were by now devoted to producing his own presentation of
his new thoughts. He experimented with many different formulations -- numbered
remarks, numbered paragraphs, an annotated table of contents etc. In his
lectures, as though to orientate himself within the Western tradition, he went
through C. D. Broad's taxonomy of philosophical styles and theories, given in
Broad's own series of undergraduate lectures, 'Elements of Philosophy'. The
method of Hume and Descartes, he rejected, but said of Kant's critical method:
'This is the right sort of approach.' With regard to the distinction between the
deductive and dialectical methods of speculative philosophy -- the first
represented by Descartes, the second by Hegel -- he came down, with
reservations, on the side of Hegel:
'...the
dialectical method is very sound and a way in which we do work. But it
should not try to find, from two propositions, a and b, a further more complex
proposition, as Broad's description implied. Its object should be to find out
where the ambiguities in our language are.'" [Monk (1990), pp.321-22. This is
based on, and is a quotation from, Wittgenstein (1980), pp.72-74. Bold emphases
added.]
The above
passage from Wittgenstein is preceded by this remark (which Monk omits):
"Broad said the Speculative Philosophy had two methods. The deductive which
started with certain foundational self-evidence propositions and proceeded to
deduce further propositions about reality, and the dialectical which he
describes as the Hegelian method of examining contradictions, their relations
and resolution." [Wittgenstein (1980), p.74.]
As we have seen, Wittgenstein's
attitude toward contradictions and the
LOI does indeed appear to have
been influenced by what Hegel had to say about both.14
In fact, Yanovskaya even went as far as
to
recommend Wittgenstein for the
Chair
of Philosophy at
Kazan University (Lenin's
alma mater), as well
as for a teaching post at Moscow University. [Monk (1990), p.351.] In Stalin's
Russia
of the mid-1930s these were hardly posts one would have offered to just
about anyone, least of all to someone who was, allegedly, a conservative German
speaker,supposedly unsympathetic toward Communism.
Some have suggested that this 'liberal'
approach to foreign intellectuals was fully in keeping with the Communist
Party's
Popular Front line of the mid-1930s, so the
offer of such a post to Wittgenstein implies nothing significant about his
political leanings. To be sure, the Popular Front was being promoted abroad
at that time, but the atmosphere inside the USSR itself was completely
different.This was the era when everyone was under
suspicion of being either a fascist or a "Trotskyite wrecker", when
Kirov was assassinated and the
Great Purge
was underway (which began in September 1936) -- and when Bukharin and other
prominent Bolsheviks were soon to be railroaded and executed on trumped-up
charges. So, and once again, this was hardly an opportune time for these
Stalinist paranoiacs to appoint, or even offer to appoint, a
German-speaking Austrian (and
alleged non-red) to the chair at Lenin's old University! The fact they
even so much as entertained the idea suggests Wittgenstein was
recognised as a kindred spirit.
As Cornish
points out:
"Kazan had been Lenin's university. Is this not striking? It would be rather
like the Archbishop of Canterbury appointing a Muslim as the Bishop of London
[that is, of course, on the assumption that Wittgenstein was a non-Marxist --
RL]. Is it credible that such an offer to a visiting non-Marxist Austro/English
academic could have been made without approval from the very highest Soviet
level? And why was it made? Are we to believe it was offered from disinterested
Soviet intellectual respect for Wittgenstein's brand of linguistic analysis? Why
would a Communist government support a non-Marxist philosopher teaching
philosophy from the chair of Lenin's university?" [Cornish (1999), pp.73-74.]
John Moran
had the following to say about Wittgenstein's proposed trip to Russia (first of
all reporting what
von Wright -- one of Wittgenstein's literary executors -- had told him):
"In a number of different letters von Wright made the following points. He had a
single conversation with Wittgenstein concerning the Soviet trip; he recalled
that Wittgenstein told him he was accompanied by Francis Skinner [Skinner did
not in the end accompany Wittgenstein -- RL]; Wittgenstein was pleased with the trip,
finding it 'interesting and humanly rewarding'; Wittgenstein had mentioned
meeting a likeable woman philosophy professor whose name Wright thought was
Janovskaja....
"The only source relative to the Russian trip of which he was aware was some
correspondence between Wittgenstein and J. M. Keynes, in the Library of King's
College, Cambridge. In fact this correspondence relates only to the prologue of the trip. There are
three relevant letters from Wittgenstein to Keynes and one from Keynes to
Wittgenstein, along with a letter of introduction to Soviet Ambassador Ivan
Maisky. In one dated Sunday 30.6 (presumably 1935), Wittgenstein asked for an
introduction to Maisky with a view to getting from him an introduction to 'some
officials in Russia....' He adds that
'I have now more or
less decided to go to Russia as a tourist in September & see whether it is
possible for me to get a suitable job there. If I find (which, I'm afraid is
quite likely) that I can't find such a job, or get permission to work in Russia,
then I should want to return to England & if possible study medicine. Now when
you told me that you would finance me during my medical training you did not
know that I wanted to go to Russia & that
I would
try to get permission to practice medicine in Russia. I know that you are
not in favour of my going there (& I think I understand you). Therefore I must
ask you whether under these circumstances, you would still be prepared to help
me....'
"In a letter dated
6.7.35 Wittgenstein thanked Keynes for agreeing to finance his medical training
regardless of his plans. He adds that
'...what I wanted
with Maisky was...to see him and have a conversation with him. I know that there
is very little chance that I or my case could make a good impression on him. But
I think there is an off chance of this happening. There is further a small
chance of his knowing some official at Leningrad or Moscow to whom he might
introduce me. I want to speak to officials at two institutions; one is the
Institute of the North in Leningrad, the other the Institute of National
Minorities in Moscow. These Institutes, as I am told, deal with people who want
to go to the 'colonies', the newly colonized parts at the periphery of the USSR.
I want to get information and possibly help from people in these Institutes. I
thought that Maisky might recommend me to someone there. I imagine that such a
recommendation or introduction could be one of two kinds. It might either be
purely official; in which case it could only say "would so & so be so kind to
see me & listen to my questions". For it is clear to me that Maisky could not do
anything else qua Ambassador. Or it might be an unofficial recommendation to
someone he knows well & this he would only give me if I made a good impression
on him, which -- I know -- is very unlikely. If what I think is sound -- and God
knows whether it is -- then it might be useful for me to get an introduction
from you to Maisky. In this introduction I don't want you to ask him to give me
introductions, but only to allow me to have a conversation with him.... You
would have to say in your introduction that I am your personal friend & that you
are sure that I am in no way politically dangerous (that is, if this is
your opinion).... I am sure that you partly understand my reasons for wanting to
go to Russia & I admit that they are partly bad & even childish reasons but it
is true also that behind all that there are deep & even good reasons.'
"In a note dated only
Friday, Wittgenstein wrote to Keynes,
'This is only to
thank you for your introduction & to tell you that my interview with Maisky went
off all right. He was definitely nice & in the end promised to send me some
addresses of people in Russia of whom I might get useful information. He did not
seem to think that it was utterly hopeless for me to try to get permission to
settle in Russia though he too didn't think it was likely.'
"On 10 July 1935,
Keynes wrote Maisky that he would like to
introduce Wittgenstein
'...who is anxious to
find a means of obtaining permission to live more or less permanently in Russia.
Dr Wittgenstein....a distinguished philosopher, is a very old and intimate
friend of mine, and I should be extremely grateful for anything you could do for
him. I must leave it to him to tell you his reasons for wanting to go to Russia.
He is not a member of the Communist Party, but has
strong sympathies with the way of life which he believes the new regime in
Russia stands for. [Can you imagine Keynes saying this of a
conservative? -- RL.]
'I may mention that Dr Wittgenstein is an Austrian subject, though he has had
long periods of residence in Cambridge both before and since the war. He has
already had an interview with Mr Vinogradoff, who gave him some preliminary
advice, but I gather Mr Vinogradoff is no longer in England.'
"Keynes sent the
letter of introduction to Wittgenstein along with a note to the latter in which
he said he
'gathered from Vinogradoff that the difficulty would be that
you would have to receive an invitation from some Soviet organization. If you
were a qualified technician of any description of a sort likely to be useful to
them, that might not be difficult. But without some such qualification, which
might very well be a medical qualification, it would be difficult.'" [Quoted
from
here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. (These letters have now been published in
Wittgenstein (2012), pp.244-47.)
Bold emphases added. Several paragraphs merged.]
It is worth
underlining the following comment of Wittgenstein's:
"You would have to
say in your introduction that...you are sure that I am in no way politically
dangerous...." [Ibid.]
Would a
conservative (large or small "c") say this, or expect Keynes to endorse
it? Or, indeed, imagine that the neurotically suspicious communist
authorities that had been delegated to decide on such matters
would so easily have the wool pulled over their eyes?
Moran even
managed to contact and then elicit a few comments from several of the Russians
involved who were still alive. Here is his report:
"A. Soubotine at the
Institute of Philosophy recalled a conversation with the late
Sophia Alexandrovna Janovskaya,
late professor of mathematical logic at the University of Moscow, who said she
met Wittgenstein on one occasion in Moscow in the thirties; he impressed her
favourably with his friendly simplicity and showed an
interest in
dialectical materialism. She gathered from her conversation with him that he
was interested in Soviet philosophic thought and followed its development.
Soubotine thought there might be pertinent material among the papers of
Professor Janovskaya, who died in 1966.
"[Added in a
footnote
-- RL]: Goodstein [this is
Reuben
Goodstein, a pupil of Wittgenstein's -- RL]
mentioned that Wittgenstein corresponded for a long time with a woman
philosopher in Moscow whom he had visited.]
"Oleg Drobnitsky at
the Institute of Philosophy learned through inquiries among his colleagues that
Wittgenstein frequently met with Tatiana Nikolaevna Gornstein at Leningrad,
where she is still a professor of philosophy. He was also said to have been
friendly with a woman psychologist named Ladygina-Kots who is now dead.... In 1935, according to Mrs Gornstein, Wittgenstein visited her in Leningrad and
offered to give a philosophy course at Leningrad University where she was in
charge. At her request, he sent her a copy of
The Yellow Book.
She said he impressed her as a genuine
friend of the Soviet Union, and she added that if her memory was
correct, he was then president of the Society of Friends of Soviet Russia. She
recalled that he mentioned his chat with Maisky, and that he spoke Russian
reasonably well.
"Upon his return to
England, according to Mrs Pascal, Wittgenstein sent Skinner to give her a
report. She thought he would have found it difficult to tell her himself that
when he was announced to a woman philosopher-mathematician in Moscow he heard
her exclaim 'What, the great Wittgenstein?' She said he was offered a chair in
philosophy at Kazan; and that at his request she ordered insulin shipped
regularly to a woman professor in Moscow whose name she thought was 'Nikolaeva'.
"Sraffa, an economist to whose many years of critical
stimulus Wittgenstein acknowledged indebtedness for 'the most consequential
ideas' of his
Philosophical Investigations, said that according to his recollection
Wittgenstein was offered a teaching post in philosophy at the University of
Moscow. He intended to accept it 'but the offer was withdrawn shortly afterwards
when all Germans (including Austrians) became suspect in Russia'. He thought
Wittgenstein had corresponded with a woman philosophy professor about this, but
he did not recall her name. It was Goodstein's recollection that Wittgenstein
spoke little of the visit, 'except to say how much he regretted Russia's
continued suspicion of the West'." [From
here.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Links and bold emphases added. Italics in the original. Several paragraphs merged.]
This confirms that Wittgenstein was
confident enough in his knowledge of
DM to be able to hold
a conversation about it with Professor Yanovskaya (an expert in the subject); he also managed to
convince her that he was interested both in this theory/method and Soviet
Philosophy in general. Tatiana Gornstein also formed the impression that he was
friendly toward the USSR -- and that he was even President of the Society of Friends of
Soviet Russia!
However, in a footnote, Moran informs us
that Maurice Cornforth expressed doubts about this:
"...as the Society was then dominated by the CP. He suggested
that Wittgenstein 'probably had connections with the more respectable body, The
Society for Cultural Relations with the Soviet Union (SCR), but he did not hold
office in it'." [Ibid.,
footnote 15.]
Even so,
Wittgenstein clearly left a positive impression on Gornstein, to such an
extent that she drew some favourable conclusions about him, rightly or wrongly.
This was at a time when the Stalinists had imposed a severe form of orthodoxy on
Russian Philosophy -- so-called 'Diamat', a rigid, statist form of DM, This was
after the
ideological and political defeat of the
'mechanists' and the 'idealists' in the mid-1920s and the early 1930s,
respectively, So the Soviet authorities would be in no mood to appoint as a Professor of
Philosophy someone who held an alleged 'conservative view of the world', or who was
'ideologically unsound'. [On this period in Soviet 'intellectual' history, see Graham (1973, 1987), Joravsky (1961), and
Wetter (1958).]
Be this as
it may,
Drury informs us that Wittgenstein had a low opinion of Lenin's philosophical
work (but exactly which part of it this refers to we don't know; nevertheless, it
does indicate that Wittgenstein had at least read
Lenin, since he never passed comment on second-hand reports of another's
views),15
but the
opposite estimation of his practical endeavours:
Moran also
records a comment made by Allen Jackson, which supports Drury's recollection:
"Jackson mentions
Wittgenstein’s having spoken of Lenin as 'a genius and a philosophical
primitive'." [Quoted from
here.]
So,
Wittgenstein finally visited Russia in September 1935. Like many other Cambridge
intellectuals at the time his desire to live in the USSR was partly motivated by
the false belief that under Stalin it was a Workers' State (i.e., as he himself
said, he thought it was "classless", and that he would lose sympathy with it
if class distinctions returned). In this regard, of course, his intentions
are more significant than his mistaken views. One only has to contrast
Wittgenstein's opinion of Russia with, say,
Bertrand Russell's,
to see how sympathetic in comparison Wittgenstein was toward revolutionary
Marxism, even if, like so many others, he mistook the latter for what had
transpired in the
fSU in the 1930s. [Cf., Drury's memoir in
Rhees (1984), p.144, and Russell (1962).]
In his biography of Wittgenstein, Ray
Monk downplays Wittgenstein's proposed move to Russia; relying on Fania Pascal's
view of Wittgenstein's motives, he interprets it as a reflection of his
attachment to a
Tolstoyian
view of the Russian peasantry and the 'dignity of manual labour'. [Moran also
notes that one or two others formed this impression, too.]
While that clearly was a factor,
it can't explain Wittgenstein's many positive remarks about the gains he
believed workers had made because of the revolution, as well as his belief
that there were no class distinctions in the USSR as a result. On this, Rhees is
clearly a more reliable guide; he knew Wittgenstein better than almost anyone
else. It is also impossible to square this with his desire to go and live in
Russian in 1922, long before the fSU had recovered from the Civil War.
Russia in 1922 was on no way a Tolstoyian paradise. Furthermore, it sits rather awkwardly with Keynes's remarks
above, where he notes that Wittgenstein was sympathetic to "the way of life
which he believes the new regime in Russia stands for". Notice the comment about
the
regime, and not just the way of life. Nor does it seem consistent with
the positive impression he made on those he met while there --, that is, that he was a
friend of the Soviet Union.
and was interested in Russian Philosophy.
Rhees concurs:
"He
said to me once, 'Marx
could describe the kind of society he would like to see, that's all'.... If Wittgenstein felt sympathy with
anything important in Marx, I think it was Marx's faith in the proletariat:
the
importance of manual labour in the overthrow of capitalism and in the
character of the 'non-capitalist' society there would be then. Marx's statements
about this are cut and crossed by what he writes of the 'historical task' of the
proletariat and by his suggestions that science, which transforms the world, is
working for them. But when he shows the degradation of the workers under
capitalism, giving one example after another, he writes with the force of
someone fighting against it. This sense of fighting may have seemed to
Wittgenstein to show in the vitality of Russian workers -- to judge from such
reports as reached us." [Rhees (1984), pp.206-07. Paragraphs merged.]
It is also difficult to harmonise Monk's
opinion with the many other comments we have seen Wittgenstein make about Lenin,
Russia and workers in general, as well as the fact that he surrounded himself
with Marxists of one sort or another for much of the 1930s and 1940s.16
Here is a selection of the various
comments Monk
made about the 1935 visit:
"Throughout the
summer of 1935 he made preparations for his impending visit to Russia. He met
regularly with those of his friends, many of them members of the Communist
Party, who had been to Russia or who might be able to inform him about the
conditions there.... Among those friends were Maurice Dobb, Nicholas Bachtin,
Piero Sraffa and George Thomson....
"Wittgenstein was not the only one at Cambridge then seeking
in Soviet Russia an alternative to the countries of Western Europe.... The
summer of 1935 was the time when Marxism became, for the undergraduates at
Cambridge, the most important intellectual force in the university, and when
many students and dons visited the Soviet Union in the spirit of a pilgrimage.
It was then that Anthony Blunt and
Michael Straight made their celebrated journey to
Russia, which led to the formation of the co-called 'Cambridge Spy Ring', and
that the Cambridge Communist Cell, founded a few years earlier by Maurice Dodd,
David Hayden-Guest and John Cornford, expanded to include most of the
intellectual élite at Cambridge, including many of the younger members of the
Apostles.
"Despite the fact
that Wittgenstein was never at any time a Marxist, he was perceived as a
sympathetic figure by the students who formed the core of the Cambridge
Communist Party, many of whom (Hayden-Guest, Cornford, Maurice Cornforth,
etc.) attended his lectures....
In Moscow Wittgenstein also met two or three times with
Pat Sloan, the British Communist who was the
working as a Soviet trade union organizer (a period of his life recalled in the
book Russia Without Illusions, 1938).... After his return to
England Wittgenstein very rarely discussed his trip to Russia.... The reason
he gave friends for his silence was that he did not wish his name to be used, as
Russell had allowed his name to be used..., to support anti-Soviet propaganda....
"He nevertheless
repeatedly expressed his sympathy for the Soviet regime and his belief that, as
material conditions for ordinary Soviet citizens were improving, the regime was
strong and unlikely to collapse. He spoke admiringly of the educational
system in Russia, remarking that he had never seen people so eager to learn and
so attentive to what they were being told.... For two years after
his return from Russia Wittgenstein toyed with the idea of taking up the
teaching post in Moscow that he had been offered. During this time he continued
to correspond with Sophia Janovskaya, and when he went away to Norway he
arranged with Fania Pascal for Janovskaya to be sent insulin for her
diabetes....
"...[E]ven after
the show trials of 1936, the worsening of relations between Russia and the West
and the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, Wittgenstein still continued to express his
sympathies with the Soviet regime -- so much so that he was taken by some of his
students at Cambridge to be a 'Stalinist'.... But at the time when most
people saw only the tyranny of Stalin's rule, Wittgenstein emphasised the
problems with which Stalin had to deal and the scale of his achievement in
dealing with them...." [Monk, op cit, pp.347-54. Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site.
Links and bold emphases added. Italics in the original. Several paragraphs merged.]
Had
Wittgenstein been a conservative (large or small "c"), he would hardly have
refused to allow his name to be used for anti-Soviet propaganda, nor would he
have been quite so optimistic about the resilience of the Soviet system --, or, rightly or wrongly,
the gains he thought that workers had made and
were still making. And, if he had been a conservative (large or small "c"), or
he had been perceived as unsympathetic to the USSR, Professor Yanovskaya
wouldn't have agreed -- nor would she have been allowed --
to correspond with him (given the paranoid,
anti-German hysteria prevalent in the USSR at the time).
It is also
worth noting that in his preparations to go to Russia, Monk points out that
Wittgenstein met with Sraffa and other leading communists. It is hardly credible
that they only spoke about the weather or the intricacies of the Tractatus.
He plainly conversed with them about matters relevant to his proposed
trip, that is, he must have conversed with them about politics; it is
doubtful that this would have included the thoughts of
Edmund Burke
or
Joseph de Maistre.
The on-line
Cambridge University biography of Wittgenstein also had this to say about his visit
to Russia:
"On 12 September Wittgenstein arrived in Leningrad. There he
met the author and educator Guryevich at the Northern Institute, then an
autonomous faculty of Leningrad University. On the evening of the following day
he travelled on to Moscow, arriving there on the morning of the 14th. Here he
had contacts with various western Europeans and Americans, including the
correspondent of the Daily Worker, Pat Sloane (sic). Most of his discussions,
however, were with scientists, for example the young mathematician Yanovskaya
and the philosopher Yushevich from Moscow University, who were both close to
so-called Mach Marxism and the Vienna Circle. He was invited by the
philosopher Tatiana Nikolayeva Gornstein, a member of the Soviet Academy of
Sciences, to teach philosophy at Leningrad University. He travelled to
Kazakhstan, where he was offered a chair at the famous university where
Tolstoy once studied [i.e., Kazan University -- RL]. On 1 October he was
back in Cambridge. The trip was shorter than planned, and it appears that he had
given up the idea of settling in Russia." [Quoted from
here.
Minor typo corrected. Bold emphases added.]
Again, would
a conservative (large or small "c") have met with the communist trade
union
organiser, Pat Sloan, in Russia? Never mind that, would Sloan have
agreed to meet him?
We have
already seen that Alan Turing was -- in the
early-, to mid-1930s -- sympathetic to the left. However, Wittgenstein thought that
Alan Turing
(who was also one of his 'part time' pupils for a brief period in the 1930s)
believed that he (Wittgenstein) was trying to introduce "Bolshevism" into
Mathematics, because of his criticisms of the irrational fear of contradictions
among mathematicians.17
As Wittgenstein himself put it:
"Turing does not object to anything I
say. He agrees with every word. He objects to the idea he thinks underlies it.
He thinks we're undermining mathematics, introducing Bolshevism into
mathematics. But not at all." [Wittgenstein (1976), p.67.]
Of course, Wittgenstein's rejection is
somewhat equivocal, since he could have been denying he was trying to "undermine
mathematics", or even that Bolshevism would or could do this.
Here is what
Monk had to say about this "Bolshevism":18
"The changes Wittgenstein wished to see
are...I believe, so radical that the name 'full-blooded Bolshevism' suggests
itself as a natural way to describe the militant tendency of his remarks." [Monk
(1995).
Bold emphasis added.]
"It was Ramsey -- the 'bourgeois thinker' [which
is what Wittgenstein called him
-- RL] -- who spoke of the 'Bolshevik menace' of
Brouwer
and
Weyl,
a phrase Wittgenstein was no doubt consciously echoing when he tried to reassure
Turing that he was not 'introducing Bolshevism into mathematics'...." [Ibid.]
There are in
fact many places in Wittgenstein's 'middle period' where he questioned whether
the presence of contradictions in, say, mathematics was such a bad idea.
Since
both contradictions and tautologies are
Sinnloss (senseless),
according to the Tractatus, Wittgenstein asks why mathematicians fear the
former but not the latter. Plainly they do so since they regard contradictions,
not as senseless (i.e., lacking a truth-value), but as
false.19
Be this as
it may, here are just a few of the many things he had to say about
contradictions in notebooks and lectures during his 'middle period':
"I want to talk about the sense in which we should say that
the law of contradiction -- ~(p.~p)
[the 'dot' stands for 'and', and the tilde (i.e, '~')
for 'not'; 'p' is a propositional letter; '~(p.~p)' is counted as a tautology in
the
Propositional Calculus
(i.e., it is true under every interpretation) -- RL] -- is a true
proposition. Should we say that if '~(p.~p)'
is a true proposition, it is true in a different sense of the word from the
sense in which it is a true proposition that the earth goes around the sun?
"In logic one deals
with tautologies -- propositions like '~(p.~p)'.
But one might just as well deal with contradictions instead. So that the
Principia Mathematica
would not be a collection of tautologies but a collection of
contradictions. Should one say that the contradictions were true? Or would one
then say that 'true' is being used in a different sense?" [Wittgenstein (1976),
p.187. Bold emphasis added.]
"The laws of logic,
e.g., excluded middle and contradiction, are arbitrary. This statement is a bit
repulsive, but nevertheless true. In discussing the foundations of mathematics
the fact that these laws are arbitrary is important, for in mathematics
contradiction is a bugbear. A contradiction is a proposition of the form p
and not-p. To forbid its occurrence is to adopt one system of expression,
which may recommend itself highly. This does not mean we cannot use
contradiction." [Wittgenstein (1979a), p.71.
Italic emphasis in the original; bold added.]
"I am prepared to
predict that
there will be mathematical investigations of calculi containing
contradictions, and people will pride themselves on having emancipated
themselves from consistency too." [Waismann (1979), p.139. Bold emphasis
added.]
And, we have
already
encountered the following passage (which is directly reminiscent of Hegel
and Engels):
"But you can't allow
a contradiction to stand! -- Why not?... It might for example
be said of an object in motion that it existed and did not exist in this place;
change might be expressed by means of contradiction." [Wittgenstein (1978),
p.370. Paragraphs merged.]20
In which
case,
it is quite plain why Turing, according Wittgenstein,
believed that he (Wittgenstein) was trying to introduce "Bolshevism" into
Mathematics -- because of his criticisms of the irrational fear of
contradictions among mathematicians. [Cf., Monk (1990), pp.419-20; see also
Hodges (1983), pp.152-54.]
The above comments (and there were plenty more like them in the 1930s) plainly
demonstrate the influence of both DM and Hegel on Wittgenstein's thought. But, which
other major non-Hegelian (or even non-Buddhist) philosopher was arguing
along these lines in the 1920s and 1930s? Which one was surrounded on all sides
by active and leading Marxists with whom he regularly discussed DM?21
"The word 'dialetheism' was coined by Graham Priest and
Richard Routley (later Sylvan) in 1981 (Priest et al 1989, p. xx). The
inspiration for the name was a passage in Wittgenstein’s Remarks on the
Foundations of Mathematics, concerning
Russell's paradox.... A
dialetheia is a two-way truth, facing both truth and falsity like a Janus-headed
figure. Unfortunately, Priest and Routley forgot to agree how to spell the
'ism', and versions with and without the 'e' appear in print." [Priest, Berto
and Weber (2022); quoted from
here;
accessed 03/04/2018.]
Here is an
earlier version of the above (quoted in previous versions of this Essay):
"Though dialetheism is not a new view, the word itself is. It
was coined by
Graham
Priest
and
Richard
Routley
(later Sylvan) in 1981 (see Priest, Routley and Norman, 1989,
p.xx). The inspiration for the name was a passage in Wittgenstein's
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, where he describes the Liar
sentence ('This sentence is not true') as a
Janus-headed
figure facing both truth and falsity (1978, IV.59). Hence a di-aletheia is a
two(-way) truth. Unfortunately, Priest and Routley forgot to agree how to spell
the 'ism', and versions with and without the 'e' appear in print." [Priest and
Berto (2013), quoted from
here.
Links added.]
The passage
to which the above two authors refer reads as follows:
"Why should Russell's contradictions not be conceived as
something supra-propositional, something that towers above the propositions and
looks in both directions like a Janus head? N.B. the proposition F(F) --
in which F(ξ) =
~ξ(ξ)
-- contains no variables and so might hold as something supra-logical, as
something unassailable, whose negation itself in turn only asserts it.
Might one not even begin logic with this contradiction? And as it were
descend from it to propositions. The proposition
that contradicts itself would stand like a monument (with a Janus head) over the
propositions of logic." [Wittgenstein (1978), p.256. Italic
emphases in the original; bold added. Paragraphs merged.]
However, in
his later work, it is clear that Wittgenstein abandoned this way of seeing
things:
"There can be no
debate about whether these or other rules are the right ones for the word
'not'.... For without these rules, the word has as yet no meaning; and if we
change the rules, it now has another meaning (or none), and in that case we may
just as well change the word too." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§549,
footnote, p.155e.
(This links to a PDF.)]
In which
case, if the negative particle typically maps a truth onto a falsehood, or
vice versa, then a contradiction can't be true, but must either be senseless
or false. Either that or we abandon this rule for negation.22
Any other
interpretation can only be based on different use of the use of the 'negative
particle', which would in turn imply that any 'contradiction' so formed would
also involve using that word with its new meaning. Of course, this also
impacts on how contradictions are viewed in mathematics, since, whenever a
contradiction emerges in a proof (i.e., in
an indirect proof), it implies that one of the premisses must be discharged
as false. If contradictions can be true, then that would clearly be an unsafe
inference -- otherwise the meaning of "false" must change, too -- and so on.23
This is
more-or-less the approach I have adopted in these Essays; that is, I have argued
that any other interpretation of "contradiction" must be employing that word
with
a new meaning -- and, in DM, this is compounded by the fact that this "new
meaning"
still remainsunexplained.
A more
balanced and nuanced view of this issue (and one that displays a rather more
secure grasp of Wittgenstein's overall method) can be found in Goldstein (1986,
1988, 1989, 1992, 1999).24
More
importantly,
Wittgenstein himself declared that his later philosophy had been inspired by
his regular conversations with Piero Sraffa. The extent of Sraffa's
influence is still unclear (however, see below), but Wittgenstein admitted to
Rhees that it was from Sraffa that he had gained an "anthropological"
view of philosophical problems.25
Von Wright, who succeeded Wittgenstein
as Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, had this to say about the latter's encounter with
Sraffa:
"[Wittgenstein] said
that his discussions with Sraffa made him feel like a tree from which all the
branches had been cut." [Von Wright (1980), p.28.]
And, in a manuscript from the 1930s, we
read the following:
"Are the sentences of
mathematics anthropological sentences that say how we, human beings, infer and
calculate? -- Is a book of laws a work of anthropology that tell us how persons
of this people ["the people of this nation" in the other published edition -- RL] treat a thief, etc? -- Could one
say: 'The judge consults in a book of anthropology and, after it, sentences the
thief to a prison sentence'? Now, the judge does not USE the book of laws as a
manual of anthropology (conversation with Sraffa)." [Manuscript 117,
quoted in Engelmann (2012), p.164. Capitals in the original. The other version
is
Wittgenstein (1978), p.192, §65, but with the
reference to Sraffa omitted.]
This at
least confirms the fact that Sraffa was indeed introducing Wittgenstein to an
"anthropological view" of such matters at the time, whatever Wittgenstein
initially thought of such an approach in the early 1930s. In another manuscript (written
this time in 1940), we find the following comment (about mathematics):
"If we employ the
ethnological viewpoint, does it mean that we declare philosophy to be ethnology?
No, it only means that we take up our position far out in order to be able to
see things more objectively."[Manuscript 162b, quoted in
Engelmann (2012), p.165.]
Engelmann points out the following in
relation to the above passage:
"The ethnological
viewpoint brings more objectivity to our investigation because it may avoid
mythological assumptions (such as Platonism, Idealism or Grammaticism), and
because it may help us to reach a clear view of how mathematics is binding in
our practices -- our practices might also get clearer if we contrast them with
imaginary forms of life." [Engelmann, op cit, p.165.]26
That
is, Wittgenstein was arguing that we needn't look to something else outside
of human life and society that makes our mathematics so certain to us, or which
underpins "mathematical necessity" (such as the
Platonic
Forms, or 'God', etc.). A human-centred approach began to dominate
Wittgenstein's thought -- and not just in relation to mathematics -- from
the mid-, to late-1930s onwards. This represented a major change in the direction of
his thinking which he later attributed to Sraffa's influence. [Later, we will see that there were other
things he also learnt from Sraffa.]
So,
in the Preface to what is his most important and influential work,
Wittgenstein had this to say:
"Even more than this...criticism, I am indebted to that which a teacher of this
university, Mr P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly applied to my thoughts.
It is to this stimulus that I owe the most fruitful ideas of this book."
[Wittgenstein (2009), p.4e.
(This links to a PDF.)
Bold emphasis added.]
This is
quite remarkable! The author of what many believe to be the most original and
innovative philosophical work of the 20th
century -- and one that, if correct,
brings to an end 2500 years of Traditional Thought
-- claims that his most "fruitful" ideas were derived from a man who was an
avowed Marxist!
Of course, some question whether Sraffa
was indeed a Marxist. In that regard, here is what one researcher has
noted about Sraffa's political leanings:
"The Sraffa archives -- at the Wren
Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK -- were opened for consultation in the
1990s, and I began some work there in the second half of that decade. The most
widespread reading of the Marx-Sraffa relationship -- almost a vulgata [a
commonplace -- RL], especially among the Sraffians -- was the one embodied in
Steedman's Marx after Sraffa (Steedman
1977). What PoC [The
Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities
-- RL] showed, he argued, was that the labour theory of value was dispensable in
a scientific analysis of capitalism. What was needed was just a set of objective
data -- physical and material -- about the methods of production. In a
Classical-Marxian approach this had to be complemented by the real wage as
determined from outside. Labour-values themselves are derived from these
'givens'. Moreover, most of the conclusions derived from value theory (as the
theory of relative prices based on labour-values) can be shown to be
analytically useless. Marx's magnitudes of value are redundant relative to the
task of determining (simultaneously, and not successively, as Marx pretended)
the rate of profits and the prices of production. This irrelevance of value
theory does not necessarily mean a criticism of the other parts of Marx's
economic legacy, since most of it may be confirmed within the Sraffa-based
'surplus approach'.
"Once again, these bold conclusions -- whatever their merits
-- met the silence of Sraffa. They were in contrast with the anecdotal evidence
put forward by friends and colleagues. So, for example,
Joan Robinson (1977:
56) wrote: 'Piero has always stuck close to pure unadulterated Marx and regards
my amendments with suspicion.' Similar recollections were written by
Antonio Giolitti
(1992: 80), who met Sraffa several times between 1948 and
1952: Sraffa, he says, was always urging him not to have doubts about Marx's
theory of surplus value and also on the feasibility of Soviet planning. Adopting
a very different reading (and rightly so!) of the Marxian labour theory of
value,
Paul M. Sweezy, one
of the most important figures in what I've called Traditional Marxism, commented
in 1987:
'[Sraffa] always was a loyal Marxist, in the sense of himself
adhering to the labour theory of value. But he didn't write about that. Now that
was Sraffa's peculiarity [...] Thinking that it is possible to get along without
a value theory (using the term in a broad sense to include accumulation theory
and so on) seems to me to be almost total bankruptcy. It's no good at all. And I
don't think anything has come of it. It was good to show the limitations, the
fallacies, the internal inconsistencies of neoclassical theory, that was fine,
that was important. But to think that on that basis a theory with anything like
the scope and purposes of Marxism can be developed is quite wrong.' (Sweezy
1987: 13-14.)" [Riccardo Bellofiore, quoted from
here. Accessed 25/08/2013. Spelling modified to
agree with UK English; formatting and quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site. Italics in the original. Links added; minor typos corrected.]
This agrees with a BBC radio interview I
heard that had been broadcasted just before Sraffa died, in which he emphatically underlined
his commitment to Marxism. Readers are encouraged to consult the rest of the
above article for further evidence of Sraffa's (albeit, non-standard) Marxism.
"The temptation to examine 'the economist Sraffa' separately
has certainly been strong. And yet there is something to be gained from seeing
Sraffa's different contributions together. No less importantly for the history
of philosophical thought, it may be important to re-examine Sraffa's
interactions with Wittgenstein, whom Sraffa strongly influenced, in the light of
Sraffa's relationship with Antonio Gramsci, the Marxist theorist, who had a
strong influence on Sraffa. Indeed, these dual relations also provide an
opportunity to explore a possible 'Gramsci connection' in the transformation of
'early Wittgenstein' into 'later Wittgenstein.'" [Sen
(2003), p.1241. (This links to a PDF.) Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold
emphasis added.]
He
continues:
"Sraffa also had deep political interests and commitments,
was active in the Socialist Students' Group, and joined the editorial team of
L'Ordine Nuovo, a leftist journal founded and edited by Antonio Gramsci in
1919 (it would later be banned by the fascist government). Indeed, by the time
Sraffa moved to Britain in 1927, he had become a substantial figure among
Italian leftist intellectuals, and was close to -- but not a member of -- the
Italian Communist Party, founded in 1921 and led by Gramsci. While Sraffa had
obtained the position of lecturer at the University of Perugia in 1923, and a
professorship in Cagliari in Sardinia in 1926, he considered a move to Britain,
as fascist persecution became stronger in Italy." [Ibid.,
p.1241. Italics in the original.]
In relation
to the conversations that took place between Wittgenstein and Sraffa, Sen
concludes:
"The conversations
that Wittgenstein had with Sraffa were evidently quite momentous for
Wittgenstein. He would later describe to Henrik von Wright, the distinguished
Finnish philosopher, that these conversations made him feel 'like a tree from
which all branches have been cut'....
Wittgenstein told a friend (Rush Rhees, another Cambridge
philosopher) that the most important thing that Sraffa taught him was an
'anthropological way' of seeing philosophical problems. In his insightful
analysis of the influence of Sraffa and Freud, Brian McGuinness (1982) discusses
the impact on Wittgenstein of 'the ethnological or anthropological way of
looking at things that came to him from the economist Sraffa' (pp.36-39)." [Ibid.,
p.1242. Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site. Paragraphs merged.]
Sen then informs us of several
conversations he had with Sraffa himself in the 1950s and early 1960s:
"Was Sraffa thrilled by the impact that
his ideas had on, arguably, the leading philosopher of our times...? Also, how
did Sraffa arrive at those momentous ideas in the first place? I asked Sraffa
those questions more than once in the regular afternoon walks I had the
opportunity to share with him between 1958 and 1963. I got somewhat puzzling
answers. No, he was not particularly thrilled, since the point he was making was
'rather obvious.' No, he did not know precisely how he arrived at those
arguments, since -- again -- the point he was making was 'rather obvious.'...
"There remains, however, the question of why Sraffa was so reserved about the
depth and novelty of his conversations with Wittgenstein even at the beginning
(in 1929 and soon thereafter), and why the ideas that so influenced Wittgenstein
would have seemed to Sraffa to be rather straightforward. Sraffa himself did not
publish anything whatsoever on this subject, but there is considerable evidence
that what appeared to Wittgenstein as new wisdom was a common subject of
discussion in the intellectual circle in Italy to which Sraffa and Gramsci both
belonged." [Ibid.,
pp.1242-44. Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis added.]
As we know,
Gramsci was arrested, tried and then imprisoned by the fascist regime, and
while incarcerated he wrote his famous Prison
Notebooks. Sen continues:
"These notes give us considerable understanding of what
Gramsci and his circle were interested in. Sraffa was very keen that Gramsci
should write down his thoughts, and to help him, Sraffa opened an unlimited
account with a Milan bookshop (Sperling and Kupfer) in the name of Gramsci, to
be settled by Sraffa.... Working together on this distinguished journal had
brought Sraffa and Gramsci even closer together than they already had been, and
they had intense discussions over the years. [Added in a footnote: Their
intellectual interactions involved a great variety of subjects, and John Davis
(1993, 2002a) has illuminatingly investigated the impact of Gramscian notions of
'hegemony,' 'caesarism' and 'praxis' on Sraffa's thinking, and how these ideas
may have, through Sraffa, influenced Wittgenstein. These possible connections
are more complicated than the interactions considered in this essay, which are
concerned with the most elementary issues of meaning and communication which lie
at the foundation of mainstream philosophy.]" [Ibid.,
p.1244. Quotation
marks and references altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this
site.]
Sen then
proceeds to outline the specific influences of Gramsci's ideas on Sraffa, and
derivatively on Wittgenstein. Here are the most obvious:
"The first item that Gramsci lists under
this heading is 'language itself, which is a totality of determined notions and
concepts and not just of words grammatically devoid of content.' The role of
conventions and rules, including what Wittgenstein came to call
'language-games', and the relevance of what has been called 'the anthropological
way' which Sraffa championed to Wittgenstein, all seem to figure quite
prominently in the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci 1975, p.324):
'In acquiring one's
conception of the world one always belongs to a particular grouping which is
that of all the social elements which share the same mode of thinking and
acting. We are all conformists of some conformism or other, always
man-in-the-mass or collective man.'
"The role of linguistic convention was
discussed by Gramsci with various illustrations. Here is one example (Gramsci
1975, p.447 -- a longer version of this now appears in Gramsci (2011), Volume
Three, p.176 -- RL):
'One can also recall the example
contained in a little book by Bertrand Russell [The Problems of Philosophy,
i.e., Russell (2013); this links to a PDF -- RL]. Russell says approximately this:
"We cannot, without the existence of man
on the earth, think of the existence of London or Edinburgh, but we can think of
the existence of two points in space, one to the North and one to the South,
where London and Edinburgh now are."…
'East and West are arbitrary and
conventional, that is, historical constructions, since outside of real history
every point on the earth is East and West at the same time. This can be seen
more clearly from the fact that these terms have crystallized not from the point
of view of a hypothetical melancholic man in general but from the point of view
of the European cultured classes who, as a result of their world-wide hegemony,
have caused them to be accepted everywhere. Japan is the Far East not only for
Europe but also perhaps for the American from California and even for the
Japanese himself, who, through English political culture, may then call Egypt
the Near East.'
"How exactly Sraffa's ideas linked with Gramsci's, and how they influenced each
other, are subjects for further research. But it is plausible to argue that, in
one way or another, Sraffa was quite familiar with the themes that engaged
Gramsci in the twenties and early thirties. It is not very hard to understand
why the program of Wittgenstein's
Tractatus would have seemed deeply misguided to Sraffa, coming from the
intellectual circle to which he belonged. Nor is it difficult to see why the
fruitfulness of 'the anthropological way' -- novel and momentous as it was to
Wittgenstein -- would have appeared to Sraffa to be not altogether unobvious." [Ibid.,
p.1245. Quotation marks and formatting altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italics in the
original.]
It must be
said that even though Sen ignores the huge difference between Gramsci's approach
and Wittgenstein's, beyond the turn to the "anthropological", there is only an
echo
(one can't put it any higher than that) of the Italian's approach to language in
Wittgenstein's work. As Sen goes on to point out, unless more hard evidence
turns up, the precise details of Gramsci's influence on Wittgenstein (via
Sraffa) will remain
unclear and somewhat speculative.
However,
Venturinha notes the following:
"Lo Piparo's [i.e., Lo Piparo (2010) -- RL] extensive study
of Gramsci's
Prison Notebooks and of the correspondence between Sraffa and Gramsci's
sister-in-law, who transcribed his letters for Sraffa while he was in prison,
illuminates significantly the impact Sraffa may have had on Wittgenstein. There
are many aspects in Gramsci's thought that are truly reminiscent of issues
characteristic of the later Wittgenstein." [Venturinha (2010); quoted from
here. Italics in the original.]27
In addition,
attempts to reconstruct Sraffa's influence on Wittgenstein are, even now, in
their early stages, and they aren't likely to progress much further unless some hard evidence turns up (but see below).
To date, these
attempts have largely been based on inference, analogy and supposition.
Having said that, new evidence has
recently started to emerge, and scholars are slowly working their way through
it. [I have said much more about this below,
here,
here and
here.]
Given the above considerations, it is no surprise to
find that there are topics in Voloshinov's work that prefigure certain ideas
that are also to be
found in Wittgenstein's writings
-- albeit in a much more sophisticated, developed, but often criticised and then
modified form. In the main, these are connected
with (i) The social nature of language, and (ii) The meaning of words/'signs'.28
Concerning
the second of the above, we read the following:
"Meaning is a function of the sign and
is therefore inconceivable...outside the sign as some particular, independently
existing thing. It would be just as absurd to maintain such a notion as to take
the meaning of the word 'horse' to be this particular, live animal I am pointing
to. Why if that were so, then I could claim, for instance, that having eaten
an apple, I have consumed not an apple but the meaning of the word 'apple'."
[Voloshinov (1973), p.28. Bold emphasis added.]
Compare that
with Wittgenstein's comments, directed at what he alleged was
Augustine's view of language:
"These words, it seems to me, give a
particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the words in a
language name objects -- sentences are combinations of such names. -- In this
picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a
meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which
the word stands....
It is important to note that it is a
solecism
to use the word 'meaning' to signify the thing that 'corresponds' to a word.
That is to confound the meaning of a name with the bearer of the name.
When Mr. N. N. dies, one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the
meaning dies." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§1, p.5e, and §40, p.24e.
(This
links to a PDF.)
Italic emphasis in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions
adopted at this site.
Link and bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]29
This
parallel is quite striking -- partly because, as far as I am aware, no one
seems to have noticed it before. The theory of the meaning of words Voloshinov and
Wittgenstein were criticising has been (and in many cases still is) a
core principle of traditional theories of language -- that is, that the meaning
of a word is the object (or the 'idea', 'image', 'concept') to which it refers
or with which it is associated.
In their
place these days we have the pair,
"signifier" and "signified", which are plainly a re-vamped version of
the traditional theory, with a couple of neologisms thrown in for good measure.
Of
course, there is a pertinent logical difference between the examples used by Wittgenstein
and Voloshinov; the former employed a Proper Name, while the latter used a
common noun. That would normally constitute a significant difference, but I
don't think it affects the aim or the force of the argument they are both
employing, that the meaning of
a word isn't an object or set of objects. We can see this when Voloshinov says "It
would be just as absurd to maintain such a notion as to take the meaning of the
word 'horse' to be this particular, live animal I am pointing to."
(Italic emphasis added.) Further, some have argued that Proper Names have
no meaning.
I won't enter into that debate here; suffice it to say that whether or not
a Proper Name has a meaning, if it has it can't be the person (or object) named by that
Proper Name. If a Proper Name has no meaning it most certainly can't be that
person/object; if a Proper Name does have a meaning it still can't be
that person/object. Either way, it can't be that person/object.
The
approach advocated by Voloshinov and Wittgenstein thus broke entirely new ground.
Is it just a
coincidence that within a few years of Voloshinov writing the above
Wittgenstein also began to think along the same lines, using an analogous
argument to motivate the completely new direction he was taking, a direction
that took him away from the rather over-simplified semantics of the Tractatus
(where every symbol was in the final analysis just a concatenation of "simple"
names29a)?
When we take into account the fact that both Voloshinov and Wittgenstein, (a) make the same point about the meaning of words, (b) were influenced by the
Bakhtin Circle, and (c) adopted an anthropological/social view of language,
it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to conclude that Wittgenstein
was indeed influenced (directly or indirectly) by Voloshinov and/or Bakhtin.
Concerning
the first of the above points (i.e., the social nature of language), we have
these comments:
"In point of fact, the speech act, or more
accurately, its product -- the utterance, cannot under any circumstances be
considered an individual phenomenon in the precise meaning of the word and
cannot be explained in terms of the individual psychological or
psychophysiological conditions of the speaker. The utterance is a social
phenomenon." [Voloshinov, op cit, p.82. Italic emphasis in the
original.]
"Signs can arise only on
interindividual territory. It is territory that cannot be called 'natural'
in the direct sense of the word [Added in a footnote: Society, of course, is
also a part of nature, but a part that is qualitatively separate and
distinct and possesses its own specific systems of laws.]: signs do not
arise between any two members of the species
Homo sapiens.
It is essential that the two individuals be organised socially, that they
compose a group (a social unit); only then can the medium of signs take place
between them. The individual consciousness not only cannot be used to explain
anything, but, on the contrary, is itself in need of explanation from the
vantage point of the social, ideological medium....
"The only possible objective definition of consciousness is a sociological one.
Consciousness cannot be derived directly from nature, as has been and still is
being attempted by naive mechanistic materialism and contemporary objective
psychology (of the biological,
behaviouristic, and
reflexological
varieties). Ideology cannot be derived from consciousness, as is the practice of
idealism and psychologistic
positivism.
Consciousness takes shape and being in the material of signs created by an
organised group in the process of its social intercourse. The individual
consciousness is nurtured on signs; it derives its growth from them; it reflects
their logic and laws. The logic of consciousness is the logic of ideological
communication, of the semiotic interaction of a social group...." [Ibid.,
pp.12-13. Italic emphases in the original. Spelling altered to conform
with UK English. Links added.]
"Thus every sign...is
social." [Ibid.,
p.34.]
"[T]he sign and its
social situation are inextricably fused together. The sign cannot be separated
from the social situation without relinquishing its nature as a sign." [Ibid.,
p.37.]
"Idealism and psychologism alike
overlook the fact that understanding itself can come about only within some kind
of semiotic material...that sign bears upon sign,
that consciousness itself can arise and become a viable fact only in the
material embodiment of signs...understanding is a response to a sign with
signs." [Ibid.,
p.11. Italic emphasis in the original.]
"Theme is a complex, dynamic system
of signs that attempts to be adequate to a given instant of generative process.
Theme is reaction by the consciousness in its generative process to the
generative process of existence." [Ibid.,
p.100. Italic emphasis in the original.]
"To understand another person's
utterance means to orient oneself with respect to it, to find the proper place
for it in the corresponding context. For each word of the utterance that we are
in process of understanding, we, as it were, lay down a set of our own answering
words. The greater their number and weight, the deeper and more substantial our
understanding will be.
"Thus each of the distinguishable
significative elements of an utterance and the entire utterance as a whole
entity are translated in our minds into another, active and responsive, context.
Any true understanding is dialogic in nature…. Understanding strives to
match the speaker's word with a counter word…." [ibid., p.102. Italic
emphases in the original.]
Compare the
above with what Wittgenstein was arguing:
"'A sign is always
intended for a living being, so that must be something essential to a sign.'...
A sign has a purpose only in human society...." [Wittgenstein (2013), p.146e.]
"The criterion of
understanding is sometimes a process of translating a sign into action; we
transcribe the sentence into other signs...." [Ibid., p.12e.]
"Interpreting a sign,
adding an interpretation to it is a process that does take place in some cases
but not every time I understand a sign.... An interpretation is
a supplementation of the interpreted sign with another sign. If someone asks me
'What time is it?' then no work of interpretation goes on inside me. I react
immediately to what I see and hear." [Ibid., p.16e. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Paragraphs merged.]
{Compare the above
with Voloshinov:
"…The utterance 'What time is it?' has a
different meaning each time it is used, and hence, in accordance with our
terminology, has a different theme, depending on the concrete historical
situation...." [Voloshinov, op cit, p.99.]}
"What I want to say
is that to be a sign a thing must be dynamic not static." [Wittgenstein (1974b),
p.55.]
{Compare the above
with Voloshinov:
"Theme is a complex, dynamic system
of signs that attempts to be adequate to a given instant of generative
process...." [Voloshinov, op cit, p.100. Italic emphasis in
the original.]}
"In attacking the
formalist conception of arithmetic, Frege says more or less this: petty
explanations of the signs are idle once we understand the signs.
Understanding would be something like seeing a picture from which all the rules
followed, or a picture that makes them all clear. But Frege does not seem to see
that such a picture would itself be another sign, or calculus to explain the
written one to us." [Ibid., p.40.
Italic
emphasis in the original.]
"We may say that
thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs.... If we say that
thinking is essentially operating with signs, the first question you might ask
is 'What are signs?' -- Instead of giving any kind of general answer to this
question, I shall propose to you to look closely at particular cases which we
would call 'operating with signs'." [Wittgenstein (1969), pp.6, 16.
Paragraphs merged.]
"[H]e [Wittgenstein
-- RL] seemed to imply that for a sign to have significance it is not
sufficient that we should 'commit ourselves' by its use, but that it is also
necessary that the sign in question should belong to the same 'system' with
other signs." [Moore (1959a), p.259; reprinted in Wittgenstein (1993a), p.53. Italic
emphasis in the original.]
"He said, for
instance,... 'To explain the meaning of a sign means only to substitute one sign
for another.'" [Ibid., p.290, and Wittgenstein (1993a), p.82.]
"We think by means of
the sign: to think of a thing is to think a proposition in which it occurs."
[Wittgenstein (1980), pp.28-29.]
"For didn't I say
that a sign can be explained only through another sign?" [Manuscript 112,
quoted in Hallett (1977), p.113.]
While
Wittgenstein later rejected this rather simplistic view of "thinking", it is
plain that the way he framed these questions in the 1930s was remarkably similar
to the way Voloshinov had conceived them only a few years earlier. Indeed, we have the
following comment in an unpublished manuscript dating from 1937; Wittgenstein
had this to say about his earlier (pre-Sraffa) views:
"It showed itself
that I did not have a general concept of sentence and language. I had to
recognize this and this as signs (Sraffa) and could not, however, give a grammar
for them." [Manuscript 157b, Quoted in Engelmann (2013), p.152.]
That could
almost have come directly from Voloshinov, which suggests that Sraffa was
perhaps familiar with the Russian's work, or with the discussions that had taken
place in the Bakhtin Circle --, or, indeed, the somewhat similar debates going
on at that time in the Italian Communist Party (on that, see
above, and again,
below).
In fact,
what Wittgenstein had to say about "symbols" in his lectures [reported
in Wittgenstein (1980), pp.26-29, 43] is remarkably similar to some of
the things Voloshinov had to say about "theme" (see
below, too).
"Understanding a
sentence in language is much more a kin to understanding a theme in music than
one may think. What I mean is that understanding a spoken sentence is closer
than one thinks to what is ordinarily called understanding a musical theme....
"We speak of
understanding a sentence in the sense in which it can be replaced by another
which says the same; but also in the sense in which it cannot be replaced by any
other. (Any more than one musical theme can be replaced by another.)
"In the one case, the
thought in the sentence is what is common to different sentences; in the other,
something that is expressed only by these words in these positions.
(Understanding a poem.)
"Then has
'understanding' two different meanings here? -- I would rather say that
these kinds of use of 'understanding' make up its meaning, make up the
concept of understanding.
"For I want to apply
the word 'understanding' to all this.
"But in the second
case, how can one explain the expression, communicate what one understands? Ask
yourself: How does one lead someone to understand a poem or a theme? The
answer to this tells us how one explains the sense here." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§§527-33,
pp.151e-52e.
(This links to a PDF.) Italic emphases in the
original.]
In a note dated 25/09/1946,
Wittgenstein also had this to say about theme in music:
"Does the theme point to nothing beyond itself? Oh yes! But
that means: -- The impression it makes on me is connected with things in its
surroundings -- e.g., with the existence of the German language & of its
intonation, but that means with the whole field of our language games." [Ibid.,
p.59e.
(Again, this links to a PDF.)]
This not
entirely clear passage appears to suggest that Wittgenstein also connected theme
with language and with "language games".
Compare that
with what Voloshinov had to say about "theme":
"Let us agree to call the entity which
becomes the object of a sign the theme of the sign. Each fully fledged
sign has its theme. And so every verbal performance has its theme." [Voloshinov,
op cit,
p.22.]
"A definite and unitary meaning, a
unitary significance, is a property belonging to any utterance as a whole.
Let us call the significance of a whole utterance its theme….
[Added in a footnote: "The term is, of
course, a provisional one. Theme in our sense embraces its implementation as
well; therefore our concept must not be confused with that of a theme in a
literary work. The concept of 'thematic unity' would be closer to what we mean.]
"…The theme must be unitary, otherwise
we would have no basis for talking about any one utterance. The theme of an
utterance is individual and unreproducible, just as the utterance itself is
individual and unreproducible. The theme is the expression of the concrete,
historical situation that engendered the utterance. The utterance 'What time is
it?' has a different meaning each time it is used, and hence, in accordance with
our terminology, has a different theme, depending on the concrete historical
situation ('historical' here in microscopic dimensions) during which it is
enunciated and of which, in essence, it is a part.
"It follows, then, that the theme of an
utterance is determined not only by the linguistic forms that comprise it --
words, morphological and syntactic structures, sounds, and intonation -- but
also by extraverbal factors of the situation. Should we miss these situational
factors, we would be as little able to understand an utterance as if we were to
miss its most important words. The theme of an utterance is concrete -- as
concrete as the historical instant to which the utterance belongs.
Only an utterance taken in its full, concrete scope as an historical
phenomenon possesses a theme. That is what is meant by the theme of an
utterance.
"...Together with theme or, rather,
within the theme, there is also the meaning that belongs to an utterance.
By meaning, as distinguished from theme, we understand all those aspects of the
utterance that are reproducible and self-identical
in all instances of repetition. Of course, these aspects are abstract: they have
no concrete, autonomous existence in an artificially isolated form, but, at the
same time, they do constitute an essential and inseparable part of the
utterance. The theme of an utterance is, in essence, indivisible. The meaning of
an utterance, on the contrary, does break down into a set of meanings belonging
to each of the various linguistic elements of which the utterance consists. The
unreproducible theme of the utterance 'What time is it?' taken in its
indissoluble connection with the concrete historical situation, cannot be
divided into elements. The meaning of the utterance 'What time is it?' -- a
meaning that, of course, remains the same in all historical instances of its
enunciation -- is made up of the meanings of the words…that form the
construction of the utterance.
"Theme is a complex, dynamic system
of signs that attempts to be adequate to a given instant of generative process.
Theme is reaction by the consciousness in its generative process to the
generative process of existence. Meaning is the technical apparatus for
the implementation of theme. Of course, no absolute, mechanistic boundary
can be drawn between theme and meaning. There is no theme without meaning and no
meaning without theme. Moreover, it is even impossible to convey the meaning of
a particular word…without having made it an element of theme, i.e., without
having constructed an 'example' utterance. On the other hand, a theme must base
itself on some kind of fixity of meaning; otherwise it loses its connection with
what came before and what comes after -- i.e., it altogether loses its
significance….
[Quoting
Marr]
"'But was such an all-meaning word in fact a word?' we might be asked. Yes,
precisely a word. If, on the contrary, a certain sound complex had only one
single, inert, and invariable meaning, then such a complex would not be a word,
not a sign, but only a signal. Multiplicity of meanings is the constitutive
feature of a word. As regard the all-meaning word of which Marr speaks, we
can say the following: such a word in essence has virtually no meaning; it is
all theme. Its meaning is inseparable from the concrete situation of its
implementation. This meaning is different each time, just as the situation
is different each time. Thus the theme, in this case, subsumed meaning under
itself and dissolved it before meaning had any chance to consolidate and
congeal. But as language developed further, as its stock of sound complexes
expanded, meaning began to congeal along lines that were basic and most frequent
in the life of the community for the thematic application of this or that word.
"Theme, as we have said, is an attribute
of a whole utterance only; it can belong to a separate word only inasmuch as
that word operates in the capacity of a whole utterance…. Meaning, on the other
hand, belongs to an element or aggregate of elements in their relation to the
whole. Of course, if we entirely disregard this relation to the whole (i.e., to
the utterance), we shall entirely forfeit meaning. That is the reason why a
sharp boundary between theme and meaning cannot be drawn.
"The most accurate way of formulating
the interrelationship between theme and meaning is in the following terms. Theme
is the upper, actual limit of linguistic significance; in essence, only
theme means something definite. Meaning is the lower limit
of linguistic significance. Meaning, in essence, means nothing; it only
possesses potentiality -- the possibility of having a meaning within a concrete
theme. Investigation of the meaning of one or another linguistic element can
proceed, in terms of our definition, in one of two directions: either in the
direction of the upper limit, toward theme, in which case it would be
investigation of the contextual meaning of a given word within the conditions of
a concrete utterance; or investigation can aim toward the lower limit, the limit
of meaning, in which case it would be investigation of the meaning of a word in
the system of language or, in other words, investigation of a dictionary word.
"A distinction between theme and meaning
and a proper understanding of their interrelationship are vital steps in
constructing a genuine science of meanings. Total failure to comprehend their
importance has persisted to the present day. Such discriminations as those
between a word's usual and occasional meanings, between its
central and lateral meanings, between its denotation and connotation, etc., are
fundamentally unsatisfactory. The basic tendency underlying all such
discriminations -- the tendency to ascribe greater value to the central, usual
aspect of meaning, presupposing that that aspect really does exist and is stable
-- is completely fallacious. Moreover, it would leave theme unaccounted for,
since, theme, of course, can by no means be reduced to the status of the
occasional or lateral meaning of words." [Voloshinov,
op cit,
pp.99-102. Italic
emphases in the original.]30
Now, I am
not suggesting that Wittgenstein and Voloshinov meant the same by "theme" in
every respect (in fact, it is difficult to decide what Voloshinov finally
did mean by this word -- on that, see, for example,
here
and here), but
there are clear similarities, nonetheless.
"How does verbal discourse in life
relate to the extraverbal situation that has engendered it? Let us analyse this
matter, using an intentionally simplified example for the purpose.
"Two people are sitting in a room. They
are both silent. Then one of them says, 'Well!' The other does not respond.
"For us outsiders this entire
'conversation' is utterly incomprehensible. Taken in isolation, the utterance…is
empty and unintelligible. Nevertheless, this…colloquy of two persons…does make
perfect sense….
"Let us suppose that the intonation with
which this word was pronounced is known to us: indignation and reproach
moderated with a certain amount of humour. This intonation somewhat fills the
semantic void of the adverb well but still does not reveal the meaning of
the whole.
"What is it we lack, then? We lack the
'extraverbal context' that made the word well a meaningful locution for
the listener. This extraverbal context of the utterance is comprised of
three factors: (1) the common spatial purview of the interlocutors (the unity of
the visible -- in this case, the room, the window, and so on), (2) the
interlocutors' common knowledge and understanding of the situation, and
(3) their common evaluation of that situation.
"At the time the colloquy took place,
both interlocutors looked up at the window and saw
that it had begun to snow; both knew that it was already May and that it
was high time for spring to come; finally, both were sick and tired
of the protracted winter -- they were both looking forward to spring and
both were bitterly disappointed by the late snowfall. On this 'jointly
seen' (snowflakes outside the window), 'jointly known' (the time of the year --
May) and 'unanimously evaluated' (winter wearied of, spring looked forward to)
-- on all this the utterance directly depends, all this is seized in its
actual, living import -- is its very sustenance. And yet all this remains
without verbal specification or articulation. The snowflakes remain outside the
window; the date, on the page of a calendar; the evaluation, in the psyche of
the speaker; and, nevertheless, all this is assumed in the word well."
[Voloshinov (1987), p.99. Italic emphases in the original. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]31
Compare the
above with these remarks by Wittgenstein (once again made only a few years
later):
"But, think of the
meaning of the word 'oh!' If we were asked about it, we would say '"oh" is a
sigh; we say, for instance, things like "Oh, it is raining again already"'. And
that would describe the use of the word. But what corresponds now to the
calculus, the complicated game that we play with other words? In the use of the
words 'oh"', or 'hurrah', or 'hm', there is nothing comparable." [Wittgenstein
(1974b), p.67.]
For such
one word sentences, Voloshinov chose "Well!", Wittgenstein "Oh!"; Voloshinov has
it snowing; for Wittgenstein, it is raining.
Another
coincidence?
The
background to this remark of Wittgenstein's can be found in
Engelmann (2013), who links it to a conversation between Wittgenstein and
Sraffa, reported by Norman Malcolm. Malcolm tells us that Wittgenstein had
related to him two anecdotes about the Tractatus; the first does not
really concern us, but the second does:
"The other incident
has to do with something that precipitated the destruction of this conception
[that a proposition is a picture -- RL]. Wittgenstein and P. Sraffa, a lecturer
in economics at Cambridge, argued together a great deal over the ideas of the
Tractatus. One day (they were riding, I think, on a train) when Wittgenstein
was insisting that a proposition and that which it describes must have the same
'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity', Sraffa made a gesture, familiar
to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the
underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And
he asked 'What is the logical form of that?' Sraffa's example produced in
Wittgenstein the feeling that there was an absurdity in the insistence that a
proposition and what it describes must have the same 'form'. This broke the hold
on him of the conception that a proposition must literally be a 'picture' of the
reality it describes." [Malcolm (2001), pp.57-58. Italic emphases in the
original.]
Von Wright
reports this anecdote slightly differently; he has Wittgenstein saying that
every proposition must have a "grammar" (footnote to the same page as the
above). His version is confirmed by a comment made by Sraffa (in conversation
with Professor Alessandro Roncaglia in 1973), where Sraffa says von Wright's
account is the correct one. Von Wright's version is also confirmed in a letter
written by Sraffa (dated 23/10/1974, now in the Sraffa Papers, C303).
[I owe this
point to Engelmann (2013), p.152, who quotes Roncaglia (2009), p.27 (footnote
8), and Bellofiore and Potier (1998), p.73.]32
This might
appear to be a rather trifling difference in emphasis, but Engelmann is able to
draw some rather surprising conclusions from it, but which conclusions needn't,
however, detain us.
While I do
not want to enter into whether anything can be salvaged from the analogy drawn
between pictures and empirical propositions (i.e.,
indicative
sentences concerning matters of fact) in the Tractatus, it seems to me
that this 'argument' (i.e., the one based on that hand gesture), if such
it may be called, constitutes a very poor reason for abandoning Wittgenstein's earlier
conception of a proposition (even if the latter is finally abandoned, or adjusted, for
other reasons). A philosopher of
Wittgenstein's brilliance should surely have been able to point out that
Sraffa's gesture wasn't a proposition, and doesn't even look like a
proposition. If Wittgenstein was going to abandon the idea that a proposition
describes the 'reality' it represents, he should perhaps have done so for other
reasons, not least because of this odd use of "describe", among other things
-- certainly not because of a hand gesture that wasn't a proposition to begin
with, nor which even implied one.
Be this as
it may, I think Engelmann makes rather too much of this anecdote (as do many
others), but this plainly isn't the place to enter into that topic (although I
have said a little more in
Note 32). The point is
that this unexpected interjection (concerning gestures, one word exclamations
and 'sentences') on Sraffa's part certainly nonplussed Wittgenstein, and, rightly
or wrongly, helped send him off in an entirely new direction. So, Voloshinov's
emphasis on our capacity to understand single word sentences (directly or
indirectly) exercised a profound (but indirect) influence on Wittgenstein, to such
an extent that he was fully prepared to abandon a core Tractarian
idea -- again, rightly or wrongly.
From this we
can perhaps understand a little more clearly why Wittgenstein said he received
from Sraffa
such an important intellectual stimulus. This sheds new light on the
significance of Voloshinov's comments
above, and Wittgenstein's point about the use of "oh".
Joachim
Israel, however, had this to say about the connection between Voloshinov and
Wittgenstein:
"Historically viewed, philosophy of language has two
epistemological roots. The first of these is anti-subjectivist, rejecting the
notion of the isolated individual constituting or constructing the world of
objects. This line of thought in Western philosophy is represented by the
cogito of Cartesian rationalism, by Kant's
notion of transcendental consciousness and Hegel's idea of natural
consciousness. The second root, however, is the empiricist critique of all forms
of transcendentalism, a critique which prioritised the sense experience of the
concrete individual (rather than some transcendental 'consciousness') as the
source of all knowledge.
"The philosophy of
language, therefore, in reaction to these two dominant and warring trends which
preceded it, seeks to preserve the anti-individualist thrust of transcendental
philosophy, while acknowledging the force of the empiricist critique. It seeks
to do so by focussing not on subjectivity but on intersubjectivity, understood
as intercourse and communication between concrete historical subjects or classes
of subjects, holding certain positions in the social structure of society. In
this perspective, 'consciousness' (in transcendentalism) and 'sense perception'
(in empiricism) are both replaced as grounds for epistemological analysis and
philosophical reflection by language and, especially in Wittgenstein's work, by
everyday language. One consequence is that 'language became central for
the methodological self-understanding of philosophy'....
"In [Marxism and
the Philosophy of Language] Voloshinov directed his critique against two
'false trends in the philosophy of language'. He termed them 'individualistic
subjectivism' and 'abstractive objectivism'.... The two most
fundamental aspects of language are, according to Voloshinov, the possibility of
using it creatively and the evaluative nature of meaning. In discourse, the
context of utterances therefore becomes the most essential linguistic feature.
The notion that the meaning of an utterance depends on the context in which it
is uttered anticipates Wittgenstein." [Israel (2002), pp.214-16; italic emphases in the
original. Israel is here quoting Markus (1986), p.2. I haven't yet been able to
check the latter source. Link added; some paragraphs merged.]
While I
don't agree with everything Israel says (especially the link suggested between
Wittgenstein and epistemology), I think he has the broad brushstrokes right --
especially if we take the word "meaning" in this particular comment, "The notion that
the meaning of an utterance depends on the context in which it is uttered ..."
to refer to "speakers' meaning". [On
that, see
here.]
Israel then
goes on to point out that Voloshinov worked closely with Mikhail Bakhtin (the
brother of Nicholas Bakhtin, Wittgenstein's close friend), so close in fact that
some scholars have attributed much of Voloshinov's Marxism and the Philosophy
of Language to Mikhail Bakhtin himself (pp.215-16).33
Craig
Brandist had this to say about the
Bakhtin Circle:
"Most of the group's significant work was produced after
their move to Leningrad in 1924. It seems that there the
group became acutely aware of the challenge posed by
Saussurean
linguistics and its development in the work of the
Formalists. Thus there emerges
a new awareness of the importance of the philosophy of
language in philosophy and poetics. The most significant
work on the philosophy of language was published in the
period 1926-1930 by Voloshinov: a series of articles and a
book entitled
Marksizm i filosofia iazyka (Marxism and the Philosophy
of Language) (1929).
Medvedev, who had been put in
charge of the archive of the symbolist poet
Aleksandr Blok, participated
in the vigorous discussions between Marxist and formalist
literary theorists with a series of articles and a book, Formal'lnyi
metod v literaturovedenii (The Formal Method in
Literary Scholarship) (1928) and the first book-length study
of Blok's work. Voloshinov also published an article and a
book (1925, 1926) on the debate which raged around
Freudianism at the time. In 1929 Bakhtin produced the first
edition of his famous monograph Problemy tvorchestva
Dostoevskogo (Problems of Dostoyevsky's Work), but many
other works dating from 1924-9 remained unpublished and
usually unfinished. Among these was a critical essay on
formalism called 'Problema soderzheniia i formy v
slovesnom khudozhestvennom tvorchestve' (The Problem of
Content, Material and Form in Verbal Artistic Creation)
(1924) and a book length study called 'Avtor i geroi v
esteticheskoi deiatel´nosti' (Author and Hero in Aesthetic
Activity) (1924-7).
"Since the 1970s the works published under the names of
Voloshinov and Medvedev have often been ascribed to Bakhtin,
who neither consented nor objected. A voluminous,
ideologically motivated, often bad-tempered and largely
futile body of literature has grown up to contest the issue
one way or another, but since there is no concrete evidence
to suggest that the published authors were not responsible
for the texts which bear their names, there seems no real
case to answer. It seems much more likely that the
materials were written as a result of lively group
discussions around these issues, which group members wrote
up according to their own perspectives afterwards. There
are clearly many philosophical, ideological and stylistic
discrepancies which, despite the presence of certain
parallels and points of agreement, suggest these very
different works were largely the work of different authors.
In accordance with Bakhtin's own philosophy, it seems
logical to treat them as rejoinders in ongoing dialogues
between group members on the one hand and between the group
and other contemporary thinkers on the other." [Brandist
(2005).Quotation marks altered
to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold
emphasis and links added. Italics in the original.]34
It is
difficult to believe that the subject matter (as well as some of the content) of
these "lively group discussions" in the Bakhtin Circle didn't find their way to
Nicholas Bakhtin in the UK, and thus to Wittgenstein. After all, we were told
the following about those two:
"[A]nother intimate friend of
Wittgenstein's [was] Dr Nicholas Bachtin (sic).... 'Wittgenstein loved Bachtin'
Constance, Bachtin's widow, told me. From her I heard of the interminable
discussions that went on between the two men....
Nicholas Bachtin, an exile from the Russian Revolution but by the outbreak of
the second World War a fiery communist, was an inspired teacher and lecturer....
What I do know...is that Wittgenstein loved Bachtin...and never dropped him as
he easily did others." [Pascal (1984), p.14. Paragraphs merged; bold
emphasis added.]
Or, indeed,
that the discussions in the Bakhtin Circle didn't find their way to Gramsci and
Sraffa, and then to Wittgenstein (see below). All this takes on a new
significance, too, when we recall that at that time (or soon after) Wittgenstein
expressed a keen desire to go and live in Russia. The fact that theorists there
were thinking along lines he found conducive to his new approach to language
must have been a factor.
Brandist
summarises Voloshinov's work in the Philosophy of Language as follows:
"The semiotic dimension of the new orientation of the Bakhtin
Circle was developed at the same time by Voloshinov. In a series of articles
between 1928 and 1930 punctuated by the appearance of the book-length Marksizm
i filosofiia iazyka (Marxism and the Philosophy of Language) in 1929 (2nd
edition 1930) Voloshinov published an analysis of the relationship between
language and ideology unsurpassed for several decades. Voloshinov examines two
contemporary accounts of language, what he calls 'abstract objectivism', whose
leading exponent is Saussure, and 'individualistic subjectivism', developed from
the work of
Wilhelm von Humboldt
by the romantic idealists
Benedetto
Croce
(1866-1952) and
Karl Vossler
(1872-1942). Voloshinov argues that the two trends derive
from rationalism and romanticism respectively and share both the strengths and
weaknesses of those movements. While the former identifies the systematic and
social character of language it mistakes the 'system of self-identical forms'
for the source of language usage in society; it abstracts language from the
concrete historical context of its utilisation (Bakhtin's 'theoreticism'); the
part is examined at the expense of the whole; the individual linguistic element
is treated as a 'thing' at the expense of the dynamics of speech; a unity of
word meaning is assumed to the neglect of the multiplicity of meaning and accent
and language is treated as a ready-made system whose developments are
aberrations. The latter trend is correct in viewing language as a continuous
generative process and asserting that this process is meaningful, but
fundamentally wrong in identifying the laws of that creation with those of
individual psychology, viewing the generative process as analogous with art and
treating the system of signs as an inert crust of the creative process. These
partial insights, Voloshinov argues that a stable system of linguistic signs is
merely a scientific abstraction; the generative process of language is
implemented in the social-verbal interaction of speakers; the laws of language
generation are sociological laws; although linguistic and artistic creativity do
not coincide, this creativity must be understood in relation to the ideological
meanings and values that fill language and that the structure of each concrete
utterance is a sociological structure." [Ibid.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Links added. Italics in the original.]
However,
although Voloshinov certainly wanted to argue that it was:
"fundamentally wrong
in identifying the laws of that creation with those of individual psychology,
viewing the generative process as analogous with art and treating the system of
signs as an inert crust of the creative process...",
the way he
posed this question, and the way he framed the argument, only succeeded in
undermining these otherwise commendable objectives. [On that, see Essay Thirteen
Part Three, especially
here. Despite this, compare
the above with what
Wittgenstein had
to say about artistic theme, quoted earlier.]
Brandist
then links Voloshinov's work to Gramsci's:
"...Voloshinov firmly establishes the sign-bound nature of
consciousness and the shifting nature of the language system, but instead of
viewing the subject as fragmented by the reality of difference, he poses each
utterance to be a microcosm of social conflict. This allows sociological
structure and the plurality of discourse to be correlated according to a unitary
historical development. In this sense Voloshinov's critique bears a strong
resemblance to the Italian Communist leader Antonio Gramsci's account of
hegemony in his Prison Notebooks. Like Voloshinov and Bakhtin, Gramsci
drew upon the work of Croce and Vossler and
Matteo
Bartoli's Saussurean 'spatial linguistics', and
combined it with a Hegelian reading of Marxism. As we have seen, however,
Voloshinov was heavily influenced by the work of
Cassirer,
whose admiration for the work of von Humboldt, the founder of generative
linguistics, was substantial. Voloshinov's critique thus tended towards the
romantic pole of language study rather than taking up the equidistant position
he claimed in his study. This can be seen in the tendency to see social groups
as collective subjects rather than institutionally defined collectives and such
assertions as those which suggest the meaning of a word is 'totally determined'
by its context. What Voloshinov effectively does is to supplement Humboldt's
recognition of individual and national linguistic variability with a
sociological dimension. Humboldt’s 'inner-form' of language is recast as the
relationality of discourse, dialogism. Abandoning the Marxist
distinction between base and superstructure, Voloshinov follows
Cassirer
and Hegel in seeing the variety of linguistic forms as
expressions of a single essence. It is significant that Gramsci, who adopted a
consistently pragmatist epistemology followed the same course and emerged with
startlingly similar formulations." [Ibid.
Italics in the original.]
So, this
(postulated) link between Voloshinov and Gramsci might help explain how the
former managed to influence Wittgenstein (directly or indirectly via Sraffa and
Nicholas Bakhtin).
Wherever the
truth lies, until more
hard evidence emerges [but check
this out] the postulated
connection between Voloshinov and Wittgenstein must remain largely
conjectural, based on (a) their overlapping circle of friends, (b) a handful
of 'parallel' remarks, (c) a strikingly similar use of certain words, phrases
and arguments, and (d) a shared "anthropological" and "social" approach to
language (as a system of signs), based on Marx and Engels's ideas.
Israel
summarised the connection between Voloshinov and Wittgenstein in the following
terms:
"Voloshinov maintains
that a discourse can only be studied meaningfully as a communicative event, as a
meaning-creating interaction between actors, finding themselves in a social
situation. 'Any true understanding is dialogic in nature,' he writes, and adds
that meaning therefore 'is the effect of interaction between speaker and
listener'. [Voloshinov (1973), p.35.] Language is therefore a shared practical
activity -- a 'form of life' in Wittgenstein's terminology." [Israel, op cit,
p.216. Referencing conventions modified to conform with those adopted at this
site.]
[Readers are
encouraged, however, to read the rest of Israel's article, since he outlines
several other parallels between Voloshinov and Wittgenstein.]35
Now, I do
not want to suggest that Wittgenstein and Voloshinov were in total agreement
with one another (whether or not they were even aware of it); the differences
between Wittgenstein's work and Voloshinov's are far greater than are their
similarities. This section has merely been aimed at showing that it is
highly likely that some of Wittgenstein's ideas (even those where he
disagreed with the approach adopted by the Russian) came from Voloshinov via his
Marxist friends.
If so,
core ideas in Wittgenstein's philosophy of language will have unimpeachable
roots in contemporaneous Marxist theories of language.36
We already
know of the sympathetic reception given to Wittgenstein by prominent Soviet
Philosophers
when he visited Russia in 1935.
He was even referred to there as "The great Wittgenstein". [On that, see
here.]
In addition
to this we have this interesting (if not significant) reference to his work in
an officially approved Soviet textbook -- A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy
-- produced by the philosophical establishment in the USSR in the mid-, to
late-1930s:
"The 'logical-analytic' method of
Wittgenstein and his followers is by no means the only modern philosophy that
approximates in certain points to the new dialectic....
It would appear, in fact, that not only are scientific discoveries confirming
the standpoint of dialectical materialism but that Western philosophers are
increasingly discarding metaphysical concepts...." [Shirokov
(1937), pp.18-19. Paragraphs merged, bold
emphasis added.]
Concerning
this textbook we read the following:
"This volume was
originally prepared by the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy as a textbook in
Dialectical Materialism for institutions of higher education, directly connected
with the Communist Party and also for use in the Technical Institutes which
correspond to Universities in Great Britain. This particular
textbook was specially selected by the Society for Cultural Relations in Moscow
(VOKS) as the best example they could find of the philosophical teaching now
being given in the Soviet Union not only to students of philosophy but to
engineers, doctors, chemists, teachers, in fact to all who pass through the
higher technical schools and institutes." [Ibid.,
p.7. Paragraphs merged, bold emphasis added.]
Of course, the above only serves to confirm what we already knew: that in the 1930s Wittgenstein
was perceived as sympathetic not only to the new Soviet society, but also to the
"new dialectic", and that his work was viewed as supportive of the
anti-metaphysical stance adopted by Russian thinkers (that is,
as they understood the word "metaphysics"). Indeed, we also know
that textbooks like the above had to pass through a rigorous official
censorship process at the highest level of the Soviet political establishment
(violation of which protocols threatened imprisonment or other forms of punishment). If
the Soviet authorities at the highest level
regarded Wittgenstein's work in this way, they must have viewed him, rightly or
wrongly, as a philosophical, or even a political, ally. To that end, it
is also highly likely that they will have contacted the likes of Maurice Dobb,
Maurice Cornforth, or Roy Pascal (or, indeed, Anthony Blunt and the other
Cambridge spies, who were also in Russia at the same time as Wittgenstein -- on
this, see Cornish, op cit, p.74) as part of the process of vetting the
political opinions and loyalties of this
German-speaking philosopher -- who, incidentally,
was a contemporary student in the same school as Adolph Hitler!37
However,
having said that, it is important to note the following from the Preface:
"In the original work Part I, which consisted of an historical introduction to
Marxist Philosophy and the Theory of Knowledge, was of considerable length and
included illustrations which would not be familiar to English students. But as
it is really quite impossible to comprehend the philosophy of Marx and Engels
without some knowledge of the development of philosophy up to Hegel, this
section has been considerably condensed and entirely rewritten by the English
editor who takes entire responsibility for this part of the work. The original
authors did not cover this familiar ground in the manner of a conventional
history of philosophy but from the Marxist point of view, and this whole method
of approach has, of course, been faithfully followed in the rewritten section. The English editor [John
Lewis] has also contributed an introduction
relating the whole work to philosophical thought in the West to-day." [Ibid.,
p.7. Paragraphs merged.]
In other
words, it was John Lewis who wrote the above words about Wittgenstein. Even so, his Introduction would still have had to pass the censor for it to be
given an official imprimatur. So, this textbook still enjoyed the support
of the communist movement, and was published in the UK by the Left Book
Club.
Again, it could be argued that it is because
this textbook appeared in English during the era of the
Popular Front (the book was first published in the UK, as far as I know, in
1937) that the author(s) took a conciliatory stance toward Wittgenstein, whose
work they clearly confused with that of the Vienna Circle. But that just
illustrates how vacillating the Stalinists were between, say, 1930 and 1980. For
example, compare the above comments with Kuusinen's, published some twenty-five
years later:
"The basic tenets of neo-positivism were formulated by Bertrand Russell and the
Austrian philosophers Wittgenstein and
Schlick.
Its most prominent exponents are
Carnap
in the United States and
Ayer
in Britain. It owes its origin to a desire to refurbish the subjective-idealist
philosophy of
Machism and adapt it to the present state
of physics, mathematics and logic." [Kuusinen (1961), p.57.]
It is worth noting that Kuusinen offers
no evidence whatsoever in support of the allegation that Wittgenstein was a
Positivist, or that he was keen to promote "Machism" -- or even to accommodate
to it.
Be this as
it may, communists in the 1930s clearly saw "the great Wittgenstein" as a
sympathetic figure. How many 'conservatives' can we say the that about?
Perhaps
the cornerstone of the argument that Wittgenstein was a conservative
philosopher is the claim that he argued that philosophy "leaves
everything as it is", and that it has, therefore, no political, social, or
critical role to play -- other than, perhaps, to rationalise (directly or
indirectly) the status quo. [On this, see, for example,
Sean Sayers's remarks, quoted below.]
According to this abiding (and
convenient) myth, the sole job of the philosopher is to contemplate the
minutiae of the use of language in splendid, ivory tower isolation. This hackneyed view of Wittgenstein's work
on the left is well expressed by Herbert Marcuse, in a
book that heavily influenced the reception, not just of Analytic Philosophy in
general, but also Wittgenstein's work in particular by the left:
"Austin's
contemptuous treatment of the alternatives to the common usage of words, and his
defamation of what we 'think up in our armchairs of an afternoon';
Wittgenstein's assurance that philosophy 'leaves everything as it is' -- such
statements exhibit, to my mind, academic sado-masochism, self-humiliation, and
self-denunciation of the intellectual whose labour does not issue in scientific,
technical or like achievements. These affirmations of modesty and dependence
seem to recapture Hume's mood of righteous contentment with the limitations of
reason which, once recognized and accepted, protect man from useless mental
adventures but leave him perfectly capable of orienting himself in the given
environment. However, when Hume debunked substances, he fought a powerful
ideology, while his successors today provide an intellectual justification for
that which society has long since accomplished -- namely, the defamation of
alternative modes of thought which contradict the established universe of
discourse." [Marcuse (1968),
pp.141-42. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Spelling adjusted to agree
with UK English.]
Here is how
I tackled this Marcusian slur in Essay Thirteen
Part Three
(slightly edited):
I won't try to defend John Austin in this
Essay, but Marcuse clearly failed to notice that
when Wittgenstein said philosophy "leaves everything as it is" he was speaking of
the discipline as he practised it, not as it
has traditionally been pursued. Moreover, in view of the fact that Traditional Philosophy is little more than self-important hot air (on that, see Essay Twelve
Part One), except perhaps negatively,
it can't change anything, anyway.
Furthermore, Wittgenstein isn't advocating
"conformism", as Marcuse alleges. It is no more the role of philosophy to challenge
the status quo than it is the role of, say, basket weaving to challenge
advanced brain surgery. Alongside Marx
(who,
it is worth recalling,
had abandoned philosophy root and branch by the late 1840s and advised
others to do likewise),
Wittgenstein, again like Marx, would have argued that the point is in fact to change the world,
not build non-sensical
and
incoherent
philosophical theories about it. Change is the remit of
political action, science and technology, not philosophy (even if individual
philosophers might choose to involve themselves in the class struggle), as Wittgenstein
conceived it.
Here is Wittgenstein:
"[W]hat is the use of studying
philosophy if all it does for you is to enable you to talk with some
plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic etc., if it does not
improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does
not make you more conscientious than any...journalist in the use of the
DANGEROUS phrases such people use for their own ends." [Letter from Wittgenstein
to Malcolm, 16/11/1944, quoted in Malcolm (2001), p.93. Capitals in the
original.]
...Moreover, one only has to read the many
conversations that took place between Wittgenstein and those he gathered around
him to see that he wasn't a political quietist. Nor was he unsympathetic
to Marxism or, indeed, the gains made by the Russian Revolution. [On that, see
above.]
In
fact, Marcuse along with the vast majority of Wittgenstein critics (and, it is worth adding, many Wittgensteinians, too) misquote
or misinterpret him in this regard. Here is what
Wittgenstein actually said:
"Philosophy must not interfere in any
way with the actual use of language, so it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot justify it either. It leaves everything as it is.
It also leaves mathematics as it is, and no mathematical discovery can advance
it." [Wittgenstein
(2009), §124, p.55e.
(This links to a PDF.)
Paragraphs
merged.]
From this it is quite clear that the word
"everything" refers back to "the actual use of language". This is plain from the fact that he then goes
on to mention mathematics ("It also leaves mathematics as it is"),
which he wouldn't have added if "everything" were totally unqualified in
the way that many now suppose. So, philosophy leaves everything in language and
mathematics as they are, but (by default) nothing else. Whether or not one agrees with
Wittgenstein, this passage offers no support to those who characterise Wittgenstein as a
conservative.
So, Philosophy leaves language and
mathematics as they are. Whether or not one agrees with Wittgenstein (and I
tend to the view that philosophical criticism, using Wittgenstein's method, can
certainly change how we interpret language, science and mathematics, which is the
approach I have adopted at this site), but it can in no way affect how we use
language -- or, indeed, how we apply mathematics --, in every day life), this
particular passage offers no support at all to those who would characterise
Wittgenstein as a
conservative.37a
[Others
point to Oswald Spengler's work and its influence on Wittgenstein as additional
'proof' he was a conservative. I have destructively criticised that argument in Note 36.]
Moreover,
as noted above, there is this interaction between Norman Malcolm and Wittgenstein:
"[W]hat is the use of studying
philosophy if all it does for you is to enable you to talk with some
plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic etc., if it does not
improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does
not make you more conscientious than any...journalist in the use of the
DANGEROUS phrases such people use for their own ends." [Letter from Wittgenstein
to Malcolm, 16/11/1944, quoted in Malcolm (2001), p.93. Capitals in the
original.]
[Here
Wittgenstein is clearly referring Malcolm to his new conception of philosophy,
not philosophy as it has traditionally been conceived.]
This doesn't
sound like the remark of a 'philosophical quietist', as he has often been
depicted by many on the left -- as well as far too many who should know better.
It is also
worth pointing out, once again, that it isn't being maintained here that
Wittgenstein was a political activist, or a left-wing/Marxist theorist,
but the above comments, and those quoted and referred to throughout this Essay,
show that the picture painted by Marcuse (and others) couldn't be more wrong.
As T. P.
Uschanov has pointed out in relation the
Ernest
Gellner's egregious 'criticism' of OLP,
Words and Things, and in connection with the question of
Wittgenstein's alleged 'relativism':
"Finally,
there remains the awkward question of intellectuals
who profess to understand and appreciate Wittgenstein while fighting everything
Gellner claims he represents. If Wittgenstein equals rampant self-legitimating
relativism, it's extremely hard to explain why such outspoken foes of
self-legitimating relativism as
Pierre
Bourdieu,
Jacques Bouveresse,
Esa Itkonen,
Hilary
Putnam
and
Barry Smith
present themselves as admirers of Wittgenstein and constantly co-opt him as an
ally in their struggle against postmodernist defeatism. It's also hard to
explain why many Marxists and other political radicals such as
Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, K. T. Fann,
David Rubinstein
and
Gavin
Kitching
have a similarly positive attitude to Wittgenstein. As far as Gellner is
concerned, these antirelativist, anti-quietist Wittgensteinians might never have
written. Of course it is a possibility that they are deluded or
mendacious on a grand scale; but an immeasurably more economical explanation is
that Gellner profoundly misunderstands Wittgenstein's stance on relativism. Yet
another example of Gellner's
no-true-Scotsman arguments
is his explaining away of social scientists who admire Wittgenstein. In Words
and Things and in many of his essays from the sixties Gellner condemned OLP
for being a pseudo-sociology unsuitable for 'real' empirical social scientists,
who were supposed to be above all that; in the early seventies, as many trained
and competent social scientists like
Hanna Pitkin and
Rodney
Needham
started to use OLP to fructify their researches, Gellner rushed to
condemn them for somehow ceasing to be 'real'. Already in 1968, Gellner had
attacked the use of sociological research by philosophers in an article in the
Times Literary Supplement, and again it was followed by a heated
correspondence, this time involving such familiar names as
Alasdair MacIntyre,
Peter Winch,
W. G. Runciman
and
D. Z. Phillips." [Taken from
here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site. Links added.]
Incidentally, the rest of Uschanov's article is as good a 'take down' of another
academic as I have ever seen; anyone who thinks Gellner is a reliable critic of OLP
should read it and thenmost definitely think again.38
Another of
the charges often levelled against Wittgenstein (particularly by those on the far-left who
are somewhat suspicious of his influence, to say the least) is that Wittgenstein
was a mystic. However, this is an odd accusation coming from those who
also look to Hegel for inspiration -- when he is a card-carrying Christian Mystic,
Kabbalist,
Alchemist,
and Hermeticist, if ever there
was one -- upside down or the 'right way up'.
But, what
truth is there in this allegation, anyway? It is undeniable that the Tractatus
contains remarks like the following:
"It is not how
things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. To view the world
sub specie aeterni [from the viewpoint of eternity -- RL] is to view it as a
whole -- a limited whole. Feeling the world as
a limited whole -- it is this that is mystical.... There are, indeed,
things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They
are what is mystical." [Wittgenstein (1972), 6.44, 6.45, 6.522; pp.149-51.
Italic emphases in the original. Paragraphs merged.]
However,
these passages do not sit at all well with the whole tenor of the book, as Roger
White, among others, has pointed out:
"In the light of the fact that the
general form of a proposition
gives us every possible proposition as a truth function of elementary
propositions, then there could be no proposition that could answer a question
that was not answered by any possible truth-function of elementary propositions.
Hence, the main thrust of the 6.5s [where the above quotations from the
Tractatus are located -- RL] seems to be entirely negative....
[White then quotes
the last one of the above three sentences from the Tractatus -- RL, and
adds the following:]
"The intrusion of
this paragraph in what otherwise looks an unremittingly negative sequence
suggests that a purely iconoclastic reading of the 6.5s may not have been
Wittgenstein's intention.... On this interpretation, what [those to whom the
meaning of life has become clear -- RL] have seen is something that cannot be
put into words, but only shows itself, so that part of what they have learnt is
a recognition that they cannot say what they have seen. Although the question is
indeed nonsensical [according to the criteria Wittgenstein himself lays down in
the Tractatus -- RL], the asking of it registers a genuine intellectual
worry, a worry that could not be appeased by giving a straight answer to the
question, but by seeing something that could not be put into words.
"If that was Wittgenstein's
intention, then, at any rate, as applied to issues such as the meaning of life,
the difficulty is understanding what is supposed to
show what cannot be said. In the earlier use of the
saying/showing distinction, he was concerned with what was shown by the way
our language worked, and where our mastery of the language showed that we were
all implicitly aware of what was shown. It is hard to see what takes the place
of our mastery of language here." [White (2006), pp.114-15. Links added.]
So, much of
these last few sections of the
Tractatus fit badly with the stark criteria Wittgenstein laid down
for an expression to count as a proposition (and hence for it to be
capable of
saying, and then
showing, something). The ethical and mystical passages can't do that
since they aren't truth functions of elementary propositions.
As
Wittgenstein (inadvertently) pointed out to Russell in a letter (dated
19/08/1919):
"Now I'm afraid you
haven't really got hold of my contention, to which the whole business of logical
propositions is only a corollary. The main point is the theory of what can be
expressed by [propositions] -- i.e., by language -- (and, which comes to the
same, what can be thought) and what can not be expressed by
[propositions], but can only be shown; which, I believe, is the cardinal problem
of philosophy." [Wittgenstein (2012), p.98.
Italic emphasis in the original. I have replaced Wittgenstein's abbreviation
"props" with what he intended, "propositions", in order to make his point easier
on the eye.]
Hence, as
White argues, if there are certain things that can't be said by means of
propositions (and they have to be propositions to begin with), then there is nothing beyond these propositions that
could do the "showing" for them. However, since the whole point of the
book is what can't be expressed but only shown by propositions, these
incongruous passages can't be integral to what the Tractatus had to say.
In which
case, we must look to
other reasons why these rather odd sections were included -- reasons
which I don't think anybody else has noticed before, or, at least, which haven't
been fully appreciated by commentators -- but they are in fact staring us
in the face.
These rather
bizarre 'concerns' (about the meaning of life, and the mystical, etc.) only
began to exercise an (overt) influence on Wittgenstein's thought during his military
service in the First World War. They appear in his Notebooks for the
first time in 1915/1916, after
most of the core ideas of the Tractatus had been settled upon a year or
so earlier -- as Brian McGuinness notes:
"'[M]ystical' themes
hardly appear in [Wittgenstein's] Notebooks until 6 May 1916, when
propositions 6.371-6.372 of the Tractatus are first propounded." [Then in
footnote 2, McGuinness adds:] "An exception is the anticipation of Tractatus
6.52 which occurs in the notes for 25 May 1915 (Notebooks, p.51e,
paragraph 3 -- i.e., Wittgenstein (1979b), p.51e -- RL)." [McGuinness (1966),
p.305. Quotation marks, formatting and referencing conventions altered to
conform with the rules adopted at this site; italics in the original.]
'God' makes 'His' first appearance in a note dated 11/06/16
[Wittgenstein (1979b), p.72e]; as noted above, explicit reference to the
'mystical' surfaces in a note
written in May 1915 [Ibid., p.51e], but makes no further appearance in the
Notebooks. Comments about the 'will' first appear in the same month, as do
those about 'the soul', and solipsism receives its first mention then, too.
[Ibid., pp.49e-50e.] Up to that point, Wittgenstein's interests had been almost
exclusively concerned with logical syntax, logical form, the logical constants,
the quantifiers, analysis, clarity, names, sense, nonsense, the nature of facts,
simples and complexes, etc., etc. -- i.e., the core ideas of the Tractatus.
After this the meaning of life, happiness, death, suicide and
assorted ethical concerns began to dominate his thinking.
As Brian
McGuinness notes in his biography of Wittgenstein:
"Russell was shocked
by the mystical tendencies that he found in Wittgenstein after the war."
[McGuinness (1990), p.204.]
He was
shocked since there was no hint of it before he went off to fight in that
conflict.
It is worth
recalling at this point that Wittgenstein had lost his faith early on in life --
indeed, he tells us he abandoned belief in 'god' when he was a schoolboy. [Monk
(1990), p.18.]
Now, this
turn to 'god' and the 'mystical' isn't all that surprising given the effect we
now know that modern warfare can have on human beings. So, this odd turn of
events is a clear sign that Wittgenstein was beginning to suffer from
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD], which, as we also understand, can
last for many years causing long-term psychiatric problems -- such as
clinical depression, coupled with suicidal tendencies, both of which
conditions we also know plagued Wittgenstein for the rest of his life.
[Of
course, part of the reason for an early onset of depression was the death
of his friend
David Pinsent. However, as we are about to see, he suffered from depression a few
years before that death.]
Indeed, we
read the following about those who, for example, lost loved ones in the
9/11
terror attack on New York, and who later suffered from PTSD:
"A group of researchers affiliated with
the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia
University, and the Veterans Administration Boston
Healthcare System surveyed a large number of people who had
lost a loved one during the 9/11 attacks. About a quarter
had lost a child, relative, or spouse, and most people had
lost someone as a result of them being near the World Trade
Centre or in lower Manhattan during the terrorist attacks.
"Most people felt
their religion to be just as important after the 9/11
terrorist attacks as it was before the attacks. However,
about a tenth said religion became more important and
another tenth said that religion became less important to
them. It seems that some people may have relied on their
religious beliefs in an attempt to make sense of the
terrorist attacks or gain comfort in response to their loss.
On the other hand, some people may have become disillusioned
or began to question aspects of their faith after the
terrorist attacks. This was particularly the case for people
who lost a child during the attacks....
"When faced with a major traumatic event, such as the 9/11
terrorist attacks, it is natural to struggle with how to
make sense of that event. This is especially going to be the
case when a loved one is lost as a result of that event.
Relying on and strengthening religious beliefs is one way
people may choose to cope with a traumatic event and
unexpected loss.
Relying on religion and spirituality can help some people
adjust and recover from a traumatic event." [Quoted from
here; spelling modified to
conform with UK English. Bold emphases added. Accessed
21/08/2013.]
This
shouldn't surprise us given not just what is now known about how human
beings react to trauma but also what
Marx
said about religious belief; in times of extreme stress and emotional
turmoil, many turn to mysticism as a source of consolation. It is reasonable to
assume therefore that the same happens to soldiers and other combatants during
war -- as well as after they have returned from service. Indeed, in connection
with that assumption we read the following (which is, again, far from news to most of
us):
"Virtually
every war that has ever been fought has been supported by at least one
religion. Faith in divine approval has helped soldiers go into battle confident
their own cause was righteous and faith has strengthened their courage and
convictions. Religious influences have also created moral confusion, however,
because the same act of violence might be considered a sacred duty in one
situation, or a violation of religious teachings in another situation.
Victorious warriors usually believe they have pleased a God or gods, while
defeat might be interpreted as divine punishment or displeasure.
"Exposure to
traumatic combat experiences often leads to a search for meaning and purpose
within a personal and collective sense -- seeking the answers to myriad
questions about the painful realities of warfare, the value of personal
existence, and the value of the human race....
"Traumatic distress
refers to the emotional and psychological symptoms, or reactions, a traumatized
individual experiences as a result of exposure to a traumatic event. Phrases
such as 'traumatic distress' and 'symptoms of PTSD' are general terms referring
to some level of distress that might vary from mild to severe. Some of these
symptoms are nightmares, unwanted thoughts, and relationship problems. When
symptoms are severe and last for a long time, an individual is likely to be
diagnosed with PTSD. Many survivors initially suffer traumatic distress, but
symptoms usually subside within a few months. About 30% of Vietnam veterans have
met the criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD at some point in their lives, with
another 20% reporting some symptoms.
"Spiritual alienation
and loss of meaning have been identified by clinicians as issues that are
distressing to veterans seeking treatment for symptoms of PTSD....
Limited research has found that combat veterans who were
able to find meaning and purpose in their traumatic experiences were less likely
to develop PTSD." [Quoted from
here; quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added. Accessed 21/08/2013.
Several
paragraphs merged.]
So:
"Exposure to
traumatic combat experiences often leads to a search for meaning and purpose
within a personal and collective sense -- seeking the answers to myriad
questions about the painful realities of warfare, the value of personal
existence, and the value of the human race...." [Ibid.]
But, that is
exactly what happened to Wittgenstein.39
We can see
the trauma he clearly experienced
beginning to take shape in the Autumn of 1914; here is a diary entry
dated 09/11/1914:
"But in the last few
days
I have been a subject for depression. I have no real pleasure
in anything and my life is full of anxiety about the future! I am no longer at
peace within myself.... Because I can't bring myself to feel at ease. I feel
myself as dependent on the world and so I have to be afraid of it even when for
the present nothing bad is going to happen to me. I see myself -- that self in
which I was once able to rest secure -- as a distant country, now vanished, that
I long for. -- The Russians are advancing fast on Cracow. The entire civilian
population is having to leave the city. Things look very bad for us. God
help me!" [Quoted in McGuinness, op cit, p.216. Italic
emphases in the original; bold added.]
In another
diary entry (dated 13/09/1914), he wrote the following:
"The news gets worse
and worse.... I say Tolstoy's words over and over again in my head: 'Man is
powerless in the flesh but free because of the spirit.' May the spirit be in me!
In the afternoon the lieutenant heard shots in the vicinity. I became very
agitated.... How will I behave when it comes to shooting? I am not afraid of
being shot but of not doing my duty properly. God give me strength. Amen.
Amen. Amen." [Quoted in McGuinness, op cit, p.221. Bold emphasis
added.]
McGuiness
tells us that Wittgenstein started to read Tolstoy's
The Gospel in Brief (this links to a PDF) in early September that year,
from which he derived "great profit", a book he carried with him everywhere he
went from then on (ibid., p.220). About these 'gospels', Monk had the following
to say:
"His logic and his
thinking about himself being but two aspects of the single 'duty to oneself',
this fervently held faith was bound to have an influence on his work. And
eventually it did -- transforming it from an analysis of logical symbolism in
the spirit of Frege and Russell into the curiously hybrid work which we know
today, combining as it does logical theory with religious mysticism.
"But such an
influence does not become apparent until a few years later....
[Quoting
Schopenhauer's
The World as Will and Representation, a book
that Wittgenstein had read many years earlier -- RL:] 'Undoubtedly, it is the
knowledge of death, and therewith the consideration of the suffering and misery
of life, that give the strongest impulse to philosophical reflection and
metaphysical explanations of the world.'
"If Wittgenstein
had spent the entire war behind the lines, the Tractatus would have
remained what it almost certainly was in its first inception of 1915; a treatise
on the nature of logic. The remarks in it about ethics, aesthetics, the soul
and the meaning of life have their origin in precisely the 'impulse to
philosophical reflection' that Schopenhauer describes, an impulse that has as
its stimulus a knowledge of death, suffering and misery.
"Towards the end of
March 1916 Wittgenstein was posted, as he had long wished, to a fighting unit on
the Russian Front... [where] he endeavoured to prepare himself psychologically
and spiritually, to face death. 'God enlighten me. God enlighten me. God
enlighten my soul', he wrote on 29 March." [Monk (1990), pp.116, 137.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Links and bold emphases added.]
Then, later
that year, we read this (in a diary entry dated 29/07/1916):
"Yesterday I was shot
at. I was scared!
I was afraid of death. I now have such a desire to live.... From time to
time I become an animal. Then I can think of nothing but eating, drinking and
sleeping. Terrible! And then I suffer like an animal too, without the
possibility of internal salvation. I am then at the mercy of my appetites and
aversions. Then an authentic life is unthinkable." [Quoted in Monk, op cit,
p.146.
Italic emphasis in the original; bold added.]
It is quite
clear from this that Wittgenstein was beginning to suffer from
clinical depression:
"Hypersomnia is excessive sleepiness....
[P]eople who are suffering from clinical depression may suffer from
hypersomnia...nearly every day." [Quoted from
here; accessed 26/10/2013.]
As Monk
points out, Wittgenstein's turn to the
mystical is hardly surprising, therefore.40
So, his
ethical and mystical ruminations were a coping strategy (conscious or
not). Just as Dialectical Marxists have found it necessary to
turn to their own mystical 'theory' [DM]
in times of stress (i.e., long-term, continuous defeat, reverse, and
disaster -- the evidence substantiating that
allegation can be found
here), as a
source of consolation, so Wittgenstein turned toward his own preferred opiates,
and stitched them into the Tractatus --against the grain, as it
were. No wonder they don't fit!
Significantly, these
mystical leanings are conspicuous by their absence in Wittgenstein's
'middle' and 'later' periods. [Concerning references to 'God' etc. in
Wittgenstein (1998), see Note 41.]
The
'mystical' is absent from the Notebooks
of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as from the Investigations. "Mysterious"
and "mystery" make an appearance in Wittgenstein (1981), §125,
p.22, but that is only in relation to attempts to understand the nature of
flames; they are mysterious until we understand them. "Mysterious" and "mystery"
crop up several times in Wittgenstein (1993c), on pages 129 and 151, but, and
once again, only in connection with explaining certain puzzling phenomena, like
fire or flames, or in relation the beliefs of those who celebrate
Beltane, for
example. "Mysterious" is also used (once) in The Big Typescript:
"One keeps hearing
the remark that philosophy really doesn't make any progress, that the same
philosophical problems that occupied the Greeks keep occupying us. But those who
say that don't understand the reason this must be so. The reason is that our
language has remained constant and keeps seducing us into asking the same
questions. So long as there is a verb 'be' that seems to function like 'eat' and
'drink', so long as there are the adjectives 'identical', 'true', 'false',
'possible', so long as there is talk about a flow of time and an expanse of
space, etc., etc. humans will continue to bump up against the same mysterious
difficulties, and stare at something that no explanation seems able to remove. And this, by the
way, satisfies a longing for the transcendental [an alternative version of the
manuscript has 'supernatural' here -- RL], for in believing that they see the
'limit of human understanding' they of course believe that they can see beyond
it." [Wittgenstein (2013), p.312e. Bold emphasis added. Paragraphs merged.]
This is
totally out of sympathy with the
Tractatus; here Wittgenstein argues that the source of mystery lies in our
tendency to read too much into language, or in our tendency to misunderstand it.
Plainly, Wittgenstein is here endeavouring to combat these 'mysteries' by
applying his new "method" to the language many use in order to motivate it. [On
that, see
here.]
The word
also crops up in Wittgenstein (1993b), p.319, where he uses it to describe the
"mysterious" link some claim to see between a name and the object it supposedly
names. Once again, he is trying to challenge that idea -- as indeed he does in
The Brown Book:
"The relation of name
and object we may say, consists in a scribble being written on an object..., and
that's all there is to it. But we are not satisfied with that, for we feel that
a scribble written on an object in itself is of no importance to us, and
interests us in no way. And this is true; the whole importance lies in the
particular use we make of the scribble written on the object, and we, in a
sense, simplify matters by saying that the name has a peculiar relation to its
object, a relation other than that, say, of being written on the object, or of
being spoken by a person pointing to an object with his finger. A primitive
philosophy condenses the whole usage of the name into the idea of the relation,
which thereby becomes a mysterious relation. (Compare the ideas of mental
activities, wishing, believing, thinking, etc., which for the same reason have
something mysterious and inexplicable about them.)" [Wittgenstein (1969),
pp.172-73.]
Here, this
'mystery' is one that results from the
reification of the use to which we put certain inscriptions (ordinary names
and words we employ to express or describe, for example, our psychological lives
and experiences -- on the latter, see
here). Once more, Wittgenstein is
trying to combat these untoward moves, which he largely managed to do in
the
Investigations [i.e.,
Wittgenstein (2009),
§§37-43,
pp.22e-25e. (This links
to a PDF.)]
This term
also appears once in Wittgenstein (1993d), p.401, where he characterises the
idea that the future movements of a machine are somehow "mysteriously" embodied
in its present operation. Once again, he is trying to dispel this
'mystery'.
Finally,
"mysterious" crops up in Wittgenstein (1970), p.27, but there he is speaking
about
Sir
James Jeans's book The Mysterious Universe (about which he took a
rather dim view).
This
suggests Wittgenstein might have begun to recover from the trauma he experienced
during the First World War, or he had found other ways of coping -- by
taking
lovers, or even, like Dialectical Marxists, by accepting several of the core ideas of DM! So, when he
was in discussion with Sraffa and his other Marxist friends in the early 1930s
and beyond, he was no longer a mystic.
Certainly, there is no evidence to suggest he still was.40a
To be sure
Wittgenstein did have religious 'leanings' of some sort (as noted above, the
word "god" crops up all over the place in his later
Notebooks, but his use of this word is often equivocal), and he converted
to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed, But that was, clearly, at the very end
of his life. At other times, he wore his religious beliefs, if he had any,
very lightly.41
Hence, the
two main reasons why the far-left have remained somewhat hostile toward
Wittgenstein -- i.e., that his work was a conservative affectation, and that
he was a mystic -- have been shown to be entirely misconceived -- or, at
least with respect to his alleged mysticism,
wildly exaggerated.
Finally,
even if Wittgenstein were a mystic of sorts, why that should count against
him when, in the eyes of many on the left, it doesn't count against Hegel, or
prevent them from studying his work, is itself something of a mystery.41a
There is,
however, another reason why revolutionaries have harboured negative or
even hostile opinions about Wittgenstein's work: his emphasis on the use of
ordinary language. This represents -- so it seems to many on the left -- a capitulation
to all the prejudices and 'banalities' of 'commonsense', just as it amounts to
an accommodation with the status quo and with ruling-class ideology.
"Radical Philosophy
was born in the aftermath of the student movement of the 1960s. At that time,
philosophy in British universities was very conservative and traditional.
Ordinary language philosophy, the analytical approach, and the empiricist
tradition were absolutely dominant. However, the student movement of the 1960s
had opened young people's minds to a whole new range of radical ideas and
issues. These were dismissed as not worthy of study, and excluded from
discussion in philosophy departments....
It [Radical Philosophy -- RL] has tried to avoid the obscure and abstract style
of much recent philosophy in both the analytical and continental traditions."
[Quoted from
here; this links to a PDF. Accessed 22/08/2013.
Paragraphs merged; bold emphasis added.]
Here is what the late
Gerry Cohen had to say about his
experience at Oxford University in the early 1960s:
"I moved in 1961 from McGill to Oxford, where, under the
benign guidance of Gilbert Ryle, I learned British analytic philosophy. Almost
all politically committed students were, at that time, and throughout the 1960s,
hostile to that philosophy. They regarded it as bourgeois or trivial, or both."
[Cohen (2000), pp.xx-xxi;
bold emphasis added.]
Sayers and
Cohen were right about the conservative nature of British Philosophy in the
1960s, but it is now clear this had nothing to do with Wittgenstein, but more to
do with his 'followers' and with the nature of academia itself. Having said that, this
non-radical
current in
contemporary confusion (i.e., Radical Philosophy itself!) has ended up
preferring neo-Hegelian and other assorted 'Continental' obscurantisms
in place of what are in effect a
series of egregious misrepresentations of Analytic Philosophy. The latter current
in modern thought has in general been hostile to what passes these days for
philosophy in France and Germany (and this for several generations), but 'Continental
Philosophy' itself has enveloped Marxism in a blanket of intellectual fog from
which it will take many more generations if it is to be freed from it. This can be seen from the
simple fact that Radical Philosophy, and, indeed, 'continental' forms of
Marxism have had zero impact on the class war. [I have covered this topic in
more detail
here and here.] The
almost total absence of practical implications coming in from a current whose ideologues
spare no effort telling all who will listen of the importance of 'praxis' is a
pragmatic contradiction best left to those sad souls to figure out for
themselves. They stopped listening to us Analytic Philosophers years ago.
Fortunately, Jerry Cohen learnt an entirely different lesson during his time at Oxford.
The
'youthful affectation' that Sayers mentioned in fact reflects views
expressed by Marcuse a few years earlier still:
"Throughout the work of the linguistic
analysts, there is this familiarity with the chap on the street whose talk plays
such a leading role in linguistic philosophy. The chumminess of speech is
essential inasmuch as it excludes from the beginning the high-brow vocabulary of
'metaphysics;' it militates against intelligent non-conformity; it ridicules the
egghead. The language of John Doe and Richard Roe is the language which the man
on the street actually speaks; it is the language which expresses his behaviour;
it is therefore the token of concreteness. However, it is also the token of a
false concreteness. The language which provides most of the material for the
analysis is a purged language, purged not only of its 'unorthodox' vocabulary,
but also of the means for expressing any other contents than those furnished to
the individuals by their society. The linguistic analyst finds this purged
language an accomplished fact, and he takes the impoverished language as he
finds it, insulating it from that which is not expressed in it although it
enters the established universe of discourse as element and factor of meaning.
"Paying respect to the prevailing variety of meanings and usages, to the power
and common sense of ordinary speech, while blocking (as extraneous material)
analysis of what this speech says about the society that speaks it, linguistic
philosophy suppresses once more what is continually suppressed in this universe
of discourse and behaviour. The authority of philosophy gives its blessing to
the forces which make this universe. Linguistic analysis abstracts from
what ordinary language reveals in speaking as it does -- the mutilation of man
and nature." [Marcuse (1968),
pp.142-43.]42
Here, once
again, is how I tackled that criticism in Essay Thirteen
Part Three (slightly edited):
From this it is quite plain that Marcuse
prefers the obscure and impenetrable jargon that ruling-class hacks regularly inflict on their
readers to the language of ordinary workers, and it isn't hard to see why.
Indeed, as was alleged above, Marcuse all but concedes that it is impossible to derive the empty theses of Traditional Philosophy
("metaphysics") if theorists confine themselves to the vernacular. [On this, see
Essay Twelve Part One.] And that is why he complains that
the language used by Wittgenstein, and others, has been "purged" of the
very jargon
upon which traditionalists like Marcuse dote -- which "purge" is in fact a move in
the right direction since it would prevent them from even attempting to
perform their
verbal tricks.
Arguing in this way,
Marcuse plainly disagrees with Marx himself:
"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary
language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the
distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts
nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only
manifestations of actual life." [Marx
and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases
added.]
It is also worth pointing out that,
again like many
others, Marcuse
has confused ordinary language with "common sense". As we
have seen, these two aren't at all the same. [On that, cf., Hallett (2008),
pp.91-99.] Moreover, Marcuse is wrong in what he says about "eggheads" -- in
fact, in all my years of studying Wittgenstein and OLP (to date, at least 45 years), I have yet to encounter anything that
remotely suggests this reading. It isn't surprising, therefore, to find that
Marcuse fails to quote, or even cite, a single passage in support of his wild allegations.
Furthermore, neither the OLP-ers nor
Wittgenstein raised objections against other uses of language, they
simply point out that it is a serious error to suppose one can answer
questions about knowledge, perception, time, space, thought, action, etc., by
using words in technical, or in other odd ways (a point Marx also made).
As Hanjo Glock notes:
"Wittgenstein's ambitious claim is that
it is constitutive of metaphysical theories and questions that their employment
of terms is at odds with their explanations and that they use deviant rules
along with the ordinary ones. As a result, traditional philosophers cannot
coherently explain the meaning of their questions and theories. They are
confronted with a trilemma: either their novel uses of terms remain unexplained
(unintelligibility), or...[they use] incompatible rules (inconsistency), or
their consistent employment of new concepts simply passes by the ordinary use --
including the standard use of technical terms -- and hence the concepts in terms
of which the philosophical problems were phrased." [Glock (1996), pp.261-62. See
also
this
quotation, and my comments in Essay Thirteen
Part One, as well as those I have posted
at Wikipedia (here
and
here) concerning the use of technical terms in science.]
"For
two and a half millennia some of the best minds in European culture have
wrestled with the problems of philosophy. If one were to ask what knowledge has
been achieved throughout these twenty-five centuries, what theories have been
established (on the model of well-confirmed theories in the natural sciences),
what laws have been discovered (on the model of the laws of physics and
chemistry), or where one can find the corpus of philosophical propositions known
to be true, silence must surely ensue. For there is no body of philosophical
knowledge. There are no well-established philosophical theories or laws. And
there are no philosophical handbooks on the model of handbooks of dynamics or of
biochemistry. To be sure, it is tempting for contemporary philosophers,
convinced they are hot on the trail of the truths and theories which so long
evaded the grasp of their forefathers, to claim that philosophy has only just
struggled out of its early stage into maturity.... We can at long last expect a
flood of new, startling and satisfying results -- tomorrow.
"One can blow the Last Trumpet
once, not once a century. In the seventeenth century Descartes thought he had
discovered the definitive method for attaining philosophical truths; in the
eighteenth century Kant believed that he had set metaphysics upon the true path
of a science; in the nineteenth century Hegel convinced himself that he had
brought the history of thought to its culmination; and Russell, early in the
twentieth century, claimed that he had at last found the correct scientific
method in philosophy, which would assure the subject the kind of steady progress
that is attained by the natural sciences. One may well harbour doubts about
further millenarian promises." [Hacker (2001c), pp.322-23.]
Comrades like Marcuse are welcome to this
monumental waste of ink and paper (to which Hacker alludes) -- and that
comment applies even more so to 'dialectical philosophy', which is definitely the poor relation
of this long slow detour
to
nowhere.
What of this, though?
"Moreover, all too often it is not even the ordinary language which guides the
analysis, but rather blown-up atoms of language, silly scraps of speech that
sound like baby talk such as 'This looks to me now like a man eating poppies,'
'He saw a robin', 'I had a hat.' Wittgenstein devotes much acumen and spare to
the analysis of 'My broom is in the corner.'" [Marcuse (1968),
p.143.]
But, does Marcuse take Hegel or Engels to
task for their use of "The rose is red" (on that, see here
and here), or Lenin for his employment of "John is
a man"? Not a bit of it! In fact, Marcuse misses the point of using such simple
language: If we can't
get that right, we stand no chance with more complex propositions or
larger bodies of text. Indeed,
as we have seen (for example,
here, here
and here),
dialecticians can't even get "John is a man" right! [Which rather makes
my
point for me, one feels.]
However, Marcuse has
an answer to this:
"To take another illustration: sentences such as 'my broom is in the corner'
might also occur in Hegel's Logic, but there they would be revealed as
inappropriate or even false examples. They would only be rejects, to be
surpassed by a discourse which, in its concepts, style, and syntax, is of a
different order -- a discourse for which it is by no means 'clear that every
sentence in our language "is in order as it is."' Rather the exact opposite is
the case -- namely, that every sentence is as little in order as the world is
which this language communicates." [Ibid.,
p.144.]
But, if the above were indeed so -- if "every sentence is as
little in order as the world is which this language communicates" then the
ordinary words and sentences Marcuse himself usescan't be "in order",
either, which means we can't take what they say at face value. [But, is
there another, deeper significance to his words?] We have
already seen that
attempts to argue that ordinary language is in some way (or in any way)
defective back-fire on anyone foolish enough to try. But, here we encounter the same
reckless bravado, for if Marcuse's words aren't "in order", what can they possibly
mean?
As Marcuse notes on the same page:
"Thus the analysis does not terminate in the universe of ordinary discourse, it
goes beyond it and opens a qualitatively different universe, the terms of which
may even contradict the ordinary one." [Ibid.,
p.144.]
Except that here the tables are turned on
Marcuse, for if we analyse his words, and are able to follow his argument, we see that
(if he were correct) his
words would imply the opposite of what he intended -- that is, our ability to
comprehend what he says shows that his words
are in the "right order" and hence we can understand him after all! And yet, as soon as we
succeed in understanding
what he is telling us, we immediately see that
his words aren't in fact in the "right order", for he tells us that
none are!
--
"every sentence is as little in order as the world is which this language
communicates"
--,
and that they make no sense, therefore. [Yet another ironic 'dialectical inversion', one
feels.]
Then we encounter
this hackneyed complaint; Marcuse (quoting Wittgenstein):
"The almost masochistic reduction of
speech to the humble and common is made into a program: 'if the words
"language", "experience", "world", have a use, it must be as humble a one as
that of the words "table", "lamp", door."' We must 'stick to the subjects of our
every-day thinking, and not go astray and imagine that we have to describe
extreme subtleties...' -- as if this were the only alternative, and as if the
'extreme subtleties' were not the suitable term for Wittgenstein's language
games rather than for Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Thinking
(or at least its expression) is not only pressed into the straitjacket of common
usage, but also enjoined not to ask and seek solutions beyond those that are
already there. 'The problems are solved, not by giving new information,
but by arranging what we have always known.'
"The self-styled poverty of philosophy,
committed with all its concepts to the given state of affairs, distrusts the
possibility of a new experience. Subjection to the rule of the established fact
is total -- only linguistic facts, to be sure, but the society speaks in its
language, and we are told to obey. The prohibitions are severe and
authoritarian: 'Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of
language.' 'And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be
anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do
away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.'
"One might ask what remains of philosophy? What remains of thinking,
intelligence, without anything hypothetical, without any explanation? However,
what is at stake is not the definition or the dignity of philosophy. It is
rather the chance of preserving and protecting the fight, the need to
think and speak in terms other than those of common usage -- terms which are
meaningful, rational, and valid precisely because they are other terms. What is
involved is the spread of a new ideology which undertakes to describe what is
happening (and meant) by
eliminating the concepts capable of understanding what is happening (and
meant)." [Ibid.,
pp.144-45.]
Marcuse has worked himself up into a right
old lather here, all the while missing the point. Once more, Wittgenstein was speaking here of his
new approach to philosophy, which, if correct, would mean that
traditional forms-of-thought, beloved of characters like Marcuse, are nothing
more than elaborate, insubstantial
"houses of cards". Wittgenstein is certainly not arguing against
"anything
hypothetical", or against "explanation" in other areas of theory (for example,
in science -- indeed, he developed a novel account of what it is
to reason hypothetically). Once more, in his haste to malign Wittgenstein,
Marcuse only succeeded in aiming a few blows at thin air.
And,
far from the following being true,
the opposite
is in fact the case:
"It is rather the chance of preserving
and protecting the fight, the need to think and speak in terms other than
those of common usage -- terms which are meaningful, rational, and valid
precisely because they are other terms. What is involved is the spread of a new
ideology which undertakes to describe what is happening (and meant) by
eliminating the concepts capable of understanding what is happening (and
meant)." [Ibid.]
The
obscure terminology that litters the pages of Traditional Thought, and particularly the
impenetrable jargon Hegel inflicted on his readers, actually prevents us
from understanding the world. As pointed out in Essay Twelve
Part One, the influence of Traditional Philosophy must be terminated in
order to facilitate the advance of scientific knowledge in general, and Marxism
in particular. [I am here, of course, very loosely paraphrasing Kant.]
Marcuse's failure to
get the point is further underlined by this blindingly irrelevant
comment:
"To begin with, an irreducible difference exists between the universe of
everyday thinking and language on the one side, and that of philosophic thinking
and language on the other. In normal circumstances, ordinary language is indeed
behavioural -- a practical instrument. When somebody actually says 'My broom is
in the corner,' he probably intends that somebody else who had actually asked
about the broom is going to take it or leave it there, is going to be satisfied,
or angry. In any case, the sentence has fulfilled its function by causing a
behavioural reaction: 'the effect devours the cause; the end absorbs the
means.'" [Ibid.,
pp.145-46.]
Marcuse plainly
didn't know -- perhaps because of his characteristically sloppy research --,
that when Wittgenstein used the sentence "My broom is in the corner" [Wittgenstein
(2009), §60, p.33e
(This links to a PDF).] he
was in fact criticising a view he himself had adopted in the Tractatus -- about
(i) The nature of logically simple names, (ii) The idea that a fact is a complex,
and (iii) The thesis that the sort of analysis he promoted in the Tractatus is capable of revealing
(hidden) logical form, etc.44
So, Wittgenstein
was here advancing a profound criticism of his earlier
way of seeing things. Now, whether or not one agrees with Wittgenstein (before or
after he changed mind -- or even at all!), the issues he raises aren't of
the everyday "behavioural" sort that Marcuse seems to think; they
concern the
logical nature of propositions and how they can be used to represent the world (that is,
if they can). These are hardly trivial.45
However, of
far greater significance is the fact that Marx himself abandoned Philosophy
sometime in the mid-, to late-1840s, a development about which Marcuse and the vast
majority of Dialectical Marxists seem to be completely oblivious.
Any who
doubt this are encouraged to read on where their qualms will soon be laid to
rest.
In view of
the above, it might be useful to review Marx's negative attitude toward
Philosophy (i.e., as it took shape from the mid-1840s onward).
Here
is what he wrote about Philosophy in the 1844 Manuscripts:
"Feuerbach's
great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence
equally to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975b), p.381. I have used the on-line
version, here. Bold emphasis and link added.]
[Incidentally, some have argued that Feuerbach and Marx were referring to
recent and contemporaneous German Philosophy. I have responded to that
objection,
below.]
Here
are the thoughts of both Marx and Engels in The Holy Family:
"If from real apples, pears,
strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further
and imagine
that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity
existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple,
etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy -- I am declaring
that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the
almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the
apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence,
perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and
then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -- 'Fruit'…. Particular real
fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the
substance' -- 'Fruit'….
"Having reduced the different real
fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -- 'the Fruit',
speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow
to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the
diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as
hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea 'the Fruit' as it is
easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to
arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the
abstraction….
"The main interest for the speculative
philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary
fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds
and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in
the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances
of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for
they are moments in the life of 'the Fruit', this abstract creation of
the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind….
When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the
mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the
contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into
sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of
'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the
mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the
Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses,
for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond.
Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their
natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which
gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute
Fruit'.
"The ordinary man does not think he
is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears.
But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he
says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing
the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal
creation of the mind 'the Fruit'….
"It goes without saying that the
speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting
universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in
reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names
of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract
formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which
he passes
from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity
of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'
"In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending
Substance as Subject, as an
inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension
constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx
and Engels
(1975), pp.72-75. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphasis added.]
So,
according to the above, Hegel's philosophy is full of empty abstractions
that
"the ordinary man" would never dream of concocting. In view of the other things
Marx had to say (recorded above and below), it is reasonably safe to conclude he
also thought this of Philosophy in general.
Here,
indeed, is what he and Engels concluded about philosophy and philosophical language in
its entirety -- taken this time from The German Ideology:
"One of the most difficult tasks
confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual
world.
Language is the immediate actuality of thought.Just as
philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to
make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of
philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own
content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual
world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.
"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in
consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring
independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with
these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the
systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and
that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German
petty-bourgeois conditions. The
philosophers have only to dissolve
their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order
to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise
that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that
they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx
and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases
alone added.]
From this it
is quite clear that they thought that Philosophy was divorced from real life and
was based on distorted language (i.e., it was "the distorted language of the
actual world") and self-referential discourse ("so they were bound to make
language into an independent realm") -- which is, of course,
exactly what Wittgenstein concluded. More importantly, however, he also
recommended a return to ordinary language as a way of undoing the
damage ("the philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary
language, from which it is abstracted") -- again, just like
Wittgenstein.
Later
on in The German Ideology we read the following:
"With the theoretical equipment inherited from Hegel it is, of course, not
possible even to understand the empirical, material attitude of these people.
Owing to the fact that
Feuerbach
showed the religious world as an illusion of the earthly world -- a world which
in his writing appears merely as a phrase -- German theory too was
confronted with the question which he left unanswered: how did it come about
that people 'got' these illusions 'into their heads'? Even for the German
theoreticians this question paved the way to the materialistic view of the
world, a view which is not without premises, but which empirically
observes the actual material premises as such and for that reason is, for the
first time, actually a critical view of the world. This path was
already indicated in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher -- in the
Einleitung zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie and Zur Judenfrage.
But since at that time this was done in philosophical phraseology, the
traditionally occurring philosophical expressions such as 'human essence',
'species', etc., gave the German theoreticians the desired reason for
misunderstanding the real trend of thought and believing that here again it was
a question merely of giving a new turn to their worn-out theoretical garment --
just as
Dr. Arnold
Ruge, the
Dottore
Graziano
of German philosophy, imagined that he could continue as before to wave his
clumsy arms about and display his pedantic-farcical mask.
One has to 'leave philosophy aside' (Wigand, p.187, cf., Hess,
Die letzten Philosophen, p.8), one has to leap out of it and devote
oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality, for which there exists
also an enormous amount of literary material, unknown, of course, to the
philosophers. When, after that, one again encounters people like
Krummacher
or 'Stirner',
one finds that one has long ago left them 'behind' and below.
Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one
another as
onanism
and sexual love. Saint Sancho, who in
spite of his absence of thought -- which was noted by us patiently and by him
emphatically -- remains within the world of pure thoughts, can, of course, save
himself from it only by means of a moral postulate, the postulate of 'thoughtlessness'
(p.196 of 'the book'). He is a bourgeois who saves himself in the face of
commerce by the banqueroute cochenne [swinish bankruptcy -- RL]
whereby, of course, he becomes not a proletarian, but an impecunious, bankrupt
bourgeois. He does not become a man of the world, but a bankrupt philosopher
without thoughts." [Marx
and Engels (1976), p.236. Bold emphases
alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. Links added.]
Clearly,
this is an expression of Marx'sownfarewell to Philosophy, telling his readers that "one has to 'leave [it]
aside'" and devote oneself "like an ordinary man to the study of the actual
world" (and that farewell would surely apply to himself) --, which is, of course,
one reason why he also famously said this:
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is
to change it." [Theses
on Feuerbach.]
Marx elaborated on those themes in the 1844 Paris Manuscripts:
"It can be seen how subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism,
activity and passivity, lose their antithetical character, and hence their
existence as such antitheses, only in the social condition; it can be seen how
the resolution of the theoretical antitheses themselves is possible
only in a practical way, only through the practical energy of man,
and how their resolution is for that reason by no means only a problem of
knowledge, but a real problem of life, a problem which philosophy
was unable to solve precisely because it treated it as a purely theoretical
problem." [Marx
(1975b), p.354. Italic emphases in the
original; bold added.]
So,
according to Marx: "philosophy is nothing but religion rendered into thought"; it
must, therefore, be "left aside", and one has to "leap out of it and devote oneself like
an ordinary man to the study of actuality". That is because Philosophy stands in
the same relation to the "study of the actual world" as onanism does to sexual
love. Furthermore, Philosophy is based on "distorted language of the actual
world",
empty abstractions and fabricated concepts. No wonder then that he
contrasted practicalities (such a desire to change the world) with the
pursuit of that empty and aimless ruling-class discipline, Philosophy.
Of course, we know
that Marx also thought Philosophy was a ruling-class form-of-thought,
since he told us it was:
"The ideas of the ruling class are in
every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which
is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling
intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its
disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so
that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of
mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than
the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant
material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make
the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The
individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness,
and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and
determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do
this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as
producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of
their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch...." [Marx and
Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from
here. Bold emphases added.]
"The class which has the means of
material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means
of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those
who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.... Insofar,
therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an
epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence
among other things rule also
as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate
the production and distribution of the ideas of their age...."
[Ibid. Bold emphases added.]
Hence, according to Marx, the elite control the production and distribution of ideas --
doctrines that represent and reflect their interests, and which promote
their view of the world. Plainly, in order to do that, the ruling-class
must also
control education:
"The
class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control
at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby,
generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production
are subject to it....The
ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material
relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of
the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas
of its dominance." [Ibid.]
In
addition, the elite and
their ideologues rule as "thinkers"
and they do this in "its whole range" (which, of course, includes Philosophy).
As I
have pointed out many times at my site:
It
is worth adding that phrases like "ruling-class theory", "ruling-class view of
reality", and "ruling-class ideology" -- used at this site in connection with
Traditional Philosophy and the concepts that underpin Dialectical
Materialism/'Materialist Dialectics', upside down or 'the right way up' --
aren't meant to imply that all or even most members of various ruling-classes
actually invented this way of thinking or of seeing the world (although some
of them did -- for example,
Heraclitus,
Plato,
Cicero
and
Marcus Aurelius).
They are intended to highlight theories (or "ruling ideas")
that are conducive to, or which rationalise, the interests of the various
ruling-classes history has inflicted on humanity, whoever invents them.
Up until recently this approach had almost invariably been promoted by thinkers
who relied on ruling-class patronage, or who, in one capacity or another, helped
run the system
for the elite.
However,
that will become the central topic of Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve (when
they are published; until then,
the reader is directedhere,
here,
and here,
for further details.)
[Of course,
there are other reasons for arguing that Philosophy is a form of ruling-class
thought-form. We don't have to take Marx's word for it!
Readers can find out what these are by following the above links.]
Indeed, Marx
argued that philosophy is in effect an ideological affectation of, or even a
weapon used in, the class war itself:
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably
enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely
relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their
material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production
constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which
arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite
forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life
conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is
not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social
existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of
development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with
the existing relations of production or -- this merely expresses the same thing
in legal terms -- with the property relations within the framework of which they
have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these
relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The
changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of
the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always
necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic
conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural
science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic -- in
short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and
fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks
about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its
consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from
the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the
social forces of production and the relations of production." [Marx
(1968), pp.181-82. Bold emphasis added.]45a
Now, it is
certainly possible to identify these "ruling ideas" (follow
these links for more on that), but I have elsewhere summarised the point in the
following way:
As is
easy to
show, Hegel lifted many of his doctrines from
earlier mystics and ruling-class hacks. These ideas have appeared in
the philosophical theories of boss-class thinkers from
ancient times
until today....
Traditional
Philosophy taught that behind appearances there lies a hidden world,
accessible to thought alone, which is more real than the material world we
see around us.
This way of seeing things was invented by ruling-class ideologues. They did so
because if you belong to, benefit from or help run a society which is based on
gross inequality, oppression and exploitation, you can keep 'order' in several
ways.
The first and most obvious way is through violence. This will work for a time,
but it is not only fraught with danger, it is costly and it stifles innovation
(among other things).
Another way is to win over the majority (or, at least, a significant
proportion of "opinion formers", bureaucrats, judges, bishops, generals,
intellectuals, philosophers, editors, teachers, administrators, etc., etc.) to
the view that the present order either (1) Works for their benefit, (2)
Preserves and defends 'civilised values', (3) Is ordained of the 'gods', or (4)
Is 'Natural' and thus cannot be fought against, reformed or negotiated with.
Hence, a 'world-view' that helps rationalise one or more of the above is
necessary for the ruling-class to carry on ruling "in the same old way". While
the content of this aspect of ruling-class ideology may have changed with each
change in the
mode
of production, its form has remained largely the same for thousands of
years: Ultimate Truth (about this 'hidden world' underlying appearances) can be
ascertained by thought alone, and can therefore be imposed on reality
dogmatically and
aprioristically.
Some might object
that philosophical ideas can't have remained the same for thousands of years,
across different modes of production; that idea runs counter to core ideas in
Historical Materialism. But, we don't argue the same for religious belief.
Marx put no time stamp on the following, for example:
"The foundation of
irreligious criticism is:
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the
self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to
himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract
being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state,
society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted
consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world.
Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its
logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its
moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation
and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence
since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle
against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world
whose spiritual aroma is religion.
"Religious
suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering
and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of the people.
"The abolition of religion as the illusory
happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call
on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to
give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion
is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which
religion is the halo." [Marx (1975d),
p.244.
Italic emphases in the original.]
The above remarks
applied back in Ancient Babylon and Egypt, just as they did in China and India,
in Greece and Rome, in the Middle Ages and they have done so right across the
planet ever since.
The same is true of the core thought-forms found right throughout Traditional
Philosophy -- that there is indeed an invisible world, accessible to thought
alone --, especially since Marx also believed that:
"...philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded
by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of
the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975b), p.381.]
This helps
explain, of course, why Marx thought this entire discipline was based on
distorted language and contained little other than empty abstractions and
alienated thought-forms -- and, indeed, why he turned his back on it from the
late 1840s onward. [Not so Engels, who back-slid with the best of them. I have
explained why he did so in Essay Nine
Part Two.]
In fact, after the mid-1840s, there are
no positive, andvery few even neutral comments about
Philosophy in Marx's work (and that includes his letters).46
It could be objected that Marx made
positive remarks about 'dialectics' throughout his intellectual and activist
career, in published and
unpublished work. In fact, he pointedly calls "the dialectic" a "method", not a
theory or a philosophy. [I have dealt with that line-of-defence in Essay Nine
Part One;
readers are directed there for more details. (More precise links can be found in Note 46.)]
As is well-known, Marx even published a
book in 1847 called
The Poverty of Philosophy -- hardly a ringing endorsement of that
misguided ruling-class discipline! [Yes I am aware he was lampooning Proudhon's
The Philosophy of Poverty!]
Here are a few paragraphs from that
work:
"If we had M. Proudhon's intrepidity in
the matter of Hegelianism we should say: it is distinguished in itself from
itself. What does this mean? Impersonal reason, having outside itself neither a
base on which it can pose itself, nor an object to which it can oppose itself,
nor a subject with which it can compose itself, is forced to turn head over
heels, in posing itself, opposing itself and composing itself -- position,
opposition, composition. Or, to speak Greek -- we have thesis, antithesis and
synthesis. For those who do not know the Hegelian language: affirmation,
negation and negation of the negation. That is what language means. It is
certainly not Hebrew (with due apologies to M. Proudhon); but it is the language
of this pure reason, separate from the individual. Instead of the ordinary
individual with his ordinary manner of speaking and thinking we have nothing but
this ordinary manner purely and simply -- without the individual.
"Is it surprising that everything, in
the final abstraction -- for we have here an abstraction, and not an analysis --
presents itself as a logical category? Is it surprising that, if you let drop
little by little all that constitutes the individuality of a house, leaving out
first of all the materials of which it is composed, then the form that
distinguishes it, you end up with nothing but a body; that, if you leave out of
account the limits of this body; you soon have nothing but a space -- that if,
finally, you leave out of the account the dimensions of this space, there is
absolutely nothing left but pure quantity, the logical category? If we abstract
thus from every subject all the alleged accidents, animate or inanimate, men or
things, we are right in saying that in the final abstraction, the only substance
left is the logical category. Thus the metaphysicians who, in making these
abstractions, think they are making analyses, and who, the more they detach
themselves from things, imagine themselves to be getting all the nearer to the
point of penetrating to their core -- these metaphysicians in turn are right in
saying that things here below are embroideries of which the logical categories
constitute the canvas. This is what distinguishes the philosopher from the
Christian. The Christian, in spite of logic, has only one incarnation of the
Logos; with the philosopher there is no end to incarnations. If all that
exists, all that lives on land, and under water can be reduced by abstraction to
a logical category -- if the whole real world can be drowned thus in a world of
abstractions, in the world of logical categories -- who need be astonished at
it?
"All that exists, all that lives on land
and under water, exists and lives only by some kind of movement. Thus, the
movement of history produces social relations; industrial movement gives us
industrial products, etc. Just as by dint of abstraction we have
transformed everything into a logical category, so one has only to make an
abstraction of every characteristic distinctive of different movements to attain
movement in its abstract condition -- purely formal movement, the purely logical
formula of movement. If one finds in logical categories the substance of all
things, one imagines one has found in the logical formula of movement the
absolute method, which not only explains all things, but also implies the
movement of things....
"Up to now we have expounded only the dialectics of Hegel. We shall see later
how M. Proudhon has succeeded in reducing it to the meanest proportions. Thus,
for Hegel, all that has happened and is still happening is only just what is
happening in his own mind. Thus the philosophy of history is nothing but the
history of philosophy, of his own philosophy. There is no longer a 'history
according to the order in time,' there is only 'the sequence of ideas in the
understanding.' He thinks he is constructing the world by the movement of
thought, whereas he is merely reconstructing systematically and classifying by
the absolute method of thoughts which are in the minds of all." [Marx
(1976), pp.162-65. Italic emphases
in the original. Minor typos and a few major errors corrected. (I have informed
the editors over at the Marxist Internet Archive about them.) Quotation marks altered
to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]
There isn't much positivity obvious in
that passage!
Of course,
as noted earlier, some have argued that Marx was only concerned with
criticising German Philosophy in his
early writings. That was certainly one aspect of his immediate focus, but it
wasn't his only concern. For example, when he wrote the following, he
knew Feuerbach wasn't just saying this of contemporaneous German Philosophy.
"Feuerbach's great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else
but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975b), p.381.]
His target
was much broader, in fact. As Brudney points out (with respect to the specific
work written by Feuerbach to which Marx was referring):
"...[T]he Principles [i.e.,
The Principles of the Philosophy of the Future
-- RL] can be divided into three sections: the first tying modern philosophy to
theology, the second characterizing and attacking Hegel's work as the
culmination of modern philosophy, and the last presenting the themes of
Feuerbach's new philosophy. The first part is intended to establish that
modern or 'speculative' philosophy -- basically the rationalist tradition from
Descartes to Hegel...has the same conceptual structure as Christianity and,
therefore can be critiqued on the same grounds." [Brudney (1998), p.85.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Bold emphasis and link added.]
So, unless
Marx had suffered from some form of
localised amnesia, he can't fail to have known that Feuerbach was arguing
that Modern Philosophy, from
Descartes
to Hegel, was "religion rendered into thought". Is anyone prepared to argue that
that isn't also the case with respect to Medieval Philosophy
-- or even
Eastern Philosophy, tout court? The same question might well be asked
about much of Ancient Greek Philosophy, too.
Moreover,
even though the following words appeared in
The German Ideology, it is hard to see how Marx either could, or would have
restricted them to contemporaneous German thought:
"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary
language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the
distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor
language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only
manifestations of actual life." [Marx
and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases
alone added.]
The above
comments were just as true of Descartes,
Plato
and Anselm
as they were of the German Idealists of Marx's day. Or, are we to suppose that
an Idealist of the stature of
Plotinus,
for example, whose ideas find clear echo in Hegel's work, didn't
"distort" language? Indeed, if these remarks were true of Hegel, they must
also be true of the Idealists whose doctrines Hegel appropriated (i.e.,
Heraclitus, Plato,
Aristotle, Plotinus,
John Scotus Eriugena,
Nicholas of
Cusa,
Giordano
Bruno,
Jacob Böhme,
Spinoza,
etc., etc.).
More-or-less
the same can be said about this comment:
"It can be seen how subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism,
activity and passivity, lose their antithetical character, and hence their
existence as such antitheses, only in the social condition; it can be seen how
the resolution of the theoretical antitheses themselves is possible
only in a practical way, only through the practical energy of man,
and how their resolution is for that reason by no means only a problem of
knowledge, but a real problem of life, a problem which philosophy
was unable to solve precisely because it treated it as a purely theoretical
problem." [Marx
(1975b), p.354. Italic emphases in the
original.]
Or, should
we imagine that non-German philosophers didn't treat these issues
"as...purely theoretical problem[s]"?
As well as
this:
"One has to 'leave philosophy aside'..., one has to leap out of it and devote
oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality..." [Marx
and Engels (1976), p.236. Quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
The above
plainly doesn't apply just to German Thought. If it did, Marx would surely have
said something like this:
"One has to 'leave philosophy aside'...,
one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study
of non-German philosophy and actuality...".
More to the
point, does anyone think Marx was referring only to German Philosophers
when he penned this famous observation:
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is
to change it." [Theses
on Feuerbach.]
Or this?
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably
enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely
relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their
material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production
constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which
arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite
forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life
conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is
not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social
existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of
development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with
the existing relations of production or -- this merely expresses the same thing
in legal terms -- with the property relations within the framework of which they
have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these
relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The
changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of
the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always
necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic
conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural
science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic -- in
short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and
fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks
about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its
consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from
the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the
social forces of production and the relations of production." [Marx
(1968), pp.181-82. Bold emphasis added.]
Or even this?
"The ideas of the ruling class are in
every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class
which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling
intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its
disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so
that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of
mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than
the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant
material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make
the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The
individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness,
and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and
determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do
this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as
producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of
their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch...." [Marx and
Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from
here. Bold emphases added.]
Did the
ruling-class only begin to "rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas"
between, say, 1750 and 1840? Did they only begin to "regulate the production and
distribution of the ideas of their age" when Kant was still in short pants?
Did they only begin to "control...the means of mental production" when
Wolff was still in his cradle? Maybe the following only kicked in
after
the
Lisbon earthquake:
"[The] legal,
political, religious, artistic or philosophic [are the] ideological forms in
which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out." [Loc cit.]
Finally, as
noted above, unlike the early part of that decade, after the late 1840s
there are no positive (or even neutral) comments about Philosophy in Marx's work
(including his unpublished writings). On its own
(never mind the other things I have pointed out), that suggests the
interpretation placed on Marx's intellectual development in this Essay is
accurate: Marx became an anti-philosopher.
So, who do
we know from the last century who also fits that description? Who gathered around him
little other Marxist and socialist friends and pupils? Who tells us that the
most formative ideas of his mature work were suggested to him by a leading
Marxist economist? Who questioned the
LOI and railed against
the fear of contradictions among mathematicians? Who was called a "left-winger"
by those who worked with him? Who wanted to go and live in Russia? Who spoke
glowingly of the gains made by the Russian Revolution? Who was also an
anti-philosopher, and who, like Marx, enjoined on us to reject the abstractions
of philosophy and return to the use of the
vernacular?
Marx also had other things to say which
were later elaborated upon in and by Wittgenstein's famous 'Private
Language Argument'. The following passage comes from the Grundrisse
(I have quoted the entire section so that readers may appreciate the context):
"The object before us, to begin with,
material production.
Individuals producing in Society -- hence socially determined individual
production -- is, of course, the point of departure. The individual and isolated
hunter and fisherman, with whom
Smith
and
Ricardo
begin, belongs among the unimaginative conceits of the eighteenth-century
Robinsonades, which in no way express
merely a reaction against over-sophistication and a return to a misunderstood
natural life, as cultural historians imagine. As little as
Rousseau'scontrat social, which brings naturally independent, autonomous subjects
into relation and connection by contract, rests on such naturalism. This is the
semblance, the merely aesthetic semblance, of the Robinsonades, great and small.
It is, rather, the anticipation of 'civil society', in preparation since the
sixteenth century and making giant strides towards maturity in the eighteenth.
In this society of free competition, the individual appears detached from the
natural bonds etc. which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of
a definite and limited human conglomerate. Smith and Ricardo still stand with
both feet on the shoulders of the eighteenth-century prophets, in whose
imaginations this eighteenth-century individual -- the product on one side of
the dissolution of the feudal forms of society, on the other side of the new
forces of production developed since the sixteenth century -- appears as an
ideal, whose existence they project into the past. Not as a historic result but
as history's point of departure. As the Natural Individual appropriate to their
notion of human nature, not arising historically, but posited by nature. This
illusion has been common to each new epoch to this day.
Steuart avoided this simple-mindedness
because as an aristocrat and in antithesis to the eighteenth century, he had in
some respects a more historical footing.
"The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and
hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to a
greater whole: in a still quite natural way in the family and in the family
expanded into the clan [Stamm]; then later in the various forms of
communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of the clan. Only in
the eighteenth century, in 'civil society', do the various forms of social
connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his private
purposes, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint,
that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto most
developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations. The human being is
in the most literal sense a
Zwon politikon
not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only
in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society
-- a rare exception which may well occur when a civilized person in whom the
social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the
wilderness -- is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language
without individuals living together and talking to each other.
There is no point in dwelling on this any longer. The point could go entirely
unmentioned if this twaddle, which had sense and reason for the
eighteenth-century characters, had not been earnestly pulled back into the
centre of the most modern economics by
Bastiat,
Carey,
Proudhon
etc. Of course it is a convenience for Proudhon et al. to be able to give a
historico-philosophic account of the source of an economic relation, of whose
historic origins he is ignorant, by inventing the myth that Adam or
Prometheus
stumbled on the idea ready-made, and then it was adopted, etc. Nothing is more
dry and boring than the fantasies of a
locus communis." [Marx
(1973), pp.83-85. Bold emphasis and links
added.]
"The main point here is this: In all these forms -- in which landed property and
agriculture form the basis of the economic order, and where the economic aim is
hence the production of use values, i.e., the reproduction of the individual
within the specific relation to the commune in which he is its basis -- there is
to be found: (1) Appropriation not through labour, but presupposed to labour;
appropriation of the natural conditions of labour, of the earth as the
original instrument of labour as well as its workshop and repository of raw
materials. The individual relates simply to the objective conditions of labour
as being his; [relates] to them as the inorganic nature of his subjectivity, in
which the latter realizes itself; the chief objective condition of labour does
not itself appear as a product of labour, but is already there as
nature;
on one side the living individual, on the other the earth, as the objective
condition of his reproduction; (2) but this relation to land and soil,
to the earth, as the property of the labouring individual -- who thus appears
from the outset not merely as labouring individual, in this abstraction, but who
has an objective mode of existence in his ownership of the land, an
existence presupposed to his activity, and not merely as a result of
it, a presupposition of his activity just like his skin, his sense organs, which
of course he also reproduces and develops etc. in the life process, but which
are nevertheless presuppositions of this process of his reproduction -- is
instantly mediated by the naturally arisen, spontaneous, more or less
historically developed and modified presence of the individual as member of
a commune -- his naturally arisen presence as member of a tribe etc. An
isolated individual could no more have property in land and soil than he could
speak. He could, of course, live off it as substance, as do the animals. The
relation to the earth as property is always mediated through the occupation of
the land and soil, peacefully or violently, by the tribe, the commune, in some
more or less naturally arisen or already historically developed form. The
individual can never appear here in the dot-like isolation...in which he appears
as mere free worker." [Ibid.,
p.485. Bold
emphasis and links added. Italics in the original. Some paragraphs merged.]
In other
words, Marx thought the belief that there could be such a thing as a private
language, whichonly one individual could speak, "absurd".
Wittgenstein simply added the detail and provided supporting argument.
For Marx, language was, therefore, a social product:
"But also when I am
active
scientifically, etc. -- an activity which I can seldom perform in direct
community with others -- then my activity is social, because I perform
it as a man. Not only is the material of my activity given to me as a
social product (as is even the language in which the thinker is active): my
own existence is social activity, and therefore that which I make of
myself, I make of myself for society and with the consciousness of myself as a
social being....
"Man is the immediate object of natural science; for
immediate, sensuous nature for man is, immediately, human sensuousness
(the expressions are identical) -- presented immediately in the form of the
other man sensuously present for him. Indeed, his own sense-perception first
exists as human sensuousness for himself through the other man. But
nature is the immediate object of the science of man: the first
object of man -- man -- is nature, sensuousness; and the particular human
sensuous essential powers can only find their self-understanding in the science
of the natural world in general, just as they can find their objective
realisation only in natural objects. The element of thought itself -- the
element of thought's living expression --
language -- is of a sensuous nature. The social reality of nature,
and human natural science, or the natural science of man, are
identical terms." [Marx
(1975b), pp.350-52. Italic emphases in the
original; bold added.]
"Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into
relation with each other as values, it is not because we see in these articles
the material receptacles of homogeneous human labour. Quite the contrary:
whenever, by an exchange, we equate as values our different products, by that
very act, we also equate, as human labour, the different kinds of labour
expended upon them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it. Value,
therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is value,
rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, we try
to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social
products; for to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as much a
social product as language." [Marx
(1996), pp.84-85. Bold emphasis added.]
"Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical
consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it
really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only
arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men." [Marx
and Engels (1976), p.44.]
Here, too,
is what Engels had to say about language:
"Much more important
is the direct, demonstrable influence of the development of the hand on the rest
of the organism. It has already been noted that our simian ancestors were
gregarious; it is obviously impossible to seek the derivation of man, the most
social of all animals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mastery over
nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man's
horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto
unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of
labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by
increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the
advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making
arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other.
Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but
surely transformed by modulation to produce constantly more developed
modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one
articulate sound after another.
"Comparison with
animals proves that this explanation of the origin of language from and in the
process of labour is the only correct one....
"First labour, after
it and then with it speech -- these were the two most essential stimuli under
the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man,
which, for all its similarity is far larger and more perfect. Hand in hand with
the development of the brain went the development of its most immediate
instruments -- the senses. Just as the gradual development of speech is
inevitably accompanied by a corresponding refinement of the organ of hearing, so
the development of the brain as a whole is accompanied by a refinement of all
the senses. The eagle sees much farther than man, but the human eye discerns
considerably more in things than does the eye of the eagle. The dog has a far
keener sense of smell than man, but it does not distinguish a hundredth part of
the odours that for man are definite signs denoting different things. And the
sense of touch, which the ape hardly possesses in its crudest initial form, has
been developed only side by side with the development of the human hand itself,
through the medium of labour.
"The reaction on
labour and speech of the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of
the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of conclusion,
gave both labour and speech an ever-renewed impulse to further development. This
development did not reach its conclusion when man finally became distinct from
the ape, but on the whole made further powerful progress, its degree and
direction varying among different peoples and at different times, and here and
there even being interrupted by local or temporary regression. This further
development has been strongly urged forward, on the one hand, and guided along
more definite directions, on the other, by a new element which came into play
with the appearance of fully-fledged man, namely, society." [Engels (1876),
pp.356-57. Italic
emphases in the original.]
[Now, I am
not so much interested in the scientific accuracy of the above comments
as I am with the connection they might or might not have with Wittgenstein's own
thoughts.]
So, for
Engels, as for Marx, language is a product of collective labour -- coupled with
a "need to communicate" --, and is therefore a social artefact.
As we will
see, Wittgenstein adopted similar views: language is a social phenomenon,
developed as a result of
collective labour (with words functioning as "tools"), and which is
also primarily a means
of communication.47
What follows isn't meant to be a
definitive account of Wittgenstein's view of Philosophy (that topic would
require an entire book!), merely an outline of
some of its main features, particularly those that echo Marx's approach
(or, indeed, that of other Marxists).
"If, e.g., we call our investigations
'philosophy', this title, on the one hand, seems appropriate, on the other hand
it certainly has misled people. (One might say that the subject we are dealing
with is one of the heirs of the subject which used to be called 'philosophy.')"
[Wittgenstein (1969), p.28.]
This is in line with Marx's emphasis on
leaving philosophy. For Wittgenstein, it amounted to arguing that philosophy, as it
has traditionally been practiced, is just self-important nonsense, based on a
systematic misuse of language.
So, what is this new approach, this new
'method'? Here is how Wittgenstein described it:
"There is not a single philosophical
method, though there are indeed methods, different therapies, as it were." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§133,
pp.56-57e.
(This links to a PDF.)
Italic emphases in the original.]
"Our inquiry is therefore a grammatical
one. And this inquiry sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings
away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, brought about, among other
things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different
regions of our language." [Ibid.,
§90,
p.47e.
(Again, this links to a PDF).]
Of course, Wittgenstein didn't mean by
the word "grammar" what one finds, for instance, in books devoted to formal
or school grammar. What he meant by this word will become apparent as this section
unfolds. [See, for example, Savickey (1999).]
"All I can give you is a method; I
cannot teach you any new truths." [Wittgenstein (1979a), p.97.]
"My method throughout is to point out
mistakes in language [although from what he said elsewhere, he clearly meant
'mistakes in how we use language', since he also said 'ordinary language is all
right', Wittgenstein (1969), p.28 -- RL]. I am going to use the word
'philosophy' for the activity of pointing out such mistakes. Why do I wish to
call our present activity philosophy when we also call Plato's activity
philosophy? Because of a certain analogy between them, or perhaps because of the
continuous development of the subject. Or the new activity may take the place of
the old because it removes mental discomforts the old was supposed to." [Ibid.,
pp.27-28. Bold emphasis added.]
"The correct method of philosophy would
really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said..., and then,
whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to
him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although
it would not be satisfying to the other person -- he would not have the feeling
that we were teaching him philosophy -- this method would be the only
correct one." [Wittgenstein
(1972), 6.53, p.151. (This links to a PDF.) Italic
emphasis in the original.]
He also thought that Traditional
Philosophy (Metaphysics)
had blurred the distinction between scientific research and
conceptual problems:
"It was correct that our considerations
must not be scientific ones.... And we may not advance any kind of theory. There
must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. All explanation
must disappear, and description alone must take its place. And this description
gets its light -- that is to say, its purpose -- from the philosophical
problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; but they are solved
through an insight into the workings of our language, and in such a way that
these workings are recognized -- despite
an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by coming up with
new discoveries, but by assembling what we have long been familiar with.
Philosophy is a struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding by the
resources of our language." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§109,
p.52e.
(This links to a PDF.)
Italic emphases in the original.]
"Philosophers
constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and they are
irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This
tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into
complete darkness." [Wittgenstein (1969), p.18.]
"The essential thing about metaphysics
is that it blurs the distinction between factual and conceptual investigations."
[Wittgenstein (1981), §458,
p.81.]
"What we find out in
philosophy is trivial; it does not teach us new facts, only science does that."
[Wittgenstein (1980), p.26.]
"I think that essentially we have only
one language, and that is our everyday language.... [O]ur everyday language is
the language, provided we rid it of the obscurities that lie hidden in it. Our language is completely in order, as
long as we are clear about what it symbolizes." [Waismann (1979), pp.45-46.
Paragraphs merged.]
"When philosophers use a word --
'knowledge', 'being', 'object', 'I', 'proposition/sentence', 'name', -- and try
to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the
word ever actually used this way in the language in which it is at home? What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday
use." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§116,
p.53e.
(This links to a PDF.) Italic
emphasis in the original.
Paragraphs merged.]
"When I speak about language..., I must
speak the language of every day." [Ibid.,
§120,
p.54e.
(Again, this links to a PDF.)]
"On the one hand, it is clear that every
sentence in our
language 'is in order as it is'.
That is to say, we are not strivingafter an ideal, as if our
ordinary vague sentences had not yet got a quite exceptionable sense, and a
perfect language still had to be constructed by us." [Ibid.,
§98,
p.49e.(Once more, this links to a PDF.]
"For philosophical problems arise when
language goes on holiday." [Ibid.,
§38,
p.23e.
(Again, this links to a PDF.) Italic
emphasis in the original.]
"It is wrong to say
that in philosophy we consider an ideal language as opposed to our ordinary one.
For it makes it appear as though we thought we could improve on ordinary
language. But ordinary language is all right." [Wittgenstein (1969), p.28.]
"The thing to do in
such cases is always to look how the words in question are actually used in
our language." [Ibid., p.56. Italic emphasis in the original.]
"[B]ut it is shocking
to use words with a meaning they never have in normal life and this is the
source of much confusion." [Wittgenstein (1980), p.73.]
"The language used by philosophers is
already deformed, as though by shoes that are too tight." [Wittgenstein
(1998), p.47e.]
Hence, the 'problems' that have
exercised Traditional Philosophers derive from a misuse, or misconstrual of
language (which means that philosophy, for him, was a critique of language --
i.e., typically the sort of language found and mis-used in Traditional Thought
and linguistic forms that mislead the unwary). In which case the
job of a philosopher is, among other things, to (i) Remind us how we ordinarily employ our words (which is
very roughly part of what Wittgenstein meant by "grammar"), and
(2) Untangle the knots and confusions in our thought created by our misconstrual
of the vernacular.
"What is the meaning of a word? Let us attack this question by asking,
first, what is the explanation of the meaning of a word; what does the
explanation of a word look like? The way this question helps us is
analogous to the way the question 'how do we measure a length?' helps us
understand the problem 'what is length?'
"The questions 'What is length?', 'What is
meaning?', 'What is the number one?' etc. produce in us a mental cramp. We feel
we can't point to anything in reply to them and yet ought to point to something.
(We are up against one of the real sources of philosophical bewilderment: a
substantive
makes us look for a thing that corresponds to it.)" [Wittgenstein (1969), p.1.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Link added.
Several paragraphs merged.]
I have explored this question at length
in Essay Three
Part One, where I show how this "source of bewilderment" has misled philosophers from Ancient Greece
until today (and that includes Hegel and DM-theorists, with all their
'abstractions' and 'essences').
"We are bringing
words back from their metaphysical to their normal use in language. (The man who
said that one cannot step into the same river twice was wrong; one
can step into the same river twice). And this is what the
solution to all philosophical difficulties looks like. Our answers, if they are
correct, must be ordinary and trivial." [Wittgenstein
(2013),
p.304e. Italic emphasis in the original. Paragraphs merged.]
"Philosophy just puts everything before
us, and neither explains nor deduces anything -- Since everything is open to
view, there is nothing to explain. For whatever may be hidden is of no interest
to us.... The work of the philosopher consists in
marshalling recollections for a particular purpose." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§§126-27,
p.55e.
(This links to a PDF.)
Paragraphs merged.]
"The main cause of philosophical
diseases -- a one-sided diet: one nourishes one's thinking with only one kind of
example." [Ibid.,
§593,
p.164e.
(Again, this links to a PDF.)]
"The confusions which occupy us arise
when language is, as it were, idling, not when it is doing work." [Ibid.,
§132,
p.56e.
(Once more, this links to a PDF.)]
"In philosophy one is
in constant danger of producing a myth of symbolism, or a myth of mental
processes. Instead of saying what one knows and must admit."
[Wittgenstein (1981), §211,
p.38.]
{CF
Russell: "That is why the theory of symbolism has a certain importance, because
otherwise you are so certain to mistake the properties of the symbolism for the
properties of the thing." [Russell (1918), p.185.] -- RL.}
"When we do
philosophy, we are like savages, primitive people, who hear the way in which
civilised people talk, put a false interpretation on it, and then draw the
oddest conclusion from it." [Wittgenstein
(2009), §194,
p.85e.
(Once more, this links to a PDF.)]
"Troubles we get into
in philosophy come through constantly trying to construe everything in
accordance with one paradigm or model. Philosophy we might say arises out of
certain prejudices. The words 'must' and 'cannot' are typical words exhibiting
these prejudices. They are prejudices in favour of certain grammatical forms."
[Wittgenstein (1979a), p.115. Spelling altered to conform with UK English.]
"[This] book deals with the problems of
philosophy, and shows, I believe, that the reason why these problems are posed
is that the logic of our language is misunderstood. The whole sense of the book
might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said
clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence. Thus the aim of the book is to draw a
limit to thought, or rather -- not to thought, but to the expression of
thought.... It will therefore only be in language
that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will
simply be nonsense." [Wittgenstein
(1972), p.3. (This links to a PDF.)
Paragraphs merged.]
"Most of the propositions and questions
to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.... Most of the
propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand
the logic of our language. (They belong to the same class as the question
whether the good is more or less identical with the beautiful.) All philosophy is a critique of
language.... It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the
apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one." [Ibid.,
4.003-4.0031, p.37. (This links to a PDF.)
Paragraphs merged.]
"In everyday language it very frequently
happens that the same word has different modes of signification -- and so
belongs to different symbols -- or that two words that have different modes of
signification are employed in propositions in what is superficially the same
way. Thus the word 'is' figures as the
copula, as a sign for identity, and as an expression for existence; 'exist'
figures as an intransitive verb like 'go', and 'identical' as an adjective' we
speak of something, but also of
something's happening." [Ibid.,
3.323, p.29.(This links to a PDF.)
Paragraphs merged.]
"Philosophy aims at the clarification of
thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical
work consist essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in
'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of
propositions.... [Philosophy] must set the limits to what can be thought; and,
in doing so, what cannot be thought. It must set the limits to what cannot be
thought by working outwards through what can be thought. It will signify what
cannot be said, by presenting clearly what can be said." [Ibid.,
4.112-4.115, p.49. (This links to a PDF.) Some paragraphs merged.]
"We want to replace wild conjectures and
explanations by quiet weighing of linguistic facts." [Wittgenstein (1981), §447,
p.79.]
"Why is philosophy such a complicated
structure? After all, it should be completely simple if it is that ultimate
thing, independent of all experience, that you make it out to be. Philosophy
unravels the knots in our thinking, hence its results must be simple, but its
activity as complicated as the knots it unravels. Lichtenberg:
'Our entire philosophy is correction [sic] of the use of language, and therefore
the correction of a philosophy -- of the most general philosophy.'... You ask why grammatical problems are so
tough and seemingly ineradicable. -- Because they are connected with the oldest
thought habits, i.e., with the oldest images that are engraved into our language
itself (Lichtenberg)....
"Human beings are deeply imbedded in
philosophical, i.e., grammatical, confusion. And freeing them from these
presuppositions [amounts to?] extricating them from the immensely diverse
associations they are caught up in. One must, as it were, regroup their entire
language. -- But of course this language developed as it did because human
beings had -- and have -- the tendency to think this way. Therefore
extricating them only works with those who live in an instinctive state of
dissatisfaction with language. Language has the
same traps ready for everyone; the immense network of easily trodden false
paths. And thus we see one person after another walking down the same paths....
"One keeps hearing
the remark that philosophy really doesn't make any progress, that the same
philosophical problems that occupied the Greeks keep occupying us. But those who
say that don't understand the reason this must be so. The reason is that our
language has remained constant and keeps seducing us into asking the same
questions. So long as there is a verb 'be' that seems to function like 'eat' and
'drink', so long as there are the adjectives 'identical', 'true', 'false',
'possible', so long as there is talk about a flow of time and an expanse of
space, etc., etc. humans will continue to bump up against the same mysterious
difficulties, and stare at something that no explanation seems able to remove. And this, by the
way, satisfies a longing for the transcendental [an alternative version of the
manuscript has 'supernatural' here -- RL], for in believing that they see the
'limit of human understanding' they of course believe that they can see beyond
it.
"I read
'...philosophers are no nearer to the meaning of 'Reality' than Plato got...'.
What a strange state of affairs. How strange in that case that Plato could get
that far in the first place! Or that after him we were not able to get further.
Was it because Plato was so
clever?" [Wittgenstein (2013), pp.311-12e. Italic emphases in the
original; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. Several paragraphs merged. Link added.]
"When a sentence is
called senseless, it is not, as it were, its sense that is senseless. Rather a
combination of words is being excluded from the language, withdrawn from
circulation." [Ibid.,
§500,
p.147e.
(Again, this links to a PDF.)]
"This again is
connected with the idea that the meaning of a word is an image, or a thing
correlated to the word. (This roughly means, we are looking at words as though
they were proper names, and we then confuse the bearer of a name with the
meaning of the name.)"[Wittgenstein (1969), p.18.]
"Language cannot express what belongs to the essence of the world. Therefore it
cannot say that everything is in flux. Language can only say what we
could also imagine differently." [Wittgenstein (2013),
p.314e. Italic
emphasis in the original.]
[Once more, I am not concerned here to
defend every single one of the above remarks, or, indeed, explain why
Wittgenstein advanced them (or even why I think they are correct) -- I have
largely done that in other Essays posted at this site; for example,
here and
here. This section is, once again,
aimed at showing how Wittgenstein appropriated and then developed ideas
he clearly owed to various Marxists (and possibly, indirectly, to Marx himself),
and thus that he is no enemy of the revolutionary left.]
The result of a consistent application
of Wittgenstein's method will be the complete dissolution of philosophical
problems,
as well as the demolition of the "houses of cards" built by Traditional
Theorists -- the exposure of latent "nonsense" as patent "nonsense":
"What I want to teach is: to pass from
unobvious nonsense to obvious nonsense." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§464,
p.141e.
(This links to a PDF.)]
{"My aim is: to teach you to pass from a
piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense." [Wittgenstein
(1958), §464,
p.133.]}
"But what we are destroying are only
houses of cards, and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they
stood. The results of philosophy are the discovery of some piece of plain
nonsense...." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§§118-19,
p.54e.
(Again, this links to a PDF.)]
"For the clarity that we are aiming at
is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical
problems should completely
disappear.... A main source of our failure to understand is that we don't have
an overview of the use of our words.... A philosophical problem has the form: 'I
don't know my way about.'" [Ibid.,
§§122-23,
pp.54-55e.
(Once more, this links to a PDF.)
Italic emphasis in the original. Some paragraphs merged.]
"All philosophy can
do is to destroy idols. And that means not creating a new one -- say in 'the
absence of an idol.'" [Wittgenstein (2013), p.305e.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
"If I am right, then
philosophical problems really must be solvable without remainder, in contrast to
all others.... The problems are solved in the literal sense of the word --
dissolved like a lump of sugar." [Ibid., p.310e. Paragraphs merged.]
"The philosopher is
someone who has to cure many diseases of the understanding...." [Wittgenstein
(1998), p.50e.]
The application of his method won't
therefore be the discovery of a new set of truths, but a set of truisms with
which no one would think of disagreeing:
"A common-sense person, when he reads
earlier philosophers thinks -- quite rightly -- 'Sheer nonsense'. When he
listens to me, he thinks -- rightly again -- 'Nothing but stale truisms'. That
is how the image of philosophy has changed." [Manuscript 219, quoted in
Kenny (1984b), p.57.]
"If someone were to advance theses in
philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would
agree with them." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§128,
p.56e.
(Once more, this links to a PDF.)]
That is because if someone were to make
a list of 'philosophical' theories (recall that "philosophy" is being used in
Wittgenstein's new sense of this word) it would contain nothing but rather
obvious reminders about how words are ordinarily used, which, since
Wittgenstein's listeners and readers already use them in this way
every day of their lives would leave us with a rather boring list of truisms.
This is partly what lies behind a feeling of extreme disappointment, if not
complete deflation, when those new to Wittgenstein's work first encounter the results
of his method (like those found in
Appendix A, or those in
Essay Five, for instance). From philosophers
they expect wisdom, profound truths about the nature
of 'Being', 'Truth', and the 'Mind', moral guidance, or perhaps some insight
into 'the meaning of life', not a set of banal truisms about how we use
certain words! But, that is all Wittgenstein has to offer -- at least when
he didn't stray into ethics or the philosophy of religion.
If Wittgenstein is right, then, like
Marx, everyone will choose to "leave philosophy" of their own volition since it would
tell them nothing new, or nothing about which they weren't already aware (or
about which they can be made aware by the application of his method), because of their
ordinary use of language -- rather like they would leave the 'paradise' that
Cantor created:
"[A] quotation
from
Hilbert: 'No one is going to turn us out of the paradise which Cantor has
created.' I would say, 'I wouldn't dream of trying to drive anyone out of this
paradise.' I would try to do something quite different: I would try to show
you that it is not a paradise -- so that you'll leave of your own accord. I
would say, 'You're welcome to this; just look about you.' One of the greatest
difficulties I find in explaining what I mean is this: You are inclined to put
our difference in one way, as a difference of opinion. But I am not
trying to persuade you to change your opinion. I am only trying to recommend a
certain sort of investigation. If there is an opinion involved, my only opinion
is that this sort of investigation is immensely important, and very much
against the grain of some of you. If in these lectures I express any other
opinion, I am making a fool of myself." [Wittgenstein
(1976), p.103. Italics in the original. Paragraphs merged; link and
bold emphasis added.]
Hopefully, such individuals would then devote themselves "like an
ordinary man to the study of the actual world", and how to change it, turning
their backs on empty speculation and pointless word-juggling. So, Wittgenstein's
method in effect helps destroy whatever motivation there might be for anyone to
indulge in Traditional Philosophy (that is, when it becomes obvious that its concerns
are in fact pseudo-problems, its theories "houses of cards")
-- and, according to the approach I have adopted at this site, this it does in order to
help clear some space for
genuine science to flourish. [Again, on this see Appendix A.]
Another clear parallel
between Wittgenstein's new "anthropological" approach to language and the views
promoted by Marx and Engels is to be found in the opening sections of the
Investigations. As part of his discussion of what he took to be
Augustine's conception of language, Wittgenstein considers an anecdote about
a very simple human society with a very basic form of 'language':
"[Augustine's words (quoted in
Appendix B
-- RL)] give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is
this: words in language name objects -- sentences are combinations of such
names. -- In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea:
Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the
object for which the word stands. Augustine does not
mention any difference between kinds of word. Someone who describes the learning
of language in this way is, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like 'table',
'chair', 'bread', and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of
certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of words as something
that will take care of itself....
"That philosophical
notion of meaning is at home in a primitive idea of the way language functions.
But one might instead say that it is the idea of a language more primitive than
ours.
Let us imagine a language for which the description given by
Augustine is right: the language is meant to serve for communication between a
builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building
stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass him the
stones and to do so in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose
they make use of a language consisting of the words 'block', 'pillar',
'slab', 'beam'. A calls them out; B brings the stone which he has
learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. -- Conceive of this as a complete
primitive language." [Wittgenstein
(2009), §§1-2, pp.5e-6e.
(This links to a PDF.)
Quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold added.
Several paragraphs merged.]
Now, I do not want to enter into whether
or not the scenario described here by Wittgenstein depicts a
viable form of language, a believable linguistic community/sub-culture, or even that it pictures a remotely
plausible human society, simple or otherwise (although I tend to agree with
Rush Rhees's view that it doesn't
and it
isn't -- Rhees (1970b); cf., also the important and pertinent remarks in
Lamb (1979), pp.36-44; see also below -- and it is possible to argue that
Wittgenstein didn't, either). I merely wish to point out that it is
remarkable (for all that no one seems to have noticed this before!) that
Wittgenstein connects "primitive" language, not with a 'gift from god', nor yet
with something that an individual invents for herself, nor even with the
activation of an innate 'language faculty' -- which ideas represent theories of
language that have
dominated traditional thought for many centuries,
and still do --, but with collective labour and human communication!
As we have seen,
that is precisely how Marx and Engels viewed language.
Of course, as noted above,
Wittgenstein's fanciful 'anecdote' doesn't picture a fully developed (or even plausible) view of language -- to
say the least -- so care must be taken not to read too much into it. Even so, it
underlines the fact that the "anthropological" view Wittgenstein adopted --
even when applied to a "primitive" 'language' --, connects it with human labour.
After outlining the
ridiculous nature of such a simple language (pp.36-43), David Lamb added the
following comment:
"When Wittgenstein
asks us to 'imagine a language where...' he is not saying that this is a
possible language, but simply conducting an exercise to free the philosopher
from certain misconceptions about the nature of language and reality.... Thus if
he asks us to imagine a language consisting of commands..., or of the words
'Block', 'Slab' or 'Stone', he is showing that languages are not the kind of
things we can create arbitrarily and independently of a whole network of
activities people engage in." [Lamb (1979), p.44.]
We already know from his biography about the
importance Wittgenstein placed on manual labour -- which was one of the reasons
he wanted to emigrate to live in the USSR. The fact that he linked language to
collective labour is, therefore, no big surprise.
Wittgenstein even went on to draw an
analogy between words and tools,
and then with the many levers and handles one might find in a locomotive's cabin:
"Think
of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a
rule, a glue-pot, nails, screws. -- The functions of words are as diverse as the
functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are similarities.)
Of course, what
confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them in speech, or
see them written or in print. For their use is not that obvious.
Especially when we are doing philosophy!
"It is like looking
into the cabin of a locomotive. There are handles there, all looking more or
less alike.... But one is the handle of a crank, which can be moved continuously
(it regulates the opening of a valve); another is the handle of a switch, which
has only two operative positions: it is either off or on; a third is the handle
of a brake-lever, the harder one pulls on it, the harder the braking; a fourth,
the handle of a pump: it has an effect only so long as it is moved to and fro."
[Wittgenstein
(2009),
§§11-12, pp.9e-10e.
(This links to a PDF.)
Italic emphasis in the original. Cf., Wittgenstein (1974a),
§351, p.46e.
Some paragraphs merged.]
"I have often
compared language to a tool chest, containing a hammer, chisel, matches, nails,
screws, glue. It is not [by?] chance that all these things have been put
together -- but there are important differences between the different tools --
they are used in a family of ways -- though nothing could be more different than
glue and a chisel...." [Wittgenstein (1970), p.1.]
These analogies were employed by
Wittgenstein to counter the idea that all words operate the same way, as names
(which, as we have seen, was a theory that dominated traditional theories of
language -- on this see Hacking (1975)). But, he also wanted to highlight the
clear connection that exists between language and action,
work
and communication. As he noted elsewhere (in
a remark dated 21/10/1937):
"Language -- I want to say -- is a
refinement, 'in the beginning was the deed'." [Wittgenstein (1998), p.36e; cf.,
Wittgenstein (1974a), §402. Wittgenstein is here quoting
Goethe's
Faust, a passage also quoted by Marx:
Marx (1996), p.97.]
He later added:
"Words are also deeds." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§546,
p.155e.
(Again, this links to a PDF.) Cf., also Wittgenstein (1998), p.53e: "Words are deeds", dated sometime in
1945.]
The Russian
revolutionary,
Nikolay Bukharin,
also picked up on this theme. He had the following to say in a paper read to the Second
International Congress of the History of Science and Technology (held in London,
June and July 1931; there is no evidence that Wittgenstein attended this
congress, but several of his friends did, so it is reasonable to conclude they
probably reported back to him about it):
"And so man is historically given as social man (in contradistinction to
the enlightened Robinsons of Rousseau, 'founding' society and history like a
chess club, and with the help of a 'contract.' This social animal, i.e., human
society, in order to live must produce.Am Anfang war die Tat ['In
the beginning was the deed' -- RL] (in contrast to the Christian Logos: 'In
the beginning was the Word'). Production is the real starting point of
social development." [Bukharin (1971), p.22. Italic
emphases in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Link added.]
This approach plainly emphasises the
active, labour-oriented aspect of human communication and social development,
which Marx and Engels had also highlighted. it, clearly finds echo in
Wittgenstein's work, except he added that the use of
language is part of "the deed", too.
Of course, Robinson Crusoe also featured
in an early version of Wittgenstein's famous 'Private Language Argument':
"Robinson Crusoe may have held
soliloquies. And then he talks to himself alone. But he talks the language he
has talked with people before." [Wittgenstein (1993b), p.320.]
We have
already seen that Marx also referred to Robinson Crusoe:
"The object before us, to begin with,
material production.
Individuals producing in Society -- hence socially determined individual
production -- is, of course, the point of departure. The individual and isolated
hunter and fisherman, with whom
Smith
and
Ricardo
begin, belongs among the unimaginative conceits of the eighteenth-century
Robinsonades, which in no way express
merely a reaction against over-sophistication and a return to a misunderstood
natural life, as cultural historians imagine. As little as
Rousseau'scontrat social, which brings naturally independent, autonomous subjects
into relation and connection by contract, rests on such naturalism. This is the
semblance, the merely aesthetic semblance, of the Robinsonades, great and small.
It is, rather, the anticipation of 'civil society', in preparation since the
sixteenth century and making giant strides towards maturity in the eighteenth.
In this society of free competition, the individual appears detached from the
natural bonds etc. which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of
a definite and limited human conglomerate. Smith and Ricardo still stand with
both feet on the shoulders of the eighteenth-century prophets, in whose
imaginations this eighteenth-century individual -- the product on one side of
the dissolution of the feudal forms of society, on the other side of the new
forces of production developed since the sixteenth century -- appears as an
ideal, whose existence they project into the past. Not as a historic result but
as history's point of departure. As the Natural Individual appropriate to their
notion of human nature, not arising historically, but posited by nature. This
illusion has been common to each new epoch to this day.
Steuart avoided this simple-mindedness
because as an aristocrat and in antithesis to the eighteenth century, he had in
some respects a more historical footing." [Marx
(1986), pp.17-18. Bold emphases and links added. Italics in the
original.]
Easton had this to say, too:
"Wittgenstein's links with Cambridge
have tended to overshadow his connections with German thought, even though
during the period from 1908 to 1937 he spent less than eight years in England,
of which three were spent studying engineering at Manchester University. Through
his association with Russell and Moore, Wittgenstein has been identified with
the English empiricists. Yet many of his ideas, such as the need for a general
critique of language expressed in the Tractatus, had reached maturity before his
contact with Cambridge and had their origins in the post-Kantian tradition
dominating the pre-war Viennese cultural milieu. The later writings also bear
the imprint of these Austrian influences: his abandonment of the
representational view of language for a functional analysis in the
Investigations reflects the move away from ornamentation to functionality in
architecture, as well as the more direct influence of discussion with the
economist Piero Sraffa. In place of a general representational theory,
Wittgenstein focussed on the use of language within a plurality of contexts and
in doing so revealed an affinity with Marx. This is reflected in their approach
to epistemological and philosophical problems which militates against the
erection of fixed dichotomies and antinomies, the endless classification,
polarisation and fragmentation characteristic of much Anglo-Saxon philosophy and
instead appeals to the practice of everyday life to solve philosophical
problems. As Marx says:
'We see how
subjectivity and objectivity, spirituality and materiality, activity and
suffering, lose their antithetical character, and thus their existence as such
antitheses only with the framework of society: we see how the resolution of the
theoretical antitheses is
only possible in a practical way by virtue of the practical energy of
man. Their resolution is therefore by no means merely a problem of
understanding, but a real problem of life, which philosophy could
not solve precisely because it conceived the problem as merely a
theoretical one.'" [Easton (1983), p.2. Italic emphases in the original.
Easton is here quoting
Marx (1975b), p.354.]
The translation of this passage
published in the Penguin edition is, I think, to be preferred (if only for
its use of "passivity" in place of "suffering"!):
"It can be seen how subjectivism and
objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity, lose their
antithetical character, and hence their existence as such antitheses, only in
the social condition; it can be seen how the resolution of the theoretical
antitheses themselves is possible
only in a practical way, only through the practical energy of man,
and how their resolution is for that reason by no means only a problem of
knowledge, but a real problem of life, a problem which philosophy
was unable to solve precisely because it treated it as a purely theoretical
problem." [Marx (1975b), p.354. Italic emphases in the original.]
Easton mentioned architecture in
the above comment, which was partly an allusion to the (very modernist) house in
Vienna Wittgenstein designed in 1926 for his sister, Gretl, and which later
became the communist Bulgarian Embassy.49
Yet another
sheer coincidence?
Possibly it is, but these 'coincidences' are
accumulating rather alarmingly for those who think Wittgenstein was some sort of
conservative.
Figure One: The House Wittgenstein
Helped Design,
Situated in Kundmanngasse, Vienna
Hence, it is
arguable that
Wittgenstein's
novel approach to philosophy and his method represent a logical extension to
Marx's view of language and philosophy (however, I am not suggesting
Wittgenstein saw his work this way -- even though he might very well havedone --, but it is how I see it and, indeed, how I view my own work), except, of course, Marx
had waved Traditional Philosophy "Good-bye!", and didn't bother spend any time
trying to show how the quagmire of distorted language (in which Traditional Philosophers
have mired themselves) has only succeeded in thoroughly confusing them.
Be this as it may,
Wittgenstein and
Marxboth
traced the 'problems' with which Traditional Theorists have wrestled long and
hard back (and to no avail) to their use of "distorted", or "deformed", language.
[Incidentally, I have pushed this approach much further than both of them imagined, in
order to show that all philosophical theories -- not 99%, or even 99.9%
--
but all such theories (from
Anaximander
onwards) are little more than incoherent
non-sense. I have
explained why
here -- but, in much more detail
here.]
In
Appendix A, I have added
several examples -- drawn from one of Friedrich Waismann's books, but written in
conjunction with Wittgenstein -- that show how Philosophical 'problems'
can be dissolved, and how they differ markedly from scientific
problems.
One of the difficulties with
trying to prove to fellow revolutionaries that someone is 'of the left' is that
the bar has already been set rather high. Even worse, it is set at different
heights by different comrades. This is a direct consequence of the
sectarian approach to 'orthodoxy' endemic all across the far-left. A pharisaical
requirement of
doctrinal purity
demanded of all those who are, or claim to be, Marxists is, it seems, a
universal character defect of this corner of the radical market.50
Hence, if comrade, C, is, for
instance, a Trotskyist, then, concerning fellow Marxist, P, unless it can be
shown to C that P is a member of the very same Tendency,
Party, or Micro Sect as C,
C is highly unlikely to accept any amount of evidence, no matter how
comprehensive or persuasive it might be, that purports to show that P is 'of the left' (or, and
what is far more likely, part of 'the genuine left'). The same is true, mutatis
mutandis, if C is a Stalinist, Maoist, or Libertarian Communist
-- or, indeed, hails from some other wing of the myriad options currently on offer in
revolutionary and far-left politics. Hence, the material presented
in this Essay is unlikely to convince anyone who resembles comrade, C,
and this would
still be the case even if that evidence were several orders of magnitude greater than it already is.
So, unless it could be shown that Wittgenstein had been praised to the rafters
by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao -- or some other 'acceptable' figure on the far
left --, or even belonged to the very same Party, Tendency or Tiny Sect as comrade C,
then nothing I have to say will change his/her mind. Such comrades dwell in the
same sort of echo chamber/ideological bubble that many of Donald Trump's
followers inhabit.
Before I consider the 'objections'
raised against the view that Wittgenstein was 'of the left', it is worth
reminding the reader what I am, and what I am not, claiming for
Wittgenstein, and then why I am doing this.
First: the
original Essay was aimed at countering the widely-held opinion (on the far
left) that
Wittgenstein was a
conservative
theorist who sought to "leave
everything as it is". This clichéd view of Wittgenstein has unfortunately
become a knee-jerk reason for dismissing his work out-of-hand ever since. It
has also become a lazy excuse for doing likewise with the ideas of anyone on the
left who hasn't been put off Wittgenstein's work, or who has based their
own approach on his method. Indeed, I have lost count of the number of times I
have been accused of being influenced by the thoughts of this 'bourgeois'
theorist and 'mystic', those advancing such accusations clearly oblivious of the
irony involved, since they seem quite happy to appropriate ideas drawn from that
quintessentially bourgeois mystic, Hegel (upside down or 'the right way
up').
Second: At no point has it ever been
argued, or even so much as suggested, that Wittgenstein was a political activist or
a political theorist. That alone disposes of at least half of the
'objections'.
Third: It has been argued that Wittgenstein's
opinions were left-leaning, and, indeed, were, in many respects,
far to the left of, say, Bertrand Russell's and every other leading
philosopher since at least Marx himself. That doesn't mean Wittgenstein was a Marxist
(but he may have been, as many close to him certainly believed), or even a
revolutionary, simply that he adopted an attenuated form of class politics
coupled with a view of language that was heavily influenced by Marx, Engels and
several other Marxists.
Fourth: it wasn't maintained,
either, that his work contributed in any direct way
to the development of left-wing theory, but that it most certainly is capable of doing just
that,
as this site has sought to demonstrate (even if only negatively, at
present). More to the point, however, his method is capable of showing that
all of Traditional Philosophy
(including DM, although there is no evidence Wittgenstein would have agreed
with that claim -- even if there is much to suggest he should have)
-- and hence a major
slice of ruling-class ideology -- is little more than self-important
hot-air, a conclusion that isn't a million miles removed from
Marx's own stated aims
and intentions.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
In view of the above, what
penetrating, or path-breaking objections do we find over at RevLeft? Here is
ex-SWP honcho, 'Hit
the North' ([HTN], a comrade who used to berate me for not being actively
involved in the UK-SWP, but who should now berate himself for the same reason
since he tells us he has now left that party!), with the following highly complex,
detailed and devastating 'critique':
"If he [Wittgenstein] was a leftist (and
just hanging out with a few, who also happen to be your academic colleagues, is
no proof at all), he wasn't one of any note. Move on."
In the pecking order of leftists who
aren't of 'any note', HTN perhaps ranks above most, so we should take what he says with all due
seriousness. But, is it really of 'no note' that one of the twentieth century's
leading philosophers was 'of the left', and whose method, if he was right,
brings to an end 2500 years of empty, ruling-class speculation? Of course,Wittgenstein
might have been mistaken, but is it really of 'no note' to find out where the
truth lies?
This question may be of 'no note' to HTN
-- which attitude alone confirms his preeminent position at the top of the No
Notist Tendency --, but to those who want to oppose ruling-class ideology --
especially since it has helped cripple Marxism for so long --, it is of
considerable 'note'.
Finally, and true-to-form, HTN ignores
what he can't answer; Wittgenstein didn't just 'hang out' with a few individuals
who just happened to have been his academic colleagues, for they
weren't his academic colleagues to begin with!
They were among his closest friends (some of whom were academics, or
later became academics at Birmingham University, not Cambridge, but
still not
his
academic colleagues), who were also
leading Communist Party members, activists and theorists,
as we have seen. Moreover,
they comprised the vast bulk of his close friends. This isn't something a
non-leftist would choose for him/herself.
Can anyone name a single Conservative, or
even a conservative --
before or since -- with a comparable circle of Marxist and/or socialist
friends, theorists, pupils and activists?
Indeed, a far more pertinent question is this:
Can HTN cite any students, close friends or acquaintances of Wittgenstein's that tell a
different story?
[The only examples of
genuine right-wingers that fall in that category I can think of are
Peter Geach
and
Elizabeth Anscombe. Two, compared to more than a dozen who were of the
left or the far left.]
And, here is self-confessed Wittgenstein
non-expert,
Luis Henrique [LH]:
"It boils down to two facts in Wittgenstein's life: he once
fancied living in the Soviet Union (happily, he changed his mind in time, thus
avoiding becoming more a victim of Stalinist repression, which is what would
have happened to him if he went there), and he was friends with Piero Sraffa,
who was a Marxist, and even thanked the Italian professor for some helpful
insights in the preface of Philosophical Investigations.
"We have discussed the fantasy about living in the SU [Soviet Union,
see below -- RL] elsewhere.
"About Sraffa, he was an economist, who, as far as I know, never wrote about
Ordinary Language Philosophy. Conversely, Wittgenstein never wrote, or even
demonstrated any visible interest, in Sraffa's subject. So whatever insight
Sraffa gave to Wittgenstein, it was something that Sraffa himself didn't think
important enough to write down, and it was not about something in his area of
expertise. So what does that prove? Apparently, that when Wittgenstein and
Sraffa talked to each other, they talked about Wittgenstein's interests, not
Sraffa's. After all, Sraffa didn't thank Wittgenstein for any helpful insight in
the preface of 'Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities', did he?
"Seriously, it would make more sense to try and make the case that
Wittgenstein's philosophic work is valuable for Marxists or leftists in general,
without pretending that he was a leftist, if for no other reason, because the
two issues are completely unrelated, as we can see from the enormous number of
enthusiastic leftists who never made a single important contribution to Marxist
or anarchist theory." [I have corrected minor typos in all of the passages of
LH's I have quoted.]
More than "two facts" in fact, but that
'oversight' might be because LH finds it a challenge to count much beyond one.
Here is a brief
summary of some of the more important facts:
(2) In 1922,
he expressed a desire to go and live In Russia
-- that was soon after the revolution, at the end of the civil war and before
the Bolshevik party became Stalinised. So, he didn't do this justonce,
as LH alleged.
(3) The
vast majority of his
closest friends
were prominent Marxists or other socialists, and almost to a man/woman attested
to Wittgenstein's left-leaning opinions.
(4) Many of Wittgenstein's students in
the 1930s became leading communists (four of whom died in Spain fighting
against
Franco), and called Wittgenstein a "Stalinist", while another informs us
that Wittgenstein told him he was "a communist at heart".
(5) Wittgenstein is on record affirming
his support for the gains workers made as a result of the Russian Revolution,
declaring that he would lose sympathy for the regime there if
class distinctions returned.
(6) He was
offered the chair at Kazan University (Lenin's old college), hardly an offer
that would have been made to a non-red, German speaker at the height of
Russian anti-Nazi paranoia.
(7) He
demonstrated a
workable knowledge of
DM, engaging in
conversation with a leading expert in the field, Professor Yanovskaya. He also
convinced other academics in the USSR he was a good friend of Russia. Several
DM-concepts surface throughout his work, in his 'middle' and 'later' periods.
[See below.]
(8) In the
Preface to his most important work (the Investigations), Wittgenstein
credits a leading Marxist economist (Sraffa) for motivating his most formative ideas. We now know of
striking similarities between their work (on that, see
below, too).
(9) Wittgenstein
quotes (or alludes to) Engels
approvingly in the above book, and uses
an argument developed in
Voloshinov's work. This Russian Marxist was a colleague of a mutual friend of his. He also adopted a social and
anthropological approach to language, as had Voloshinov only a few years
earlier. There are other remarkable similarities between Voloshinov's work and
Wittgenstein's, as there are between Wittgenstein, Marx, Engels and Hegel's work
(see the next point).
(10)
Almost totally unique among Analytic Philosophers, Wittgenstein
questioned the 'Law of Identity',
and raised doubts over the applicability of the 'Law of Non-Contradiction' (even
arguing that one could regard
motion and
change as contradictory!). He also
expressed the opinion that
the theory that everything is in flux (Heraclitus) must be inherent in language --
all of which ideas are central to Hegel's system and DM (upside down or the
'right way up'). Moreover, he employed
arguments and expressions
that can be
found in both Hegel and Engel's writings.
(11)
Just like Marx and Engels, Wittgenstein
regarded language as a social artefact (even
likening words to tools), and connected discourse with practical activity
-- also like Marx --, arguing, for example, that in the beginning "was
the deed".
(14) How many conservatives (large or
small "c") of that time, or even later, would have described Lenin as a "genius"? And yet,
Wittgenstein described him that way.
(15) His only publicly recorded
political act (that we know of) was to
support a communist Students' Convention
in Cambridge in 1940, just when Communism was a dirty word because of the
1939 Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact.
Add to this the lack of evidence to the
contrary; have these critics found any colleagues, friends, students or
acquaintances who tell us Wittgenstein wasn't 'of the left', or that he was a
conservative?51
But, what of this comment from Luis
Henrique [LH]?
"[H]e was friends
with Piero Sraffa, who was a Marxist, and even thanked the Italian professor for
some helpful insights in the preface of Philosophical Investigations."
And yet, these weren't just "some
helpful insights"; as Wittgenstein himself acknowledged:
"Even more than this...criticism, I am indebted to that which a teacher of this
university, Mr P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly applied to my thoughts.
It is to this stimulus that I owe the most fruitful ideas of this book." [Wittgenstein
(2009), p.4e.
(This links to a PDF.)
Bold emphasis added.]
Notice, he credits Sraffa with providing
him with "the most fruitful ideas of this book". Once again, LH fails miserably
when even a minimum level of accuracy is called for.
LH then remarks:
"About Sraffa, he was
an economist, who, as far as I know, never wrote about Ordinary Language
Philosophy."
Who on earth has ever argued that
Sraffa wrote about "Ordinary Language Philosophy" [OLP]? Not even
Wittgenstein did that! As I noted in the
original Essay:
It is also worth
pointing out that even though OLP is often associated with Wittgenstein's work,
this identification is misleading, since it blurs the significant differences
that exist between his method and that of the so-called "Oxford Ordinary
Language Philosophers".
I also added this comment:
In addition to
Marxist misrepresentations of Wittgenstein's views, there is an equally spurious
idea that his work is of a piece with the
Oxford OLP of
Ryle,
Austin,
Warnock,
Strawson, Urmson and
Hampshire. Beyond a few superficial similarities, Wittgenstein's work bears
little or no resemblance to "Oxford Philosophy". [On that, see Cavell (1971) and
Dummett (1960).]
[For
an example of at least one major difference between Wittgenstein's method and
Oxford OLP, see below.
See also my reply to Marcuse's 'objections',
here and
here.]
Not only is LH's objection irrelevant,
it is based on a serious error on his part.
Even so, a recently discovered
note written by Sraffa indicates he was actively interested in ordinary
language, and he communicated this to Wittgenstein:
"If the rules of
language can be constructed only by observation, there never can be any nonsense
said. This identifies the cause and meaning of a word. The language of
birds and the language of metaphysics can be interpreted in this way.... And if nonsense is a
'mere noise' it certainly must happen.... We should give up
with generalities and take particular cases, from which we started. Take
conditional propositions: when are they nonsense and when are they not?
"'If I were a king'
is nonsense. For either I, or the job, would have to be entirely different....
"'If I were a
lecturer' has sense....
"Then of course there
are the propositions where 'if' stands for 'when'...." [Note from Sraffa to
Wittgenstein written in Sraffa's own hand, January-February 1932; reprinted in
Wittgenstein (2012), p.196. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. (I have quoted only about a third of the note
in question.) Several paragraphs merged.]
Not much can be concluded from this
except that it confirms that Sraffa and Wittgenstein exchanged ideas about (i)
The nature of language, (ii) Conditionals, and (iii) What does or does
not constitute "nonsense".
There is also this comment of Sraffa's
(which concerns Wittgenstein's 'therapeutic' method for dispelling metaphysical
puzzles, outlined in the Blue and Brown Books):
"When you [Wittgenstein] describe the cause of these puzzles
and prescribe the remedy you act as a scientist (like Freud). Have you found out
whether these puzzles have in fact arisen out of this attitude to language, have
you made sure that they did not exist before anyone took that attitude? And
also, is it a fact that the disease is cured by your prescriptions? Even if this
is so, you have only based it on your assertion, you have not given the evidence
(Cp. the mass of actual examples produced by Freud). [Quoted in Engelmann
(2012), p.228, who in turn was quoting a re-formatted version of Sraffa's Notes
published in
Venturinha (2012).
Italic emphasis
in the original.]
Venturinha adds:
"This document
consists of a series of notes on Wittgenstein’s 'Blue Book', dictated in
1933-34, written by Sraffa on the back of two diary sheets dated 'October 1941'
and on the front and back of an envelope. Included in the folder (Sraffa/I21) is
a letter from Sraffa to von Wright dated 27 August 1958, which reads:
'On comparing my copy of the Blue Book with the recently published edition I
find that it contains a number of small corrections in Wittgenstein's
handwriting which have not been taken into account in the printed version. I
suppose that he made these corrections when he gave me the book which was
shortly after the death of Skinner, to whom it had originally belonged.'"
[Venturinha (2012); quoted from
here. Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site.]52
Were those
alterations the result of Sraffa's criticisms? We have as yet no evidence either
way.
[I have added Sraffa's Notations to
Note 52. See also Engelmann (2012), pp.172-73, 178.]
We have also seen that these questions
(about language) were also central concerns of the
Bakhtin Circle
(which included Voloshinov), a group that enjoyed links with Gramsci, and in turn
with Sraffa. Indeed,
as we have also seen, it was
precisely this that helped move Wittgenstein in an entirely new direction.
But, what about the following from LH?
"Conversely,
Wittgenstein never wrote, or even demonstrated any visible interest, in Sraffa's
subject. So whatever insight Sraffa gave to Wittgenstein, it was something that
Sraffa himself didn't think important enough to write down, and it was not about
something in his area of expertise. So what does that prove? Apparently, that
when Wittgenstein and Sraffa talked to each other, they talked about
Wittgenstein's interests, not Sraffa's. After all, Sraffa didn't thank
Wittgenstein for any helpful insight in the preface of 'Production of
Commodities by Means of Commodities', did he?"
This comrade misses the point, once more, which
isn't that these two influenced each other, but that a leading Marxist
economist had an important influence on Wittgenstein's change of direction,
toward an anthropological and social interpretation of language and knowledge
in line with ideas coming out of the USSR and the far left in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s
(which, of course, had in turn originated in Marx and Engels's work).
Now, LH has no idea whether or not
Sraffa wrote any of this down (except, we
now know that he did,
just as we also know that these two did discuss economics -- on that, see below), but
that didn't prevent LH from asserting the opposite (from a position of almost
total ignorance).
From this one can only hope LH learns not
to keep leading with his chin.
And, what does LH mean by "area of
expertise"? Is he seriously arguing that Sraffa didn't know any ordinary
language, or any of the ideas about language expressed by Marx and Engels? Or by
Gramsci, Bakhtin and Voloshinov? If so, he unwisely omitted the evidence
supporting that rather peculiar idea.
And, speaking of irrelevance, we
chance upon this strange remark of LH's:
"After all, Sraffa
didn't thank Wittgenstein for any helpful insight in the preface of 'Production
of Commodities by Means of Commodities', did he?"
If my argument had been: Wittgenstein
and Sraffa influenced each other, LH would have had a point, but it
wasn't, so he hasn't. But, there is evidence that Sraffa's work was
influenced by Wittgenstein.
"During the periods
when they were both at Cambridge, Wittgenstein and Sraffa would in general spend
one afternoon a week together, discussion ranging far and wide rather than
specifically dwelling on philosophy and economics as such. However their
debates had a decisive influence on the Austrian philosopher, with his
transition from the logical atomism of the
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to the mature positions emerging in the
Philosophical Investigations....
"...[I]n the
Philosophical Investigations,
Wittgenstein went on to abandon the idea of language as a univocal
representation of the world, as well as the idea of the 'unspeakable'.
Discussions with Sraffa seem to have played a role in this change....
"We shall see later
on...how the change in Wittgenstein's philosophical position can be compared
with the differences between the marginalist approach of general economic
equilibrium and Sraffa's theoretical contribution.... We may perhaps detect
Sraffa's political interests behind his opposition to an a priori theory
of language, and his preference for a theory open to recognition of the role
played by social factors. Although it is difficult to specify its precise nature
given the scant documentation, there can be no doubt that Sraffa had a
significant influence on Wittgenstein's thinking, and in this way on the course
of contemporary philosophy.
[Added in a footnote:
"The Sraffa-Wittgenstein correspondence recently acquired by Trinity College
(Cambridge) might cast further light on this." [Roncaglia (2009), pp.25-28. Bold
emphasis added.]54
About this new material, John Davis (one
of the leading researchers in the field) had this to say:
"The availability of Piero Sraffa's unpublished manuscripts
and correspondence at Trinity College Library, Cambridge, has made it possible
to begin to set out a more complete account of Sraffa's philosophical thinking
than previously could be done with only his published materials and the few
comments and suggestions made by others about his ideas, especially in
connection with their possible impact on Ludwig Wittgenstein's later thinking.
This makes a direct rather than indirect examination of Sraffa's philosophical
thinking possible, and also shifts the focus from his relationship to
Wittgenstein to his own thinking per se. I suggest that the previous focus,
necessary as it may have been prior to the availability of the unpublished
materials, involved some distortion of Sraffa's thinking by virtue of its
framing in terms of Wittgenstein's concerns as reflected in the concerns of
scholars primarily interested in the change in the his thinking. This paper
seeks to locate these early convictions in this historical context, and then go
on to treat the development of Sraffa's philosophical thinking as a process
beginning from this point, arguing that his thinking underwent one significant
shift around 1931, but still retained its early key assumptions. Thus the
approach I will take to Sraffa's philosophical thinking is to explain it as a
process of development largely within a single framework defined by his view of
how modern science determines the scope and limits upon economic theorizing." [Davis
(2011). This links to a PDF. Accessed 31/08/2013.]
After pointing out that both Sraffa and
Wittgenstein were opposed to
Physicalism, Davis adds:
"However, one way to
proceed -- albeit with many caveats -- would be to begin with the judgment
Sraffa makes in his 'Surplus Product' paper about how the 'economic field' is
influenced by the 'outside causes which operate in it'...and attempt to relate
this idea as it may be found in Production of Commodities to comparable
ideas in Wittgenstein's later thinking, on the grounds that they seem to have
shared a similar overall view after 1931. I sketch such an argument here as one
strategy for investigating Sraffa's mature philosophical views.
"Sraffa's judgment
can be better understood by contrasting it with what he does not say. He does
not say that the 'economic field' is simply affected tout court by 'outside
causes' impinging upon it, but rather says that these 'outside causes' work
within the 'economic field' in a such a way as to modify its functioning. His
case is that of economies that produce a surplus where distribution, which is
not determined objectively as are the values of commodities in terms of physical
real cost, nonetheless comes to play a role in the determination of commodity
values. In effect, in his later thinking Sraffa regards the 'economic field' as
what can be described as only a relatively autonomous domain in that its own
functioning is changed by those outside forces associated with distributional
changes that operate within it. Indeed, the 'economic field' would only be fully
autonomous in economies that do not produce a surplus in that their functioning
would be fully determined in terms of objective physical real costs. But such
economies were not Sraffa's chief concern. Critics might argue of course that
the idea that 'economic field' was only 'relatively autonomous' could only be
conjectured and that there was no evident reason to attribute it this character.
But Sraffa anticipated this criticism in Production of Commodities where
he demonstrated that the 'economic field' indeed has this relatively autonomous
character within his equation system from the perspective of the standard system
and standard commodity device. From this perspective, Sraffa's modified
post-1931 objectivism is a subtle one in that it both preserves a physical basis
for the world of production and at the same time shows it to be influenced by a
social activity that operates upon and within it.
"Consider, then, Wittgenstein's later thinking.... It has
been argued that one thing central to Wittgenstein's later thinking is his
critique of the idea of a private language via his account of rule following in
language games.... Wittgenstein's argument can be understood as saying that all
languages are rule-governed, and that since rule-following is a public activity,
language meaning must be determined in public settings in the various different
language games in which we use it. A private language, however, were it
conceivable, would seem to be one that is fully autonomous. I suggest, then,
that parallel to Sraffa's view above, language games were conceived of as
relatively autonomous by Wittgenstein, just as were types of commodity
production by Sraffa. The one involves determining meaning and the other
involves determining value (two different sorts of production), and the
rule-governed character of the former, understood by Wittgenstein in terms of an
ordinary physicalistic object language, is comparable to the quantitative
determination of the latter, understood objectively by Sraffa in terms of
physical real cost. At the same time, just as for Sraffa commodity value
determination depends on distributional factors that operate within the
'economic field,' so also for Wittgenstein rule-following depends on social
practices that are not part of language-games but nonetheless operate within
them. There seems to be a parallel, then, between the later Wittgenstein and the
later Sraffa as concerns their shared understanding of the idea of the relative
autonomy of natural/physical systems that are nonetheless influenced by the
human world. Put differently, they seem to share a conception of just how the
natural and social worlds ought to be seen as connected which treats the former
naturalistically and the latter historically." [Ibid.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Minor typo corrected; italic emphases added.]
And here is the abstract of another
paper -- 'Sraffa and the Later Wittgenstein', by Ajit Sinha:
"This paper is an attempt at
establishing the philosophical underpinnings and thus a deeper understanding of
Sraffa's enigmatic book, particularly in the light of his well acknowledged
influence on Wittgenstein's later philosophy or perhaps their mutual influence
on each other's thinking during the period of late 1920s and 30s. It identifies
and highlights certain parallels between the theoretical propositions of Sraffa
in the Production of Commodities and the later Wittgenstein's propositions
regarding his philosophy of language and meaning. It argues that both Sraffa and
the later Wittgenstein eschew essentialism; both propose descriptive as opposed
to predictive theories; and both are concerned with establishing the context
that distinguishes sense from non-sense. It goes on to argue that it is
unconvincing to suggest, as some scholars have done, that Sraffa's influence on
Wittgenstein could either be located at his purported attack on the atomism of
the Tractatus or its critique from the Gramscian perspective." [Quoted from
here. I haven't yet been able to access this paper.]
I will pass no comment on the above
opinions, except to note that as this new material is emerging and is then examined
by scholars, a much clearer picture of the influence these two had
on each other is bound to emerge. But it can no longer be doubted that
they did influence each other. This new material also shows that these
two discussed current affairs as well as politics.55
Moreover, most of Wittgenstein's
unpublished manuscripts (estimated to be approximately four million words) have
only become widely available in the last ten years or so, and more are being
discovered all the time. On that, see
below.56
LH ends with this flourish:
"Seriously, it would
make more sense to try and make the case that Wittgenstein's philosophic work is
valuable for Marxists or leftists in general, without pretending that he was a
leftist, if for no other reason, because the two issues are completely
unrelated, as we can see from the enormous number of enthusiastic leftists who
never made a single important contribution to Marxist or anarchist theory."
(a) I have
made that case, as have several others, but LH refuses to read this material, so no wonder he still thinks
the case has yet to be made. The words "ignorance", "is", and "bliss" oddly come
to mind at this point.
(b) The point is that revolutionaries in
general have dismissed Wittgenstein's work on the grounds that he wasn't
'of the left', and that he was a conservative mystic (Marcuse being a
notorious example of this attitude; on that, see
here and
here). So, it
is important to show that this is a serious mistake on all of their parts.
"Now the place of
Sraffa in the collection has indeed been considerably enlarged, since a large
number of letters from Wittgenstein and some memoranda written for Wittgenstein
by him have come to light.... These enable us to form rather more than a
speculative idea of the conversations to which Wittgenstein ascribed much of the
inspiration of his
Philosophical Investigations." [Editor's Introduction to Wittgenstein
(2012), p.1.]
This new edition of his letters is now
about three times the size it was when
first published in the 1970s. [I have
already quoted several
recently discovered notes from Sraffa to Wittgenstein.] There is no reason to
conclude that more documents won't come to light in the future.
"A rediscovered
archive could shed new light on the work of renowned philosopher, Ludwig
Wittgenstein. Professor Arthur Gibson, from the University of Cambridge, has
been examining books and papers which disappeared from public view in 1941. He
believes that one of these could be the 'pink' or 'yellow' book Wittgenstein's
pupils thought existed. He said there was also a handwritten Brown Book which
differs from the version that was published.
"Wittgenstein, who
taught philosophy at Trinity College in Cambridge, was a prolific writer but
published very little. The work now being examined has been described by Prof
Gibson as 'entirely original philosophy whose existence, apart from the Brown
Book was totally unknown to scholars'. It dates mostly from Wittgenstein's
'middle period', November 1932 to July 1936 and, like most of his work, was
never published or made public in his lifetime....
"When his scribe,
Francis Skinner, died in 1941, Wittgenstein packed the papers into two boxes and
sent them to a former pupil, Reuben Goodstein. In the 1970s Goodstein gave the
archive to the Mathematical Association. He had been president of the
institution during the 1950s. It was later loaned to Trinity College and it was
not until three years ago that Prof Gibson began working through the material at
the request of the association. The boxes contained handwritten exercise books,
lecture notes and papers amounting to more than 150,000 words. 'This archive is at
least as important as the Blue and Brown Books which were published after
Wittgenstein's death and has other important unpublished manuscripts,' Prof
Gibson said....
"Among these is one
with a pink cover containing some 'unknown narrative and many visual
illustrations'. Prof Gibson believes that this is the hoped-for 'pink book'.
Another 'significant' find was a handwritten version of Wittgenstein's Brown
Book with a revised opening and an extra 60 pages. 'It's a unique, new
version that no-one has ever seen,' Prof Gibson said. 'It appears to be ready
for publishing as much of it is fair copy complete with instructions for the
publisher.'
"Prof Gibson said
Wittgenstein was frequently uncertain about whether he was writing one or a
number of books. He said that the archive also helped to clarify the closeness
of the relationship between the philosopher and Francis Skinner, with whom he
lived in Cambridge. 'Many people assumed
that Skinner was simply one of many students working as note-takers for
Wittgenstein. But these handwritten manuscripts make it clear that they were
working side-by-side, with Skinner taking dictation and Wittgenstein making his
own amendments in the margins and on facing pages,' he said.
"Prof Gibson hopes to publish the contents of the archive
later in the year. He said it would be a fitting tribute to Wittgenstein who
died 60 years ago, on 29 April 1951." [BBC
News, 28/04/2011. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site; several paragraphs merged.]57
"Material gives fresh insight into
philosopher's mind and relationship with
[his] young male lover and amanuensis. In the rarefied
world of Wittgenstein scholarship it is little short of
astonishing: an untapped, lost archive of original material
which provides fresh insights into the utterly brilliant but
undeniably troubled mind of a man who could lay claim to
being the 20th century's pre-eminent philosopher. The Cambridge
academic Prof Arthur Gibson revealed on Tuesday that he had
spent much of the past three years working his way through
an archive of Ludwig Wittgenstein material which disappeared
in the chaos of the second world war. The archive, around
170,000 words plus mathematical equations, provides fresh
insights into the philosopher's mind and also shines a
fascinating light on the complex relationship he had with
the man who, as amanuensis, put most of the words on to
paper -- his young male lover Francis Skinner.
"Gibson recalled
when he first opened the archive: 'I was just stunned. It
was astonishing because it's a whole archive, never seen
before and most of it entirely new. It provides an insight
into his thought processes -- you're almost peering into his
mind.' Wittgenstein dictated most of the archive to Skinner
and it shows just how close the two were.
Indeed, it was Skinner's untimely death at
29 which led to the archive being lost in
the first place. It was 1941 and Skinner
was, not for the first time, ill with polio
and taken into hospital in Cambridge for
treatment. At about the same time, hundreds
of other patients were brought in because of
heavy bombing on a nearby RAF base. In the
confusion, Skinner was left in a corridor,
forgotten for about for 16 hours. He died
seven days later with the distraught older
man by his side. Skinner's death
'provoked just about a nervous breakdown' in Wittgenstein,
said Gibson.
"They had lived together, holidayed together and
at one stage learned Russian together with the grand plan of
emigrating to the Soviet Union and become farmers or medics. In his grief, the
philosopher more or less shoved the archive in the post to
one of his other students, where it remained, hidden away
and unexplored until today, almost 60 years after
Wittgenstein's death on 29 April 1951. It has some
eye-popping elements, not least the only
known handwritten version of Wittgenstein's
Brown Book -- notes from his Cambridge
lectures in the mid-1930s. There are an
additional 60 pages of manuscript for the
Brown Book with a revised opening and other
changes. Gibson also believes that a pinkish
Norwegian school exercise book in the
archive, which has a complete and previously
unknown narrative, may in fact be a missing
Wittgenstein gem -- something talked about
but never seen. 'This may or may not be the
missing item called the Pink Book or Yellow
Book that scholars have long been hoping
for.' There is also a series of thousands of
mathematical calculations in which
Wittgenstein examines Fermat's little
theorem. 'It's an extraordinary, even
bizarre, and yet original series of
calculations,' said Gibson.
"That the archive's rich
seams have been unmined for all these years
is down to circumstance more than anything.
It was given to the Mathematical Association
[MA -- RL] by its former president Reuben
Goodstein in 1976 but, lacking professional
archivists, the MA did not really appreciate
what it had. In more recent years, the
archive was handed by the MA to Trinity
College to investigate -- a huge job
eventually undertaken by Gibson. The
material will add much to the knowledge of a
man who was as eccentric as he was
brilliant. For example, it had previously
been assumed Skinner was one of a number of
students taking notes, but Gibson can show
that he was not just the chief scribe -- he
was in-house partner and co-editor, far more
important to Wittgenstein's philosophy than
previously thought. Much of the dictation
may have been made from the deckchair
Wittgenstein sat on in his otherwise empty
-- apart from a heater -- room at Trinity.
"'He was very austere,
yes, although it was a bit of a fetish,'
said Gibson, who is now dotting the i's and
crossing the t's on his research, which will
be published in a book within the year. For
Gibson, it has been something of a labour of
love because of his strong links with
Wittgenstein. As an undergraduate at
Cambridge he was taught by two of the great
man's most distinguished students, Elizabeth
Anscombe and Peter Geach. 'The archive shows
that unpredicted and new revolutionary
matters still await us in Wittgenstein's
philosophy and scientific knowledge that we
incorrectly think we already understand,'
said Gibson." [Quoted from
here; accessed 27/08/2013.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. See also the
Cambridge University site for more details. Several
paragraphs merged.]
Finally, this new material (especially
the recently discovered notes and letters) largely supports the case presented
in this Essay, but it is no less significant that none of it supports the
opposing view.
Now, as far
Luis Henrique's [LH's] comments about Wittgenstein and the fSU
are concerned (alongside several other topics he discussed), this is what I have
managed to discover in his earlier posts at RevLeft (each numbered
heading contains a link to the webpage involved); as noted earlier, many of
these links, if not all, no longer work:
"At the time he tried to immigrate, the
SovietUnion was anti-worker itself."
Sure, we know that now, but at
the time Wittgenstein thought workers had
made major gains as a result of the revolution, and that it was
indeed a classless
society. That shows that he, at least, was pro-working class even if he was
ignorant of the true nature of Stalin's Russia.
"Being close to Marxism is one thing,
being close to class struggle is another. What relation did he have to class
struggle? Did he even ever noticed [sic] the existence of social classes? On the
other hand, what relation did he have to Marxism? Is there any indication that
he ever read anything by Marx or any Marxist writer?
"I am sorry, but what I see is a philosopher completely removed from practical
politics or political practice, who seems to seldom have even wondered about
society, much less about social inequality, and even less about the causes of
social inequality.
"I would say that, even if you restrict the universe to non-Marxist thinkers,
there would still be lots of prominent thinkers that were closer to class
struggle than Wittgenstein. Russell, obviously, Einstein, Keynes, Veblen, Hannah
Arendt, Barthes, Baudrillard, Isaiah Berlin, Simone Weil, for instance."
Of course, many of these questions
(which, in LH's case, arise from his manifest ignorance of the material in
question --
some of which was in fact included in the
original Essay, which he either
didn't read, or he did so with a bag over his head) have been answered in the
material presented above.
"I am sorry, but what
I see is a philosopher completely removed from practical politics or political
practice, who seems to seldom have even wondered about society, much less about
social inequality, and even less about the causes of social inequality."
Well, it is pretty decent of LH to
apologise for his self-inflicted ignorance, but his caricature of
Wittgenstein (which mirrors widely held and no less erroneous views held of
him by many on the left) is misguided:
(i) As we now know, he wasn't "removed
from practical politics" (see the above material); and,
(ii) It was never argued that he was a
left-wing activist.
"One day I asked him
why he never stated any political views or discussed politics in any of his
lectures. His reply was interesting. He said he could not do so but that
one day he would give a lecture or talk explaining why he could not. He
never gave such a lecture or talk while I was still attending his classes."
[Theodore Redpath, in Flowers (1999), p.47. Italic emphases in the
original.]
As Redpath notes, we don't know whether
or not he ever did give that lecture, but new material pertaining to his writings and
lectures is
constantly turning up.
LH, again:
"I would say that,
even if you restrict the universe to non-Marxist thinkers, there would still be
lots of prominent thinkers that were closer to class struggle than Wittgenstein.
Russell, obviously, Einstein, Keynes, Veblen, Hannah Arendt, Barthes,
Baudrillard, Isaiah Berlin, Simone Weil, for instance."
I'd like to see the evidence that some
of the above were 'closer to the class struggle' than Wittgenstein; but, even
if they were, so what? It had nowhere been part of the case presented in the
original Essay, or here, that others were 'closer to the class struggle' than
Wittgenstein, only that he has been badly misrepresented by the left for many
years. Moreover, none of those mentioned by LH are in the same league as
Wittgenstein, which is why I asserted the following in the original Essay (and
have repeated it in this one, too):
Rhees and Monk record the many
sympathetic remarks Wittgenstein made about Marxism, about workers and about
revolutionary activity in general. While these aren't in themselves models of
'orthodoxy', they reveal how close Wittgenstein came to adopting an attenuated
and nuanced form of class politics in the 1930s -- certainly closer than any
other major philosopher since Marx himself.
The only
other individual in LH's list who could be regarded as a "major philosopher" was
Russell (and he was an anti-Soviet commentator), and Wittgenstein's views
were markedly to the left even of Russell's. Of course, Einstein, Veblen, Arendt and
Keynes weren't philosophers to begin with, and it is arguable that
Barthes wasn't either. So what they are doing in LH's list is mysterious, to say
the least.
"His attraction to
the SovietUnion,
however, seems to have had nothing to do with politics. Rather it seems that
Wittgenstein had a problem with being an intellectual, and yearned for a simple,
unsophisticated existence as a manual labourer (or, perhaps, yearned for
symbolic punishment for his perceived faults). Thence his attempts at living a
'useful' life -- as a soldier, a teacher, a gardener, a bureaucratic employee at
a public pharmacy, etc, culminating with his attempt to become a manual worker
in the SovietUnion (probably partially motivated by the common
anti-communist fantasy about 'reeducation' of intellectuals through hard labour
in the SU). In other words, he seemed to be in pursuit of some kind of hell
where he could pay for his sins, and the SovietUnion for a brief time seemed a suitable one. But
I see no signs that this translated, in any way, into political support for the
SovietUnion, not
even in the Sidney/Beatrice Webb fashion of support for the
Soviet State without any consideration of working
class issues."
While there is a grain of truth in what
LH has to say here, we have seen (again, in the material presented above, and in
the original Essay) that Wittgenstein had very clearly expressed political
reasons for wanting to live in the USSR -- indeed, as Keynes himself pointed
out:
"Dr Wittgenstein....a distinguished philosopher, is a very
old and intimate friend of mine, and I should be extremely grateful for anything
you could do for him. I must leave it to him to tell you his reasons for wanting
to go to Russia. He is not a member of the Communist Party, but has strong
sympathies with the way of life which he believes the new regime in Russia
stands for." [Quoted from
here. Bold emphasis added.]
Moreover, he impressed those with whom he met
during that visit of his support for the Soviet regime, as Moran notes:
"In 1935, according to Mrs Gornstein
[Professor of Philosophy in Leningrad -- RL], Wittgenstein visited her in
Leningrad and offered to give a philosophy course at Leningrad University where
she was in charge. At her request, he sent her a copy of
The Yellow Book. She said he impressed her as a genuine friend of the
Soviet Union, and she added that if her memory was correct, he was then
president of the Society of Friends of Soviet Russia. She recalled that he
mentioned his chat with Maisky, and that he spoke Russian reasonably well."
[Quoted from
here.]
He repeatedly expressed his support for
the gains he thought workers had made -- indeed, he believed the USSR was
a classless society -- , and he said that he would cease to support the regime if class divisions returned. These all sound like political and
socialist reasons to me (even if he was mistaken over the true
nature of the Stalinised USSR).
Philosopher Jay
(quoted only so that LH's replies to 'him' make more sense):
"I think the fact
that he visited the SovietUnion at a time that there was an intense boycott
of the SovietUnion
was a sign of political support. One does not necessarily have to use words to
show support."
LH: "And what did he support? Something that
happened in 1917, or what was actually going on in the SU at the time of his
visit? The revolution or Stalin's Thermidor?" [Paragraphs merged.]
Again, LH exposes his ignorance, for
these issues were cleared up in the original Essay (and have been again, above).
We know that Wittgenstein wanted to move to Russian in 1922, and at a time
when he was known by those with whom he worked as a "left-winger", so we can
safely conclude that he supported the gains made in 1917 -- especially since he
called Lenin a "genius".
Unfortunately, he also supported the
fSU of the 1930s. So, like many others, but unlike
Rush Rhees, he failed to see clearly what had become of the revolution.
However, when challenged by Rhees (who was at that time becoming a Trotskyist)
-- and as noted several times already -- he said that
his support was
conditional on there being no class divisions in Russia.
"The situation was quite complex at the
time. He visited the SovietUnion in 1935 and I believe things got a lot
worse only in 1936 when the Moscow show trials started.
"I think people underestimate the effect Adolf Hitler had on Stalin. Stalin was
in no way the equivalent of Hitler, but he was pragmatic. He noted that Adolf
Hitler had ripped up all democratic norms violently and ruthlessly eliminating
his opposition from1933 through 1935. He was preparing the country for immediate
war against the Soviet
Union. Stalin simply adopted the violent wartime measures that had worked
for Hitler. We should recognize that it was done in a modified form and was not
the same as the insane and mindless sadism of the Nazis.
"In any case, I think the important thing to remember about Wittgenstein is that
he was not anti-gay marriage nor anti-Soviet. I don't think his philosophy is
particularly Marxist, but neither is it anti-Marxist. There are many things in
it quite compatible with a Marxist outlook. He was anti-metaphysical and
understood that language only had meaning within an historical-human context."
LH: "So this shows that
he actually didn't support Stalinism. Good for him. What does that say about his
grasp of political situations? Hadn't he noticed the nature of the Stalinist
regime before going there? What were his particular delusions (sic) about the
regime? Did he ever believe it had anything to do with the working class? (Other
people failed, or even refused, to see what Stalinism was, out of a misguided
loyalty to the very Revolution that Stalinism betrayed -- but how would that be
the case for a thinker who, as far as I am informed, never spent two seconds of
his time wondering about the Russian Revolution?)...."
In fact, he did support Stalin --
those who knew him pointedly called him a "Stalinist" --, but it was also clear
that this meant he supported what Stalin's "regime stood for" as he
(Wittgenstein) understood things, which support was conditional on class division not
returning to Russia. So, his "grasp of political situations" was quite good;
good enough to impress Ambassador Maisky (in London), as well as various
Professors of Philosophy and others he met in Russia.
It would be interesting to see how LH
knows that Wittgenstein "never spent two seconds...wondering about the Russian
Revolution", especially since the evidence presented in the original Essay, and
above, tells a different story.
LH, again:
"'Anti-metaphysical' means different
things for different people, and I am far from sure that his peculiar way of
being 'anti-metaphysical' shouldn't be considered 'metaphysical' itself from a
Marxist point of view (and, conversely, that he wouldn't dismiss Marxism as a
form of 'metaphysics' if he ever deigned to pay any attention to Marxism)."
Once more, as we have seen,
it is quite clear what Wittgenstein meant by "metaphysics", and what he meant by
this word agrees with how it has been understood since at least Descartes's day.
[On that, see
here and here.]
And sure, one could characterise the
sort of anti-metaphysics Wittgenstein advocated, or even the approach adopted at
this site, in the way LH does, but that doesn't affect the actual arguments I
have advanced -- and by implication, it won't affect Wittgenstein's, either.
All this is quite apart from the fact
that it isn't at all clear what "the Marxist point of view" on this
actually is, and LH
certainly offers his readers no guidance in this regard. [Follow the two links
above for what I think about this topic.] It isn't obvious, either, who
exactly is dismissing Marxism as metaphysical; certainly I am not, and
Wittgenstein is on record calling Marx's theory of history "scientific". Once
again, LH has only succeeded in revealing he knows very little about this subject,
even though he still seems happy to pontificate about it.
LH:
"And I think the part on 'understood
that language only had meaning within an historical-human context' is simply
false. He lacked any sense of History; doesn't seem to have been interested in
History at all; his method in Philosophical Investigations manifestly fails to
take History in account, everything being phrased and considered as if language
magically emerged ex-nihilo a second ago. He doesn't even seem to take into
consideration the differences and contrasts between different modern languages
-- he talks about 'looking at how words are used' but doesn't seem to notice the
contrasts between the way they are used, for instance, in German and English,
two languages he was fluent in." [Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
Once again, LH omitted the evidence that
supports the allegation that Wittgenstein wasn't interested in history.
Wittgenstein's comments about Marxism, however, paint a different picture; they
show he certainly knew about Marx's theory of history -- he even called it
"scientific". Nor is it true that the Investigations
"fails to take History into account"; indeed it begins with a brief
discussion of Augustine of Hippo. And the many things Wittgenstein had to say
about language hardly support the view that he thought it had "magically emerged
ex-nihilo a second ago" -- for example:
"Why is philosophy such a complicated
structure? After all, it should be completely simple if it is that ultimate
thing, independent of all experience, that you make it out to be. Philosophy
unravels the knots in our thinking, hence its results must be simple, but its
activity as complicated as the knots it unravels.
"Lichtenberg:
'Our entire philosophy is correction of the use of language, and therefore the
correction of a philosophy -- of the most general philosophy.'...
"You ask why grammatical problems are so
tough and seemingly ineradicable. -- Because they are connected with the oldest
thought habits, i.e., with the oldest images that are engraved into our language
itself (Lichtenberg)....
"Human beings are deeply imbedded in
philosophical, i.e., grammatical, confusion. And freeing them from these
presuppositions [amounts to?] extricating them from the immensely diverse
associations they are caught up in. One must, as it were, regroup their entire
language. -- But of course this language developed as it did because human
beings had -- and have -- the tendency to think this way. Therefore
extricating them only works with those who live in an instinctive state of
dissatisfaction with language. Language has the same traps ready for everyone;
the immense network of easily trodden false paths. And thus we see one person
after another walking down the same paths....
"One keeps hearing
the remark that philosophy really doesn't make any progress, that the same
philosophical problems that occupied the Greeks keep occupying us. But those who
say that don't understand the reason this must be so. The reason is that our
language has remained constant and keeps seducing us into asking the same
questions. So long as there is a verb 'be' that seems to function like 'eat' and
'drink', so long as there are the adjectives 'identical', 'true', 'false',
'possible', so long as there is talk about a flow of time and an expanse of
space, etc., etc. humans will continue to bump up against the same mysterious
difficulties, and stare at something that no explanation seems able to remove.
"And this, by the
way, satisfies a longing for the transcendental [an alternative version of the
manuscript has 'supernatural' here -- RL], for in believing that they see the
'limit of human understanding' they of course believe that they can see beyond
it.
"I read
'...philosophers are no nearer to the meaning of 'Reality' than Plato got...'.
What a strange state of affairs. How strange in that case that Plato could get
that far in the first place! Or that after him we were not able to get further.
Was it because Plato was so
clever?" [Wittgenstein (2013), pp.311-12e. Italic emphases in the
original; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. Some paragraphs merged.]
Exception might be taken to
Wittgenstein's comment that language has "remained constant" since Ancient Greek
times, but the context makes it clear what he intended by this: he meant that
the grammatical forms it contains, which cause the problems to which he alluded,
have remained in place:
"So long as there is
a verb 'be' that seems to function like 'eat' and 'drink', so long as there are
the adjectives 'identical', 'true', 'false', 'possible', so long as there is
talk about a flow of time and an expanse of space, etc., etc. humans will
continue to bump up against the same mysterious difficulties, and stare at
something that no explanation seems able to remove." [Ibid.]
Now, I have analysed in detail one such
grammatical form (subject-predicate propositions in Indo-European
languages, which take the copula "is", or its cognates) that has manifestly
remained the same for thousands of years, and I have shown how it has seriously
misled philosophers and logicians for centuries -- but more specifically in this
regard, Hegel. In fact, it misled him into inventing his own idiosyncratic
version of the 'dialectic', and hence it has led astray every subsequent
Marxist dialectician. [On that, see Essay Three
Part One.]
Even so, it is true that the
Investigations isn't dominated by historical questions; but since
Wittgenstein was interested in examining the sort of 'problems' that have cast a
shadow over philosophy ever since Ancient Greece, that certainly provides a leitmotif
for the entire book. In that case, Wittgenstein was concerned with unravelling
recurring confusions over our use of language -- for example, (i) the
idea that all words are names, (ii) that all nouns are
substantivals, (iii) that there is an 'essence' lying behind the use of such
words, (iv) that there is only one form of knowledge, for instance, which
requires we search for an 'essentialist' definition of it, etc., etc. These and
other topics have remained central to the work of philosophers for over two
thousand years. Wittgenstein was at pains to show that puzzles like these arise
from a
systematic
misunderstanding
and distortion of
language -- just
like Marx. Indeed, it is why he said the following:
"If, e.g., we call our investigations
'philosophy', this title, on the one hand, seems appropriate, on the other hand
it certainly has misled people. (One might say that the subject we are dealing
with is one of the heirs of the subject which used to be called 'philosophy.')"
[Wittgenstein (1969), p.28.]
This
shows that Wittgenstein had the history of this failed intellectual discipline
in mind as he endeavoured to replace it with his new method.
But, what about this?
"[H]e talks about 'looking at how words
are used' but doesn't seem to notice the contrasts between the way they are
used, for instance, in German and English, two languages he was fluent in."
In fact, this is something Wittgenstein does
take into account, but he considered such things only of significance
when they led to
philosophical confusion. As usual, LH seems oblivious of this salient
fact.
[OLP = Ordinary Language Philosophy.]
But, there is a more fundamental point
at issue here. LH appears to be labouring under a widely-held illusion that
Wittgenstein was only interested in parochial or
minor
differences in our use of language -- this plainly underlies LH's reference to
the two languages in which Wittgenstein was fluent, English and German. In fact,
as he told his students, he was interested in the "big logical differences",
those that carried across all languages. [More on this presently.] By way of
contrast, an interest in linguistic minutiae was characteristic of
John Austin's
work, as it was also of the Oxford OLP-ers, not Wittgenstein.58
In Essay Twelve Part One
I outlined an example
which illustrates Wittgenstein's concern with the "big differences" (in this
case concerning our use of number words). Here is what I wrote:
An
example
taken from Wittgenstein's
Philosophical Investigations illustrates the radical difference between
number words and other terms we use (which, incidentally, also exposes one of
the core confusions motivated by
Semiotics -- that all words are signs, or operate as
"signifiers" of the "signified"; on this see Essay Thirteen
Part Three).
Wittgenstein encourages us to consider
an example where a customer enters a grocery
shop and asks the shop assistant for five red apples. The assistant
doesn't first go off in search of red things, nor yet collections of
five things. Manifestly, he or she will go and find apples first, or even red apples, and then count them.
This forms part of the
Fregean idea that number
words attach to concepts, not objects. Or, as Wittgenstein might have said,
number words express operations carried out on objects of a certain sort,
qualified by a
count noun -- like "three apples" or "five pears" (although, as far as I am
aware, Wittgenstein didn't use the phrase "count noun"
-- he did use a roughly equivalent term "substantive",
though).
Hence, the
assistant
will count apples: one apple, two apples..., and so on, as the concept
expression "ξ is an apple" is successively instantiated or
applied -- sometimes expressed demonstratively (typically to children) as: "This
is an apple, and that is another...".
Of course, this isn't to suggest that these are the words that this fictional
assistant will
actually use, or indeed that he/she will use any words at all, but they, or
words like them, will have been used in her/his childhood training, at
some point. No
one is just taught to count 'objects' -- but to count objects of a certain sort,
or objects identified demonstratively, governed by the use of concept expressions
(like "ξ is an apple"), or count nouns (i.e., "napples").
Novices who can
proceed along lines they have been trained are thus said to have grasped the use of number
words (and,
indeed, of concept expressions and/or count nouns). Subsequently, this linguistic skill
becomes automatic, which is indeed part of what we mean by "knowing how to count" --
or even how to serve in a grocers shop! [On
this, see Robinson (2003b). The use of Greek symbols, like those employed above, is explained
here.]
[This isn't to suggest,
either,
that knowing (implicitly) how to apply number words is sufficient to be
able to credit an individual with a minimal grasp of the concept of number. As
is well known (at least since Frege (1953) -- and as is implied by the above
comments), this requirement needs supplementing with what is called a "criterion
of identity" -- that is, the individual concerned must be able to specify
whether or not, in this case, there are the same number of apples (or,
indeed, red apples) each time. So, they must be proficient with the
practical, and not just verbal, application of the phrase "same apple", i.e., with what counts as the same (sort of) apple. Cf.,
Wittgenstein (2009), §1,
pp.5e-6e. [This links to a PDF.]
See also,
Geach (1968), pp.39-40.
[This links to the 3rd
(1980) edition, so once again the page numbers are different:
pp.63-64).] Cf., also Lowe (1989), and
Noonan
and Curtis (2022). For some of
the complexities involved in this area, see Epstein (2012).]
Now, the
whole point of this analysis is aimed at showing that not all words are names
and not all words function in the same way -- and, eo ipso,
that words can't be "signifiers" of the "signified" -- otherwise, the order in which
the above grocer looked for the items required by this customer would be
indifferent, and he/she could or would look for five things first, red things next,
apples last.
In
addition, it is also aimed at demonstrating
that we all know this to be so (i.e., in our practice -- in, say, our
automatic reaction to requests like the one the shopkeeper faced
--,
but not necessarily in our deliberations about such things, where we
often go astray). And, that is
why (whatever philosophical theory we hold, whatever ideology we assent to) not one of us
would dream of looking for something named by "five" first, or even "red",
and then "apples" last. On the other hand, if all words were names, we would typically
do this.
This
alone shows that Wittgenstein wasn't fixated on ordinary German (or even ordinary
English). No human being who has ever walked the planet would dream of
looking for something 'named' by "five" first, or even "red", and then "apples" last (always assuming they lived in a society with the requisite
social organisation and vocabulary,
etc.), whatever their language, social circumstances or ideological
commitments happened to be.
Not even George W Bush, or the Pope, or
Andrew Carnegie, or
Rupert Murdoch, or
Plotinus, or Julius Caesar, or Hegel, or Stalin, or..., would look for five
red things first!
Now, this
is what Wittgenstein meant by "logical grammar": logical features expressed in
language, reflected in our practices, which illustrate how we all
react in social circumstances (or otherwise),
no matter what ideology or theory we
subscribe to, and no matter in what century we actually live. Indeed, they are so much part of our second nature, so much
part of what we do without thinking, that we fail to spot their significance --,
which is, of course, why they went unremarked upon for millennia (until Frege and
Wittgenstein pointed them out).
[This also illustrates
that Wittgenstein was interested in "big logical differences" rather than the
minutiae that concerned much that passed off as
OLP, especially as
it was practiced in Oxford in the 1950s and 1960s. (I owe this point to
Peter
Geach.) This also shows that numbers can't be 'abstracted' into existence,
either. I will leave that gnomic comment in that state for now and return to it in a
future re-write of Essay Three Part One. On this in general, see
Frege (1953).
Cf., also Beaney (1996), Dummett (1991), Gillies (1992a), Kenny (1995), Noonan (2001), Weiner
(2004). See also
Zalta
(2021).]
This
specific topic isn't covered
at all well in the Wittgenstein literature (indeed, most commentators seem to
miss the point of Wittgenstein's parable here);
however, see Baker and Hacker (2005b), pp.43-91, and Baker and Hacker (2005a),
pp.1-28. But, and once more, the best
article on this is still Robinson (2003b).
Hallett refers his readers to the
following passage from Peter Geach's lecture notes:
"...[N]otice that the order of the operations in the grocer's shop is
determinate: it would be hopeless for the grocer to...look around for red things
until he found some that were also apples, and it would be still more hopeless
for him to recite the numerals up to five in his language first of all -- this
would be a completely idle performance. Frege said that a number attaches to a
concept.... What Frege of course meant was that a number is a number of a kind
of things -- a kind of things expressed by a general term; and that until you
have fixed upon the kind of thing that you are counting, you can't count, you
can't attach a number." [Hallett (1977), pp.74-75.]
LH appears to be totally oblivious of
this, too -- as, indeed, are many of Wittgenstein's critics.
This
is what Wittgenstein meant by looking at how we actually use and comprehend
language, but because LH appears to be unaware of it he once again advances a series of
irrelevant criticisms.
"Now, I can't claim
to have a proper understanding of Wittgenstein's work...".
As we have seen: that is an
understatement.
"I am at the moment
struggling with the Philosophical Investigations (and wondering how can people
get so passionate about that kind of stuff). But what has been systematically
presented to us as his thought has not bought any sympathy from my part -- it is
just a new fad of intellectual sectarianism and snobbery, of the same gender,
though obviously not of the same species, that has long plagued the left
(indeed, a particularly nasty and extreme species of such dogmatism, even
compared to the abyssal standards of the left). The best I can say in
Wittgenstein's behalf, regarding this, is that he is apparently innocent of such
developments (and, indeed, that some things he writes in [the Philosophical
Investigations -- RL] seem to directly contradict some of the posturing
here); the worse I can imagine is that his own presumption and arrogance may
have added with those of the left to ignite Ms. Lichtenstein's own school of
sectarian and dogmatic sophistry."
Once more, it would be interesting to
see LH's evidence (or argument) that justifies this parting shot (but see
below).
"Pick [up] your [Philosophical
Investigations
-- RL] and open it at paragraphs 193-194, where he discusses the functioning of
machines, or rather what we mean by 'functioning of machines'. Does that sound
like it was written by someone with any knowledge of Marx's work? Namely, where
does it sound as written by someone acquainted to Marx's discussion of the
finalistic nature of human activity?" [Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. Emphasis in the original.]
LH seems not to have noticed that the
paragraphs he mentioned occur in a section where Wittgenstein was examining what
it means to follow a rule, and he introduced the machine analogy since the views
he was criticising depend on a
mechanical interpretation of rule following -- that the steps in a rule
are as determined as the movements of a machine. [On this, see Baker and Hacker
(1988), pp.106-81.] Now, of course, this isn't what Marx was interested in, but
who ever suggested it was? Nobody.
So, why this puzzlement on LH's part?
His intention seems to be to suggest that this section of the Investigations
shows that Wittgenstein was unaware of what Marx had said about machines. But,
why is that the case? They both wanted to make entirely different points,
so it isn't clear how this shows Wittgenstein was unaware of what Marx
had argued.
But, let us suppose LH is right; even
then, all this would show is that Wittgenstein hadn't read every page that Marx
had written. Who ever claimed he had? [Not even LH has read every page! If he
had,
he, too, would be an
anti-philosopher, for example.] But, it is clear from what we have seen,
Wittgenstein had read enough of Marx's work to
declare it "scientific".
Finally, this comment is rather odd:
"Namely, where does
it sound as [if it were] written by someone acquainted to Marx's discussion of
the
finalistic nature of human activity?"
But, what does LH mean by "finalistic"?
That human activity is in general goal directed? At least, intentional
action is. Wittgenstein certainly accepted that idea.
How could he have failed to do so?!
Hence, it is unclear what LH is actually suggesting by this word, or this
comment.
"But is it relevant?
As far as I know, he never uttered any criticism, be it of Marxism, or of
Stalinist 'diamat'. Indeed, people intend to prove that he was sympathetic to
the left because he once planned to live in the SovietUnion -- but, by such line of reasoning, this
would 'prove' he was 'sympathetic' to 'diamat' -- which was the 'official'
'philosophy' in that place and time."
In fact, as we now know -- but, alas, LH
doesn't --
Wittgenstein did
criticise Marxism, although there is no evidence that he criticised DM
(or even the Stalinised version of it, Diamat; but, see
Note 59, where we see he does criticise the misconstrual of the "is" of
predication as an "is" of identity). Moreover, Wittgenstein's desire to go and live in the USSR
could indeed be used to argue that he was sympathetic with the ideas
enshrined in DM. He certainly
left that impression on those with whom he conversed on his visit there in
1935. Of course, as already noted, that doesn't mean that his method can't be
used to criticise DM. Plainly, it can.
But, what of these more fundamental
allegations?
LH:
"What can be said is that his work implies such criticism. But his work
is so convoluted and enigmatic, that practically anything can be thought as
'implied' in it, from militant atheism to mystical, if unorthodox, theism.
Apparently it is impossible to interpret Wittgenstein without misinterpreting
him. So what are the implications to socialism or to dialectical materialism, if
any? Maybe there are some -- and -- gasp -- maybe there are none; what I can say
for sure is, I don't take Ms. Lichtenstein very peculiar, very idiosyncratic,
and very biased, interpretation of Wittgenstein for granted. And, not taking it
for granted, I don't think that Wittgenstein's method is necessarily opposed to
Marx's method (a.k.a. 'dialectical materialism'). Some much better arguments
than Ms. Lichtenstein's sophisms would be needed to take me to that
conclusion...." [Bold emphasis in the original.]
This isn't so; if we look at how we
actually use language (in the sense indicated
earlier), every doctrine
enshrined in Traditional Thought can be shown to be
incoherent non-sense.
The rather broad and baseless
allegations made about my use of Wittgenstein's method will need far more
support than LH's sweeping (and unsupported) allegations, however.
LH: "Now, let's place the burden of proof where it belongs. Where
did Wittgenstein criticise 'dialectics', or Marx's method, or 'diamat', or
Lenin's 'Empiriocriticism', etc.? What does he say that can be actually taken as
contrary to any of those things? I am tired of 'arguments' like 'Lenin had to
think about motion without matter in order to say it was unthinkable' -- it is
sheer sophistry, and
anti-Wittgensteinian sophistry for what is worth, because anyone
actually looking at how words are used can see that this is not
how we use the word 'unthinkable'...." [Emphases in the original.]
I have answered LH's rather odd argument
here (in an Essay where
I do in fact consider a wide range of uses of "unthinkable", had LH bothered
to check before he shot his mouth off). But, this is yet another topic about
which LH prefers to remain in a state of profound ignorance.
[His other allegations have already been
answered above.]
LH: "The guy had f**k
[expletive deleted -- RL] all to do with socialism (of course, someone else
might try and build bridges between his thought and socialism, but that would be
this someone else's work, not Wittgenstein's). And any attempts to use his work
to criticise 'my philosophy' -- or whatever other philosophy, for what it is
worth -- should at least be actually based in his work, which 'anti-dialectics'
is not." [Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site; abbreviation replaced with what it stands for.]
Given that LH openly admitted he lacks a
"proper understanding" of Wittgenstein's work, he is hardly in a position to
criticise my work when I support what I have to say with detailed evidence and
references to Wittgenstein's published and unpublished writings, as well as that
of his commentators, while LH
simply posts a series of ignorant and uninformed opinions regaling us with what he thinks
Wittgenstein said -- which he fails to substantiate with a single reference to
the latter's work, or even the secondary literature on Wittgenstein.
Sure, LH 'sort of' quotes Wittgenstein
in a few places, but not in support of the allegations he makes about my
alleged misrepresentation of Wittgenstein's work.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Finally, there is this inane comment
from 'Nizan':
"There are enough leftists who were leftists in addition to
idiots, the distinction is not necessarily worth much trouble. Incidentally,
Wittgenstein hardly endeavoured into any serious philosophical projects that
were not already dead, his work served as the framework for postmodernism at
best, a[t] best (sic) hardly worthy of comment." [Quoted from
here.]
Well, we can all be grateful to this
comrade for volunteering to add his name (albeit inadvertently) to the list of
leftists who are "idiots", but it is manifestly untrue that "Wittgenstein hardly
endeavoured into any serious philosophical projects that were not already dead",
since philosophers are still hotly debating them. These include such hardly
perennials as: the meaning and reference of names, the nature of reference and
meaning themselves, sense, language, and what it means to follow a rule, the
status of definite descriptions, our knowledge of other minds, the use of first
person and third person psychological verbs, aspect perception, sensation, the
nature of colour, action, behaviour, contextualism, 'universals', proof, truth,
number, infinity, sets, the Real Number Line, nonsense, foundationalism,
knowledge, belief, intention,
scepticism, causation, and perception,
to name but a few.
But, what about this?
"...his work served
as the framework for postmodernism at best, a[t] best hardly worthy of comment."
Certainly, postmodernists have used his
work to motivate their own ideas (but so have anti-postmodernists; on that see
here), but there is nothing 'postmodernist' in Wittgenstein's work (and I
challenge anyone who disagrees to provide evidence to the contrary), but blaming
Wittgenstein for postmodernism (if that is what 'Nizan' is doing) makes
about as much sense as blaming Marx for Stalinism -- or, if you are a Maoist or
a Stalinist, blaming Marx for Trotskyism; or for Leninism, if you are a
non-Leninist Marxist, etc., etc.
From the above it is now abundantly
clear that Wittgenstein was "a left-winger" (at least in the 1920s, 1930s, and
arguably also in the 1940s), just as it is reasonably clear he was a mystic for only a few years
(during, and shortly after, WW1). We have also seen that the idea that he was a
conservative (small "c" or capital "C"), and that his work only serves to
defend or rationalise the status quo,
isn't just misguided, it is the exact opposite of the truth. His method
in fact terminates, or can be used to bring to an end, two-and-half millennia of
a central strand of ruling-class ideology (i.e., 'Traditional Philosophy') --
or, at the very least, it reveals it to be self-important hot air.
This isn't just an academic exercise.
It is important to challenge the 'received' view of Wittgenstein, widely held on
the far-left, since it has served as an effective barrier to his method being
appropriated by revolutionaries. There are now no good reasons to reject his
work -- other than those that one would apply to any other philosopher,
that is, whether or not his approach is sound and his arguments persuasive.
I haven't directly addressed these two
issues in this Essay, but I have defended Wittgenstein's method in other Essays
(for example,
here and
here), where I have also shown that
the alternative approach adopted by Marxist Dialecticians (i.e.,
their appeal to DM/'Materialist Dialectics') collapses into
incoherence all too easily.
The
long-term failure of Dialectical
Marxism (note the use of the word 'dialectical' here; the non-dialectical
version hasn't been road-tested yet) means that we have no other choice but
to re-examine our core theory like the radicals we claim to be.
And this is where
Wittgenstein's method -- coupled with a return to ordinary language (as Marx
himself enjoined) -- will come into its own.
I have in fact 'dissolved' several
philosophical 'problems' in my Essays, the most accessible example of which
is perhaps my discussion of the
'paradox of motion' that
Zeno
bequeathed to posterity, which Hegel put to no good in his spectacularly
wrong-headed 'derivation' of the 'contradictory' nature of motion.
There is, of course, a classic
dissolution of another philosophical 'problem' in the
Investigations itself: the possibility of there being a 'private
language', but it is far too long and involved to summarise here.
Fortunately,
Friedrich Waismann's The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy outlines
several easily accessible examples of the dissolution of a handful of
philosophical 'problems'.
The Preface
to the second edition points the following out:
"What seems clear,
however, was that Waismann was to be the sole author of the finished
text. Later this plan was modified: Wittgenstein agreed to become a co-author
of the book with Waismann. Still later, after a period of collaboration,
Wittgenstein withdrew from this arrangement, leaving Waismann with clear
authority to complete the project himself as he wished.... That [arrangement]
had described the book as 'essentially a presentation of the thought of
Wittgenstein', but it had denied Wittgenstein any official role in shaping the
outcome." [Waismann (1997), p.xv. Italic emphases in the original.
Paragraphs merged.]
The book later appeared as The
Principles of Linguistic Philosophy [Waismann (1997)], which
Wittgenstein subsequently disowned -- oddly accusing Waismann of plagiarism,
among other things! However, as its editor points out, a good half of the book was
sourced "verbatim" via dictation, or from typescripts written by Wittgenstein
himself -- cf., Waismann (1997), p.xv.
Even so, there is no reason to suppose
that Wittgenstein would have tackled the following 'problems' any differently
-- at least in the early 1930s, even if he would have adopted a much more
nuanced approach ten or fifteen years later. Nevertheless, the following two
examples show reasonably clearly how his method can be used to make
philosophical pseudo-problems disappear.
"Let us ask, for
example: What right have we to believe what our memory tells us?
"This question, as is well known, often arises out of
Descartes's
more general question: Have we any knowledge which is infallible? If there were
any such knowledge it would show itself as infallible in that it would be
impossible even to doubt it. Now is there anything which cannot possibly be
doubted? Let us review the various departments of knowledge to see which of them
can significantly be doubted. This method of doubt is like a sieve which retains
only absolutely certain knowledge. It is clear that the general propositions of
Physics and the Laws of Nature are excluded; for everyone admits that they are,
without exception, hypotheses which can at any time be overthrown by further
experiments. The propositions of history are no better since they rest upon
tradition, and the same applies to most of our everyday knowledge as far as it
relies on the evidence of other people. The situation seems to be different with
regard to propositions of whose truth I am convinced by my own observation. For
example, if I say 'the rose is red', it does seem as if what I say is beyond all
doubt. But do not people now and then have illusions and hallucinations? May not
I only be dreaming of seeing a rose? However, what I cannot doubt is that I have
the sense-impression of a rose now, whether it is a dream or not. Do we not seem
to have reached the point at which all doubt is silenced? Yet a really determine
sceptic could, even at this point, find something to attack. He might say 'Be
this as it may, even if this moment I have before me a wholly definite picture,
even so my problem is not affected. For the question was whether there is any
absolutely certain knowledge? (sic) But a perception cannot be called knowledge
until it is expressed in words. And to do this presupposes a correct use of
words which depends, like all things learned, on memory. So, if I look at a rose
and say I see a rose, the truth of what I say depends on my remembering
correctly what each word I say means. I must know what the words 'rose', 'red',
and 'see' mean. Plainly all speaking, thinking, and formulating presupposes that
we can store up the meanings of words in our memories. Yet we know that memory
can deceive us. What guarantees that it does not always deceive
us, even when we make the simplest perceptual judgement? Does not certainty seem
to dissolve into nothing?
"This train of thought exposes even
analytic judgements (which consist merely in the analysis of concepts) to
doubt. That certain things follow from the definition of a word cannot be
doubted; what can, however, be doubted is our capacity to hold a concept in mind
long enough to enable us to infer anything from its definition with certainty.
It is not the logical connection, but our psychological capacity to hold it in
mind, that is open to doubt. However cogently the steps in a mathematical proof
may follow from each other, I can never be sure that my proof is correct, that
during the short time that elapses between the first and the last steps I have
not forgotten, or slightly altered, the meaning of the symbols involved; so that
the symbols which I write down as the final stage in the proof may not mean
anything that in fact follows from the data with which I started. Whether it is
probable or not that our memory deceives us in this way is not relevant
here; it is sufficient that it should be possible to doubt the
reliability of memory, for this leads at once to the question, how far, in
principle, memory is trustworthy.
"At first sight this
seems a question that can be answered without much difficulty; for I can easily
check whether I am using my words correctly by asking whether their usage is the
same, or by consulting various written explanations of our language. But even
such practical aids, it might be said, do not in principle exclude possibilities
of error. For in what other people say and in the written explanations,
dictionaries, etc., there will again occur words whose meaning needs to be
determined, and the same sceptical doubts can be raised about this
interpretation; not to mention the fact that among fundamental presuppositions
of knowledge we cannot include the assumption that the physical marks preserve
their shape and could not for some mysterious reason change from one moment to
another. How can you tell that there is not an arch-deceiver, who alters the
shape of the letters whenever you close the book or look away from the page for
an instant? That such things do not happen is already the conclusion of an
inference from our experiences in the past; but how can we appeal to these
experiences when we are suspicious about the trustworthiness of memory?
"So doubt can corrode
all certainty. And in fact the situation is exceedingly odd. We cannot go back
into the past and hold our present memories alongside it for comparison. We have
only our memories to rely on, and they now seem suspect. Every attempt to prove
the reliability of memory at the decisive point makes use of memory, so that we
go hopelessly round in a circle. Anyone who broods on this process will soon be
overtaken by a kind of giddiness. It is as if a bottomless abyss opened before
him. Is there no escape from this desperate situation?" [Waismann (1997),
pp.15-17. Italic
emphases in the original; links added.]
After testing and rejecting several
attempted solutions to this 'puzzle', Waismann proceeds to
dissolve it:
"I believe that the
right way out lies close at hand, and that it has been overlooked for so long
only because people have not tried to see exactly what is meant by the question.
It is only necessary to alter the direction of one's attention in the way we
have spoken of earlier to see how a solution is to be found. If we want to
understand the meaning of a question, we must know under what circumstances it
should be answered by 'yes', and under what circumstances it should be answered
by 'no'. So we ask the doubter 'What does it mean to say that my memory deceives
me? What are the criteria for this being the case?' He may make some answer as:
'My memory deceives me when it disagrees about a past event either with what
most other people say really happened or with what is written in reliable
documents, diaries, letters, etc.' In this case his question has a clear
meaning. I can tell whether specific memories, e.g. of my childhood, are, or are
not correct. There is, if this is what the sceptic means, no further
problem to perplex us. It is a matter of experience how far memory can be
trusted. But this is obviously not the sense in which the sceptic doubts the
certainty of memory. For what he asks is whether all memory is
unreliable, including the memory we normally call reliable. So we ask him again:
'What do you now mean by the word "unreliable"? At any rate you do not mean what
is normally understood by it. You must therefore explain what you mean by this
word; that is, you must say in what circumstances you call memory "reliable",
and in what "unreliable".' If he gives us a criterion, such as comparison with a
certain document, we can understand precisely what his question means. In this
case, however, it is not a philosophical question but one of everyday life.
There is nothing exciting about his question but if he fails to mention any
criterion whatever (and this, of course, is usual with the radical philosophic
sceptic), in such a case he does not know himself what he is asking. He does not
know how a case of reliable memory is to be distinguished from one of unreliable
memory. He draws, in fact, no distinction between these concepts. The question
'Is not all memory (including that which we call reliable) perhaps unreliable?'
is thus on a level with 'Are not all notes including those which we call low
perhaps high?' This questions is a misuse of language, nothing more.
"We can now see how
the problem dissolves. We do not say to the doubter, 'You are mistaken, for what
you doubt is something which is a matter of fact.' We tell him instead, 'Your
question has no meaning, for you have failed to give a meaning to the words of
which it is made up'. Our conclusion would in no way be affected, however much
he persisted that he meant something definite by his question. We should reply:
'Then tell us what it is that you mean. If you cannot do this, then do not
imagine that there is a question'.
"But what are we to
do if the doubter contends that the criterion for reliability of memory is that
it should agree with the facts of the past? Does saying this give a sense to his
question?... [However], saying that a memory is reliable 'when it agrees with
the past' gets us no farther, for it does not tell us how we are to find out
whether such an agreement exists or not. We have not formulated any criterion
but simply replaced the old words with new ones whose meaning is as much in need
of explanation as the old. Hence the sceptic deceives himself if he thinks his
question has been given a clear meaning." [Ibid., pp.20-21. Italic
emphases in the original.]
Waismann then explains how philosophical
'problems' like this arise. He points out (the obvious) that we typically learn
how to use words like "unreliable" as the opposite of "reliable". But when
someone wonders whether, say, memory is unreliable, what are they distinguishing
it from? The posing of such a question only serves to undermine the meaning of
the words used to raise such doubts.
[This is the line I have adopted (with
suitable modifications) in several of my Essays -- for example,
here, in relation to the word "change";
here, in relation to "motion";
here in relation to "identity",
"same" and "equal"; and here in
relation to "motion" and "matter".]
Waismann continues:
"Somebody might
object, 'But surely I know what the word "unreliable" means. I need not give an
explanation. I am just asking whether all memory may not turn out to be
unreliable. So it is not a matter of how I am going to use the word, but a
question concerning the facts.' To this we should reply, 'You are asking the
question whether a memory which is normally called reliable cannot turn out to
be in fact unreliable. So you deviate from the ordinary use of language; you
cannot mean by "unreliable" what the plain man means. So will you please explain
to us what you mean.'" [Ibid., p.22. Italic emphases in the
original.]
Of course, one response to Waismann
would be to ask him why the ordinary use of words is decisive and why the
opinions of 'the plain man' should be taken into account when we are conducting
a philosophical enquiry.
However, anyone who agrees with Marx
won't respond that way. Nevertheless, let us suppose some might, or who might agree
with what Marx says elsewhere, but disagree with him over this, at least:
"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary
language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the
distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor
language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only
manifestations of actual life." [Marx
and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases
alone added.]
What could we say to such an objector?
Surely the vernacular can't be expected to cope with areas outside of the
ordinary and the everyday -- for example, with respect to technical issues in the
sciences or even difficult problems of interest to philosophers?
I hope to cover this hackneyed objection
more fully in Essay Twelve Part Seven, but until then the reader is directed to
my response
above, in
Essay Four
Part One, and
to the following passage I quoted in Essay Thirteen Part Three (which concerns
the language used in Artificial Intelligence, but the point the authors make
also
applies to the employment of technical language in any discipline, if it is
thought that such language will solve a single philosophical problem):
"As
to the widespread disparagement of attempts to
resolve philosophical problems by way of appeals to 'what we would ordinarily
say', we would proffer the following comment. It often appears that those who
engage in such disparaging nonetheless themselves often do what they
programmatically disparage, for it seems to us at least arguable that many of
the central philosophical questions are in fact, and despite protestations to
the contrary, being argued about in terms of appeals (albeit often inept) to
'what we would ordinarily say...'. That the main issues of contemporary
philosophy of mind are essentially about language (in the sense that they
arise from and struggle with confusions over the meanings of ordinary words) is
a position which, we insist, can still reasonably be proposed and defended. We
shall claim here that most, if not all, of the conundrums, controversies and
challenges of the philosophy of mind in the late twentieth century consist in a
collectively assertive, although bewildered, attitude toward such ordinary
linguistic terms as 'mind' itself, 'consciousness', 'thought', 'belief',
'intention' and so on, and that the problems which are posed are ones which
characteristically are of the form which ask what we should say if
confronted with certain facts, as described....
"We have absolutely nothing against the
coining of new, technical uses [of words], as we have said. Rather, the issue is
that many of those who insist upon speaking of machines' 'thinking' and
'understanding' do not intend in the least to be coining new, restrictively
technical, uses for these terms. It is not, for example, that they have decided
to call a new kind of machine an 'understanding machine', where the word
'understanding' now means something different from what we ordinarily mean by
that word. On the contrary, the philosophical cachet derives entirely from their
insisting that they are using the words 'thinking' and 'understanding' in the
same sense that we ordinarily use them. The aim is quite
characteristically to provoke, challenge and confront the rest of us. Their
objective is to contradict something that the rest of us believe. What the 'rest
of us' believe is simply this: thinking and understanding is something
distinctive to human beings..., and that these capacities set us apart from the
merely mechanical.... The argument that a machine can think or understand,
therefore, is of interest precisely because it features a use of the words
'think' and 'understand' which is intendedly the same as the ordinary use.
Otherwise, the sense of challenge and, consequently, of interest would
evaporate.... If engineers were to make 'understand' and 'think' into technical
terms, ones with special, technical meanings different and distinct from
those we ordinarily take them to have, then, of course, their claims to have
built machines which think or understand would have no bearing whatsoever upon
our inclination ordinarily to say that, in the ordinary sense, machines do not
think or understand." [Button et al (1995), pp.12, 20-21. Italic
emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
So, if the sceptic mentioned by Waismann
isn't using words such as "memory", "reliable", and "doubt" in an ordinary way,
then he or she isn't questioning the reliability of memory, but
the 'reliability' of 'memory', and memory itself will, of course, emerge
unscathed. On the other hand, if that individual is using these words in
ordinary ways, his or her doubts must disintegrate along the lines suggested above.
Either way, memory emerges (philosophically) unscathed, and this 'problem'
simply disappears.
That isn't to suggest memory is
infallible, as Waismann points out:
"In order to avoid
misunderstandings it must be remarked that it is not because it is general
that the sceptic's question is mistaken. Once we know under what circumstances a
memory is to be called reliable, it might well be that the memories of someone
during a certain period of time were all unreliable. Experiences could even be
described which (if they occurred) would show that the memory of all men
during a certain time was unreliable. But then such a case could be contrasted
with the case in which this was not so. But if and only if the sceptic rejects
this and every other criterion which we may suggest, if for instance he refuses
to allow that either introspective knowledge, or the testimony of others, or
written documents, or causal effects, e.g. vestiges, can be sufficient to show
whether or not a memory is reliable, then his constantly reiterated question:
'But are not all memories unreliable?' is merely a logical confusion dressed up
as a problem." [Waismann, op cit, p.22.]
[On reflection Waismann might want to
replace "logical" with "linguistic" or even "grammatical" (in Wittgenstein's
later sense of that word) in the last clause.]
However, there is a much quicker way to
dissolve this 'problem', one I have in fact used on Internet Discussion Boards
many times, which employs a modified version of a technique Wittgenstein
explored in On Certainty,
and one hinted at in the above.
If a sceptic questions memory (in the
way outlined by Waismann), then her memory of what this word itself means must
now be
open to doubt (as must her memory of the word "doubt"). In which case, the
sceptic has no way of knowing whether or not her 'doubt' has any content, since
she might not only be misremembering the word "doubt", but the word "memory",
too. If so, for all she knows, her 'doubt' might not be a
doubt, and it might not even be about memory.
The only way to circumvent that fatal objection
is for her to argue that her use of words remains secure even while she
undermines her own memory (or even visa versa), thus dissolving her own
doubts, once more.
[Of course,
this isn't to suggest sceptics have no answer, or don't have a
counter-argument to the above, but we will have to leave that to another time.]
Waismann now considers another
metaphysical 'problem' that dates back at least to
Aristotle:
"We turn now to the consideration of a
question which goes back to Aristotle and is today again attracting attention
-- the question whether our logic is valid for statements which refer to the
future....
Lukasiewicz writes:
'The proposition that there are only two
truth-values is the most fundamental basis of our whole logic and has been much
disputed since ancient times. The proposition, well known to Aristotle, was
disputed by the
Epicureans
for the case in which the statement refers to
contingent
events in the future. It occurs most clearly as the principle of their
dialectics in the writings of
Chrysippos
(sic) and the
Stoics. Here it represents the
propositional calculus of antiquity. The controversy about the two
truth-values has a metaphysical background; the adherents of this principle are
decided
determinists while its opponents are inclined
to the indeterministic view of the world....
'Accordingly the most
fundamental principle of logic does not seem to be quite self-evident. I have
tired to overcome the doctrine of the two truth-values by using examples which
go back to Aristotle. This has led to the following train of thought:
'There is no
contradiction in supposing that my presence in Warsaw at a certain time next
year, say at 12 noon on 21 December, is decided neither in the affirmative nor
in the negative at the moment. It is therefore possible but not necessary that I
shall be present in Warsaw at the given time. According to this supposition the
statement 'I shall be in Warsaw next year at 12 noon on 21 December' cannot be
either true or false today. If the statement were true today my presence in
Warsaw would be necessary, which contradicts the supposition; if the statement
were false today my presence in Warsaw would be impossible, which also
contradicts the supposition. The statement is therefore neither true nor false
at the present moment. Hence it must have a third truth-value, differing from
true and false, or (putting it symbolically) from 1 and 0. This truth-value may
be symbolised by "1/2"; this symbol represents the idea "possible", which is a
third value beside the true and false.
"In this system of
logic the principle of the excluded middle is not unconditionally valid;
statements concerning the future are neither true nor false but undecided, i.e.
possible. Before we accept this view we must make sure that it provides a clear
solution of the difficulty. A statement about the future is said to be neither
true nor false at the present moment. It begins to be true at the moment when
the event which it describes happens. But does this change take place suddenly
or gradually? At what moment does the proposition 'it will rain tomorrow' begin
to be true? When the first drop of rain falls to the ground? Or, supposing that
it does not rain tomorrow, when does the proposition begin to be false? In the
last second of the day, on the stroke of 12 p.m.? Supposing that the event
has happened, that the proposition is true; does it remain true for
ever? And if so it what way? Does it remain uninterruptedly true, true at every
moment of the day and night? Would it remain true even if there were no thinking
beings? Or shall we say that it is true only at certain times -- for instance,
when it is being thought of? In that case how long exactly does it remain true?
For the duration of the thought, or of the written, or of the spoken, word? I
have not raised these difficulties wilfully, or for my own amusement; they
represent themselves to anyone who examines the situation closely; and so we are
even more deeply involved in embarrassment. It is as if we could not understand
how logic can be valid if it leads to the paradoxical result that the whole
future is determined at the present moment. But, on the other hand, it is even
more difficult to be content with the opposite view, according to which truth
and falsity should be states into one of which every proposition enters at a
particular moment. From this dilemma arises a philosophical problem with all its
characteristic features. We see no escape...." [Waismann (1997), pp.27-28.
Italic
emphases in the original.]
Waismann points out that several
philosophers have tried to solve this 'problem' by arguing that truth is a
timeless property of propositions.
"Such a view as this
leads in the right direction, but it does not reach the heart of the problem.
For what is meant by saying that truth is a timeless quality? Does it mean that
the proposition is true at all times? Or that to combine truth with a
time-specification is nonsensical? Such an answer cannot satisfy us,
particularly for the following reason: if we say 'Truth is something timeless',
it looks as if we have made an assertion about truth which we expect our
opponents to admit, but we are in fact only provoking them to contradict us, and
they may well reply 'I cannot see why truth should be something timeless'. And
so our interminable dispute will begin again, and no conclusion will be
established. We must then realise that this is still a dogmatic formulation. A
genuine solution of the problem must be such that any hesitation and resistance
has been made impossible. For this hesitation always rises from the feeling
'Something is being asserted -- I do not really know whether I should agree to
it or not'. As long as dispute is still possible the real solution has not been
found.
"Now we wish to
proceed undogmatically. Let us pass from the question 'Is a statement
about the future true now?' to the question 'What is meant by saying that
a statement about the future is true now?' First of all: 'What is meant by
saying of a given proposition that it is true?' Does this describe the
proposition? One is tempted to answer 'In a sense, yes; I do ascertain that the
proposition is true'. Suppose the proposition is 'It is raining'. What am I
saying when I say this proposition is true? I am saying no more than it is
raining. I have simply repeated the proposition. The words 'It is true that' add
nothing to the meaning of 'It is raining', though they may add emphasis, like
'certainly', 'surely', etc." [Waismann, op cit, pp.28-29. Italic
emphases in the original.]
It could be objected, Waismann notes,
that saying it is raining doesn't automatically mean that it is true
that it is raining. So, the objection might proceed, after having verified that particular proposition,
saying that it is true does in fact add to the original statement,
contrary to what was argued above. Hence, "It is true that it is raining"
says more than
"It is raining".
Waismann replies:
"[I]t must be
remembered that adding the words 'It is true that...' does not guarantee the
truth of the proposition. If a criminal lies in court, but every time he lies
[he] swears that he is speaking the truth, does this make his statements true?
The proposition 'p is true' is not more true than the proposition
p; affirming that p is true does not make it true.
"What does it mean to
say that there is a difference between 'p' and 'p is true'?
Perhaps the difference can be put as follows: In uttering the sentence p
I need not know whether
p is true, but on the other hand when I say 'p is true' I express my
knowledge of the truth of p. Certainly one can use the words 'p is
true' in this way, but one is deviating from the ordinary use of language. There
are at least three reasons for saying this:
"(i) If the suggested
usage were adopted, the same words when uttered by different persons would have
a different meaning. If
A and B both say 'It is true that it is raining', and if this
means 'I know that it is raining; I have ascertained it is raining' they are
saying different things, and it is possible that one is speaking the truth and
the other not.
"(ii) If we interpret
the words 'It is true that...' in this way, Lukasiewicz's problem could not even
be raised. For if the expression 'It is true that...' is to mean 'I know
that...', the question whether a statement about the future is true at
the present moment would amount to the question: 'Do I know at the
present moment whether, e.g. I shall be in Warsaw next year on 21 December?' And
in this case, of course, the reply is that I do not know. There would be
no need to doubt the principle of the excluded middle; it is obvious that there
are only two possibilities, viz. that I either know or do not know what will be
the case, and the principle of excluded middle remains perfectly valid. Since
Lukasiewicz has been led to doubt its validity he cannot have been using the
words 'It is true that...' in the sense of 'I know that...'.
"(iii) The
proposition 'It is true that it is raining' can be denied in only one way, for
the expressions 'It is not true that it is raining' and 'It is true that it is
not raining' have exactly the same meaning. Whereas the proposition 'I know that
it is raining' can be denied in two different ways, for 'I know that it is not
raining' does not mean the same as 'I do not know that it is raining'. Therefore
the proposition 'I know that it is raining' is not a translation of the
proposition 'It is true that it is raining'. The two propositions have different
logical multiplicity." [Ibid., pp.29-30. Italic emphases in the
original.]
Waismann then supposes that his opponent
still maintains that "It is true that
p" says more than "p"; he doesn't contradict him but merely asks:
"'What exactly do you
mean by "more" in this connection?' We would remind him that in ordinary
language we say, for example, that 'Today is Thursday' means more than that
'Today is a weekday'. The difference is that the former entails the latter but
not conversely. It is conceivable that 'Today is Thursday' should be false and
'Today is a weekday' true; on the other hand it is inconceivable
(self-contradictory) that today should be Thursday and not a weekday." [Ibid.,
p.31. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this
site.]
From this Waismann proposes the
following criterion:
"The proposition p
means more than the proposition
q, if~p & q is meaningful (possible) but, p
& ~q is inconceivable (contradictory)." [Ibid., p.31.
Italic
emphases in the original.]
["~"
is the negative particle, "not"; "&" stands for "and" (I have employed a
different symbol here, since Waismann's ".", which he uses in place of my "&",
is less perspicuous). So ~p & q implies that p could be false
while
q is true (or ~p could be trueand q could also be
true), whereas p & ~q represents the converse: p
could be true while q is false (or p could be true and so could
~q). There are, of course, other possibilities (i.e., p and q
might have opposite truth values), but given the context of Waismann's argument,
not all of these other options are relevant.]
Waismann now applies this criterion to
two propositions: where "p" stands for "It is true that it is raining" and "q"
for "It is raining":
"[We now ask:] 'In
what sense are you using the word "more"'? If you were using it according to the
criterion just given there would be sense in saying 'It is not true that
it is raining, and it is raining'. If you do not agree to use it in this sense,
then we ask you in what sense you are using it, for we do not understand you.'"
[Ibid., p.31.
Italic emphasis in the original.]
He then points out that "p is
true" can be replaced by "p", while "p is false" can be replaced by"~p".
"If [the above rules]
are accepted it is not difficult to show that Lukasiewicz's arguments are
fallacious. Since 'p
is true' means the same as 'p', 'p is true now' would simply mean
'p now'. For example, 'It is true that it will rain tomorrow' simply
means 'It will rain tomorrow'; 'It is true now that it will rain
tomorrow' means 'It will rain tomorrow now', and this is nonsense. Giving two
time-coordinates to an event in this way is a mistake of the same kind as saying
'The temperature of this room is 60 [degrees] and 70 [degrees], or 'This man is
twenty and thirty years old'.
"The confusion arises
from thinking (wrongly) that the words 'p is true' form a description of
p which can be completed by adding a time specification. Here, as in so many
cases, one is misled by the external form of expression; it seems as if the
adjective 'true' stands for a quality of propositions of which it can be asked
'When does p
have this quality?'...." [Ibid., p.32. Italic emphases in the original.]
Waismann now tells us he is "making no
assertions", but it is obvious that he
is. What I think he means is somewhat similar to the points I have made
in Essay Twelve Part One: an assertion that something is a rule is
different from the assertion of a proposition that expresses a matter of fact
--, or, indeed, the assertion of a fact
about that rule:
It could be objected that the propositions advanced in this
Essay -- such as "Metaphysical propositions are non-sensical" -- are self-refuting,
too, since they aren't empirical and yet they are also supposed to be true. If
so, they can't be false, either, hence they must be non-sensical themselves,
if we are to believe what this Essay has to say.
This objection is based on the idea that there are only two
uses of the indicative mood: fact-stating and philosophical thesis-mongering.
The conclusion seems to be that I am either stating facts -- which could be
false --, or I am advancing a supposedly true philosophical theory of my own
about language, etc. If the latter were the case, then what I have to say would
be
no less non-sensical. In that case, I would have succeeded in refuting myself!
But, there are other uses of the indicative mood, one of which features in the
formulation of scientific theories, which, in general, don't state facts, but
express rules we use to make sense of the world (also called here forms of
representation; more about that presently). And rules aren't the sort of
thing that can be true or false, only useful or useless, effective or
ineffective, practical or impractical, followed or broken, etc.
So, when Newton, for example, tells us that the rate of change of momentum is
proportional to the applied force, he isn't stating a fact -- otherwise it could be
false. But if that were so, its falsehood would change the meaning of "force",
and it would therefore be about something other than "force", as Newton
understood that word (in the
Second Law) --, he is proposing, or establishing a rule that can be used
to study acceleration, among other things.
[Of
course, he
might not have seen things this way, but that doesn't affect the point being
made. Recall
the comments made at the top of this page: This Essay "tackles issues that have sailed right
over the heads of some of the greatest minds in history...."
I will say more about why such 'Laws' are in effect rules in Essay Thirteen Part
Two. (Incidentally, this approach to scientific 'Laws' helps account for the odd
fact that they all
appear to tell lies about nature (this links
to a PDF). Why that is so will also
be examined in the aforementioned Essay. On that, see
Cartwright (1983).)]
I use the indicative mood in the same way -- as part of interpretative, or
elucidatory,
rules --, except, in this case, I do so only in order to show that philosophical theories
themselves are both non-sensical and incoherent.
At this point, someone might refer
us to Wittgenstein's notorious comment:
"6.54: My propositions [Sätze --
sentences, RL] serve as elucidations in the following way: Anyone who
understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical [unsinnig], when
he has used them -- as steps -- to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak,
throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these
propositions, and then he will see the world aright." [Wittgenstein
(1972), p.151.
(This links to a PDF.) Paragraphs merged.]
They
might
then claim (as, indeed, many have) that he only succeeded in refuting himself.
As I explained
earlier, in place of "nonsense" I prefer "non-sense",
and that is clearly what Wittgenstein also intended; that is, he was referring
to propositions (sentences) which are incapable of expressing a
sense (Sinn). [He
pointedly contrasts Unsinnig (non-sense) with Sinnloss (senseless)
sentences.]
So, Wittgenstein's own Unsinnig sentences [Sätze] -- not the
inscriptions produced by
the metaphysicians he is criticising -- express rules
("elucidations") in what appear to be propositional (or sentential) form.
That is, they use the
indicative mood, by-and-large. He employed these elucidations in an endeavour make it clear how
it is that our sentences are capable of expressing a sense (Sinn), and
how they sometimes fail to express a sense (Sinnloss)
--, or, worse, how they can't express a sense (Unsinnig). When that has been done, or once we see what
Wittgenstein was trying to say, we no longer need these rules and can "throw them away".
Now rules, as I also pointed out earlier, can't express a sense (they are Unsinnig)
-- they aren't capable of being true or false, they can only be useful or useless,
followed or flouted --, but that doesn't
prevent us from understanding them (which we plainly do once we realise they aren't
like empirical propositions, or even metaphysical pseudo-propositions, but are
elucidations -- i.e., once we see, or come to appreciate, they aren't
incoherent non-sense). In that case, Wittgenstein was outlining, or proposing, a
set of interpretative rules that were aimed at rendering his analysis of language
clear.
Again, when Newton, for example,
tells us that the rate of change
of momentum is proportional to the impressed force, he is (indirectly) informing us how he
intends to use certain words and how he proposes to make sense of nature by
means of them. His 'laws' elucidate his physics, and as such are rules.
But, why "throw them away"? Well, consider someone who is trying
to teach a novice how to play chess, how the pieces move, how they can capture other
pieces, etc., etc. In doing this, they will explain the rules of chess in the
indicative mood: "The Queen moves like this, and this...". Of course, the rules can
also be expressed in the imperative mood, too: "Move your Rook like this...",
"The King has to move this way...", but that isn't absolutely essential. In addition, the rules
of the game can be taught by
practical demonstration -- by simply playing! Novices can even learn by
just watching others play, asking the odd question or two.
The rules of chess are also Unsinnig, since they can't be false. These
rules aren't descriptive, they are prescriptive. They can't be true or
false. If they could be false, for example, then some other rule -- such as,
"The Bishop doesn't move diagonally, it moves in a zig-zag fashion like this" --
would be 'true'. But, "The Bishop doesn't move diagonally, it moves in a zig-zag
fashion like this" isn't an alternative rule for the Bishop in chess, since the way that
that piece moves
defines what the word "Bishop" means in that game. The rules elucidate how that word
is used and how that piece behaves. If a 'Bishop' were to move (legitimately) in
any other way, it would be part of an different game, not chess!
Some might
argue that a rule in chess such as, "The Bishop moves like this..." is
in fact true. So, the above comments are misguided. But, if that were the case, "The Bishop moves like this..." would
then be descriptive not prescriptive, making this an assertion,
which could be true or could be false. But, anyone who now claimed that such
rules weredescriptive (and, in this case, were true) would have no answer to someone
else who retorted "Well,
I'll move it any way I like!"; other than an to appeal to tradition, to how the
game has always been played in the past, they could make no response. So, in order to
proscribe the antics of such maverick chess players, "The Bishop moves like
this...", and sentences like it, would have to be viewed prescriptively, and thus
as rules, not descriptions. Rules are enforced because they are
prescriptive. It would make no sense to enforce a description.
Of course, "The Bishop moves like this..." is a correct (or true)
description of, or assertion about, a rule in chess, in the sense that anyone who used it would be
speaking truly about the rules themselves, but the prescriptive nature of this
rule doesn't depend on such truthful reports, but on the application of that rule, a
rule which
defines how certain pieces must move.
Once we have grasped these rules we can in effect "throw them away" (unless, of
course, we have to explain them to someone else, or appeal to them to settle a
dispute, etc.). How many times do you have to say to yourself once you
have mastered the rules of chess: "The Rook moves like this, the Pawns like
that..."?
Every single Wittgenstein commentator has missed these simple points and
they then struggle to comprehend the Tractatus!
Now, I'm not suggesting Wittgenstein was crystal clear about
this (he wasn't a systematic philosopher at any point in his life), but it seems to me to be the only way to make the Tractatus
comprehensible, so that it doesn't self-destruct, or morph into something
completely different (perhaps as a result of the rather extreme interpretations
suggested by,
for example, the 'New
Wittgensteinians'). [On that, see Crary and Read (2000), and Read and Lavery (2011).]
But, even if it could
be shown that Wittgenstein didn't hold this view, it certainly represents my
view, and my attempt to repair the
Tractatus.
I think the same comments (suitably
adjusted and/or adapted) might very well apply to what Waismann had to say.
Waismann then points out that he uses
the method of question and answer in order to help his (prospective) interlocutors see for
themselves how they have always used words like "true" and "false" (presumably
before they had read any philosophy!), directing them to their own linguistic
practices. He then continues:
"The following
objection might be raised:
"We began with the
rule 'It is true that it will rain tomorrow' = 'It will rain tomorrow' and
passed to the rule:
"'It is true that it
will rain tomorrow' = 'It will rain tomorrow now'.
"Is the second rule a
consequence of the first? Certainly not, even though, if we follow the analogies
of ordinary language, it presents itself quite naturally once the first is
accepted.
"This, however, is by
no means decisive, and someone might well say 'I agree to the first rule, but
not the second'. He would then be obliged to explain what he means when he says
'It is true now that...', and his explanation would be a new convention. On the
other hand if he agrees
to the second, he is recognising it of his own free will....
"Even now our clarification is exposed to misinterpretation;
someone might ask whether the original question about the future, 'Is "p"
true or false now?', has really been answered. To ask this is to show
that one is not freed from the spell of the verbal expression, and is like
remarking 'how strange that mathematicians have not found the
sum of
the series 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + ...!' [Discussed
earlier in the book, pp.10-11 -- RL.] Our method aims not at answering such
questions, but at displaying their lack of meaning: we rectify the use of
language, and in the rectified language the possibility of formulating the
question does not arise, for its wording is such as to violate the rules we have
specified. The solution is just this -- the problem vanishes." [Waismann, op
cit, p.33.
Italic emphasis in the original. (I have separated a few sentences to make
the points Waismann wanted to make somewhat clearer.)]
[For Waismann, a "new criterion" changes
the meaning of the sentences involved, which would alter the sentence "It is
true now that..." so that it no longer means what we normally take it to mean.
Naturally, we might want to question the wisdom of running together the meaning
of a word and the meaning of a sentence/proposition. I have tackled that knotty
problem in Essay Thirteen Part Three -- for example,
here and
here.]
Not everyone will accept this method as
a valid way to proceed in Philosophy (indeed, the vast majority of contemporary
Philosophers, never mind most Analytic Philosophers, don't accept it --
if they did they would soon be out of a job, having shown their entire
discipline exudes little other than self-important hot air!), but, as I have argued in my
Essays, traditional philosophical methods simply result in the production of
incoherent non-sense.
So, Wittgenstein's technique (which is a
modified version of the one Waismann employed) can be used to dissolve
philosophical 'problems' to order in like manner (since they all depend on a
misuse, or on a distortion, of ordinary language).
[For more details, the reader is
directed to the following: Baker and Hacker (1988), pp.34-64, 263-347, Fischer
(2011a, 2011b), Glock (1996), pp.261-62, 293-96,
Kuusela (2005, 2008), Iliescu (2000),
Peterman (1992), and Suter (1989) -- or, the many of the books and
articles listed, here and
here.]
I have employed a somewhat similar, but
far more radical, approach to the method outlined above when discussing the
philosophical confusions created by those who think Hegel had something useful
to tell humanity (upside down or 'the right way up') -- for example,
here,
here,
here,
here and
here; but in general,
here and
here.
The difference is that an application of
this method shows that the theories and theses of
DM are also
incoherent
non-sense, whether Wittgenstein held to that opinion or not.
Waismann illustrates the difference
between a philosophical and an
empirical question (while at the same time highlighting the
Wittgensteinian principle that clarification makes hitherto puzzling questions
disappear) by considering how Einstein approached simultaneity:
"...It is always
language which leads us into the fallacy of misapplied concepts and which as
a matter of course uses the same words with different meanings. The effect
of this is the effect of a conjuring trick; the change occurs so innocently that
it escapes attention....
"Perhaps the most famous example of
clarification is
Einstein's
analysis of simultaneity. At the end of the last century difficulties of unknown
origin arose in classical physics and manifested themselves in a variety of
ways. The situation can perhaps best be described by saying that in the
classical view it was quite uncertain whether two events taking place at two
widely separate places (for example, one on the Earth and the other on
Sirius) were
simultaneous or not. In this view the answer to the question depends on the
state of motion of the bodies relative to the
ether. Light takes about eight years to travel from Sirius to Earth, so that
an event which is observed to be taking place now on Sirius actually happened
eight years ago -- but only if the Earth-Sirius system is at rest in the ether.
If the system is moving in the direction from Sirius to the Earth, the light
takes longer than eight years, because the earth is flying away from it. But if
the system is moving in the opposite direction, the light takes less than eight
years. In order, therefore, to assign a definite place in time to an even on
Sirius, the size and direction of motion of the system must be known. But
experience (the
Michelson-Morley experiment) has shown that such a motion cannot be
ascertained. In order to explain this fact,
Lorentz
invented a remarkable hypothesis according to which the measurements of our
apparatus
become shorter owing to their motion, and
at the same
time clocks
(and all other natural processes), go slower in such a way that the effect of
the motion is exactly compensated. In other words, Lorentz says 'Motion through
the ether and the contraction of the measuring instruments are both real
processes. If only one part of these processes took place we could very well
measure the motion; but in fact, the processes are so adjusted to each other
that the effect of the whole is exactly zero'; the motion, though real, escapes
notice; that it becomes impossible to determine whether an event on the Earth is
simultaneous with one on Sirius or not.
"Surveying this
argument today it is perfectly clear that a way out of this dilemma could only
be found by turning away from the world of facts to a consideration of concepts.
The decisive step consists in passing from the question 'Are the two events
simultaneous?' to the question 'What exactly does it mean to say that they are
simultaneous?' The answer to this is that initially it does not mean anything;
for the word 'simultaneous' has only a clear meaning when it is applied to
events at more or less the same place. If it is used to refer to events in quite
different places, we require a statement of what it is to mean in this new
context. This step was taken by Einstein. He neither discovered hitherto unknown
facts, nor did he suggest a hypothesis which explains better the known facts;
rather he cleared away from the concept of simultaneity the confusion which had
surrounded it. He simply drew attention to the fact that the word 'simultaneous'
must be redefined if it is to be used to apply to events in quite different
portions of space. The realization that it is here a matter of our having to
determine the use of a word at once made the difficulties of classical physics
disappear. For these were precisely due to the fact that one regarded what is
only a matter of convention as if it were a problem of physics, that one tried
to ascertain whether certain events were simultaneous instead of defining the
word 'simultaneous'." [Waismann, op cit, pp.11-13. Italic emphases
in the original; links added.]
Wittgenstein quoted the following
passage from Augustine's Confessions in the opening sections of the
Investigations:
"When grown-ups named some object and at the same time turned
toward it, I perceived this, and I grasped that the thing was signified by the
sound they uttered, since they meant to point it out. This, however, I
gathered from their gestures, the natural language of all peoples, the language
that by means of facial expression and the play of eyes, of the movements of the
limbs and the tone of voice, indicates the affections of the soul when it
desires, or clings to, or rejects, or recoils from, something. In this way,
little by little, I learnt to understand what things the words, which I heard
uttered in their respective places in various sentences, signified. And once I
got my tongue around these signs, I used them to express my wishes." [Augustine
(2004),
Book One, 8:13, pp.10-11, quoted in
Wittgenstein (2009), p.5e. (This links to a PDF.). Italic emphasis in
the original.]
However, concerning the above, Garth
Hallett points out that:
"Augustine's own
criticism, in De Magistro, of such a primitive view shows that too much
should not be made of one isolated passage." [Hallett (1977), p.73. Italic
emphases in the original.]
For the 'Augustinian
Picture' of language, see Glock (1996), pp.41-45, Baker and Hacker (2005a),
pp.1-28, and Baker and Hacker (2005b), pp.48-72. See also
here.... However, Wittgenstein's view of Augustine's theory of language wasn't entirely
accurate, but it did serve as a point of departure for him. On this, see Kirwan
(2001) and
Burnyeat (1987). [This links to a PDF.]
1.
That this 'received picture' is
incorrect can be seen by reading Alan Janik's essays 'Nyiri on the Conservatism
of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy' -- which was itself a reply to Nyiri (1998)
--, and 'Wittgenstein, Marx and Sociology', both reprinted in Janik (1985),
pp.116-57.
Subsequently, George Paul, Margaret Ramsey, Allen Jackson and Douglas Gasking
were investigated by
ASIO -- the Australian equivalent of
MI5 -- for their
Communist Party connections. [Cornish, op cit, p.45.]
3.
Which is something we knew, anyway! On that, see later sections of this Essay.
4.
Cornish's source for this is John Costello's, The Mask of Treachery: Anthony Blunt: The Most Dangerous Spy in
History,
Harper Collins, 1988 -- although its UK title is, Mask of Treachery. The
First Documented Dossier on Blunt, and Soviet Subversion, Faber and Faber,
1988. The reference Cornish himself mentions can be found in the un-numbered
Documents Section at the end of this book, fourth page along.
5.
It is worth recalling that Joseph Needham, sometime Master of
Caius College Cambridge, wrote the Forward to the famous book, Science at
the Crossroads, (i.e., Bukharin et al (1971)), which published papers
read at the
Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology
(held in London, in June and July 1931). The conference was attended by Nikolay Bukharin,
Abram Deborin and
Boris Hessen,
among others.
6.
For more on Cornforth, see Sheehan, op cit, pp.343-45.
7.
I recently discovered a copy of this article on-line; I have re-formatted and
re-posted it
here. However, in the
years since Moran's article was first published much more evidence has come to
light, evidence that lends even more support to the view that Wittgenstein's
political orientation was indeed left-wing. Very little, if any of it, supports
the opposite view.
8.
However, it is important not to read too much into this isolated passage.
Wittgenstein
might be alluding to a rather obvious point (that I have also made):
C1: If Fb is true at t1,
and ~Fb
is true at t2,
b must have changed.
Hence, the
fact that Fb and~Fb
are contradictories allows us to draw the conclusion that b must have
changed. Naturally, that depends on how we are using the word "change", too! [C1
I would call a grammatical remark.] Of course, there are any number of counter-examples
to C1, but that intriguing fact will have to be left to one side for now.
Nevertheless, given the other things Wittgenstein had to say about
contradictions, it is highly likely he was alluding to Hegel,
Engels or Lenin:
"But you can't allow
a contradiction to stand! -- Why not?... It might for example
be said of an object in motion that it existed and did not exist in this place;
change might be expressed by means of contradiction." [Wittgenstein (1978),
p.370. Paragraphs merged.]
["~"
is the negative sentential operator "not", which maps a true onto a false
proposition,
or vice versa; "b" is a name variable, and "F" stands for
any
predicable to
which b can sensibly be attached.]
10.As we will see,
Wittgenstein engaged in conversation about DM with Professor
Sophia Yanovskaya -- that is, they spoke about a topic
he couldn't have learnt from Marx --
who knew nothing of
this theory. So, he felt confident enough with his
knowledge of this subject to talk to a soviet expert in the field.
Yanovskaya
was Professor of Mathematical Logic at
Moscow University and one of the co-editors of Marx's Mathematical
Manuscripts. Cf., Yanovskaya (1983), reprinted in Marx (1983).
11.
The best analysis of
Wittgenstein's criticisms of identity can be found in White (1978). See also
Marion (1998), pp.48-72 for an extended discussion. On identity in general, see
Geach (1967,
1968,
1973, 1975, 1990), Griffin (1977), Noonan (1980, 1997), Noonan and Curtis (2022) and Williams (1979, 1989, 1992). See also
Deutsch (2022). [It is worth adding that, unsurprisingly, not all of these authors agree with
one each other!]
12.
For example, the
Tractatus uses "(x).x = x" ("Everything is identical with itself") in place
of "(x).x = a".
In fact, Wittgenstein adds:
"Now we see that in a
correct conceptual notation pseudo-propositions like 'a = a', 'a = b.b = c. → a
= c', '(x).x = x', '(Ex).x = a' etc. cannot even be written down." [Wittgenstein
(1972),
5.534, p.107. (This links to a PDF.) I have used slightly different symbols
to the ones Wittgenstein employed.]
13.
But, this isn't the least bit surprising
when the other points made in this Essay are taken into account
After the
Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact (signed August 23 1939), the line
coming out of Russia was markedly different from the line promulgated before that treaty had
been signed. The Russian communists changed their tune and became not only highly critical of military
opposition to the Nazis,
they
actually supplied the Nazis with war materiel,
and even
turned over to the Nazis hundreds of German communists who had taken refuge
in Russia! Of course, all that
changed once again when the Nazis invaded Russia on the 23rd of June 1941.
14.
For further similarities between Hegel, Marx and Wittgenstein, see Easton
(1983), Lamb (1979), and Rubinstein (1981).
16.
The full details of Wittgenstein's desire to live in Russia, and the visit
itself, can be found in Monk (1990), pp.340-54.
17.
Cf., Monk (1990), pp.419-20; see also Hodges (1983), pp.152-54.
18.
I hope to re-post Monk's paper at this site at some point in the future ("fair
use" permitting).
See also Monk (2007). [Added on Edit: I have had to shelve those plans for
copyright reasons.]
19.
If that were indeed so, contradictions would have to be 'necessarily' false --
otherwise, they could be true --, but, we have
already seen
that that option is a non-starter.
20. There are
several other passages in Wittgenstein (1976, 1978) that make similar points.
21.
On this, see the detailed coverage of this aspect of Wittgenstein's work in
Priest and Routley (1989), pp.35-44, and Goldstein (1989), pp.540-62. See also
Priest (2002, 2004, 2006).
22.
Of course, if a contradiction were deemed
'false', it would have to be false in a different sense from how a factual
proposition could be false. For example, the following sentence "Tony Blair was Prime Minister of the UK
in July 2013", which, although false,
could have been true -- plainly, it would be true if Blair had refused to
resign in 2007 and had led New Labour to yet another election victory,
etc., etc. But, if we take both uses of "false" to be the same here, then we
would also have to allow for the possibility that some contradictions are in
fact true. Now, that might not be unwelcome news to
DM-theorists, but, as
I have agued elsewhere (e.g., here,
here,
here,
here and
here), no
sense can be made of 'true contradictions'.
The
different sense of "false" alluded to above would mean that a contradiction
would be false according to the
truth tables
or some other formal criterion.
23.
The rationale underlying indirect proof is still
controversial for some mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics, but
we can't enter into that thorny topic here.
24.
Graham
Priest's work will
be reviewed in a later Essay; in the meantime readers are encouraged to check
this out -- which is a
review of one of Priest's recent books, written by leading logician,
Hartry Field.
See also Slater (2004) -- now Slater (2007b) --, Slater (2002, 2007c), and Field
(2008), pp.361-92. See also
Priest,
Berto and Weber (2022). [I have now added several comments about Priest's work to
Essay Five.]
25.
Cf., Monk (1990), pp.260-61. Cf., also
Malcolm (2001), p.58, von Wright (1980), pp.28, 213, Wittgenstein (1998), p.16,
and Wittgenstein (2012). Concerning Sraffa's influence on Wittgenstein, see also an
important recent study, Engelmann (2013). Cf., also Arena (2013),
Davis (2002, 2011),
Engelmann (2012), Kurz (2009),
Lo Piparo (2010),
Marion (2006), Roncaglia (2009), Rossi-Landi (2002), pp.200-04, Sharpe
(2002), and
Venturinha (2010).
26.
By "grammaticism", I think Engelmann is referring to Wittgenstein's earlier view
that language is a "calculus", governed by strict and clearly defined
grammatical rules. [This idea is prominent, for example, in Wittgenstein (1974b,
1975).] That doesn't mean that Wittgenstein flipped over to the opposite
view -- i.e., that there are no grammatical rules. What it does
mean is that he developed a far more nuanced conception both of language and grammar.
[On that, see, for example, Savickey (1999).]
27.
I haven't
yet been able to consult a copy of Lo Piparo's article.
28.
However, it should be remembered that Frege had already emphasised the social
nature of language a generation or so earlier still, and we already know that his work exercised a
far greater influence on Wittgenstein -- on this see Travis (2010), pp.301-24.
29.
Cf., Baker and Hacker (2005a), pp.1-28 and Baker and Hacker (2005b), pp.43-91.
29a. To be sure, how
signs (functioning as symbols) are concatenated had its own logic in the
Tractatus, which couldn't itself be expressed in significant
propositions -- since such sentences in fact express rules --, but, for a proposition to signify, it had to be (in the final
analysis) a concatenation of simple names. [Cf.,
Wittgenstein (1972), 3.12ff. (This links to a PDF.)] The best
explanation of this and many other similar points is to be found in White (2006).
30.
I have argued
elsewhere that
much of what Voloshinov had to say about "theme" falls apart on close
examination. I am not, however, alleging the same about Wittgenstein's
comments!
31.
Incidentally, I have also subjected this passage to destructive criticism in
Essay Thirteen
Part Three -- which criticism could well be applied to some of the things
Wittgenstein was arguing in the early 1930s -- and which, unfortunately, also
re-surfaced in the
Investigations.
32.
I think this reference is to Bellofiore
and Potier's 'PieroSraffa: New Evidenceon the Biographyand theReception ofProduction ofCommodities inItaly'
(I am relying on Google Translator, here!),
published in Il pensiero economico italiano, VI, 1:7-55.
I have now
reproduced the relevant pages from Roncaglia (2009),
below. Roncaglia claims he can show that Wittgenstein's anthropological view
of language mirrors the change from
Marginalist
theory in economics to Sraffa's new approach, expressed in
The Production of Commodities; cf., Roncaglia, op cit, pp.51-54,
and pp.126-31. Sraffa's letter has now been published in Bellofiore and Potier
(2012).
[The
following depends on what I have said elsewhere in this article about
Voloshinov and the
hand gesture Sraffa made, which
perplexed Wittgenstein so markedly.]
Engelmann (2013) adds much to our understanding of Sraffa's influence on Wittgenstein.
However, he fails to explain why
Wittgenstein should have viewed Sraffa's gesture as a serious challenge to his
earlier, Tractarian, ideas. That gesture wasn't a proposition, so it
couldn't have had a sense, even though it might convey a certain meaning.
That, of course, is of interest in itself, but it still poses no challenge to
the Tractatus. Engelmann also fails to consider the indirect influence of
Voloshinov's work on Sraffa, and hence on Wittgenstein. Voloshinov's attempt to
fragment language into "signs", single word sentences, and assorted exclamations
and gestures would, I think, provide a more promising line of enquiry, even
though his ideas were themselves thoroughly confused (and clearly sent
Wittgenstein off down what turned out to be a philosophical rabbit hole) -- on that, see
here,
here and
here.
Of course,
that hand gesture might be interpreted in several ways, or it could be
translated into propositional or sentential form, but that just concedes the
point. If a gesture has to be given a sense in this way that only underlines the
observation that propositional form is a necessary prerequisite for
anything to have a sense, in the first place. It doesn't work the other way
round. Any sense we give to gestures are parasitic on language and
propositional form, not the other way round. In which case, it is difficult
to see why Wittgenstein was so easily nonplussed. Having said that, if we take
into consideration the (possibly) indirect influence on him of Voloshinov via Sraffa, this
incident becomes
a little less puzzling. Clearly, Sraffa had prepared the ground ahead of time in
their protracted discussions (I'm not suggesting this was a plot of some sort!), so
Wittgenstein's reaction to that gesture was no big surprise by the time Sraffa performed
it. By then, Wittgenstein's mind had been primed by the Italian (in tandem with his
(possible) retailing of Voloshinov's ideas), to which the former would pay attention
because, as we have seen, he was already sympathetic to what he took to be a
Marxist view of language.
This is surely a much more promising line of
enquiry for scholars to peruse. Nevertheless,even this will remain a tentative explanation until more hard evidence comes to light.
35.
However, what Wittgenstein meant by
"form of life" is itself still rather controversial, and in the end,
not
at all clear.
36.
Of course, it could be objected that since Wittgenstein failed tomention
Voloshinov's name in the list of those whom he said had influenced him, this
conjecture can't be correct. Here is that list:
"I think there is
some truth in my idea that I am really only reproductive in my thinking. I think
I have never invented a line of thinking but that it was always provided for me
by someone else & I have done no more than passionately take it up for my work
of clarification. That is how
Boltzmann,
Hertz,
Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell,
Kraus,
Loos,
Weininger,
Spengler,
Sraffa have influenced me." [Wittgenstein (1998), p.16. Links added.]
But, that
doesn't mean Voloshinov didn't influence Wittgenstein since that
influence could well have been channelled via Sraffa or Nicholas Bakhtin.
Moreover, the above list was written sometime in 1931, which might very well
have been before Voloshinov's influence had become apparent, even to Wittgenstein.
Anyway, the above list is incomplete, since
it omits Goethe, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, all of whom had a profound influence
on Wittgenstein. And, that can't be because the list was restricted to
philosophers since Loos and Weininger weren't philosophers, nor was
Sraffa. So, there appears to be no good reason why Wittgenstein omitted those
three names except, perhaps, that they simply slipped his mind. Also missing are
F. P. Ramsey, George Moore, and L. E. J. Brouwer! In the Preface to the
Investigations, Wittgenstein had this to say about
Ramsey's influence:
"For since I began to
occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I could not but
recognise grave mistakes in what I set out in that first book [i.e, the
Tractatus -- RL]. I was helped to realise these mistakes -- to a degree
which I myself am hardly able to estimate -- by the criticism which my
ideas encountered from Frank Ramsey, with whom I discussed them in
innumerable conversations during the last two years of his life. Even more
than to this --- always powerful and assured -- criticism, I am
indebted to that which a teacher of this university, Mr P. Sraffa, for many
years unceasingly applied to my thoughts. It is to this stimulus I owe the most
fruitful ideas of this book." [Wittgenstein (2009), p.4e.
[This links to a PDF.] Italic emphasis
added.]
It is
unclear from this whether the clause "It is to this stimulus..." refers to
Sraffa alone or to the stimulus both he and Ramsey exercised on his thought. Be
this as it may, Ramsey was either on a par with Sraffa or second only to him in
this respect. Furthermore, is anyone seriously prepared to argue that the above three
(Ramsey, Moore, and Brouwer) didn't have a profound influence on
Wittgenstein simply because their names weren't on the above list? Moore, for example, was the most important influence
motivating the writing of On Certainty, albeit twenty or so years later.
[On Ramsey and his influence on Wittgenstein, see McGuiness (2006) and
Monk (2016).]
Frege is
nowhere in sight in the above passage from the Investigations -- nor are Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer,
Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, or Spengler. Unlike the thoughts expressed in Wittgenstein (1998), the
comment in Investigations was meant for publication. Moreover, as noted above, it is
also possible that Voloshinov's ideas were filtered via
Sraffa.
Some have
pointed to Oswald Spengler, an undoubtedconservative,
as proof Wittgenstein was also a conservative. But, that no more shows
Wittgenstein was a conservative than Marx's study, and praise, of Hegel shows he
was, too. Moreover, Wittgenstein also mentioned Weininger, whose influence was
entirely 'negative'. Indeed, he said the following in a letter to Moore (dated
23/08/1931):
"I can quite imagine that you don't
admire Weininger very much.... It is true that he is fantastic [Moore had meant
this word in its older sense: "full of fantasy" -- RL] but he is great
and fantastic. It isn't necessary or rather not possible to agree with
him but the greatness lies in that with which we disagree. It is his enormous
mistake which is great. I.e., roughly speaking if you just add a '~'
to the whole book it says an important truth."
[Wittgenstein (2012), p.193. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphasis in the original. The
tilde (i.e., "~") is the sign for negation.]
In which case, the presence of Spengler's name in
no way implies Wittgenstein agreed with the latter's conservatism --
especially given the overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary presented in
this Essay.
Others have noted that, like Spengler, Wittgenstein
expressed a negative view of the 'spirit of the age'. He also had this to say
(which does at least sound Spenglerean):
"It is not absurd to believe that the scientific &
technological age is the beginning of the end of humanity, that the idea of
Great Progress is a bedazzlement, along with the idea that the truth will
ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific
knowledge & that humanity, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no
means clear that this is not how things are." [Wittgenstein (1998), p.64e.]
However, the above passage is ambiguous, not least
because it ends with an enigmatic "It is by no means clear that this is not how
things are." Wittgenstein appears to be qualifying or attenuating this pessimistic view of
progress, not fully endorsing it. Moreover, Wittgenstein's opening comment,
"It is not absurd to believe that the scientific & technological age is the
beginning of the end of humanity...", doesn't imply that this is his view, only
that it isn't absurd to hold that opinion; that is, that it is a valid point of
view but not necessarily his own. Indeed, he later says of science that it can
both enrich and impoverish. [Ibid., p.69e.] This suggests he harboured an
ambivalent attitude toward science -- even though he held a negative view of any
attempt to import its methodology into philosophy, as we saw
above.
But, let us suppose for the moment that Wittgenstein
did
fully agree with Spengler's pessimistic view of 'the west'; wouldn't
that imply he was a conservative? Hardly. Many on
the leftalso shared this view of western 'decadence', attributing
cultural decline and creeping scientism to the 'death throes of Late
Capitalism'. Here, for example, is
Louis
Fraina (aka, Corey Lewis, a founding member of the US Communist Party), in a
1934 essay entitled
The Decline of American Capitalism:
"The decline of capitalism was evident in Europe even before
the crisis and depression which set in after 1929. A general economic crisis
prevailed and cyclical prosperity was on a lower level than pre-war, while
capitalism was crushed in the Soviet Union. Bourgeois economists, particularly
in Germany, admitted and analyzed the elements of decline. In the United States,
however, it was smugly assumed that economic decline was the lot of lesser
breeds outside the law -- the law of American prosperity everlasting. For hadn't
American capitalism solved the problem of prosperity? There would not and could
not be any more depressions and hard times: prosperity was eternal, world
without end, and a new world around the corner. But when prosperity crashed in
the United States, and crashed more severely than in Europe, where the already
existing economic crisis was aggravated by the new cyclical breakdown, the
sentiment was general that 'capitalism is on trial.' Some prophesied the crack
o' doom, others argued that capitalism might survive if it 'reformed' itself. In
Europe it looked like the end; American prosperity had seemed as firm as the
Rock of Gibraltar, and now it was overwhelmed by the seas of depression....
"The decline of capitalism is the outcome neither of the
depression nor of the World War. It was the fact of decline which gave the war
its specific historical character – decline producing war and war reacting upon
decline. The decline of capitalism is the outcome of general capitalist
development and of the movement of social change. In longtime perspective, the
decline of capitalism is determined by its having outgrown the historical
necessity of its being. In the words of Prof.
F.
L. Schuman: 'Western civilization is already old. It may already have run
its course and be headed toward a long twilight of decline. In any case its
problems are immediate, pressing, and threatening.' This is a conclusion in
terms of the future, not of a past compact of the wish-fulfilments of the
agrarian-Junker reactionary, Oswald Spengler, whose lamentations, nevertheless,
express the decline of capitalist culture. Minor social changes produce a
situation where a major social change becomes necessary -- the revolutionary
substitution of the old order by the new. In short-time perspective, the decline
of capitalism is determined by the high development of the productive forces and
the relative exhaustion of the long-time factors of expansion. This imposes
fetters upon the further development of industry, leads to a slackening rate of
growth and eventually an absolute fall in production, and results in economic
decline and social decay." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 15/03/2017. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis and link added.]
A quick Google search for "The decadence of
capitalist culture" (and the like) will reveal that this topic has been a constant theme on the
left (both hard and soft left) for much of the last 150 years, so Spengler's
pessimism is hardly the sole preserve of conservatives. We have already had
occasion to note the following about Maurice Dobb:
"Until the end of his life, Maurice Dobb steadfastly played communism's
John
the Baptist, preaching the Decline of Capitalism
to successive generations of undergraduates. In 1965, when I attended his
classes, he was white-haired and weary after nearly a half century in his self
appointed role. But he still mustered the persuasive enthusiasm of the true
convert who was also an inspiring teacher...." [Costello (1988), p.165. Bold
emphasis added.]
In that case, even if
Wittgenstein agreed 100% with Spengler, that would still fail to imply he was a
conservative.
[Other 'hard left attitudes to 'capitalist degeneracy' can
be accessed, for example,
here,
here,
here and
here. See also
Esther Leslie's review of
Walter
Benjamin's analysis of the commodification of capitalist culture. On Spengler, see also
here, and Haller (1988), pp.74-89 --, but Haller seems rather confused in
places, to say the least.]
I have just received a copy of
Eagleton (2016), which, among many other things, succeeds in blurring the
distinction I have attempted to draw in this Essay between Wittgenstein's
obvious
leftist leanings and the allegation he was a conservative, or even a mystic of some
sort. Although Eagleton's work isn't in any way aimed at my work (I doubt he
even knows about it!), it is aimed at undermining the idea that
Wittgenstein wasn't a conservative in any sense of that term but was in fact a
leftist. I have already had occasion to take Eagleton to task for his
surprisingly sloppy approach both to Philosophy and Marxism
in an earlier
version of this Essay, but this latest work of his merely extends his slap-dash
approach to such matters into the nature of Wittgenstein's work itself. I
don't propose to enter into that topic here since it isn't relevant to
the aims of this Essay; I will merely comment on his attempt to blur the
aforementioned distinction.
Initially, Eagleton does make some attempt to
present a rather weak case in support of the claim that Wittgenstein was
sympathetic to the left (pp.121-33), but he spends much of the rest of the
chapter undermining that conclusion. Indeed,
true-to-form (and predictably!), he largely bases his negative
conclusions on the alleged influence Spengler had on Wittgenstein. However, he
offers no new evidence all the while ignoring the contrary evidence and argument
presented above, and throughout this Essay. Of course, Eagleton shouldn't be
faulted for not knowing about my work, but he should be taken to task for
not asking the rather obvious questions I have posed and for failing to
subject to critical scrutiny the time-worn and hackneyed tale that Wittgenstein
was influenced (positively) by that reactionary hack, Spengler -- about whom
(and the alleged influence he had on Wittgenstein) I have already commented
above, as well as
here.
Eagleton does, however, reference Bloor (1983),
p.163ff (the actual reference should in fact have been Bloor (1983), pp.162ff)
in support, but Bloor's only real evidence comes from passages found in the
early pages of Wittgenstein (1998), all but one of which date from the early
1930s -- i.e., pp.12e, 16e, 17e, 21e, 23e, 31e, and 53e --, which were written
before the influence of Wittgenstein's Marxist friends had exercised their
full effect (and this is especially true of the most formative influences that Sraffa
had on his thought -- who, it is a pretty safe bet, would have given Spengler
short shrift, to say the least). Moreover, most of these 'Spengler'
passages are about music and art, and hence don't appear to be at all relevant to
the philosophical work
Wittgenstein was doing at the time, nor is there any clear evidence they had a
notable effect on it, or on his political ideas. Indeed, as I pointed out above, given the fact that (i)
Marxists were making many of the
same points about 'bourgeois culture', and had been doing so for some time (but
from a totally different angle and for a completely different purpose), and that (ii) There is far more evidence
(direct and indirect) that these Marxists exercised a much more profound influence on
Wittgenstein than Spengler. Given these salient facts, Eagleton and Bloor's thesis can
be seen for what it is: sloppy at best, misleading at worst.
[In a future re-write of this Essay, will add
several more comments about Eagleton and Bloor. I will also add a few about
Peter Hacker's comments on Spengler.]
Finally, even if it is admitted that Spengler's
work influenced Wittgenstein, that isn't the same as admitting Wittgenstein was
a conservative. Many of the socialist and Marxist members of the Vienna
Circle were heavily influenced by Frege, a noted right-winger (who made several
reprehensible comments about Hitler in his
1924 diary), but that doesn't mean they were either rightists or
supporters of Hitler!
"Although he was a fierce, sometimes even satirical,
polemicist, Frege himself was a quiet, reserved man. He was right-wing in his
political views, and like many conservatives of his generation in Germany, he is
known to have been distrustful of foreigners and rather anti-semitic. Himself
Lutheran, Frege seems to have wanted to see all Jews expelled from Germany, or
at least deprived of certain political rights. This distasteful feature of
Frege's personality has gravely disappointed some of Frege's intellectual
progeny." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 17/05/2017.]
Similarly, many on the left have been profoundly
influenced by
that Nazi sympathiser, Heidegger; does that make them Nazis? [I have argued
otherwise,
here.]
37.
On this, see Cornish, op cit, pp.9-24, who reproduces a picture that
purports to show what some have taken to be the young Wittgenstein, in the same
school photograph as Hitler (p.11). Here is that picture:
Figures Two And Three: School
Photographs
Naturally,
the reader must make up her own mind whether or not the boy labelled "Ludwig
Wittgenstein" is indeed Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Update
September 2023: According to Ray Monk, it is now clear that the boy
highlighted in the bottom left of the picture isn't Wittgenstein. On
that, see Video One.
37a. This isn't to pick
on Marcuse, or, indeed, other Marxists who have referred to this passage in support of
the claim that Wittgenstein was a conservative thinker, since other commentators
-- who should know better -- are guilty of the same misinterpretation. The most
recent example I know of is the Oxford Philosopher, A. W. Moore, who, in his
recent book on Metaphysics, had this to say:
"Let us return to the
example of transfinite mathematics. Wittgenstein insists that 'philosophy may in
no way interfere with the actual use of language,' and, in particular, that
'it...leave mathematics as it is' (§124).
[In a footnote] "In
fact, just before this remark about mathematics, he says that philosophy, by
which he means good philosophy, 'leaves everything as it is' (emphasis
added). Everything? Well, everything untainted by bad philosophy. And here, of
course, the threat of circularity is again manifest." [Moore (2013), pp.273-74.
Italic emphasis in the original.]
Of course, it might well be the prevailing view that
Wittgenstein was here revealing his conservative, shall we say, tendencies,
hence it has now become impossible to read that notorious passage independently of that
view, and hence free of the idea that the word "everything" here is to be understood in a totally
unrestricted sense.
But it is no less clear that this is seriously to
misinterpret the passage. Here it is again:
(1) "Philosophy must not interfere in any
way with the actual use of language, so it can in the end only describe it.
(2) "For it cannot justify it either.
(3) "It leaves everything as it is.
(4)
"It also leaves mathematics as it is, and no mathematical discovery can
advance it." [Wittgenstein
(2009), §124, p.55e.
[This links to a PDF.] Italic
emphasis added.]
Once more, it is clear that the word "everything",
in Line 3, is restricted to "the actual use of language", and that can be seen
from the next sentence. If "everything" were totally unrestricted, there would
be no point adding the extra caveat in Line 4. Why inform us that Philosophy
"also" leaves mathematics as it is if we have just been told it leaves
"everything" as it is? If the meaning of "everything" in Line 2 is
unrestricted, then mathematics can't be part of "everything", can it? So,
either Wittgenstein was a sloppy stylist (who wants or admit that?), or
he held some rather odd ideas about mathematics.
So, in Line 3, Wittgenstein is talking about "the
actual use of language", not
absolutely everything -- i.e., from politics to pottery, science to sociology,
quasars to quarks! The continual use of "it" should have alerted his commentators to
this rather simple point (here coloured and underlined appropriately to help the unconvinced
see this more clearly):
(1) "Philosophy
must not interfere in any way with the actual use of
language, so
it can in the end only describe
it.
(2) "For it
cannot justify
it
either.
(3) "It
leaves
everything as it
is.
(4)
"It also leaves
mathematics as it is, and no
mathematical discovery can advance
it."
The red "it" clearly refers back to "philosophy",
but it is also clear that the purple "it" refers back to "the actual use of
language", which means that "everything as it is" is correctly coloured purple,
too.
Moore's aside, "Well,
everything untainted by bad philosophy. And here, of course, the threat of
circularity is again manifest", is also unnecessary, and hardly justified by
Wittgenstein's actual choice of words. It is no less clear that Wittgenstein's later appeal
to ordinary usage isn't "circular", as Moore claims (pp.271-74), and that
his
additional claim that:
"[T]here is no
Archimedean point from which to tell what makes sense", [Moore (2013),
pp.272-73. Link added.]
is no less misguided. I have in fact given it
just such a point (or a
practice) in Essay Twelve Part One -- or, at least indicated how one such
can be identified. Whether there is such a (general) point (or practice) that will
always enable us to discriminate sense from
non-sense (or even
nonsense) I will leave tantalising vague for now.
38.
On Wittgenstein's 'relativism', see
Putnam (1992b), pp.168-79. Incidentally, Hanna Pitkin's book [Pitkin (1992)] is
itself a first-rate example of how Wittgenstein's method can be applied to
analyse and clarify social and
political questions. It also contains an excellent exposition and defence of the
word "ordinary" in
OLP.
39.
Wittgenstein enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army on the 17th of August 1914;
he fought initially on the
Eastern Front, and later, in 1918, in the
Italian campaign.
40.
For the rest of Wittgenstein's war
experiences, see McGuiness (1990), pp.206-66, and Monk (1990), pp.105-66.
40a. Some
might try to draw our attention to one or two rather odd incidents that occurred during
Wittgenstein's meetings with The Vienna Circle -- for example, his
insistence on reading passages from that mystical poet,
Rabindranath Tagore -- as evidence of his abiding mysticism.
"[T]he Vienna Circle interpreted Wittgenstein's early work as
the charter document for their movement, until they prevailed on him to come
speak to their group and explain some of the more difficult points in his theory
of representation. When he finally came, instead of answering their questions
about his book, he sat face away from them reading Tagore, the Indian poet, for
over an hour and then got up and silently left the room. Afterward
Carnap remarked to
Schlick,
'I guess he is not one of us'." [Quoted from
here;
accessed 27/12/2016. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Links added. I have read this anecdote about Wittgenstein
many times, but have lost the exact reference, although Ray Monk reports most of
it -- Monk (1990), p.243.]
This incident will have taken place in the late
1920s, when Wittgenstein was still recovering from his PTSD, so not much can be
read into it. I am unaware of any further episodes like the one above in the 1930s,
'40s, or early '50s before he died. Having said that, Yorick Smythies and
Wittgenstein did translate a poem of Tagore's into English (the exact date of
which is unclear but it must have taken place in the late 1930s or very early
1940s, and which, to the best of my knowledge, remained unpublished) -- Smythies
(2017), pp.327-35.
[Wittgenstein had discovered Tagore's work in 1921,
when he was still dallying with mysticism [Monk (1990), pp.408-10].
Nevertheless, it looks like Tagore's poems remained important to him for the rest of
his life; but no more should be read into that than Marx's admiration for
Shakespeare and Goethe meant he was a mystic, too.]
For an
explanation of what Wittgenstein might have meant when he said: "I am not
a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of
view", see Malcolm (1997).
Malcolm
constructs, I think, the strongest case for arguing that Wittgenstein was
religious. He notes that while conversations with one of his sisters had
destroyed his boyhood faith, he had been told by Wittgenstein about a play he
had seen in Vienna when he was in his early twenties (which would place this
around 1910-11) that convinced him of the "possibility of religious faith"
[Malcolm (1997), p.7]. Now, that doesn't contradict what was argued in the main
body of this Essay, since the mere possibility of religious faith --
obviously! -- isn't the same as adopting some form of religious faith. Malcolm also
acknowledges that Wittgenstein's overt turn to the 'mystical', coupled with
ruminations about 'God', etc., didn't manifest itself until Wittgenstein's
military service has run some of its course, which is what has also been argued in this Essay. Most of
Wittgenstein's comments about religion (and hence the majority of those that Malcolm
quotes) come from Wittgenstein (1998).
Even so,
"God" (in the religious sense of that word) is absent from his most
important work --
Wittgenstein (2009). [This
links to a PDF.] To be sure, the words "God" and "deity"
do crop up in the Investigations -- for instance,
§§234, 346,352, 426(again, this
links to a PDF), as well as in the Philosophical Fragments, §§284, 342
(which is part of Wittgenstein (2009), these appear on p.217e and p.226e
respectively of the 1958 edition);see also ibid., §23
(p.178e of the 1958 edition),
which contains a non-committal reference to "religion" --, but as
will soon become clear to anyone who reads these sections, Wittgenstein is
merely using those words and ideas as linguistic and philosophical devices in
order to
make specific points.For example:
"But couldn't we imagine God's (sic) suddenly giving a parrot
reason, and its now saying things to itself? -- But here it is important that,
in order to arrive at this idea, I had recourse to the notion of a deity."
[Wittgenstein (2009),
§346,
p.117e.
[Once more, this links to a PDF.]
An atheist
or an agnostic could have written that.
Note, I am
not arguing Wittgenstein was an atheist or even an agnostic, just making the
point that this use of "God" isn't necessarily religious,
in a traditional sense of that word. [I will say more about that rather obscure
comment at the end of this Note.
So, while
Wittgenstein still played around with religious ideas in private notebooks, in
his most important work, they are totally absent.
For what
are, I think, effective criticisms of Wittgenstein's comments about religious
belief, see Cook (1988, 1993). For a timely corrective to Malcolm's interpretation, see
Winch (1997).
Ray Monk delivered the following interesting, and,
in relation to the aims of this Essay, highly pertinent lecture at Swansea
University in June 2022, entitled, 'Wittgenstein In Swansea':
This sub-section is still under construction! It should
be finished in the next few weeks.
41a. Dialectical Marxists have tended to
argue along the following lines: Hegel's mysticism can largely be ignored since
his thought (or at least its "rational kernel") represents ideas that were
revolutionary, or which represented revolutionary and progressive ideas when
they were written -- especially if they have been turned the "right way up".
But, that isn't the case
with mystics who wrote, say, a fifty or a hundred years later, when bourgeois thought was
predominantly, or even completely reactionary. Or so the argument proceeds. I
have dealt with that rather suspect line of reasoning
here.
42.
We have
already seen
how Marcuse completely misconstrued Wittgenstein's comment that philosophy
"leaves everything as it is".
44.
Wittgenstein (1972), 2-3.263, pp.7-25, and 5.5423, p.111. [This links to a PDF.] On the background to this, see White
(1974, 2006). On Investigations §37-61 (the relevant sections),
see Baker and Hacker (2005b), pp.112-42, Hallett (1977), pp.112-39, and Hallett
(2008), pp.33-41.
45.
Once again,I have said much more in response to
Marcuse; the reader is directed
here for
further details.
45a.
It could be objected that this doesn't mean that Philosophy is of no use to
revolutionaries. Indeed, Marx said the following:
"In studying such transformations it is always necessary to
distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of
production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and
the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic -- in short,
ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it
out." [Marx
(1968), p.182. Bold emphasis added.]
Hence,
Philosophy is one of the "ideological forms in which men become conscious
of this conflict [i.e., the conflict between the productive forces and
the existing relations of production -- RL] and fight it out." In which case, it could
be maintained that Philosophy is of use to revolutionaries in their ideological
struggle with ruling-class theorists.
However,
this passage on its own isn't decisive; when it is read in the light of the
other things Marx had to say it is quite clear he regarded Philosophy as an
integral part of ruling-class ideology and thus of no use to socialists. After
all, why would Marx advise his readers to "'leave philosophy aside'..., leap out of it and devote
[yourself] like an ordinary man to the study of
actuality" if it were of any use at all to revolutionaries?
Indeed, why
point the following out?
"The class which has the means of
material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the
means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the
ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it....
Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass
of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range,
hence among other things rule
also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate
the production and distribution of the ideas of their age...."
[Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65,
quoted from
here. Bold emphases added.]
Furthermore,
why make this point?
"Feuerbach's great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing
else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e.,
another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man;
hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975b), p.381. Bold emphases added.]
Why
"condemn" something if it is of any use to socialists?
And, of
course, Marx is quite clear: men, not communists or revolutionaries,
fight this out, which is why he also said:
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is
to change it." [Theses
on Feuerbach.]
46.
In order to check this allegation I have
ploughed through the Indices of all fifty volumes of MECW, and followed
up every reference to Philosophy in Marx's writings.
Of course, MECW also contains Engels's
work, who was far more sympathetic toward Philosophy, not having taken Marx's
advice, and MECW doesn't contain all of Marx's work. When it has
been completed,
MEGA will be the most comprehensive corpus to date -- reputed to extend up to
as many as 120 volumes! [When that has been finished I'll check it out, too!]
Concerning
Marx and 'dialectics', see
here and
here.
47.
On Marx, see Brudney (1998), and Labica
(1980), although these two studies are disappointinglyunsatisfactory on
this topic.
48.
I am not claiming Wittgenstein saw things this way!
Kant:
"I had to deny knowledge in order to
make room for faith". [Critique of Pure Reason,B xxx.]
Another on-line translation has rendered this sentence as follows:
"I must,
therefore, abolish knowledge, to make room for belief." [Quoted from
here.]
Paraphrasing Wittgenstein's method (at least as I have made use of it at this
site):
"I have had to destroy Traditional Philosophy in order to make room for science."
Concerning Wittgenstein's statement that
"Philosophy states only what everyone admits", see Kenny (2004).
49.
On this, see Monk (1990), pp.235-38, and
Cornish (1999), p.250, note 31.
For the background to the general (i.e.,
pre-WW1) criticism of language in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, see Janik and
Toulmin (1973), pp.120-66, and Weiler (1970). These largely focus on the work of
Fritz
Mauthner, whom Wittgenstein mentions in the Tractatus:
"All philosophy is a critique of
language (though not in Mauthner's sense)." [Wittgenstein
(1972), 4.0031, p.37. (This links to a PDF.)]
50.
I have attempted to explain why this is
so,
here.
51.
Some might point to the following
remark in Moran's article:
"Similarly Maurice Cornforth thought Wittgenstein was not in
political sympathy with the Soviet Union but hoped to find a life free of
'bourgeois' formality and insincerity." [Quoted from
here.]
"Wolfe
Mays, a former student, writes that in the early
forties Wittgenstein gave the impression in his classes of being 'distinctively
apolitical, despite his desire to live in Russia.'" [Quoted from
here.]
Certainly Wittgenstein's classes
were apolitical (even though his lectures and seminars challenged several
'bourgeois' philosophical ideas, such as the role of contradictions and the 'law
of identity'), but, as we have seen, his private conversations weren't
a-political.
Others
might mention the fact that Wittgenstein
claims he was influenced by Spengler's (reactionary)
The Decline of the West. This is supposed to indicate he was a
conservative. Even though it is true that Wittgenstein claims this book
influenced him, it is far from clear what that influence amounted to. He also
says he was influenced by Weininger, but we know that that 'influence' was
almost
totally negative. Plainly,
influence doesn't always have to be positive.
So, as noted
above, just because Wittgenstein claims
he was influenced by someone that doesn't mean he agreed with everything they
said, or, indeed, anything they said. We also saw that many communists
argued along similar lines to Spengler -- about the 'decline' of capitalism.
[On this, see the review of a recent
book about Wittgenstein and Weininger, posted
here.]
Consequently, this one fact alone (i.e.,
Spengler's supposed influence on Wittgenstein) is hardly sufficient to counter
the overwhelming bulk of evidence to the contrary presented in this Essay.
Well, I won't do the work of these
'objectors' for them. They are welcome to trawl through Wittgenstein's work (all
four million words), as well as the memoirs of his friends and pupils, in order
to find what few crumbs of comfort they can. That won't change the outcome; the
available evidence overwhelmingly supports the line promoted throughout
this Essay. And, as we will see, the new evidence that has turned up in the last
fifteen
years or so supports it, too -- on that, see
here and
here.
52.
Here are the notes written by Sraffa (quoted from Venturinha (2012)),
slightly edited:
[Sraffa/I21/2]
1) You say: circumstances. Why always
torn out or made up phrases? Why don't you take them from the works of some
philosophers e.g. ...
2) Cause. Is it, historically, true?
3) Remedy. Does it in fact cure?
4) Metaphysics, why not theology?
5) Psycho-Analysis, dispute
2-3 bis) When you describe the cause of
these puzzles and prescribe the remedy you act as a scientist (like Freud). Have
you found out whether these puzzles have in fact arisen out of this attitude to
language (II, 13 [41]), have you made sure that they did not exist before anyone
took that attitude etc? And also, is it a fact that the disease is cured by your
prescription?
[Sraffa/I21/3]
cont. Even if this is so, you have only
based it on your assertion, you have not given the evidence (Cp. the mass of
actual examples produced by Freud).
You say 'it is no use' answering the
solipsist with common sense (p. 70 [98]), and you prescribe a 'cure'. Now, as a
matter of fact, have no solipsists been 'cured' by common sense?
Arising from the above, why do you deal
only with made up examples (or, if they are actual, torn off from their
circumstances) instead of with quotations from philosophers' books?
Also, why do you deal always with
metaphysics and never with theology? Are not their puzzles very similar (e.g.
omniscience in god and freewill in man)? But could it be said that theological
puzzles only arise when people take the calculus' attitude to language? (N.B. I
am not suggesting that this is the reason you leave theology alone)
2.2. Quotations
[Sraffa/I21/4r]
II
p.9 [37] end of §2 "in order to
break the spell" (but why should we want to?)
p.16 [44] l. 3-4 "Philosophy is a fight
against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us." (cp. p. 77
[105] §1 and p. 17 [45] end)
line. 5-6 "I want you to remember that
words have those meanings which we have given them:[;] and we give them meanings
by explanations." (and the rest of the paragraph 7 following one)
p.16 [44] paragraph 4 Meaning given by
someone
p.22 [50] §2 "We are here
misled by the substantives ...["]
p.29 [57] l. 6 from bottom "an unclarity
about the grammar of words" = Metaphysics
p.51 [79] §3 "Trouble caused
by our way of expression"
p.58 [86] middle "language is slightly
cumbrous and sometimes misleading"
p.66 [94] §2 and 67 [95] §1
General rule
p.68 [96] "They state their case
wrongly.... For if they don’t wish to talk of...they should not
use...["] Psychoanalytical
Dispute
p.70 [98] l. 8 "solving their
(philosophical) puzzles, i.e. curing them of the temptation to..."
Further down: "Source of this
puzzlement"
p.81 [109] end "the phrase 'I think I
mean something by it'...is for us no justification at all" "doesn’t interest me"
"calculus"
p.82 [110] end "apparently unimportant
details of the particular situation in which we are inclined to make a certain
metaphysical assertion"
[Sraffa/I21/4v]
p.70 [98] Philosophers' disagreement
"not founded on a more subtle knowledge of fact"
I
p.9 l.9 from bottom "a puzzlement caused
by the mystifying nature of our language"
p.28
§3 Philosophers tempted by methods of science and source of metaphysics
II
p.12 [40] second half
language as exact calculus
p.13 [41] these puzzles "always spring
from just this attitude towards language"
[Bold
emphases alone added; several of Sraffa's abbreviations restored.]
53.
This isn't surprising, since scholars
were only recently allowed to examine Sraffa's private papers [Bellofiore and
Potier (2012)].
54.
Roncaglia outlines what he takes to be
the influence Wittgenstein exercised on Sraffa [Roncaglia (2009), pp.51-54, and pp.126-31]. The reader
is directed there for further details.
55.
Also worthy of note is
Kurz (2009), which is in fact a review of Wittgenstein (2012), as well as some of the material that has recently come to light. For those who
can't access Wittgenstein (2012), Kurz quotes this new material extensively.
Cf., also
Arena (2013).
56.
Some of this is now beginning
to appear
on-line (however,
much of it is still in German).
57.
It is worth recalling that Skinner was a
committed leftist who wanted to volunteer to fight in Spain on the Republican
side. [He was finally turned down on health grounds.] Hence, and once again, we
see a
committed leftist collaborating closely with Wittgenstein as his ideas
were developing and changing. Indeed, we now know that in the 1930s, Skinner was Wittgenstein's
amanuensis
for several sections of his unpublished work. [On that, see
here and
here.] As far as anyone seems
to know, not one single friend or pupil of Wittgenstein's went to Spain to
fight for
Franco -- which is rather odd if Wittgenstein were some sort of
conservative.
58.
Of course, Wittgenstein wasn't oblivious
of these relatively minor differences, but they didn't dominate his thought as
they did that of others.
(1)
Criticise Heraclitus's claim that one can't step into the same river twice
(although his reasons for doing so aren't immediately clear, but it is
quite easy to
show he was right). This would undermine one of the key arguments to which
DM-theorists appeal in support of their doctrine of universal change:
"We are bringing
words back from their metaphysical to their normal use in language. (The man who
said that one cannot step into the same river twice was wrong; one
can step into the same river twice). And this is what the
solution to all philosophical difficulties looks like. Our answers, if they are
correct, must be ordinary and trivial." [Wittgenstein (2013), p.304e.
Italic emphasis in the original. Paragraphs merged.]
(2) Argue
that a different use of the negative particle only succeeds in changing its
meaning -- which would clearly undermine (or at least change our view of)
Hegel's use of the word "contradiction", and
hence its employment in DM:
"There can be no
debate about whether these or other rules are the right ones for the word
'not'.... For without these rules, the word has as yet no meaning; and if we
change the rules, it now has another meaning (or none), and in that case we may
just as well change the word too." [Wittgenstein
(2009),
§549,
footnote, p.155e.
[This links to a PDF.]
(3) Point to
the different meaning of "is" when it is being used as the copula in
predicative propositions compared to its use as the "is" of identity -- which,
if he were right, would completely scupper the entire 'dialectic' (on that see
here):
"In no branch of learning can an author disregard the results of honest research
with so much impunity as he can in Philosophy and Logic. To this circumstance we
owe the publication of such a book as Mr Coffey's
Science of Logic: and only as a
typical example of the work of many logicians of to-day does this book deserve
consideration. The author's Logic is that of the scholastic philosophers, and he
makes all their mistakes -- of course with the usual references to Aristotle.
(Aristotle, whose name is taken so much in vain by our logicians, would turn in
his grave if he knew that so many Logicians know no more about Logic to-day than
he did 2,000 years ago). The author has not taken the slightest notice of the
great work of the modern mathematical logicians -- work which has brought about
an advance in Logic comparable only to that which made Astronomy out of
Astrology, and Chemistry out of Alchemy....
"[Summarising
Coffey's errors -- RL]:
"[1] The author
believes that all propositions are of the subject predicate form....
"[3] He confounds the
copula 'is' with the word 'is' expressing identity....
"The worst of such books is that they
prejudice sensible people against the study of Logic...."
[Wittgenstein (1913),
pp.2-3.]
[The same
idea crops up in many places in his work, but not in relation to the above
book. Of course, Wittgenstein had other and better reasons for rejecting the
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--------,
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--------,
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--------,
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--------,
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--------,
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--------,
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--------,
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[Several of
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