Error, Illusion, Madness 9781509537044, 9781509537051, 9781509537068, 9781509543571

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Error, Illusion, Madness

Critical South The publication of this series is supported by the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Series editors: Natalia Brizuela and Leticia Sabsay Leonor Arfuch, Memory and Autobiography Paula Biglieri and Luciana Cadahia, Seven Essays on Populism Aimé Césaire, Resolutely Black Bolívar Echeverría, Modernity and “Whiteness” Celso Furtado, The Myth of Economic Development Eduardo Grüner, The Haitian Revolution Karima Lazali, Colonial Trauma María Pia López, Not One Less Pablo Oyarzun, Doing Justice Néstor Perlongher, Plebeian Prose Bento Prado Jr., Error, Illusion, Madness Nelly Richard, Eruptions of Memory Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakax Utxiwa Tendayi Sithole, The Black Register

Error, Illusion, Madness Bento Prado Jr.

Commentaries by Arley Ramos Moreno, Sérgio Cardoso, and Paulo Eduardo Arantes

Translated by Marco Alexandre de Oliveira and Rodrigo Nunes

polity

Originally published in Portuguese as Erro, ilusão, loucura. Copyright © Editora 34 Ltda./ Heirs of Bento Prado Jr., 2018. Copyright © Arley Ramos Moreno, Sérgio Cardoso, and Paulo Eduardo Arantes, for their texts, 2018. Published by arrangement with Editora 34 Ltda. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This English edition © 2021 by Polity Press Chapter 4, ‘The Plane of Immanence and Life’ by Bento Prado Júnior and translated by Michael B. Wrigley, was originally published in Introduction to the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, edited by Jean Khalfa. English translation copyright © 2003 Continuum Publishing. Reprinted with permission of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 101 Station Landing Suite 300 Medford, MA 02155, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3704-4 hardback ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3705-1 paperback A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Prado Júnior, Bento., author. | Oliveira, Marco Alexandre de,   translator. | Nunes, Rodrigo, translator. | Moreno, Arley Ramos, other. Title: Error, illusion, madness / Bento Prado Jr. ; commentaries by Arley   Ramos Moreno, Sérgio Cardoso and Paulo Eduardo Arante ; translated by   Marco Alexandre de Oliveira and Rodrigo Nunes. Description: English edition. | Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA, USA : Polity   Press, [2021] | Series: Critical south | “Originally published in   Portuguese as Erro, ilusão, loucura. Editora 34 Ltda./Heirs of Bento   Prado Jr., 2018.” | Includes bibliographical references and index. |   Summary: “A key work on the nature and role of the subject by one of   Brazil’s most important philosophers”-- Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020038421 (print) | LCCN 2020038422 (ebook) | ISBN   9781509537044 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509537051 (paperback) | ISBN   9781509537068 (epub) | ISBN 9781509543571 (adobe pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, Brazilian--20th century. | Prado Júnior,   Bento. | Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951. Classification: LCC B1042 .P7313 2021 (print) | LCC B1042 (ebook) | DDC  199/.81--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038421 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038422 Typeset in 10 on 12pt Sabon by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

Contents

Publisher’s Note vii Foreword—Vladimir Safatle ix Preface xxv 1 Error, Illusion, Madness 1 Commentary by Arley Ramos Moreno: “Error, Illusion, Madness” 26 2 Descartes and the Last Wittgenstein: The Dream Argument Revisited

43

3 Wittgenstein: Culture and Value

65

4 The Plane of Immanence and Life Commentary by Arley Ramos Moreno: “Values and the Plane of Immanence”

85 105

5 Relativism as a Counterpoint Commentary by Sérgio Cardoso: “Bento Prado Jr.’s Lecture on Relativism” Commentary by Paulo Eduardo Arantes: “Neither Apel nor Rorty”

128 148

6 On Deleuze: An Interview

166

7 Bergson, 110 Years Later

176

156

Notes 182 Bibliography 213 Index 223

For my grandchildren, Sofia and Bentinho

Publisher’s Note

Chapter 4 was translated by Michael B. Wrigley. It is reproduced here by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing. The Foreword was translated by Rodrigo Nunes. The remainder of the text was co-translated by Marco Alexandre de Oliveira and Rodrigo Nunes.

I got lost inside myself Because I was a maze And to feel myself these days Is to find I miss myself. I am neither myself nor another, I am something of a medium: A pillar on the bridge of tedium That goes from me to the Other. Mário de Sá-Carneiro, ‘Dispersão’ and ‘7’, excerpts

Foreword No Proper Place of Its Own Vladimir Safatle

A single lexicon is not enough.

João Guimarães Rosa

Is there such a thing as a point of view of the periphery? Understanding the dynamics proper to traditions of critical thought that have grown on the periphery of core capitalist countries demands a double decolonial twist. For this is not simply a matter of searching there for the themes and questions perceived in European and North American universities as pertaining to the experience of overcoming colonial oppression. It is equally a matter of being attentive to the singular manner in which peripheral countries form traditions of critical thought according to their own demands and through the internalization of programs and problems. One of the most astute ways of perpetuating a certain colonial logic is by believing that some questions are out of bounds for the thought that develops in peripheral countries and belong exclusively to the core. One of the most important tasks for the decolonization of thought is to suspend that interdiction and to assume that anyone can think any question and no tradition is barred to us. Maybe this is an adequate way of introducing the intellectual experience of Bento Prado Jr. Although he is widely regarded as

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a major name in the philosophy made in Brazil and one of the country’s foremost essayists, it is only now, ten years after his death, that he is having a book translated into English for the first time. His oeuvre consists of a handful of books that have influenced several generations of Brazilian thinkers. It begins with Presença e campo transcendental: Consciência e negatividade na filosofia de Bergson [Presence and Transcendental Field: Conscience and Negativity in Bergson’s Philosophy], the doctoral thesis he presented in the 1960s but published only in the 1980s, and includes Filosofia da psicanálise [Philosophy of Psychoanalysis] (1991), Alguns ensaios: Filosofia, literatura e psicanálise [Some Essays: Philosophy, Literature, Psychoanalysis] (2000), the Error, Illusion, Madness that readers now have before them, originally published in 2004, as well as the posthumous works A retórica de Rousseau [Rousseau’s Rhetoric] (2008) and Ipseitas [Ipseity] (2017). A professor at the University of São Paulo, he was purged by the military dictatorship in the 1960s and had to go into exile. Upon returning to Brazil after the amnesty,1 Bento Prado would dedicate himself to a philosophy founded on the continuous incorporation of contents that seemed external to it, such as literature, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and cognitive science. In each of these areas he was capable of finding the means that philosophical reflection requires in order to come to grips with the problems bequeathed by the field’s history and tradition. But this dispersion of horizons was the manifestation of a more profound limitlessness with which he treated the subject of philosophical tradition itself. Between analytic philosophy and French poststructuralism, between Bergsonian vitalism and a theory of consciousness along Sartrean lines, if one were to examine the moves that Bento Prado made across the board, one would be excused for thinking that he inhabited an impossible space. In his own way, however, Bento Prado was providing a possible answer to the question concerning the specificity of philosophy in a country like Brazil. From time to time, those working in the field of philosophy in Brazil ask themselves what the country’s “national philosophy” would consist in. Does the philosophy that is practiced in Brazil have a perspective of its own? Is there a positionality that would be all ours? But what are we talking about when we speak of “national philosophies”? For example, it is not a given that “English philosophy” describes an ensemble of intellectual experiences that share some style or signature to some degree. Perhaps

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there is absolutely nothing common, in the strong sense of the word, between Alfred Whitehead and John Austin apart from the fact that they were both citizens of the same nation-state and subjected themselves to the same political power. The same observation could be made about any other so-called traditions: Habermas and Nietzsche, Foucault and Gabriel Marcel … We could take this dissociation game to its limits and turn it into a game of reversals. For instance, it is not entirely absurd to say that, from the perspective of how those traditions unfolded, Heidegger is more of a “French” philosopher than a “German” one, seeing as his influence was stronger, richer, and much more decisive on Gallic soil than it was across the border, on Germanic territory. The history of Heideggerianism, if we take into account mostly its processes of reception, may well be tied more intricately to France. In the same way, “French poststructualism” is a typically North American invention, created in order to accommodate intellectual experiments that did not fit the constricted mold set by the analytic philosophy dominant in the United States. If we look at Derrida from the point of view of the consequences of his thought, it would not be absurd to call him a North American philosopher either. This game of territorial scrambling is more than the musings of a contrarian spirit. It is a reminder that most of the styles we call national are probably no longer sustainable as such by dint of actually being the anomalous cultural constructions of local bourgeoisies that, from the nineteenth century onwards, sought to justify their control and economic frontiers by creating the illusion of an organic arrangement of ideas and forms that would provide the privileged expression of the “spirit” of a people whose natural place was the nation-states, then in the process of consolidating their identity. Philosophy was not immune to this dynamic of tradition creation. Thus the country of Siemens, metallurgy, and the Ruhr also required a “made in Germany” that consisted of Grund (ground), the illusion of a continuity between Meister Eckhart and Hegel, and a Kantian moral philosophy that, at least according to Marx, was the desperate effort to turn the economic and political impotence of its bourgeoisie into a cult of good will; it needed all these just as much as it needed a music in which depth was conveyed through the symphonic game of contrasting characters. All this takes us to the question, what good is there in insisting on the existence of national philosophies today, and in whose interest is this done? Do they really serve the purpose of describing

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the play of forces immanent in singular philosophical experiences, which take place through the refusal of tradition rather than respect for it, through improbable leaps that bind what previously did not go together—as in Deleuze and his “tradition” made of the Englishman Hume, the Frenchman Bergson, the Dutchman Spinoza, and the German Nietzsche? Or are they good only for reasserting the existence of a spirit whose purpose is solely to give a semblance of organic meaning to the institutional monstrosity that is the nation state—with its intangible, immaterial counterpart, “national culture”? It is with questions of this nature in mind that we can measure the extent of Bento Prado’s innovativeness. Instead of trying to affirm some kind of national specificity or situating himself within some historically constituted philosophical lineage, Bento insisted on thinking without a place. That is, he insisted on a mode of thinking that has an ear for resonances to which the filiation of projects and traditions has made us deaf; a mode of thinking without regard for the limits that adherence to a lineage imposes on us. One’s distance from the centers that produced the texts that came to compose the philosophical canon, one’s decentered position vis-à-vis their geography, these features were experienced not as banishment or expatriation but as the opportunity to listen without bounds. Here the peripheral position is no longer a deficit but a singular potential. In Bento Prado’s hands distance is no longer a failing, a lack of fiber (as the cliché of Brazil as a country lacking moral fiber often has it), but the condition for the exercise of a movement that demands continuous flows of translation, the reconstruction of problems in a language that is not the one in which they were originally posed. As if it were only possible to think by translating problems in an errant language—“errant” not in the sense that it is wrong or off course, but insofar as it results from errancy, from a displacement akin to the one that Samuel Beckett imposed on himself when he decided to write in a language other than his own. We should be careful, however, not to miss the most important wager—frightening for some, unacceptable for others—that this operation presupposes. What Bento Prado’s thought suggests is that, if the place of thought is the collapse of place, if its geography is the abolishment of spatial limits, this is because every true exercise of thought allows itself to be carried along by an experience that is common, yet has no language of its own: a common background that is Grund as much as it is Abgrund (abyss). This reverses the

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poles on the horizon that seemed to furnish the normative conditions of our thought. There is no common grammar that could turn all traditions into an emulation of the same set of problems, a sort of philosophical Esperanto. Nevertheless, every specific grammar is traversed by that which it cannot fully apprehend and which produces experiences that lead to categorial metamorphoses. Bento Prado’s wager was that thinking should start from this movement of traversal, of facing up to this common that does not have its proper language but reveals itself in the chiasma between things that could be considered incompatible (just as Deleuze and Wittgenstein could be judged incompatible). At the end of the day, however improbable that may seem, this was the best possible answer to the question of what it means to do philosophy in Brazil. It was this answer that Bento Prado transmitted to us.

A common place without a proper grammar Perhaps this can help us understand why one of the fundamental axes of Bento Prado Jr.’s intellectual trajectory was the philosophical decision not to suspend the essential ties connecting subject and reason, even after all the critiques of the subject that twentiethcentury philosophy rehearsed. This decision is one of the main reasons for the originality of his approach, as it runs against the grain of the most important trends in contemporary critical thought; and its consequences remain unexplored. Ultimately, Bento Prado Jr. took his place alongside those minoritarian currents within contemporary philosophy that tried at once to produce a reflection on the subject that staved off any kind of return to a metaphysics of identity and to resist conceiving of difference as an irreducible dispersion in which no kind of mutual implication could exist—in which subjects would never know any kind of “transformation through contagion” and would never undergo change under the effect of events external to them. Thus, far from a constitutive subjectivity that constructed the world from within representative thought, far from a self-identical substance that would ground its normativity on processes of selflegislation and self-jurisdiction, the subject is, for these minoritarian currents to which Bento Prado belonged, a system of reflexive implication in otherness or in what decenters it. In other words, there is in the category of subject a constitutive reflexivity, but it is

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not a simple expression of my possession of objects, or a categorial projection of my understanding onto the world. Reflection must be freed from the figures of proprietary consciousness. Instead, one must conceive of it as a form of contagion that connects us to what resists subjection to the subject as a center. It is as if this were a matter of drawing the broader philosophical conclusions from an observation on Brazilian culture made by one of its sharpest interpreters, Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes: “We are neither Europeans nor North Americans. Lacking an original culture, nothing is foreign to us because everything is. The painful construction of ourselves develops within the rarified [sic] dialectic of not being and being someone else.”2 Where we thought we were dealing with matters quite free of cultural context, we suddenly discover questions that are profoundly rooted in an indirect belonging to the peripheral condition and imbued with a vision of something that only becomes possible in some other territoriality. Let us keep this kind of connection in mind when we read such statements as: Between the Cartesian formulation of the cogito, the articulation of the meaning of Ich denke in the refutation of idealism in the first Critique, the Nietzschean demolition of that very cogito, the psychology of William James, and the “private language” argument, a whole history of categorial metamorphoses takes place.3

That this history of categorial metamorphoses should follow the ramifications of a history of different conceptions of the subject and their functions is no coincidence. For it is the concept of subject itself that allows for thought to be a history of categorial metamorphoses, a process of transformations that result from openness to and obligatory incorporation of the non-identical produced by reflection. This is why one must insist that the contemporary task of recovering the subject is symmetrical to the demand that we understand the systems of reflexive implication that tie it to what produces decentering, and that we understand how these systems insinuate themselves in discourses such as those of modern literature and psychoanalysis. This decentering, in turn, is the result not just of a recognition by another consciousness, but of the emergence of a ground that does not allow itself to be thought as consciousness. We should note how this strategy led Bento Prado to operate a certain slippage, always

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present in his texts, which consisted in deliberately associating otherness (which could in principle be something recognizable within my system of rules or language game) and a-normativity (which indicates processes whose apprehension is not subjected to any system of rules). For the otherness that really matters is the one that continuously forces me to come face to face with the limit, to think at the limit, namely in that space where the guarantees of stable control and individuation falter. A thinking capable of being touched by something like the absolute Other, the human whom I cannot, or no longer can, recognize as a human, the one who speaks a different language, who plays a different game. Or else, which is not too different, the un-world,4 a world not subject to rules, about which we cannot speak.5

The central tension of the project lies in the demand to speak of an absolute “Other” that is nevertheless constitutive of me—an “Other” that no longer has the form of another consciousness but is nevertheless still capable of contaminating reflection. This apparent paradox led Bento Prado, for instance, to try to discuss, all at the same time, subject, plane of immanence (in its Deleuzian version), transcendental field (in the Sartrean mould), and psychoanalytic unconscious. In this tension we find what Bento Prado was trying to think through in the experience of ipseity, the theme of his last, posthumously published book.6 The word was chosen in order to avoid the notion of “subjectivity” and its polarity of origin, that between subject and object. But to avoid that polarity does not entail situating his philosophy on the horizon of an affirmation of immanence. Rather it means installing that polarity within the very space of the “oneself.” “What does it mean to be oneself?” is the question that opens the book. Now, whoever asks that question, or even admits that it is a question, that it may indeed be the philosophical question par excellence, will just as well concede that attempting to describe self-reference is far from a self-evident operation. We know that self-reference requires a language and that this language establishes limits. “I cannot leave myself or my language,” Bento Prado will say. Yet such a proposition can carry the risk of a relativistic drift that would make the plurality of linguistically structured identities into a primordial, insurmountable soil: a multiplicity that is no more than a dispersion of differences across an indifferent exteriority.

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Here arises the first of the fundamental questions for a reflection on ipseity— “What would a language of my own be?”—in which one cannot help but hear the echo of a kind of angst that speaks volumes about an intellectual experience situated in Brazil. What does “my own” mean in this case? A language of my own cannot be understood as a private language, a language that lacks a force of generic implication. But to entertain the thought of such a thing as a language of my own necessarily demands that I understand the ipseity presupposed by the possessive pronoun “mine.” Is this “my own” the expression of an ontological certainty about the conditions for elucidating the uses of language and the production of meaning? We should note that it is in fact the critique of this ontological certainty that leads Bento Prado to reject Roberto Schwarz’s belief in critique as a “description of the structures that define in the last instance the field of all possible signification.”7 These structures would in turn ensure the clear intellection of the production of literary signification by unveiling their mechanisms of production, since “the center of gravity of critical interest moves from the work’s manifest face, its visible side or use value, to its schemes of production, the invisible system of coercions that presided over its fabrication.”8 “What would a language of my own be?,” asks Bento Prado once again. For a critique of language (or a literary critique) that were the “knowledge of the social structures that make consciousness possible and effectively produce it” would still be no more than the movement of consciousness toward itself, a movement charted in the shadow of its ontological certainty. After all, it is not the structures that decenter consciousness, at least not if they appear as an expression of social consciousness. In this case, one is still operating under a fundamental presupposition: “the thesis regarding the continuity between consciousness and knowledge, lived experience and structural knowledge.”9 Against this view, Bento Prado will say that my own language ought necessarily to be one capable of showing that, as Whitehead put it, “the edges of nature are always ragged.”10 Indeed it is not possible for me ever to leave my language, but it is not necessary that I do so either, because it is always ragged at the edges. Yet what does this beautiful philosophical metaphor of “being ragged at the edges” really mean? First, it implies recognition of a discontinuous articulation between linguistically constituted experience and categorial description. Language touches the world through

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its groundless ground, in which categorial description discovers the momentum that pushes it to overcome its limits: It is necessary to stop exactly at this limit where no ground is yet possible. When we believed that we were about to reach the assurance of rock and clay, of Grund, we found ourselves on the edge of the bottomless abyss, the Abgrund. It is not in the clarity of a categorial map (structure, a priori of reason, factual truth of common sense) that false problems can be dissipated and ataraxia attained.11

This is what the literature that interested Bento Prado talked about. Thus, on the importance of the marsh and the swamp in the fiction of João Guimarães Rosa, he would say: The marsh is proof that everything is possible in this world, that the most unexpected metamorphoses can convert the good into bad and that each face can all of a sudden be corroded and disfigured by an uncontrollable leprosy. The structure falls apart and all forms change into one another, in unbearable promiscuity. (Living) things attach themselves to one another and contact leaves a definitive stamp on them.12

In other words, the swamp is like a literary image of the ground as the space in which structure falls apart, all forms change into one another, and what emerges is a background capable of corroding every form, of drowning it in a metamorphic rhythm. This swampy language is ultimately the only one that can be called my own. Thus “language figures here less as a system of signs that allows for communication among subjects than as an ‘element’ or medium, a horizon, the universal soil of all existence and destiny.”13 Note the decisive dichotomy. There is a language that does not recognize its communicational submission to the condition of being a system of signs. There is a language that, even if it does not communicate, is “the universal soil of all existence and destiny,” as if this were a matter of expressing the latency of a common that lacks a grammar of its own but is a common soil from which language itself and any oeuvre arise. Let us try to render explicit here a major tension at play. Let us remember something that Bento Prado wrote in his unpublished diaries: “poetry may not be fully translated, but Croce’s texts on untranslatability were translated and understood in at least twenty-four different languages.” No, poetry can never be

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entirely translated because, in its own way, it touches on a common that has no proper grammar and that, for this reason, does not travel from one language to another; it is not codifiable through the operations of translatability. But this impotence of language is not a weakness or a limitation. Rather it is its strength: the strength of a language that comes too close to that which can put it at risk, only so as to expose the possibility of a constant overcoming of limits. This explains perhaps why, according to Bento Prado, the one true error that a philosophy can produce is The error of postulating (a devout vow) too much clarity or regularity in, let us say, souls and things, too much limpidness in language. The metaphor of a nature whose profile is ragged or badly drawn is set against the categories of the instant, of place and event, such as they were defined by classical thought.14

For what is at stake is understanding the event no longer as an element in the sense of a simple part or an indivisible atom, but as an element in the sense of an atmosphere or horizon: that is, in the sense of a field, a plane of implication that emerges beyond the therapeutic demands of a “readaptation to the world through the rediscovery, re-encounter or reconciliation with oneself, in the actuality of everyday life and its forms of expression.”15 This plane of implication will never become actualized as a logos capable of ensuring the ground of our processes of deliberation as a search for the best argument. Often, in fact, Bento Prado would describe it as the anchoring of language in phusis, as when he wrote about Guimarães Rosa’s capacity to “reveal a writing first sketched at the point zero of humanity and culture, in nature itself.”16 We will examine each of these points in time. Before we do, however, let us remember that this nature with a ragged profile, traversed by zones of indeterminacy and inapprehension, is a way of philosophically integrating what could be understood as an originary phantasm that will haunt Brazilian national experience, namely the fantasy of a lack of fiber, of a decomposed and discontinuous reality—seen as the damning mark of a lack of foundation supposedly to be overcome. In Mário de Andrade’s words, Brazil would be a “muck of contrasts” without any logic.17 This is the narrative of a formless country, which believes at each moment that it must be refounded, severed from its dead zone of indeterminacy so that it may finally find its hour amid

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the developed world and its law, its supposedly clear distribution of places and firmly established individuations18—or else so that it may find its “formation,” this time in a register that is already critical of this notion of progress. It was against this originary phantasm that Bento Prado’s philosophy constituted itself.

Persuasion Let us now turn to a central point in Error, Illusion, Madness in order to better understand the political consequences of a philosophical experience of this kind. Habermas used to say: No matter how consistent a dropout he may be, [the radical skeptic] cannot drop out of the communicative practice of everyday life, to the presuppositions of which he remains bound. And these in turn are at least partly identical with the presuppositions of argumentation as such.19

Even if we do not necessarily subscribe to a transcendental pragmatic standpoint, we could at least have a general grammar capable of regulating conflicts through the search for the best argument. However, one of Bento Prado’s major critical strategies consisted in inquiring into the structure of subjectivity presupposed by philosophical positions that wished to salvage some form of normativity immediately accessible to the subject. Such deconstructions of normativity, which went as far as claiming that the common person is no more than a “pedagogical project,” were in fact initial moves in a redimensioning of experience, since the abandonment of a normative horizon led to the acknowledgment of the “unavoidable ambiguity of experience and the discursive anarchy that it opens.”20 But how are we to understand this “discursive anarchy”? Such a defense of the ambiguity of experience, of the search for an irreducible heterogeneity, a defense that supposes a discursive anarchy that resists conceptual unification, could seem at first to be merely a profession of irrationalistic—or at the very least relativistic—faith. The case supporting that accusation appears to grow when we take into account the way in which Bento Prado used to assert the impossibility of providing a positive foundation

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for the universalizing criteria of judgment. Seeking support in a reading of Wittgenstein’s notion of language games, Bento Prado insisted that the universalization of criteria and systems of rules was not exactly the object of a more or less transparent communicational understanding. Rather it was an object of persuasion, and whoever says “persuasion” says more than just recognition of a better argument—and, against the wishes of some “conversational” conceptions of philosophy, recognizes no neutral arena in which the claims to truth of metaphysical interpretations could be tested. On the contrary, whoever says “persuasion” necessarily says conversion, constitution of a conflictual field in which processes of identification and circuits of affects, libidinal investment, constitution of authority criteria, and so on all come into play. The field of persuasion is a battlefield, Bento Prado would often insist, not a placid arena of communicational understanding. That led him to statements such as: “The basis of a language game is not constituted by propositions susceptible to truth or falsity but corresponds only to something like a choice without any rational foundation.”21 It corresponds to a “pathological” decision, in the sense not that it is distorted, but that it is affected by a pathos that refers us back to the sensible. In a country haunted by the state’s use of “pacts” and “conciliations” allegedly animated by communicative rationality (since that was the official state ideology under the “Brazilian enlightenment” of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s administration),22 talk of “discursive anarchy” could not fail to have rather obvious critical resonances for the readers. At any rate, we can see that this would be a risky philosophical operation for several reasons. First, to define rational argumentation as a conflictual field of persuasion implies, at least in this case, dismantling any strict dichotomies between the psychological and the transcendental, since it entails bringing seemingly psychological categories to bear on processes of rational argumentation. Ultimately, given that the transcendental guarantee itself is put at risk, it looks as though we will just end up dissociating matters of justification from matters of fact. After all, if the basis of a language game is made up of choices with no rational foundation, nothing can justify it except the objective existence of social practices that I take to be necessary. To see how Bento Prado deals with this question, let us begin by paying attention to the construction of a crucial passage like this:

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To persuade someone is to lead that person to admit precisely what has no basis, a “mythology,” something that lies far beyond, or below, the alternative between true and false, rational and irrational, or rather between reasonableness and madness, between cosmos and chaos.23

There would be a “Nietzschean” way of interpreting this statement. If to persuade is to lead someone to admit to what ranges below the alternative between true and false, perhaps this is because truth and falsity are not the best criteria for evaluating what has the power to elicit our assent. Perhaps there are kinds of value that pertain, not to the description of states of affairs, but to the ways in which forms of life are structured. What persuades is not exactly the truth of a proposition, but the correctness of a form of life that becomes embodied when I act according to certain criteria and admit the value of certain modes of conduct and judgment. In this sense, the criterion of what persuades is tied to a value judgment concerning forms of life that carry a normative weight. Yet the problem, far from finding a solution, has only become more complex. If I am not to fall into a new version of relativism, I must make explicit the criteria that would allow me to evaluate forms of life, for example to say that some are mutilated and pathological—since at the end of the day Bento Prado’s real inversion consists in showing to what extent the regulative idea of normality that inhabits certain conceptions of subjectivity is pathological— while others are closer to a fundamental experience. Hence a central statement such as this one: Since language games and forms of life are internally connected, linguistic misunderstandings refer back to a disorder in life itself. And [Wittgenstein] adds that, if a disease perverts [the] use [of language games], this perversion must be traceable back to a perversion at the heart of the form of life itself. For philosophy, we must free the flow of life and broaden its sphere.24

Phusis At this point we could appeal to that notion of a life in disorder as the ground of the liberation of all its flows that is the highest expression of Bento Prato’s recovery of phusis. This places us before a strategy that would inevitably appear to retrieve some

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of the themes of Heidegger’s ontological project. There would be several entry points into this discussion, but I choose one that I believe would be to Bento Prado’s liking: a commentary on a poem. The poem in question is Paul Celan’s Todtnauberg, a tribute to Heidegger written after Celan visited him in the hut located in the village that gives the poem its name. If I refer to it, it is because it orients us once again toward that swampy language that meant so much to Bento Prado and pulled him apart from Heidegger and his land: Arnica, eyebright, the draft from the well with the star-die on top, in the Hütte, written in the book —whose name did it record before mine?—, in this book the line about a hope, today, for a thinker’s word to come, in the heart, forest sward, unleveled, orchis and orchis, singly, raw exchanges, later, while driving, clearly, he who drives us, the mensch, he also hears it, the halftrod logtrails on the highmoor, humidity, much.25

It would be possible to give this poem an impoverished interpretation, treating it as a narrative or stylized account of an encounter that effectively took place between Celan and Heidegger. (They met at Heidegger’s hut, there really was a well by the entrance, there really was a book in which visitors wrote down their names …) Instead, we should view it as a clear reflection, by

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the poet Celan, on the philosopher Heidegger, whose thought he indeed knew well. Celan’s poem begins by mobilizing figures of phusis, a phusis that, as Heidegger reminded us, “is a fundamental Greek word for Being.”26 It is no coincidence that the first verses refer to medicinal plants, arnica and eyebright (Augentrost, literally “solace of the eyes”). Phusis appears here as care, protection, and cure, the restoration of an original form after illness. Yet the poem closes with phusis decomposing in the swamp, in humidity, in dead treeflanked half-trod log trails. This is the decomposition of that which no longer protects us but implicates us in its liminal existence and, precisely for that reason, appears as a path, even if only a half-path. We could say that the whole poem is a description of the movement of emergence of an “unthought” whose name cannot be heard, as we are still waiting for the word to come. It starts by opposing well and stars: the well as an archetypical image of origin, the stars as guides to our travels (as when we look to the sky for orientation). To drink from the well is to “take in what rises and bring away what has been received.”27 Acting is undercut by figures of receiving, but of a receiving that places itself as a source. The received that unfolds here is the contingency that “destitutes” me, the accident that refers back to the fact that there is no destiny at the origin. Thus to drink from the well while having “dice stars” above us is to place the downward movement toward the source under the upward movement of the eyes, which discover chance in stellar constellations. These are two figures of phusis played against each other, two different images of what Heidegger describes so aptly as a “defenselessness [that] itself affords safebeing”28 because it is an opening to what is not human, to what is not a mere expression of the human will. Well and stars as two distinct figures of destiny, of a destiny that haunts us when we open the book. What names before mine? What became of them, who are now only traces? Will I remain only as trace? Against the reduction of oneself to a trace, we see a destiny that projects itself forward in the form of hope, of hope’s temporality of expectation. And what is philosophy if not that which rhymes Denkenden and kommenden, what is to come and the one who thinks? Every thought emits a throw of the dice, as Mallarmé, for whom Celan had so much respect, would say; every thought is the expectation stirred by the word.

xxiv Foreword

At this point the poem brings into play some of the images that were dearest to Heidegger’s thought: the clearing as open space, the path or track through the forest. For there is no word to outline the common; neither the philosophical nor the poetic word can do that. Philosophy and the poem cannot be the space in which the common finds its word, even if this word is “Being.” On the contrary, the common will insist against the word, since it lacks a grammar of its own. For philosophy stretches language as far as its point of non-identity, where its capacity to name things collapses, and that is the true critical function that, as Bento Prado knew so well, it cannot but share with the poem. It recognizes the risk of technical domination over phusis, it knows that “[t]echnical production is the organization of the departure”;29 but the source of departure is a common devoid of a proper language. This impropriety will have to implicate the one who until now has seen herself as “human,” it will have to transform her for the experience of ipseity to be reconstituted. If orchids are the exuberant flowers that grow in the swamp in their autarkic beauty, then the poem will be the path leading the orchid to the swamp, from the most exuberant form to a living chaos in which humidity is the emergence of the many, of the multiple. There will thus be a direction that combines rawness, a time that is always other (später, that is, “later”) and the insistence of a deutlich (“clearly”) in which one can hear both clarity and the name of the soil, the German land. But this direction is a trail that remains half-trod. Paradoxically, this does not prevent it from leading somewhere. But it only gets there when, becoming conscious of the retreat of the first healing figures of phusis, arnica and eyebright, we open ourselves up to a phusis that teaches us how to love what, in us, pertains to the swamp. Nevertheless, as Bento Prado could observe on the basis of that experience of decentered ipseity with which Celan’s interrogations resonated, we will never see this form of thinking emerge anywhere near the Todtnauberg hut. This is the point at which Bento Prado’s originality can be measured. Translated by Rodrigo Nunes

Preface

This volume contains five lectures and one interview, all given between 1994 and 1996, in addition to a small article on Bergson, which is much more recent. Each of the texts is entirely autonomous and can be read independently of the others. All of them, however, are related and mutually supportive, and the same basic question pervades them. However, even if they present the same arguments over and over again, each does so from a different perspective, which explains and justifies their joint publication. If I am not the victim of a retrospective illusion, I could in fact claim to be resuming, in each and every one of them, an old obsession that had already surfaced in my first work in 1964: the question regarding the place of the subject, or rather the problem of ipseity and its forms of expression. When I recently presented that work—my thesis on Bergson—on the occasion of its recent French translation, this is how I described my subsequent itinerary: To conclude, I should proceed a little further into the paradox of the distant that suddenly reveals itself to be close; and I should do this by describing the curve drawn by an itinerary that, starting from the reconstitution of the Bergsonian origin of subjectivity in the transcendental field of images, seems to return to him in two different stages. I took a first step during my stay in France between 1969 and 1974 at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, after being

xxvi Preface dismissed from the University of São Paulo, when I wrote a book (of which only a few chapters were published) on Rousseau and his essentially rhetorical concept of language—that is, on his conception of intersubjectivity or, in Jean Hyppolite’s excellent formulation, on Rousseau’s decision to instate language in the place that the metaphysical tradition reserves for God.1

I would go on to describe the second step, which culminates in this book, as the one that led me, back in Brazil, to dedicate “several essays to the analytical philosophy of mind, with the intention of showing how this tradition distances itself from Wittgenstein’s thought and betrays its deepest spirit by ignoring how the problem of subjectivity and transcendence remains regardless of its conception of philosophy as grammatical analysis.” That is how Ludwig Wittgenstein came to take center stage in this book: never as the object of a properly philological approach or as a pretext to penetrate, unarmed, the field of the philosophy of logic, both of which are tasks beyond my reach. My goal was rather to make an intuitive incursion, if I may use an expression frequently employed in a pejorative sense. Do not expect, dear reader, a technical or scholastic treatment of Wittgenstein’s texts, especially because I agree with my old friend Andrés Raggio2 (himself a notable logician of the highest creativity and technical skill), who liked to say that, in philosophy, technical skill is inversely proportional to the philosophical interest of a text. Why Wittgenstein, then? Certainly not because he is in fashion (and, thank God, he no longer seems to be in fashion, as indicated by the growing proliferation of different naturalisms and of the so-called empire of cognitive science). Perhaps even for the opposite reason: because he is, as he declares himself to be, an essentially untimely philosopher by virtue of his radical opposition to the dominant spirit of contemporary techno-scientific civilization—or rather to das Kapital (see the chapter “Wittgenstein: Culture and Value” in this volume). In other words, if my texts are correct, the dominant interpretation of Wittgenstein in academic philosophy3 (today, philosophy tout court) does not do justice to his work. For me, the point was to show that the language therapist is still, first and foremost, a philosopher—like Plato, Plotinus, Descartes, or Kant—never the mouthpiece of common sense or of any form of positivism. A conservative manoeuvre? Another disguised apology for philosophia perennis? I do not think so; but only the reader can have the last word. Deep down, I believe that, in Wittgenstein (but

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also in Bergson and Deleuze … may my analytic colleagues forgive me), we can find a conception of philosophy that is essentially anarchontic,4 is not opposed to conceptual analysis, and manifests itself throughout the history of philosophy in various works, especially those of Rousseau and Pascal. I am thinking of an old philosophical war against all forms of foundationalism, a war that refuses the easy way out taken by skepticism and relativism and that is perhaps more current than the current vogue of postmodern weak thought. Pascal spoke against the “absolutism” of philosophy: “[t]o make light of philosophy is to philosophize truly.”5 And Rousseau, after demolishing the ambitions of dogmatic metaphysics, adds, I need a philosophy for myself. Of course, I may seem to be anachronistically shuffling the lines of the history of philosophy. But perhaps it is necessary to do so and to reject historicism and philosophia perennis at the same time, to imagine a time for thought that is syncopated and discontinuous. Walter Benjamin? I do not know. Let us say that the ultimate intention here is to introduce a minimum of negativity into the academic debate by revealing what is fragile in the moral–ideological assuredness that lies at its deepest foundation. But this is all very vague and refers more to a distant and still imprecise target of these writings than to the steps actually taken. It could not be very different at the level of the telos (end or goal): we have before us little more than a philosophical wager. Let us confess, from the start, that we do not know the way, as we could say by placing in the first person the title of a beautiful etching by Goya: No saben el camino [They Do Not Know the Way] (see Figure 1). This is how Michael Armstrong Roche describes this etching: A grim procession—two friars, one tonsured, the other cowled, both glowing in their white habits; three nobles, one wearing a tied wig and long waistcoast, all wearing outdated breeches and hats; two priests in cassocks and sombreros de teja (wide, soft-brimmed hats; and other lay people, all with their eyes closed—staggers through uneven, barren terrain. Rocky outcroppings make it impossible for the members of the procession to keep to a straight path. Roped together like a string of mules, in single file, some with heads bowed, they seem unaware of each other and of the person leading them into the gorge. He has raised his head in supplication or perhaps bewilderment. Light from the right side of the print penetrates the darkness, forming an abstract pattern, and plays off the polished surfaces of the rocks lining the abyss, and off the leader.6

xxviii Preface

Figure 1.  Francisco Goya y Lucientes, No saben el camino, etching nr. 70 from the series Fatales consequencias de la guerra de España con Bonaparte i otros caprichos enfaticos [Fatal Consequences of Spain’s Bloody War with Bonaparte and Other Emphatic Caprices] in the collection Desastres de la guerra [Disasters of War], 1810–20.

After this description, Roche goes on to explain how the etching gives new meaning, in the spirit of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, to the biblical parable of the blind man who guides and leads another blind man to the abyss (Matthew 15:14 and Luke 6:13) and to the proverb that comes from it. He insists on the novelty introduced by Goya, in contrast with previous representations of this scene (by Bosch and Brueghel, among others), both through the multiplication of characters and through the identification of blindness as unknowingness, ignorance, or superstition. In the words of Goya’s friend, the satirist José Gallardo Blanco, in a discourse against the anticonstitutionalism of the church, liberal ideas eliminate “the obstacles that prevent them from freely walking down the path of virtue toward happiness.”7 Or, even more clearly, “the paths of virtue, if we are to follow them with a sure step, must be illuminated by the light of wisdom; understanding guides the will; one cannot travel far on the road to perfection blindfolded and with bound feet.”8

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Roche even points out the etching’s reference to the reign of Ferdinand VII and to the blindness of his followers, who were committed to political and religious repression. It is not darkness, it is ignorance.9 However, by turning the etching’s title from the third person to the first, we can see it differently, integrating it into the earlier tradition of Bosch and Brueghel. It is clear that, in so doing, we ignore the author’s deepest intentions or create a myth. But we do not necessarily produce an arbitrary deformation. In fact, something like a grain of freedom inhabits the heart of perception. A perception is never the passive record of a form in itself: Gestalt theory itself insisted on the structuring character of the act of perception. This character is proven by the fact that I can alternate, in perception, the functions of figure and ground, as in the example of the two opposing profiles that, seen as background, give way to the perception of a chandelier, or as in Wittgenstein’s duck– rabbit, obviously inspired by Gestalt psychology, which served as his paradigm for the concept of seeing-as.10 This non-random fluctuation in meaning, evident in normal perception, becomes crucial in the perception of the art object, whose meaning is only completed in its different receptions.11 Above all, with this “deformation” we do not necessarily attack the spirit of Enlightenment philosophy, nor do we revive the topos of the praise of madness (or blindness). Is not Kant’s philosophy, in a way, the culmination of the Aufklärung? Would it not be possible to read another famous etching of Goya’s, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, from a Kantian perspective?12 Blindness and sleep refer less to error and to prejudice than to a necessary illusion. Seen in this manner, the Bergwege (mountain trails) of the etching take on the characteristics of the Holzwege (paths in the woods)13—or, to speak in more classical terms, of aporias. This process does not amount to introducing a tragic pathos into the etching’s enlightened optimism; in any case, it implies no adherence to a Heideggerian style, as the expressions I have just used could suggest. This is confirmed by the following text by Wittgenstein, which could be read as a commentary on Goya’s etching: We went sleepwalking along the road between abysses.—But even if we now say: “Now we are awake,”—can we be certain that we shall not wake up one day? (And then say:—so we were asleep again.)

xxx Preface Can we be certain that there are not abysses now that we do not see? But suppose I were to say: The abysses in a calculus are not there if I don’t see them! Is no demon deceiving us at present? Well, if he is, it doesn’t matter. What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over.14

However, if we thus project Wittgenstein’s paragraph onto Goya’s etching, which we may legitimately do, something about the richness of our perception is perhaps lost. This paragraph is at once anti-Cartesian and anti-Hilbertian in its treatment of mathematics. Already in Descartes, the dream argument was not enough to place mathematical truth at risk: if I am sleeping, my representations that refer to the physical world can lead me into error; however, even while I dream, 2 + 2 = 4! Only the hypothesis of the evil genius suspends the evidence of simple ideas. And Wittgenstein adds that no “little devil,” however tricky, can put the assuredness of my mathematics at risk. What is more, unlike Hilbert, I need not try to prove the consistency of my theory: once I prove that all the propositions that compose it derive from my axioms, there is no need to demonstrate that all are compatible among themselves and are never contradictory. It is not necessary to “fumigate” the system so as to eliminate the “virus” of any virtual contradiction. I should not fear that, in some dark corner, at the intersection of two deductions, my theorems will contradict one another. This operation would contradict the finitism of Wittgenstein’s theory of mathematics by proposing a task that is simultaneously unnecessary and useless. It would also contradict his constructivism: if I run across a contradiction, I could change my arguments. In a word, every contradiction or every error supposes a horizon of certainty. Well, the absence of horizon is essential to Goya’s etching. Let us therefore resume the analysis of this etching, rekindling a connection to the forgotten sophistic tradition that made this type of work into an important literary genre.15 If Wittgenstein’s problem was that of leaving philosophy, ours is one of entering it or restarting it.16 Let us begin with the distribution of light and shadow in the picture. As Michael Armstrong Roche observes, the light comes from the right, illuminating less than half of the figure and giving a glimpse of some faces and rocky obstacles. All the rest remains in darkness. We sense that we are at the top of a cliff, but no indication is given as to what is around it, either above or

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below. The white space in the upper right could be the sky above us all, illuminated by the sun, which infiltrates the enveloping fog. But it could also be the sea, as we catch sight of it from above—say, from the top of a hill. In fact the whole scene appears from above. In the upper left we see the same: a sky covered in clouds and an obscure and rough ocean-sea. At the edges, insulated as we are by the mist and lost in the mountain labyrinth, we can no longer locate ourselves on the horizontal plane, of course, since it concerns a labyrinth or an aporia, a path with no way out; but, above all, we can no longer locate ourselves on the vertical plane. If we are unable to discriminate the routes on the earth’s surface, this is because we are unable to locate ourselves, on earth, between heaven, which is above it, and hell, which is supposedly below. What is missing is precisely the horizon, or that which, without being the earth itself, would allow us to find our way on it. What we do not know, to recall the title of the classic text by Kant, is what it means to orient oneself in thought. Despite being perceived as a sky, the illuminated and obscure spaces in the picture are radically cut off from the immediate space covered by the wandering characters, and thus cannot serve as a guide or horizon.17 “Where am I, what time is it?”18 That would be the form of philosophical enquiry according to Merleau-Ponty, and Goya’s etching illustrates it to perfection. Even though “I am who I am” (ego qui sum), I cannot clearly determine “who this ‘I’ is” (quisnam sim), as Descartes did in the Second Meditation, if my knowledge is not retroactively guaranteed by the loop that leads me to God and returns me to my most internal ipseity. Without the positive infinite (again, as Merleau-Ponty would say), I am lost not only in an indeterminate world, but also inside myself, as in the beautiful verses by the Portuguese poet Sá-Carneiro that are inscribed as this book’s epigraph. And that is why the book opens and unfolds under the sign of an aporia such as the one that Meno raised to Socrates. That is also why it points toward a future text on ipseity (or otherness, or both) and its horizon. Having begun with Mário de Sá-Carneiro, I could not but end this preface with the verses of Luís Vaz de Camões who, in the wake of Petrarch, prefigured those by the twentieth-century poet: I bear within one person my torment as my better half; myself a danger to myself.19

xxxii Preface

I must thank three colleagues and friends—Arley Ramos Moreno, Sérgio Cardoso, and Paulo Eduardo Arantes—for authorizing the reproduction of their comments on four of my lectures. The comments often extend and complement my arguments, augmenting them with material beyond my reach, or else oppose them and open unimagined alternative paths in my texts. This is why it did not seem opportune to try to respond hurriedly to the occasional criticism in these comments, especially as I am not certain that I would be capable of doing it adequately, at least not now. Let us therefore leave room for the future—and above all for those readers who may linger over what is between these lines and discourses, finally making up their minds, as is in their power, about the ultimate sense of this book. I would like to thank my sister, Anna Lia Amaral de Almeida Prado, and my wife, Lúcia Seixas Prado, for the thankless labor they undertook of correcting and revising these texts. Bento Prado Jr., São Carlos, Vila Pureza, March 2002

1 Error, Illusion, Madness*

For Zeza, my sister from Mangueira Hill Men are so necessarily mad that it would be another kind of madness not to be mad. Blaise Pascal1 When philosophizing you have to descend into the old chaos & feel at home there. Ludwig Wittgenstein2

I Crisis perennis or a dated crisis? If dated, since when? It is certain that reason and philosophy were already in crisis when they were born together in Greece, almost as if the worm were coeval with the apple. How to imagine the institution of classical Greek philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) without the sophist’s challenge? For * “Error, Illusion, Madness’ is the text of a lecture given as part of the course “The Crisis of Reason,” organized by the National Foundation for the Arts (FUNARTE) in 1995. It was published in: Adauto Novaes (org.) A crise da razão, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, pp. 111–33). The commentary by Arley Ramos Moreno that follows is published here for the first time.

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reason to have universal reach and an ontological anchorage—for it to be reason in the most ambitious and unlimited sense of the word—it is necessary to prove it against those who would have it as a drifting island, diluted in the river that carries it: no limit, no permanent form, nothing that opposes the private world to the public world, time to eternity, the concept to simple, lived experience. It is necessary to distinguish between meaning and truth, to instate dialectics, analytics, semantics, ontology, against those who produce paradoxes from negative ideas (nonbeing, error, illusion, madness, etc.), against heroes of meontology such as Gorgias, who dissolves the human voice or rational speech into the anonymous noise of nature, the inarticulate murmur of fish or plants touched by the wind. In the same way, how are we to understand the undertakings of Descartes or Kant without the unreason against which they fight, namely those who see substantial forms or spirits without an analytical or critical method? The other of reason to be domesticated is certainly not the same in each case, nor does it coincide with the adversary of the classical Greeks, but a family resemblance seems to unite them, as if against their will. Philosophia perennis? A schoolboy’s apologia for philosophy? Not necessarily, perhaps, since I recognize the need to distinguish different moments—and, above all, the contemporary figure of this almost eternal crisis. Let me recall here a first-rate line from Merleau-Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible, in which the philosopher says precisely this: “Never has the crisis been so radical.”3 At the very least, this line signals a distrust of the Enlightenment’s optimism, in which the ideas of social and epistemic progress are connected; but let us suppose that it refers, even more, to the author’s most immediate contemporaneity. This is the same Merleau-Ponty who had undramatically asked, on another occasion, something along the lines of “Is there more truth around today than in the past?” It is difficult to assume philosophical or historical–philosophical naivety on his part. Let us suppose, then, that he is referring to some characteristic of contemporary thought (the text is written at the end of the 1950s), some sort of banalization, an emptying of philosophy without historical precedent: we are well into the civilization of the academic paper. Let us consider that, forty years later, this argument does not seem to be entirely out of place and would be certain to find an ally in Wittgenstein, whose thinking seemed to go in the same direction.



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If not, let us see. There are plenty of contemporary philosophical discourses from the last decade or so that speak of the crisis of reason and propose a different diagnosis from Merleau-Ponty’s or Wittgenstein’s. I am talking about the enemies of the new sophistic philosophy (or postmodern thought, in its right- and left-wing versions) who invoke the need to overcome the crisis and restore reason. There seems to be a strange alliance between the neoliberalism of a few philosophers who celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall and promote the restoration of the good spirit of the Lumières, and Lukács’ old initiative in The Destruction of Reason, a bad book by a great thinker.4 One should remember here Paulo Arantes’ analysis of the curious convergence of authors like Richard Rorty and Jürgen Habermas against the backdrop of American and German culture; his diagnosis identifies much ambiguity both at the points of contact and at the points of crisis.5 We would have to add to this ideological– philosophical imbroglio the Husserlian origin of the Frankfurtian diagnosis of the dialectic of Enlightenment and its derailment (the idea of a Krisis of both European sciences and humanity)—as Carlos Alberto Ribeiro de Moura has suggested, referring particularly to Herbert Marcuse’s “On Science and Phenomenology.”6 We must agree that such a coincidence in the fight against irrationalism, which is identified with the right in one case and with the left in the other, raises a question mark over the heuristic use and theoretical interest of pseudo-notions like irrationalism. Has anyone ever proclaimed him- or herself an irrationalist with sincerity or without irony? Or, paraphrasing Émile Bréhier’s bon mot about libertinism, could we not say on est toujours l’irrationaliste de quelqu’un (one is always someone else’s irrationalist)? In any case, the question of the crisis of reason appears today also in the polemic between the modern and the postmodern, universalism and relativism, rationalism and irrationalism. This is why it is perhaps worth trying to show the non-pertinence of this way of formulating the problem and to suggest that this description of the crisis is not the best—especially when it is guided by a reading of Wittgenstein, in a not always enlightening polemic about the best interpretation of his texts. What I want to do in these circumstances is deal with Wittgenstein as an essential protagonist in the contemporary crisis of reason in order to remove him from the context in which the aforementioned debate unfolds and to return him to what seems to be his rightful place in the history of modern philosophy, along a line

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that originates with Descartes and leads to Kant but, above all, to Pascal. How does modern reason exorcise its other (error, illusion, madness)? What is the validity of arguments that try to limit the reach of reason (the madness and dream arguments, transcendental dialectics)? How does Wittgenstein incorporate and re-elaborate them in his last work, On Certainty? Let me venture a hypothesis: Could we not say that this last book renews the critical undertaking of the Tractactus? In the earlier work, that undertaking consisted in showing what solipsists and realists wanted to say (without being able to do so). Some superiority was granted to solipsism, under the strict condition of recognizing that its truth was unsayable, that it could not survive its theoretical expression, and that it ultimately coincided with realism’s apparently opposite stance. The new philosophy of logic, like the old transcendental dialectics, traces the conceptual genesis of the illusions of metaphysics. In the later book, this was a matter of opposing idealism and relativism (or Protagorean idealism) to realism in the same terms. If that is so, then Wittgenstein, like Kant, was an author who systematically opposed the interest in what metaphysics wanted to say to its necessarily incorrect expression. In the words of Gérard Lebrun, the other side of the critical undertaking would be a sort of “philosophizing” history of philosophy.7

II If I am not completely wrong and it exists, the point would then be to bring out this implicit archaeology of modern philosophy in Wittgenstein’s thinking, which is more Kantian on this score than is normally accepted, particularly in his last writings and, let me anticipate, in the last sentences of On Certainty. To do so, let me take as our guiding thread José Arthur Giannotti’s Apresentação do Mundo8 [Presentation of the World], underscoring the author’s spot-on decision, against the tepid backdrop of the contemporary debate between modern and postmodern thinkers, to render void in one stroke two symmetrical misconceptions present in the literature on Wittgenstein: the relativist and the transcendental–pragmatic, communicative reading of the Viennese philosopher’s mature work. A great insight no doubt, but one that seems to bring along a few problems. In a word, my impression is that there are several indications in Giannotti’s book that he was



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ultimately led, as though unknowingly, in the direction of Apel and Habermas, authors from whom he nonetheless wanted vividly to distance himself. My first step will be to provide reasons for this judgment by focusing on the philosophical appropriation that Giannotti makes of Wittgenstein’s last writings in the final chapter of his book. It is true that Giannotti’s text is much more turned against relativist than neo-Frankfurtian readings of Wittgenstein. The whole chapter in which he addresses the dispute is marked by the intent to show that the plurality of language games and their rootedness in the diversity of life forms do not eliminate an essential reference to the horizon of universality. This thesis is systematically assembled. In the first place, it is shown that, if the dynamics of language games unfold against the backdrop of an assumed facticity, this does not deprive their comprehension or analysis of a style that is essentially grammatical or logical (rather than genetic) and transcendental (rather than empirical). That one can thus separate grammatical questions from questions of natural history is demonstrated through the clarification that to show the vital basis of a language game is not to say that this is where it grounds its truth or draws its sense from—unlike in Husserl’s foundational recourse to Lebenswelt or to earth, which, as Ur-archē (and against Galileo’s precipitated and already “positivistic” confusion between the given and the constructed), does not move. We could in fact say, following the direction of Wittgenstein’s thinking, that, if we admit that the earth as Ur-archē does move (though not necessarily objectively, really, or empirically), we will begin to understand the Grundlösigkeit (groundlessness) of the foundation. Giannotti is right to affirm that, according to Wittgenstein, “unquestionable” principles are not what gives meaning and basis to the world, it is rather the task or practice of judging and thinking that does it. Indeed, dialectics, which unites and separates polarity and bipolarity in the operation of language games, gives an unprecedented status to the idea of foundation by introducing the “difficult”—as Wittgenstein calls it—notion of the Grundlösigkeit of the ground. (Recall Heidegger’s commentaries, in The Principle of Reason, on the beautiful verse by Angelus Silesius: Die Rose ist ohne warum, “The rose is without why.”) But, above all, Giannotti seems to be right or well founded, unlike the rose, because, whether “the shovel bends” when it excavates the ground in search of the arch-solid foundation or whether it encounters there only the weak fabric of all too human conventions, it still discovers

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channels of communication with other language games. And with them are guaranteed, against the relativists or the culturalists, the communicability of all language games across all humans and the universal horizon of reason. As for me, there seems to be nothing to add concerning the demolition of relativism. In effect, affirmations such as the following seem destined to ruin: The form of life considered in On Certainty is that of postwar Great Britain. The principle obtained from this form of life can, at most, be adapted and applied to some European countries during the same time period or, with even greater restrictions, to some European countries during earlier time periods.9

Actually, in writing On Certainty, Wittgenstein seems to write not only against Moore but also against the English, or against modern times. The first lines of the preface to the Philosophical Remarks apply to it just as well: “This book is written for such men as are in sympathy with its spirit. This spirit is different from the one which informs the vast stream of European and American civilization in which all of us stand.”10 Let us leave aside, therefore, the question of relativism and move on to what interests me at the moment: to know whether Giannotti did not throw the baby out with the bathwater, or even whether, to save reason from the crisis or mire of relativism, he did not return us to the illusorily solid ground of dogmatic metaphysics. My hypothesis is that, in the end, his sin came from an excess of zeal. Let us begin with something that I have already observed before,11 namely the fact that Giannotti systematically translates vernünftiger Mensch as “rational person” instead of “reasonable person,” as he should. The two expressions do not have the same weight or the same use. While the first one, in the language of the philosophical tradition, refers to the domain of epistēmē (knowledge) or noēsis (understanding), the second seems rather to refer to that of doxa (opinion) or phronēsis (practical wisdom). In the context of On Certainty, in any case, the idea of Vernünftigkeit (reasonableness) is always contrasted with that of philosophical hubris, of a desire for an ultimate foundation, be it through the methodical–metaphysical exercise of doubt or through the cognitive–metaphysical promotion of the “truths” of common sense; in other words, it is always opposed to Descartes and Moore. Since Giannotti’s aim is to



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make the universalism of reason compatible with the pluralism of language games, his translation is strategic. Yet it is also debatable, since we should understand the expression vernünftiger Mensch as referring to those who do no more than play their game well—who do not inquire about its basis, since to do so would be precisely to interrupt the game. In fact, here one would have to distinguish, in the practice of the reasonable person, what this behavior implies in terms of reflexivity (in the sense that Giannotti, thinking of Kant and Hegel, gives to that word) from what it could imply in terms of something like a Gemeinsinn (common sense) taken in a more Kantian and contemporary way, as I will attempt to show next. I confess that I sense a Kantian tone in these texts by Wittgenstein; but let us postpone this question, which can be adequately formulated only once we have traversed Giannotti’s reading. In any case, this simple translation choice already seems to unduly expand the cognitive dimension of the idea of language games, above all if associated with an emphasis on the fact that, for Wittgenstein, the truth of certain apparently empirical propositions belongs to our frame of reference, that is, to the very basis of our Weltbild (world picture). What is there at the basis, mythology or positive knowledge? The fact is that such statements allow Giannotti not only to advance in the direction of universalism but also to give ontological reach to the idea of language games: ontological reach in the strongest sense of the word, recovering and relaunching the old idea of adaequatio (adequation or correspondence). Giannotti thus says: “We have already analysed how the agreement or harmony between thought and reality takes place: on the one hand, it is not because I falsely claim that something is red that the real acquires this property.”12 In the Tractatus, to be sure, it was necessary to show the perfect harmony between thought and reality, and it was possible to do so. But how can we do so here? I agree with Giannotti, as Wittgenstein would, that “this apple is red for everyone,” as long as the statement is placed “in certain circumstances,” as a practice situated in the flow of life, without stressing the “is,” removing from it precisely the ontological weight that the metaphysical interpretation attributes to it. Is this not, indeed, the central argument in On Certainty? But let us proceed with caution. When Giannotti speaks of the harmony between thought and reality, I believe that most of the time he is simply thinking of the relation between rules and cases, which is susceptible of a purely critical understanding and does

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not imply any metaphysics, whether realist or idealist. Certainly, if a language game works—and for as long as it works—we may in some sense say that there is “harmony” or that there is not much conflict or friction between thought and reality. But Giannotti’s interpretation seems to be stronger, since a little earlier he writes: the very fact that it [an order given by a person to another] works places on the horizon the possibility of adequation between this game and the new situation. Thus, according to the nature of the understanding (Verständigung) to which people commit, the sense of a game’s adequation (Übereinstimmung) and grounding (Begründung) are placed on the horizon.13

What is the problem here? Apparently the term Übereinstimmung does not appear in On Certainty in order to support either the idea of grounding language games or that of their agreeing with reality. In fact, at §215 Wittgenstein explicitly states: “Here we see that the idea of ‘agreement with reality’ [Übereinstimmung mit der Wirklichkeit] does not have any clear application.” Giannotti does not ignore the passage, but insinuates in his commentary that this idea may be applicable even though it is unclear; which, I confess, is very unclear to me. Moreover, the other occurrences of the word Übereinstimmung in the book do not seem to confirm the slight deviation that Giannotti imposes on §215. The first, at §191, seems to show that with the idea of agreement comes something like an inevitable vicious circle: “Well, if everything speaks for an hypothesis and nothing against it—is it then certainly true? One may designate it as such.—But does it certainly agree with reality, with the facts?—With this question you are already going round in a circle.” Or here is §199: “The reason why the use of the expression ‘true or false’ has something misleading about it is that it is like saying ‘it tallies with the facts or it doesn’t,’ and the very thing that is in question is what ‘tallying’ [Übereinstimmung] is here.” If the agreement between hypothesis and fact is problematic inside a language game, what should we say of the agreement between language and the world, or between thought and reality (considered holistically), an agreement “founded” on “polar” propositions, which have nothing in common with hypotheses and are neither true nor false? It is clear that knowledge is always a gift of nature, as Wittgenstein says in §505. Without natural regularity, we could not speak, let alone survive. But this does not presuppose



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a pre-established harmony between thought and reality. Here, with Giannotti, we seem to regress from the Critique of Judgment to Leibniz’s Monadology. It is not necessary for the world, in itself or for God, to be well behaved (as it was in fact in the Tractatus, since it had always been domesticated inside logical space) so that I do not fall from the horse, to borrow Wittgenstein’s metaphor. The world can rear, jump, or even leap. In the worst-case scenario, I can switch saddles or change my language game. But, for there to be truth (or error), certainty (or doubt), reason (or madness), no harmony needs to be stipulated. One need only accept that at least until now everything or almost everything has gone well—until now since, for Wittgenstein as for Hume, it is not up to the philosopher to make prophecies. It is enough to accept something like the vague idea (which is essentially vague and indeterminate) of the regularity of nature: an idea at the same time empirical and transcendental, like Foucault’s famous empirical–transcendental doublets in The Order of Things. Thus are combined very general facts of nature and grammatical or logical conditions of meaning or of the use of language: life, language, action, or work. A combination, it must be added, in which the undeniable facticity that we acknowledge does not imply any form of empiricism. As Bouveresse remarks, “some facts could render our language games impossible or without interest, but no fact we can observe and mention has rendered them necessary.”14 It is a little as if these facts provided only a material to be marked or shaped by the action of a transcendental authority that alone provides necessity and intelligibility. Actually only one use remains for the idea of agreement, which is, if I may use this expression, “intra-ludic–linguistic,” as Wittgenstein himself seems to say in §203: “What does this agreement consist in, if not in the fact that what is evidence in these language games speaks for our proposition?” We could perhaps say that, in the description of the dynamics of language games, more important than an eventual “agreement” is non-agreement or friction, as if we were before a “philosophy of no” or an unexpected kinship with Bachelard. For it is this friction that seems to impose movement on language games, turning them into this “mutable praxis” that Giannotti opposes to the Apelian reading of Wittgenstein—an operation that is not so easy for Giannotti. No sooner does he suggest it than he is obliged to contain this mobility; almost a lapse, one would say. This is what we may read in the following sentences: “It is not because the waters and the sands move or the banks

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change with time that we no longer bathe in the same river, insofar as, for the purpose of saying that one bathes in the same river, these changes are not pertinent to the demarcation of riverbanks from the riverbed.”15 These sentences by Giannotti comment on §97 and §99, where Wittgenstein speaks of changes in language games—when a proposition (empirically) “hardens,” so to speak, by merging into the base formation or mythology; or, on the contrary, when one of these basal elements of Weltbild becomes fluid and turns into an empirical proposition in its own right, by reassuming its bipolarity and rotating once more around the immobile polar axis. Giannotti in fact links this argument to the argument of natural regularity. If everything changed randomly, how would language be possible? And he is right to do so. But does not he, more like Plato than like Wittgenstein, exaggerate in his effort to mitigate mobility in order to retain a place for language use? What is the meaning of Wittgenstein’s Heraclitean fluvial metaphor? In On Certainty §97 we read the following: “The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself; though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other.” Although the distinction is not clear (in this as in every other case, since we have left the Platonism of the Tractatus behind), Wittgenstein seems to insist on the difference between the movement of the water and the change in profile of the riverbank, because change in the riverbank or riverbed is change in the river itself. A language game stays the same, even if propositions that are considered true in it come to be considered false and vice-versa. But if the block or group of polar propositions—the base mythology— changes, one can no longer say that we play the same game and that we bathe in the same river. It is not the world that is revealed to be inconstant, mobile quale la donna16 (fickle like a woman); only we change the rules of our game and, with them, our form of life. That is, we change. “We all bathe in the same river,” Giannotti seems to say, retying the knots between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and the classical Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. And the multiplicity of language games seems at first unable to halt the celebration of this wedding. To better neutralize the pluralism (if not the at least virtual relativism) of language games, Giannotti undertakes a double move, which runs the length of these games in two different directions.



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In a so to speak internal operation, Giannotti pursues a centripetal line that leads him from the periphery of language games to their center, or, to stay with the Wittgensteinian metaphor that he felicitously explores, from the surface of the turning globe to its immobile axis. (To be more Platonic, Giannotti could remind us that the movement of the sphere around its immobile center is the best metaphor for eternity.) That movement coincides with the movement of reflection, such as Giannotti understands it (the movement of describing language games), or with the work of the philosopher who excavates the ground of linguistic practice in order to get to the mythology that functions as the grundlösiger Grund (groundless ground) to the Weltbild that he wants to think. In another operation, complementary to the first, and which could be described as centrifugal, Giannotti transversally prolongs a line that leads from the aforementioned immobile axis toward all the others, outlining the field of possible translation among all language games. Or, as Giannotti himself summarizes, In the regressive process of formulating the foundations of language games, one arrives at the assumption that human beings can communicate with one another, despite the differences in their forms of life, because the foundation is nothing more than the possibility of their asking about the bases on which their possible episodes of communication with one another can take place, a possibility that is given when they try and succeed, even while making mistakes, in understanding at least the edges of another foreign language.17

We should note that this openness to the other or to the universal is described as an accomplice of the philosopher’s work or as a guarantee of the essentially universalist vocation of philosophy. That would tend to transform philosophy, against the grain of Wittgenstein’s thought, into the truth of language or into some form of universal game where the different language games converge or should converge. But did Wittgenstein not say, more or less, that the essence of philosophy resides in the mistaken use of language? It must be added that it actually belongs to the essence of the vernünftiger Mensch (we will return to this subject later) not to ask about the foundation, not to be a philosopher. Philosophical analysis, which may undo the question about the foundation, this mortal disease of language, runs counter to the spontaneous movement of Vernünftigkeit, defined as good common sense. Vernünftig, the philosopher? Let us recall the scene at the London garden imagined

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by Wittgenstein in On Certainty: a lady listens to a dialogue among philosophers who discuss the existence of the outside world (or of this tree, which is not the same thing) and one of them says something like: “Ma’am, we are not crazy, we are only speaking philosophy.” Giannotti wants to encounter in the reflexivity of language use, which is spontaneous and natural (if we may say so), a kind of anticipated guarantee of the universal efficacy of reason. It is as if language preserved, in its essence, a place for the philosopher to fly over the all too factual plurality of language games, playing the role that Karl Mannheim reserved for the intelligentsia, who would float freely between or over classes and ideologies in conflict. To be fair to Giannotti, he does not actually have in mind a more or less miraculous hovering, or a deus ex machina who generously and unexpectedly has come to save us from relativism. For Giannotti reveals to us the common and solid ground where one can anchor this virtual understanding of (or opening up to) the multiplicity of real and possible language games: it is essential not to lose sight of the fact that this thread running through the contacts and confrontations between different forms of life refers to an almost animal basis, a sort of animal kingdom of the spirit, that which makes us human in a more elementary sense; an already conquered ground, which would be visible in the everyday if the actual practice of language did not conceal it. This is precisely the common ground on the basis of which we interpret an unknown language.18

Paradoxically, at least for a reading of Wittgenstein, it is the practice of language, and not the perplexity that derives from its poor use, that blocks here the channels of understanding and obscures our view of things themselves. In Giannotti’s theory, although this humanitas minima (minimal humanity) does not have a determinate content (or a “primitive decalogue,” as he puts it), it anticipates, underneath language games and in silence, as it were, the Grundprinzipien (foundational principles) of human enquiry, as can or should be explained by philosophical analysis. And these Grundprinzipien, Giannotti adds, “constitute the horizon both of enquiry and of the process of persuasion by which we introduce third parties gradually into our everyday world.”19 If this characterization of Giannotti’s effort is not completely wrong and if, with it, we understand the (good) reasons that he



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invokes against the relativist interpretation of Wittgenstein, it becomes less clear why he disqualifies the reasons adduced by Apel or Habermas. What he faults them for is their fidelity to the classical and fixist model of reason and their ignoring that, for Wittgenstein, logic and grammar are rooted in a mutable praxis. Yet Apel and Habermas do not really ignore the mobility of basic praxis. What they do, inspired at once by Peirce and by Kant, is interpret it teleologically, that is, as referring to the target of an ideal communicative community, which for them seems to be virtually inscribed in the raw fact of any real or empirically given communicative community. It is not empirical realism or historical materialism that is lacking in Frankfurt; the problem lies in the transcendental idealism or the philosophy of history they subscribe to over there. In other words, the problem is in the idea of instituting, with Wittgenstein’s help but against the letter and spirit of his work, a kind of ideal and final language game, which hinders the understanding of Wittgenstein’s work and of the world itself. Such an idea is closer to the fiction of Hermann Hesse’s Glass Bead Game—a game that unifies all knowledge, music, and mathematics, encompassing the totality of science and culture, and is incorporated into an organon materialized as a super- or meta-computer avant la lettre—than to the reality of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Of course, I can invent or imagine a language game; but a universal language game, whose vocation would be to illuminate the totality of real and possible language games, seems to be something like a square circle. If it is easy to conceive that every language game is reflexive (my judgments provide the principles of judgment),20 it is more difficult to imagine that two games may relate to each other in the way a metalanguage relates to its object language. In this sense, Giannotti’s observation is justified: the Frankfurtians remain faithful at least to the classical idea that philosophy has a proper object, that it is capable of speaking significantly and truly about it, that it can dominate it theoretically. Such an idea is perhaps incompatible with that of a negative dialectics. But does Giannotti not arrive at a similar result? He does not resort to the teleological language of the Frankfurtians; Giannotti cannot forget On Certainty’s beautiful §559: “You must bear in mind that the language game is so to say something unpredictable. I mean: it is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable). It is there—like our life.” But at the very least he still endorses the idea of a convergence of language games, which are

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rooted in the ground of common minimum humanity, toward the universal principles of human enquiry or of our rationality; all this is guaranteed by the possible communication among the different language games. Are we, then, really that far from the philosophy of communicative community?

III In good part, the difficulties that we have just shown come perhaps from the attitude that underlies Giannotti’s reading. Going through Wittgenstein’s texts in the direction of his own speculative targets and being perhaps still very marked by Husserl and Hegel, Giannotti does not linger as long as he should on Wittgenstein’s own target, which the latter tries to hold in sight amid the hesitation and tremor of an enquiry that constantly corrects itself and never reaches the resting place of a full and finally transparent expression. This essential incompleteness of thought, coming as it does from a philosopher who always insisted on the essential difficulty of expression, is nonetheless rarely acknowledged by his commentators, which strongly compromises the comprehension of his writings. And yet the target of On Certainty is made quite clear, even if it is not clearly defined: it is a critique of Moore and his philosophy of common sense, which, against the entire tradition of thought (in particular idealism, skepticism, and solipsism), wants to finally attain the solid ground on which philosophy can find a definitive foundation. What is more, it wants to do it all through an operation that is limited to expressing theses—or rather truisms, recognized as such to boot—which, because of their very banality, could define the horizon of absolute truth beyond any reason for doubt. Thus, in “A Defence of Common Sense,” Moore says: I begin, then, with my list of truisms, every one of which (in my own opinion) I know, with certainty, to be true. The propositions to be included in this list are the following: There exists at present a living human body, which is my body. This body was born at a certain time in the past, and has existed continuously ever since, though not without undergoing changes; it was, for instance, much smaller when it was born, and for some time afterwards, than it is now.21



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To spare the reader, I shall not enumerate the long list of these truths; I will only insist that what shocks Wittgenstein is the emphasis that underscores the expression I know, which seems somehow to ground the list of trivial or absolute truths by infusing his immediate or subjective certainty into them. The whole of On Certainty aims to show why, for strictly logical–grammatical reasons, such propositions cannot play the tranquil foundational philosophical role that Moore attributes to them. The point is to show the impossibility of founding a realist philosophy on the “evidence” of common sense, and to show at the same time that no evidence or privileged contact with oneself can ever support a non-realist, that is, an idealist, skeptical, or solipsist philosophy. In essence, Wittgenstein indicates, it is the same reasons that cancel out the possible sense of realism and of idealism and that show the apparent opposition between these metaphysics to be a mere surface effect, or show that they both share the same basic philosophical mistake. This is what is said right at the start of On Certainty, in §37, where Wittgenstein warns the reader thus: But is it an adequate answer to the scepticism of the idealist, or the assurances of the realist, to say that “There are physical objects” is nonsense [Unsinn]? For them after all it is not nonsense. It would, however, be an answer to say: this assertion, or its opposite is a misfiring attempt to express what can’t be expressed like that. And that it does misfire can be shewn; but that isn’t the end of the matter. We need to realize that what presents itself to us as the first expression of a difficulty, or of its solution, may as yet not be correctly expressed at all. Just as one who has a just censure of a picture to make will often at first offer the censure where it does not belong, and an investigation is needed in order to find the right point of attack for the critic.

The whole book must therefore be understood as an effort to realize this correction of the critical line of fire. The target is already given, but is somehow badly focused. And that correction— the disqualification of both realism and idealism, ultimately of metaphysics— becomes possible only with a thorough grammatical analysis of the behavior of concepts such as knowing, believing, doubting, being sure of, erring, dreaming. The book’s conclusion was ready from the start, but only the often uncertain and interrogative zigzag of enquiry can give it its true horizon at the intersection of the three crucial terms error, illusion, and madness,

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which define the problematic and critical vocation of reason and philosophy. Immobilized in its thematic content (that is, disconnected from a problematic telos or, as we will see below, from its reflexive movement), Wittgenstein’s last text is rather simple. Gilbert Hottois, for example, provides a very precise model of the argumentative moments in On Certainty: Wittgenstein calls into question and denounces the idea (a) that we know such propositions [the truisms put forward by Moore as the hard core of the good and universal philosophy of common sense]; (b) that they can be considered absolutely true; (c) that it is possible to produce the least proof of those propositions or, more generally, of the “common sense view of the world” or realism; (d) that the “I” in the expression “I know that …” plays any meaningful role.22

But this commentator does not limit himself to making a good thematic x-ray of Wittgenstein’s book; in doing it, he also provides an account of the sense in which we should take the arguments that seem to lead to relativism and to bring grist to the mill of culturalist, postmodern readers. Regarding the texts that insist on the plurality and irreducibility of world pictures [Weltbilder] in the framework of the polemic against realism, he is right to say that it is necessary to interpret them in an almost dialectical style, without fixing them as theses that would give form to a Weltanschauung (worldview) undersigned by Wittgenstein. What matters is the tension that the philosopher establishes between objectivist universalism and relativism, not with a view to overcoming it in the direction of a higher synthesis, but so as to simultaneously disqualify both opposites—just like Pascal.23 It is indispensable to keep this in mind if we are to avoid a radical misunderstanding of the text. Apparently both advocates and adversaries of relativism end up digging up a few theses from Wittgenstein’s texts: a philosophy, in the sense of a doctrine or a worldview. And it is necessary to recognize that something, if not in the style, at least in a few of Wittgenstein’s expressions leads to that mistake, as if it were impossible to undo the illusions of philosophy without involuntarily incurring the same illusions. Wittgenstein himself acknowledges obstacles of this sort; for example when the “difficulty […] to realize the groundlessness of our believing” (§166) makes us fall into a philosophy that is as dogmatic and blind to the legitimate use of language as any other. As stated in §422, “I



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am trying to say something that sounds like pragmatism. Here I am being thwarted by a kind of Weltanschauung.” It is not, in effect, theses of any kind, be they epistemological or ontological, that carry us far away from relativism or pragmatism. We therefore need not recover the universality of a humanitas minima de facto—a de facto minimal humanity—from underneath the different forms of life, as Giannotti does, in order to save Wittgenstein from relativism. It is enough, for that purpose, that we acknowledge that, by describing and understanding how language games work, I am somehow qualified to understand all language games, whether real or possible.24 How can we reconcile this idea with that of the irreducibility of Weltbilder, of the abysses that separate these different paradigms? The abyss resides in the beliefs, unfounded or unfoundable, that are crystallized in the mythology at the basis of language games more than it does in the “fundamental principles of human enquiry.” What might the principles mentioned in §670 mean? This is something purely formal, which prejudges nothing of the ontological constitution of the world. At the limit, it is the idea that (a) every significant proposition depends on a foundation or on a method of verification; (b) every justification has a limit, more specifically a basis that is in itself unfounded; and (c) this apparently narrow space, an internally well-equipped sphere floating over the bottomless abyss, is large enough to accommodate the workings of human understanding. Do we not find here, once again, the spirit of Pascal, when he affirms that the lack of proof about principles is not a defect but a perfection? The principle amounts to no more than that there must be rules (and this is already a lot); but it is not important to know—nor is it important to know whether it is actually possible to know—on what such rules are based. Let us remember that what is at stake in On Certainty is always common sense and its possible philosophical use; and that the point is, above all, to discriminate between the possibilities of understanding and knowing, or to confirm that one cannot know without understanding. Perhaps it is in this sense that Wittgenstein affirms, in §378, Das Wissen gründet sich am Schluss, auf der Anerkennung (“Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement”). Let us leave aside the tangled question of the correct interpretation of the word Anerkennung, which has a history in philosophy, and not only in Germany. Let us remember once again that the text is written against Moore. In a word, if common sense does not guarantee a

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foundation or the apodeictic character of knowledge, it is still a condition of possibility for the exercise of judgment in general, in rigorously Kantian terms. If it does not require a metaphysics, as Moore wants, common sense, purified by conceptual analysis, can and should function as a horizon of rationality. Is this not what Kant has already said in the Critique of Judgment? There, in §40, Kant says: Common human understanding which as mere sound (not yet cultivated) understanding, is looked upon as the least we can expect from any one claiming the name of man, has therefore the doubtful honour of having the name of common sense (sensus communis) bestowed upon it; and bestowed, too, in an acceptation of the word common (not merely in our own language, where it actually has a double meaning, but also in many others) which makes it amount to what is vulgar—what is everywhere to be met with—a quality which by no means confers credit or distinction upon its possessor. However, by the name sensus communis is to be understood the idea of a public sense, i.e., a critical faculty which in its reflective act takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation of everyone else, in order, as it were, to weigh its judgment with the collective reason of mankind, and thereby avoid the illusion arising from subjective and personal conditions which could readily be taken for objective, an illusion that would exert a prejudicial influence upon its judgment.25

Later on I will return to the Kantian idea of the insufficiency of the definition of common sense as mere sanity or as minimum humanity. Let me say, for the time being, that it is against this reservation—that is, by ignoring Kant’s warning—that Giannotti interprets Wittgenstein’s grammar of reflexive judgment. What would be the point of an appeal to the bedrock of a minimum humanity as justification for the universality of reason, if not the attempt to bind meaning and truth to the ground floor of a rustic theory—a folk metaphysics? Is this not how Giannotti’s interpretation sounds [klingt]? On the one hand, we can say that, without violating the spirit of Wittgenstein’s reflection, the Kantian distinction between Gemeinsinn (common sense understood as Gemeinschaftlichen Sinn or communitarian sense)26 and gemeine Menschenverstand (“common sense” in the ordinary use) widens the gap between the universality of mutual human comprehension as a possibility of rational universality and



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the mere fact of the natural history of humankind. This is what we can see in Giannotti’s treatment of the texts that Wittgenstein dedicates in On Certainty to the ideas of persuasion and conversion. Following his irrepressibly universalist and ontological vocation and developing his theory of a “socialization of the ground” (or of the rational–communicative justification of the unjustifiable), Giannotti affirms: “As ground, this manner is neither true nor false, but if we ask about its truth, the answer will tend to be positive, because the question itself places it as a position, a collectively made adoption (Annahme), an orientation to think like this.”27 How can a proposition (or rather a pseudo-proposition) “tend” to be true, if logic and grammar show that, in essence, it cannot be considered either true or false? Glauben (believing) sneaks here into the folds of reflexive reason and demands rights equal to those enjoyed by wissen (knowing). This slight shift also allows Giannotti to expand the reach of Wittgenstein’s concept of Grundprinzip, confusing its epistemic effects with its general operational effects (for want of a better expression). This is what transpires, for example, in one of the countless arguments deployed against relativism that are based on the notion of the universalism of Gemeinsinn or of the universalistic character of reflexive practices in general. Giannotti says: And the very confrontation of pictures and views refers to common grounds that assure the operationality of the confrontation. It is therefore perfectly possible to speak of “fundamental principles” (Grundprinzipien) of human enquiry (§670), which constitute the horizon both of enquiry and of the process of persuasion by which we introduce third parties into our everyday world.28

Can we then really subsume the processes of enquiry and persuasion under the same principles? Wittgenstein seems to bar that move explicitly in the two paragraphs he dedicates to the idea of persuasion in On Certainty. In §262 he says: I can imagine a man who had grown up in quite special circumstances and been taught that the earth came into being 50 years ago, and therefore believed this. We might instruct him: the earth has long … etc.—We should be trying to give him our picture of the world [Weltbild]. This would happen through a kind of persuasion.

Meanwhile in §612—which actually concludes an argument begun in §609 contrasting a member of a primitive culture who

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believes in oracles with a modern man who has notions of physics— Wittgenstein writes, “I said I would ‘combat’ the other man,—but wouldn’t I give him reasons [Gründe]? Certainly; but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (Think what happens when missionaries convert natives.)” That we cannot follow Giannotti’s indication is clear in these two texts. In both cases, the idea of persuasion is essentially opposed to the idea of justification. The Grundprinzipien of human enquiry, far from subsuming the practices of persuasion, end precisely where these practices begin. In a word, if I have to persuade someone, it is because I do not have (nor can I have) a foundation or reasons to convince that person. To persuade someone is to lead her or him to admit precisely what has no basis, a “mythology,” something that lies far beyond, or below, the alternative between true and false, rational and irrational, or rather between reasonableness and madness, between cosmos and chaos. Much more than reason, persuasion involves authority, the asymmetry between the one who teaches, who can even resort to violence, and the apprentice29—the same asymmetry that exists between the missionary and the native. For Wittgenstein, unlike for Descartes, there is no “age of reason” in which humans can excavate, in themselves and for themselves, a foundation that is a reason. Once again, for Wittgenstein, to look for a ground is to fall into the bottomless abyss. How could it be otherwise? Can I teach a belief, that is, a sureness (Sicherheit), without a ground (Grund)? Can I provide Grund for what is essentially Grundlos? The field in which persuasion unfolds is sooner that of war than that of more or less communicative understanding. Thus, Wittgenstein asks in the recently quoted §612: “I said I would ‘combat’ [Ich würde ‘bekämpfen’] the other man”—and replies that this is effectively so. To persuade and convert is to break, without a properly rational or reasonable argument, a sureness, in the expectation of substituting it for another. In every paragraph from §605 to §617, the crucial words emphasized by the author (in opposition to the word “reasons”) are “sureness,” “combat,” and “persuasion.” And it could not be otherwise, since, if we do not share the same Weltbild, we do not play the same language game, we do not obey the same rules. This is why, to describe this borderline situation, Wittgenstein speaks of heresy and conversion, of madness and reasonableness. Thus in §611 he says: “Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other



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a fool and heretic.” Let it be said, incidentally, regarding the long pre-history of On Certainty, that already in 1911 Wittgenstein had protested against the theory of conversion expounded in a lecture by Moore.30 In a word, the universality of the universal principles of human enquiry encounters an insurmountable limit in the always arbitrary choice of the principles without which a Weltbild is not crystallized or a Weltanschauung is not instituted: “our rationality,” in the expression privileged by Giannotti, is metaphysically neutral. Relativism or criticism? There is no relativism here, since the idea is already in nuce in the Tractatus itself and coexists perfectly with that book’s principled universalism. There the question had to do (at an epistemological level, so to speak) with the status of the propositions of mechanics and their “conventional” character (the scare quotes should be taken very seriously). The problem, in propositions 6.3 among others, was that of the relations between logic and mechanics, where the principle of sufficient reason—der Satz vom Grund31—is struck down and, with it, the principle of causality and induction, the very idea of natural law. What interests me, in this case, is propositions 6.371 (“The whole modern conception of the world [Weltanschauung] is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena”) and 6.372: So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, just as did the ancients at God and Fate. And in fact both are right and both wrong. But the ancients were clearer in so far as they recognized one clear conclusion, whereas in the modern system it should appear as though everything were explained.32

Of course, in On Certainty it would not make sense to speak of error in describing a worldview. But what is set up here, inside the Tractatus itself (and somewhat in continuity with Herz’s mitigated conventionalism), is the idea that convention (in the mechanical representation of the world) is not arbitrary. As Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos observes in the essay appended to his Portuguese translation of the Tractatus, Analogously, it must not occur to anyone to ask whether the events of the world are intrinsically submitted to Newtonian or Aristotelian laws. They are not intrinsically submitted to any legality. There is only logical legality. The choice of one or the other mechanical

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system is arbitrary, but it is also relatively arbitrary. We learn something about how things have been happening when we perceive that one system allows for the formulation of a set of natural laws compatible with our experience that is simpler than the set of laws that the other system allows us to formulate. This is perhaps where the illusion that natural principles have empirical content, that they are meaningful propositions, comes from. From a logical point of view, however, they simply are not propositions.33

It is impossible not to note some parallelism between the conventionalism of this moment in the Tractatus and that in the later Wittgenstein. A multiplicity of projective models in one case, of language games in the other—but, in both cases, little weight is attributed to the mythology that confuses fact and logic, Weltbild and rational or positive knowledge. “Mythology” is, in both cases, the word that designates a special type of illusion—perhaps even an illusion well founded in practice—namely the kind that is unavoidable and innocuous (and, moreover, indispensable to the good functioning of discursive practice and life in common). It is indispensable to life in common as a Weltbild or baseless basis of efficacious practice. It nonetheless risks becoming a Weltanschauung in the hands of the philosopher, realist or idealist, who wants to give a theoretical or dogmatic foundation to an all too human and necessary desire for security.

IV With the definition of the idea of illusion and its necessity that we have thus outlined, the whole problem seems to have been resolved and philosophy may receive its therapeutic and negative task. But is that actually so? If philosophical illusion is born of a hubris that distances us from common sense, philosophical therapy does not simply return us to the healthy tranquility of common sense.34 Once the fruit of the tree of knowledge has been tasted, the Edenic innocence of spontaneous consciousness is lost forever. That is what Gilbert Hottois notes, with some preoccupation, in his aforementioned text. Differentiating the attitudes of Moore and Wittgenstein in the face of common sense, he states: [Wittgenstein’s] philosophical practice implies a return to common sense and, nevertheless, as a first step, a distancing. Pitcher writes



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that stirring confusion or perplexity in his students constituted a first step in Wittgenstein’s teaching. That is, the original pre-philosophical innocence is as disqualified as complacency (whether painful or not) in philosophy.35

The difficulty this good commentator has with these passages, particularly the very last ones, written by Wittgenstein on the eve of his death, is remarkable. It is, at the very least, a symptom of hermeneutic sensibility, even if it does not culminate in a complete clarification of their well-perceived strangeness. What astounds Gilbert Hottois is the resurgence, in extremis, of philosophical wonder, accompanied by a new rumination on arguments that should have been long buried—namely the dream and madness arguments. Does Wittgenstein not condemn philosophy in the name of common language, or rather in the name of its disastrously agrammatical use by philosophers? Yes; but Wittgenstein is not, like Moore, an advocate of common sense as a worldview, just as he is not an advocate of any worldview. Is not the target of On Certainty precisely the philosophy of common sense? Does he not also attack something like a historically given common sense, which he calls Amerikanismus (of which Heidegger, too, was critical)? Did he not oppose a “Bolshevik” conception to the philistine or bourgeois conception of philosophy, at least as far as mathematics was concerned? Did he not even consider, until 1937, living and working in the Soviet Union, without of course ever really coming close to Marxism as a philosophy?36 There is, beyond doubt, a non-conformism and a return of metaphysical disquiet that his usual concern with ethics brings back into play. It is thus with some perplexity that Gilbert Hottois observes that “the last aphorisms of On Certainty were written on the night before his death: philosophical perplexity appears there as profound as, or even more profound than, twenty years before, when he firmly believed he had a therapeutic method at his disposal.”37 But is philosophical therapy, contrary to what Wittgenstein believed at the time of the Tractatus, not endless in essence, like Freud’s unendliche Analyse (interminable analysis)? Yet again, what disquiets our commentator is that the dissolution of enigmas does not take us back to the “healthy” attitude of common sense. In effect, despite his therapeutic conception of philosophy, Wittgenstein does not seem to fully identify health with adherence to historically given common sense. Let us recall, incidentally,

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that, when he found himself tormented by his “sins” and logical problems in his youth (“logic is Hell,” Bertrand Russell used to say), his teacher recommended with paternal care that he abandon this discipline, lest it harm his mental health. To this, Wittgenstein replied that, were he to do so, he would be running the risk of a dangerous fall into mental normality. The task of philosophy is not only infinite, but also rigorously incompatible with common sense. At the end of On Certainty, when the idealist viewpoint has been buried alongside common sense realism, the dream argument emerges once again. It is true that the Cartesian argument is quickly dispatched in a rather traditional style.38 In keeping with a long tradition, it is a matter of showing that, to put it in Kantian terms, the I think that assures the unity of representations presupposes the consciousness of an object.39 What is more interesting, however, is that the dream argument appears to be somehow connected to the madness argument, which brings us back to the contemporary debate on the importance of these arguments in the architecture of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy.40 Yet what is madness in On Certainty? The concept appears countless times in the book (for instance, in §§155, 217, 223, 257, 355, 420, and 611). First of all, it is essentially distinguished from both error and illusion. As a matter of fact, one of the essential arguments of On Certainty consists in pointing out that corrigibility is an essential feature of error. One can speak of error only where a system of rules that can correct it is assumed, whereas madness, as a kind of incorrigible error, seems to be defined as blindness to rules. (See §156: “In order to make a mistake, a man must already judge in conformity with mankind.”) But error is also distinguished from illusion or, more specifically, philosophical illusion—not least because philosophical illusion is in a certain way natural, if not necessary, as in Kant’s transcendental appearance, which responds to a necessity of reason and does not offend the logical use of the understanding, but nonetheless “irremediably attaches to human reason, so that even after we have exposed the mirage it will still not cease to lead our reason on with false hopes, continually propelling it into momentary aberrations that always need to be removed.”41 This step, which it is up to critical analysis or conceptual therapy to correct and avoid, is one that the dogmatic philosopher takes spontaneously, by turning the inevitable Weltbild that underlies any form of life into a Weltanschauung.



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However, if correcting a philosophical illusion is not correcting an error, since Weltanschauungen, just like Weltbilder, are neither true nor false, what is the point of the philosopher’s critical activity? To the extent that such activity consists in understanding and explaining philosophical illusions, plunging into the unfounded ground of the world’s images (in an essentially comparative activity), it is essentially something like the exploration of otherness, except in a different direction from the one that missionaries follow in their persuasive task. Would not understanding another system of rules, playing all language games, amount to understanding madness at the same time? The critical philosopher may indeed reach serenity, although a serenity always en sursis (on borrowed time), but not the tranquility of the common people, who do not problematize the truth of the Weltbild that gives them security. We are not crazy, ma’am, we are doing philosophy, living against the grain … In the Tractatus, the philosopher, after drawing the limits of what is sayable and thinkable from inside language, pointed to its beyond, the mystical, as an essential target of thought that must be reached in silence. In the second phase of Wittgenstein’s work, when his conception of language is transformed, the description of language games and of their limits points to an attitude, a certain perspicacious and synoptic view that pervades them all without privileging any. Everywhere and nowhere, describing the microcosms of all language games, the philosopher glimpses the chaos that emerges in each and every one of them: “perspectivism without relativism,” in Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos’ polished expression. It is perhaps in this sense that one should understand the sentence I have used as my epigraph: “When philosophizing you have to descend into the old chaos & feel at home there.” Where there was reason, have we not introduced madness, sinking into the vortex of the crisis of reason and into the swamp of irrationalism? No! Thanks to this operation, Wittgenstein paradoxically reconnects, through German romanticism and Kantian critique, with the Greek origin of rationalism, perhaps even with that brief moment that separated death from the tragedy of the birth of philosophy. To delimit reason against the backdrop of madness is still to delimit reason, to sharpen the fine edge of logical rigor in its contact with its other. Let us remember Wittgenstein’s sentence: “If in life we are surrounded by death, so too in the health of our understanding by madness.”42

Error, Illusion, Madness Commentary by Arley Ramos Moreno

Dear Bento, here are a few observations on your text: 1.  I agree with your interpretation of Wittgenstein’s idea that vernünftiger Mensch, as opposed to the rational person, designates the individual who is in possession of a linguistic technique and does not ask about its foundations. It is just that my interpretation of this idea is, let us say, perhaps less orthodox. For me, the phrase refers to a theoretical figure that, without being a normative model but just by acting as a contrast, would allow for the comprehension and clarification of situations that are conceptually confusing. Its condition is thus opposed—and here we bring together Wittgenstein’s expression and the philosophical tradition—to that of the rational person, the philosopher who “thinks” instead of “looking” and generalizing about the diversity of situations. This is an irrepressible and, in a certain sense, natural attitude, since our thought is considered, since the Tractatus, one of the possible manifestations of language, which imperceptibly guides our thinking. This is at once a fertile ground and a justification for therapy. So, for example, when he affirms that a red object is red, that the word “table” has five letters, that his sensations are private, and even that 2 + 2 = 4, Wittgenstein’s reasonable individual is only demonstrating that he has learned to manipulate certain linguistic rules in given situations. If, furthermore, he confesses under pressure that he believes in the truth, and even in the necessity, of these



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affirmations, he will be upholding his beliefs insofar as they result from the practical efficacy of the linguistic techniques applied to his experience. This is why he would not agree that there is some profound adequation between those affirmations he has made and reality, let alone some harmony between his thinking and reality. Without being descriptions of facts, his beliefs are applied as models for propositions, whether true or false, that are descriptive of facts. If they are efficacious and consequently useful for building new techniques, such descriptions will be taken on board, and their “grammatical” foundations with them. We could press further and ask about the foundations of these “grammatical” foundations. As a good disciple of Wittgenstein, the vernünftiger Mensch would say that, no longer having reasons or criteria, she or he makes use of causes or symptoms: very general facts of nature that go unnoticed by us owing to their generality, including the very natural history of the human being, namely the person who learns, sees, hears, walks and eats and drinks, speaks, and so on. Our knowledge of facts is, in a certain way, a gift from nature, since these very general facts allow us to establish conventions, to have hopes about the repetition of given situations, to have expectations with respect to others, and thus to build propositions that are descriptive of facts. It is in this sense, it seems to me, that knowledge rests upon acknowledgment: without expressing any knowledge, this conventional basis of grammatical propositions provides the general rules for the conceptual operations of combination and comparison that lead to knowledge and, furthermore, to knowledge accompanied by the feeling of necessity—that is, to acknowledgment (§378). When speaking habitually with respect to his or her own foot, the vernünftiger Mensch does not have emotions and can do science without any conceptual confusion. Furthermore, when glimpsing, in his or her foot, the result of an inference—there are objects around me, my body is one of these objects, therefore …—this person expresses his or her feeling of certainty, a feeling resulting from a conceptual combination derived from grammatical propositions. The necessary foot of this person, as you can see, is only one step away from philosophy. (This same argument, applied here to the reasonable person, is used by Wittgenstein, with the necessary modifications, in relation to both mathematical proof and aspect perception.) But the step was not taken. If she or he remained exclusively within the scope of this process indicated by grammatical therapy, the reasonable person would be

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very boring, for such a person’s certainties would never be absolute and his or her doubts never profound. This is not, I believe, the common sense person, let alone the rational person. The last two are much more interesting, for they are the ones who generate much confusion. (Just a biographical note, which is perhaps pertinent: Wittgenstein lived among Austrian peasants—inspired, certainly, by the idyllic view that Tolstoy had of peasants—and did as poorly there as among the economic and cultural European haute bourgeoisie. Perhaps we have here two symmetrical models of the common sense person and of the rational person.) 2.  Another important idea that you point out, with which I entirely agree, is that of the “empirical–transcendental” as applied to the combination between very general facts of nature and actions that have to do with language. I would take the liberty to add only two comments. First of all, we ought to distinguish among the general facts of nature a properly transcendental function, which would be exercised when they are integrated into symbolism as rules for language use. While empirical, these general facts, just like any others, do not exercise any symbolic function: they are nothing, with respect to which we can say nothing. Once elaborated inside different practices, they gain the conventional status of rules for the use of symbolism and, from then on, become independent from their originally empirical nature: they become a priori rules for the building of concepts. Secondly, as a consequence, the same seems to apply to empirical objects in general: they acquire a transcendental function when they are assimilated into linguistic symbolism as a “means of presentation” for the use of words (this, it seems to me, is the paradigm technique). To avoid confusion with traditional philosophical language, I believe it would be better to say that this combination is neither empirical nor transcendental. That it is not empirical is clear. That it is also not transcendental in the traditional sense means that its a priori is no longer absolute. For example, the expression “2 + 2 = 4” may be considered as the expression of a transcendental principle that determines the form and the result of an addition between units that contain, each of them, any two elements. For it to be applicable, however, it is necessary to know the system of operations in which it is included, and this system is a set of calculations correlated among themselves, an empirical technique in relation to the principle itself. In the two aforementioned examples, the



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techniques are, so to speak, the empirical horizon that the principles presuppose, but they do not regulate the formal organization that they impose on experience. (It is this relativization of the a priori, through “forms of life,” that has led me to give the title “Between the Transcendental and the Empirical: Forms of Life” to a chapter in my little book.) 3.  Another point on which I would like to comment, this time in order to ask a few questions, regards the part in which you affirm that, in Wittgenstein’s case, all it takes to escape relativism is to acknowledge that it is possible to understand all language games by describing and understanding only one language game. This affirmation is based on manuscript 980, which is cited by Granger. My question is as follows. If this were the case, then should not each language game contain the determination common to all language games, “whether real or possible”? I believe it is easy to see that this thesis is very anti-Wittgensteinian. I interpret the fragment of manuscript 980 in the following manner: as we learn only to look at word uses (without thinking—a basic methodological principle of therapeutic description), we learn all language games, real or possible; that is, we learn to describe, in Wittgenstein’s sense. To describe what I see when I look without thinking amounts to taking a philosophically confusing concept and introducing the word that expresses it in different propositions, that is, in different situations in which it can be applied. This first step will suffice to make it clear that the confusion will tend to increase if we stick to the initial definition that caused it. A second step could consist in inventing unprecedented situations and verifying whether the word is still applicable. If it is, then, in the midst of so much confusion, we must admit that the concept expressed by it is much more comprehensive than what appears in its initial definition. The conclusion is that the initial definition generates confusion because it is unilateral and intends to be absolute; it is an image, in the sense in which I myself employ the term. It is a dogmatic definition, a metaphysical thesis elaborated by thinking that has lost sight of the simple act of looking. Now, there are cases in which the word seems to be no longer applicable—say, an extremely deviant situation in which our interlocutor nevertheless insists on its application. Such are the cases of confrontation among apparently incommunicable images of the world. What does Wittgenstein say? They are situations in which we don’t know what to say or, worse, we don’t know what to think! For

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example, how is it possible to think that this object in front of me is not identical to itself? How is it possible to think that the pain I now feel is not only mine? In this case, the aforementioned procedure is applicable: asking the interlocutor what situation I should imagine in which this object would not be identical to itself and in which my pain would also be the pain of another person; asking this person to provide examples of such situations, which, apparently, are familiar to him or her. I will then attempt to apply to these examples descriptive propositions that include the words “identity” and “pain” just as my interlocutor suggests. Consequently, it does not follow that I myself, even if I succeed, will come to apply the words in this manner, for this will not be useful to me, that is, in relation to the image of the world in which I express myself. These examples are exactly equivalent, it seems to me, to that of the mathematical situation in which it is suggested that I apply the concept of sum in the following manner: “3 + 4 = 5.” How is it possible to cross the barriers of my own image of the world to access that of my interlocutor? I will be able to do so if this person provides information about the mathematical situation of the proofs that operate in his or her language games, for example. Wittgenstein invents such a situation: if A = 3 and B = 4, and if

A

B

then A + B = 5. I am led to admit that the concept of arithmetical sum may be applied, through proofs, to this (for me) non-standard but possible situation, once it is formulated according to other rules; and also that it is possible to develop arithmetical techniques that are different from the ones I know, which are equally efficacious and useful. (According to Wittgenstein and contrary to Descartes, even God should consult us to learn the rules of our language games.) This is not, however, why I will take up this operation in my everyday life, since it would be useless to me: it would have no foreseeable use in my forms of life. It does not seem possible to understand all language games on the basis of the description of only one of them. There are insurmountable barriers between them—above all because they are erected upon beliefs, for example in the absolute necessity of certain



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conceptual connections. It seems to me that, for Wittgenstein, these barriers can be surmounted only when we adopt the purification of the gaze as a “method”: when we vary the examples, starting with effective uses, when we invent uses that go against our most deeprooted beliefs, and when we describe all this without formulating theses about what its ground is. Such is the “method” that will allow one to understand, according to Wittgenstein, all language games through the description of each one. It seems to me that the positive result of this analysis is a synoptic view of the sets of language games that can be built around each concept—or, conversely, of the sets of games to which each concept can be applied. This should prompt us not to eliminate, but to relativize our beliefs; not to abandon them, of course, but to consider them as no longer corresponding to truths or absolute foundations. That is all. 4.  Another point on which I would like to comment refers to the “fundamental principles of human enquiry.” I agree only with your suggestion regarding the first aspect (§26). In the context of that statement at On Certainty §670, it strikes me as pertinent to add that the manifestations of certainty and of doubt that accompany the forms of judgment are included among those principles (see for instance Wittgenstein’s notes from April 20, 22, and 26, 1951). Someone will always have good reasons to doubt my most deeply rooted certainties, qualifying them, as Wittgenstein says, as errors, magic, heresy, or madness; and I can do the same to my interlocutors. In other words, judgments will normally enter into confrontation by virtue of their form, but mainly through the degree of conviction with which they manifest themselves inside each image of the world. When we no longer have good reasons for a judgment, when we face factual proofs that oppose our convictions, certainties, and doubts—well, in these borderline situations, which are those often thematized by Wittgenstein, we will stamp our feet (as Lebrun does at times) and hold fast to our position by continuing to play our language games of certainty and doubt (for an example, see §657). This is another element that seems to me to belong to the “fundamental principles” according to Wittgenstein. Now, through grammatical therapy, which leads us to the synoptic view, we will have acquired, above all, a thinking that is apt to combat its own natural tendency to philosophize (in the sense criticized by Wittgenstein) or to allow itself to get carried away by the force of images (in my sense)—or rather by the tendency to always seek

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foundations for certainty and for doubt. This is the hardest thing for thought to recognize: the limits of justification, the unjustifiable nature of certainty and doubt; for language itself, when on holiday, leads us astray. Being so difficult, this attitude is precisely not a natural one, as it goes against the “fundamental principles.” The point here seems to me to be the following: for anyone who thinks, it is a very natural attitude to let language go on holiday—that is, to take a linguistic expression that does not cause any confusion and congeal it, extract it from its everyday use by creating around it a theory, a system of theses. This can be done by the professional philosopher as much as by the scientist, and even by the common sense person when pressured to give explanations about her or his everyday linguistic expressions. Your point (b) (p. 17 in this volume) seems already to be a result of grammatical therapy—that is, the result of an individual effort to combat this natural, philosophizing tendency that consists in neutralizing the situations in which words are used and that, having thereby lost the capacity to “look,” views one-sidedly the concepts crystallized in the holidaying words that express them. It is perhaps more difficult to understand this point, given that this is apparently the attitude we spontaneously adopt each time when, acting without thinking, we express our pain and describe those of others, how they love, see, see as, read, ride a bike, and so on, without asking ourselves about the grounds of these actions. Yet we will not have fully adopted that attitude until we have acknowledged the lack of ultimate foundations to our certainties and doubts vis-à-vis these everyday situations, while at the same time wholeheartedly embracing those certainties and doubts in our habitual ways of acting and thinking, despite the impossibility of grounding them. It is the conjunction of these two dispositions of thought that is no longer spontaneous or natural. It is not easy to feel good in this confusion, which admittedly dissociates our now healthy thinking from our everyday action. But the target of grammatical therapy is in reality not action but thought. Facts, like actions, remain unchanged by therapeutic activity; only our thinking must change. The dissociation between thought and action turns out to have a much longer history. Grammatical therapy makes it clear that in everyday action there is no path that leads to its own absolute grounds. Why feel bad? That would be for the skeptically minded individuals who, despite having learned to respect their interlocutor’s vehement manifestations of pain, for example, profess



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extreme doubts about them. It is persons of this kind who will always either subject themselves to being slapped—in the best of cases, if they are coherent with their own skepticism—or will act hypocritically, pretending to believe in the other person’s pain. Fortunately grammatical therapy explains that, in everyday action, in the effective use of words applied to actions and situations, there are several paths that lead to one’s own and different conventions, and this is all the grounding they can have. Why feel bad? Therapy does not lead to the dissociation of action from healthy thinking— either skeptical or dogmatic. It leads only to seriously taking in, without further anguish, the conventional nature of our beliefs about necessity, error, heresy, and madness, since conventions are not arbitrary inventions; they are mutual agreements that allow us to overcome difficulties, to organize experience efficiently, to know more. We feel bad in the apparent chaos (I would now say), because our thinking is nostalgic for images, as you say: for one-sided interpretations of meaning that originate in everyday action itself, in the practice that provides our beliefs with a valid ground. Nostalgia comes from the fact that, once made into philosophical theses, these interpretations give the impression of an absolute and crystalline order, such as that of the Tractatus. This is the security that the philosophizing person needs, and it is rather different from the one that the common sense person needs; the former is characterized as an illusion, the latter as part of the “fundamental principles of human enquiry.” 5.  Another comment refers to the passage in which you say that to persuade and convert “is to break, without a properly rational or reasonable argument, a sureness” (p. 20 in this volume). I fully agree with this statement and would like to add only that, for Wittgenstein, this applies to therapeutic philosophy as well as to psychoanalysis. Contrary to what Freud, at least to a certain extent, intended for psychoanalysis, neither it nor therapeutic philosophy is a scientific activity that seeks to convince through the presentation of symptoms or natural causes picked among the facts. Facts may even be admitted consensually, as criteria or reasons in argumentation, but their factual nature depends on the indefinite and perhaps infinite chain they can form. The nature of criteria or reasons is quite distinct: they can form only finite chains. In the case of psychoanalysis, it is the individuals themselves who provide the criterion for the cure. This is when they themselves recognize,

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when they come to see a new aspect, when they finally learn a new language game and command a new technique (exactly the one that had led to persuasion). The same goes for therapeutic philosophy: Wittgenstein seeks to make us find a new aspect in what we claim to see directly, without intermediaries, and absolutely. His goal was to persuade not only his students and readers but also himself, selftherapeutically. In both cases, what is at stake is substituting one mythology for another (apart from the Philosophical Investigations, see also his comments on Frazer, his classes, as noted by students, and his comments on aesthetics). Once persuaded, individuals come, surprisingly, to provide reasons in support of their new beliefs. They have set out on a language game, a form of life previously unknown to them; they have substituted one set of beliefs for another, becoming capable of building new reasons by means of concepts and the new rules they now command. The individuals who were persuaded and make this evident through their behavior, by producing new reasons for their action and thought, obtain the cure and are consequently discharged from psychoanalytical or philosophical treatment. If the procedures are very close to one another—the philosophical one being perhaps even inspired by its psychoanalytic counterpart—their paths diverge radically. The former restricts itself to presenting the greatest possible diversity of mythologies with the purpose of relativizing each one of them, as well as the particular one that elicited the therapeutic intervention; the latter seeks to present a healing mythology that will ultimately persuade the individual to produce new reasons. Philosophical therapy must lead individuals to produce reasons that relativize their own reasons, thus making them break with the belief in ultimate foundations; this belief should be acknowledged as being an illusion. According to Wittgenstein’s Freud, psychoanalytic therapy must lead the individual to acknowledge the key to the mystery, that concealed aspect of the situation that the new language game—the new mythology—allows one to perceive. The individual him- or herself becomes here the best criterion of the cure—which is a very seductive idea, as Wittgenstein observes. Developing that reasoning a little further, I believe we might add that, in Freud, the point is also to shatter a belief that is supposed to be acknowledged as an error (to use Wittgenstein’s terminology) and that can thus be corrected by the persuaded individuals themselves. It may also happen that individuals do not allow themselves to be persuaded, which usually leads to a process of persuading by force; of course,



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this is not the case of psychoanalysis, or of therapeutic philosophy. If there is persuasion, however, be it through the acknowledgment of illusion or through the acknowledgment and correction of error, the two therapies converge once again: at every moment we are close to relapsing into illusion and error, the therapeutic effort being indefinite. It seems to me that, for Wittgenstein, philosophical therapy would have a conceptual advantage over psychoanalysis, as it does not intend to convince but only to persuade, whereas psychoanalysis, although intending to convince, is in fact only able to persuade. Philosophical therapy does not seek to substitute one mythology for another, as might seem at first glance. Psychoanalytic therapy is capable of no more than that, but it intends to do much more: to present facts that have the power to convince. This is why art and psychoanalysis are very close to philosophy—or rather to that philosophizing activity that is the target of Wittgenstein’s therapy—when they intend to express the truth of what is not a fact, or the grounds of what has no ground. In this sense, both the artist and the psychoanalyst (and the natural scientist, the mathematician, and the logician) may easily become philosophizers. To conclude this already overlong commentary, let me now reconsider the idea of the “fundamental principles of human enquiry” which you unlink from persuasion and connect to convincing— in the sense that to convince would be to present foundational arguments, or reasons, which would for their part be extracted from the set of these fundamental principles. I agree with your first point but, as you must have sensed, I have my doubts about the second (p. 17 in this volume). My impression is that, for Wittgenstein, these fundamental principles would be something very generic, as you suggest, which is why I said that I would retain only item (a). They would actually be as generic as their natural face, namely the “very general facts of nature.” How would it be possible, then, to employ principles of such a generic nature to present convincing reasons? It seems to me that reasons can be found only inside different world pictures and, more particularly, inside language games. Fundamental principles could never be part of an argumentation, since, as fundamental principles, they are the basis of the very process of producing reasons. I believe that Wittgenstein refers to these principles, only just mentioning them, solely with the purpose of indicating a limit to grammatical description. To explore them would be tantamount, in the best of cases, to constructing an empirical science: a natural science of the general facts of nature, a sociological, anthropological,

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or even psychological science about beliefs, the expressive customs of different communities, the phenomenon of memory, and so on. In other cases it would lead to metaphysical systems. Hence it does not seem to me that fundamental principles are ultimately limited by the principles of a certain world picture, as you say, but rather the opposite. 6.  One more point I would like to comment on is the arbitrary character of the basic principles that are instituted through conventions; these are less general than the principles we were just discussing. I fully agree that, since the Tractatus, Wittgenstein held that the sets of natural laws and basic principles of world pictures— the axioms of mechanics and, later, grammatical principles—have no meaning. That is, they have no truth value and are at once necessary and arbitrary. They are arbitrary in the sense that they do not result from inferences, but from choices that could be otherwise. However, they are not arbitrary in that they efficaciously take into account the situations that they express, each in its own way: physics is as efficacious for us as magic is for other communities; or, to avoid any caricatures, Newtonian mechanics allows us to know and operate on facts just as Einsteinian mechanics does. What we might call conventionalist relativism, which is observed at the level of world pictures—I would say, at the empirical level of this irreducible diversity of language games—is, if not absorbed, at least levelled inside each language game through the mechanisms or symbolic practices that allow for the incorporation of the elements of empirical experience in general into linguistic symbolism. As diverse as those principles (the different conceptions of necessity and doubt) may be, whenever they are expressed linguistically, or whenever it is at least possible to do so, this is because symbolic mechanisms have been applied that allow for the establishment of a conceptual level— at which combinations and inferences take place independently of what occurs or is the case. It is not necessary for there to be a beetle inside our private box, or sensations in our body, or emotions in our soul, and so on for us to be able to conveniently apply words and their respective concepts, and to perform those operations a priori. On the basis of mere assumptions of existence, we make calculations and come to practical conclusions, we organize our forms of life. Language games themselves, Wittgenstein says, are what defines the connections of language with facts, and in that sense they are independent of facts. If the diversity of projective, arbitrary models



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was neutralized in the Tractatus through logical form, after the 1920s and during the 1930s and 1940s, the same diversity will be neutralized through symbolic actions immersed in complex systems of other symbolic actions: the uses. Thus, already at the time of the Tractatus, we find the idea that there are mythologies that confuse fact and logic, as you say, so that is the logician’s job, through the use of logical form, to clarify the difference. Later on the task of clarifying the difference between fact and grammar by means of a description of uses will fall to the therapeutic philosopher. During both periods, the task of philosophical activity is seen by Wittgenstein to be a critique of language. What I have just said is, I believe, in agreement with your interpretation as well as with that of Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos, whom you quote in relation to the Tractatus. But I do not really understand the connection you make between this—the question of apparent relativism and arbitrariness—and the question of mythologies, when you affirm that, “in both cases, little weight is attributed to the mythology.” 7.  One more point: the negative therapeutic task and its result. Wittgenstein’s philosophical therapy does indeed seem to have no end, even though particular symptoms might disappear. Although one can explain the system of ideas that supports it—a conception of language, of meaning, of concept, of necessity, and so on—its application certainly follows the clinical model: philosophical therapy is applied to each individual in certain situations of conceptual confusion. According to the very conception that supports it, philosophical therapy could not reveal a state of definitive health or return the individual to it. This is so, I believe, for two main reasons. First, such a state would correspond to a set of rules that allowed one to avoid, and consequently to foresee, all possible conceptual confusions. Now, for Wittgenstein, therapy is not capable of presenting a set of standard procedures for all cases. Properly speaking it is not one method—even though there are guidelines to orient its application—but a set of variable procedures for each case: such and such comparisons with other games, such and such examples, actual or invented. Each case demands a specific procedure. The second reason, and this explains the previous point, is the very notion of “conceptual confusion,” which Wittgenstein sees as connected to word uses. Each concept may cause confusion on the basis of certain word uses that, for different reasons or motives,

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come to be privileged by individuals. Now, uses are dynamic, they are transformed and modified, new uses are invented and replace old ones; in short, like the forms of life in which they participate, uses are unpredictable. As a consequence, conceptual confusion is also unpredictable. When applied to a certain concept, therapy may demand that other language games are activated that are distinct from the one in which the concept that caused the confusion was picked. Thus the description of uses will clarify a whole family of word applications, which are more or less extensive linguistic sets within the concept’s range; but it cannot clarify all the concepts that cause confusion and, conversely, it cannot foresee all possible uses of words that express concepts that cause confusion. To believe that philosophical therapy could definitively eliminate all conceptual confusion would be, it seems to me, in contradiction with both Wittgenstein’s anti-dogmatism and his dynamic conception of word use. It would indeed still be dogmatic to maintain that all illusions could be eliminated once and for all, just as it would be dogmatic to claim that there is a single method for doing so, as the young Wittgenstein certainly did. If no truths or certainties remain to substitute for the eliminated illusions and the illusions themselves are dynamic in nature, there can be no definitive cure. Besides, for the cure to be complete in every particular case, the description of uses would have to be exhaustive, in order to persuade; and this would be impossible, since there is no standard set of procedures. (For Wittgenstein, however, the cure should be complete in each case!) This, I believe, is why Wittgenstein returns to old arguments such as those of the dream and of madness until the end of his life. Arguments that had already been examined in other, particular contexts—for example in the context of mathematics, of psychological states, or of the apprehension of meaning and learning of rules—return later on in the struggle against the realism of common sense. And there is no reason to think that Wittgenstein would no longer consider these same arguments in the contemporary contexts of cognitive science, generative grammar, or globalization theory, for example. Also, it may be good to keep in mind that philosophical therapy is primarily a self-therapy. (There is a beautiful book by Hilmy on Wittgenstein’s unpublished material, in which one can clearly see the latter’s hesitations regarding the value of his own reflections, most of them very confusing.1 For Wittgenstein, the only purpose of an eventual publication would be to reveal how difficult it is to make a beautiful cake—the metaphor is his—and to encourage presumptive



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readers to proceed by themselves and perhaps, I might add, against themselves. That is the price to pay for escaping dogmatisms.) It is with this epistemological and moral attitude that Wittgenstein sets out on the quest to apply grammatical therapy to other situations, for example to Frege, Russell, Helmholtz, Köhler, Goethe, Moore. But, what is the point of this therapy? It is to understand otherness, as you say; to understand madness. Now, the concepts of dream and madness are considered by Wittgenstein during the 1940s and even earlier. As always, his interest lies in the uses we make of the words “dream” and “madness,” which often lead to conceptual confusion, such as in the idealist dream argument. Taken as an argument against the realist, the statement “I may be dreaming” is confusing, because it is part of the grammar of the word “to dream” that the person who pronounces it in a descriptive proposition is awake and not dreaming, hallucinating, on drugs, and so on. It is not necessarily so, of course; but this is indeed how we use the word, and the confusion arises when we leave this use hanging in the air and language comes to spin in the void. According to the everyday use of the word, to believe that I’m describing something while dreaming is as senseless as to claim that I don’t know whether what I’m feeling is pain. Either we are playing or we have not learned how to apply the word; or else we are doing philosophy in the sense criticized by Wittgenstein. Please note that the caveat above is important: it is not necessarily so. We can indeed imagine situations not available to us in which someone who says “I am dreaming” describes something. Enter here a legion of mad people, savages, under- or super-endowed individuals, blind people or people with X-ray vision, who are different from us and follow other rules and beliefs, and who therefore use words and concepts differently. The idealist’s statement could sensibly be applied in such situations, yet it would not be an argument against the realist, since she would already have other arguments; her profile would be different. Realism and idealism, too, are concepts whose meaning can vary in different language games. This exploration allows us to affirm nothing about the phenomenon of dreaming; it only shows something about the application of the word and clarifies something about the debate among philosophers. That same statement can cause more confusion in other contexts, for example when the goal is to develop a science of mental states. The same goes for the concept of madness: “blindness to rules” is one of the characteristics that form part of our grammar for the use

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of the word “madness.” And so a new family of kindred concepts is formed, for example concepts regarding perception (blindness to color, blindness to forms), mental states (comprehension, blindness to meaning), and so on. These are situations in which not only are we ill-disposed to employ the expression “this person follows the rules,” but we say besides that the person in question is not capable of following rules on account of being physiologically blind to certain colors, or mentally imbalanced—that is, mentally and physiologically different from us. Part of our grammar for the concept of madness is the incorrigibility of behavior, just as part of our grammar for the concept of Daltonism is blindness to color. Once again, this is not necessary. Just as the colors that we claim to perceive owe more to the conceptual combinations of a certain “geometry of colors” (like Newton’s or Goethe’s) than to the empirical patches that we do indeed perceive, behavior, too, is incorrigible in relation to a certain conceptual system only to the extent that it falls outside it, and it is corrigible in relation to a certain system only to the extent that it belongs to it. The concepts of corrigibility and incorrigibility are relative in their applications, just like the realism–idealism pair just discussed. But this is already a result of therapeutic description. The corrigible and the incorrigible are clearly defined in their everyday use inside language games or world pictures; they are not causing any confusion. On the other hand, when we take dogmatic flights at night and concern ourselves with grounding everything that is corrigible and incorrigible (the false and the unreasonable), conceptual confusions arise because we lack an overall view of language games—the actual and the possible games, and even the ones we do not know and are unable to imagine without receiving instructions (for example, from those whom we consider color-blind and mad). This is why, paraphrasing your statement, I would say that to understand another system of rules, to play all language games, would be at the same time to understand both madness and something like, say, Daltonism. And, to add to the list, it would be to understand whoever says that they are dreaming when they are indeed dreaming, that they are conscious when they are unconscious, and so on, not under the effect of some drug or hallucination, but because words can be used in that way too. What I mean to say with all of this is that, contrary to what you seem to suggest, I do not see madness as a privileged case for clarifying the sense of the kind of philosophical activity proposed by Wittgenstein. If madness



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seems to be an exemplary case, since the grammar for our use of the word “madness” makes the field of otherness explicit, this is not the only case, and perhaps not even the most insidious one. I am thinking for instance of cases in which otherness is less explicit, such as magical thinking for Frazer, or pre-logical or savage thought for others, more or less close to us.2 In these cases, primitive forms of perception and thinking, and even incapacities of reasoning are attributed to a person from another community, when, as we can see through philosophical therapy, all we have in reality is different ways of expressing concepts that analyse perception (the seen, the perceived) differently. Even though the sorcerer of a tribe verifies the absence of rain after his ritual, he will keep performing the ritual until it rains, in the same way in which the contemporary western scientist will keep assuming the principle of non-contradiction even though she has knowledge of contradictory objects (such as those of quantum mechanics) in her own field of research. I would say therefore that to understand otherness is to understand madness as well as other forms of incorrigibility: the deficiencies, incapacities, and blindnesses to aspects in general. It is ultimately to understand the corrigible and even correct character of what, according to our grammar of word uses, is incorrigible. To privilege the case of madness as a model of otherness would perhaps be to apply the concept in a one-sided way. Indeed, the situations to which we apply this concept are, as I stressed above, connected to others through the application of other words. Or rather the application of certain words to certain situations establishes similarities among different situations in order to organize our experience into regions or sets of regions. For example, in certain situations we qualify a person as crazy, or as a heretic. In the same way, we can qualify that person as deceitful, color-blind, incapable of arithmetical calculations, deaf to melodies, and so on. The concept of madness is not well delimited and neither is that of reason, even inside our language games. Besides, to delimit reason against the backdrop of madness amounts perhaps to a somewhat dogmatic presentation of the therapeutic situation, seeing as the latter allows us only to demarcate different regional forms of rationality, which are actually unpredictable and modifiable, against the equally unpredictable and variable backdrop of dogmatisms. This does not result in a definition of either reason or madness. It nonetheless results in a clear and perspicuous view of the unpredictable and variable nature of their limits.

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The concepts of dreaming and madness have always been very closely related in the arguments of philosophers. This is no doubt because, as Wittgenstein shows, their applications are connected: there are family resemblances among their uses in our language games, that is, in those games in which philosophical disputes are waged. It would be interesting to note that Wittgenstein did not systematically apply his therapy to the dream argument by following the idealist in order to counter this person step by step, going from external meanings to internal meanings, and culminating with geometrical objects. His path is very different: by considering different language games, such as those of mathematics, logic, perception, psychological states, colors, and common sense evidence, he encounters confusing situations in which the same concepts run through all these different games. This is the material out of which he makes therapy, and this is where he encounters the traditional arguments of the idealist and the realist applied to these different situations. Therapy combats, so to speak, the local effects of these philosophical positions, clarifying their repercussions on different games; it does not follow the trajectory of their argumentations, the order of their reasons. This was just to conclude.

2 Descartes and the Last Wittgenstein The Dream Argument Revisited*

We went sleepwalking along the road between abysses.—But even if we now say: “Now we are awake,” can we be certain that we shall not wake up one day? (And then say:—so we were asleep again.) Can we be certain that there are no abysses now that we do not see? But suppose I were to say: The abysses in a calculus are not there if I do not see them! Is no demon deceiving us at present? Well, if he is, it doesn’t matter. What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over. Ludwig Wittgenstein1

I I must, first of all, explain the intention expressed in the title of this essay. By “the last Wittgenstein” I do not mean the last phase of his work—the “second” or “third” Wittgenstein, as some prefer to divide his intellectual itinerary. I understand this expression literally, as designating the last page written by the philosopher, right before his death, namely §676 of the posthumously published * Paper presented in 1966 at the international conference “Descartes: 400 anos” [“Descartes: 400 Years”] in Rio de Janeiro. It was published in Revista Analytica 3(1), 1998.

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book On Certainty. As the subtitle indicates, what interests me in this final (in all senses of the word) paragraph is the curious way in which the Cartesian dream argument is reintroduced, only to be immediately neutralized or blocked in its analytical efficiency. Before we begin with the paragraph in question, we should pause for a moment on the paragraph before: “If someone believes that he has flown from America to England in the last few days, then, I believe, he cannot be making a mistake. And just the same if someone says that he is at this moment sitting at a table and writing.” The text is perfectly clear and sets one of the axes that organize the whole book and its general strategy, to which we will return later. What is proposed is a sort of essential limitation on the things that one can revoke when in doubt. In a rather caricatural fashion and against the first of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, what is affirmed here is the logical or “grammatical” impossibility of transgressing the narrow range of “natural doubt” and of elevating it to its hyperbolic or metaphysical extreme. The passage resumes, briefly and dogmatically, the general “thesis statement” of the book (and let me stress the scare quotes, as we are decidedly not dealing with a livre à these here): the concept of error is incompatible with its universalization, its “grammar” demands that it can only make sense or be useful as a place or topic. In other words, error essentially presupposes a horizon of certainty. It is only by underscoring this idea of horizon that we may comprehend that the refusal of skepsis never corresponds, at any point in Wittgenstein’s itinerary, to the more or less naïve realist disqualification of solipsism or idealism. On the contrary, in the Tractatus as well as in On Certainty, solipsism, even if it is neutralized (with different instruments and strategies), always retains at least some heuristic privilege or superiority over realism. In any case, limiting the reach of doubt is unrelated to the war waged against idealism by the philosophy of common sense. Against Moore, who shook his right hand in front of his students to show them that at least this physical object existed in the world, Wittgenstein would ironically retort, as he once did to a friend, that “[t]hose philosophers who have denied the existence of Matter have not wished to deny that under my trousers I wear pants.”2 This proposition is in fact curiously similar to another, given by Fichte in his Sun-Clear Statement, in which he explains to the common reader that idealism does not imply that, when I describe how a



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watch works, this hard material object therefore disappears from my pocket. Limiting the reach of doubt does not mean stating a metaphysical thesis, but making a grammatical rule explicit. Yet grammar has philosophical effects, and retroacts upon the controversy between solipsists and realists more or less as a legal criterion; or rather, it dissolves the problem and disqualifies both sides in the conflict with the idea that error supposes a previous horizon of certainty. In any case, what interests me here is how this grammar of error implies a new reading of the classical arguments about dreaming, madness, and the evil genius. In a word: if the skeptical argument is not universalizable, it is because error cannot be confused with dreaming or madness, and no little devil can deceive me. Or it is because, if error presupposes a worldly horizon (or a linguistic horizon, such as a set or bunch of rules that cannot be consistently put into question without our being reduced to silence), dream and madness, whatever the hell they may be, could be defined as a loss of horizon, both worldly and linguistic. All this is only claimed in that penultimate paragraph, but it is interesting to examine the outline of an argument that appears in the book’s closing paragraph (§676), where we can read: “But even if in such cases I can’t be mistaken, isn’t it possible that I am drugged?” I cannot avoid, at the start of my commentary, a few consider­ ations of a stylistic nature. (Wittgenstein used to say that it was necessary to read his texts very slowly.) Let us note that the sentence I have just quoted, which opens §676, is placed between quotation marks, which signals that it is not the author who is saying it. What is more, it contains an argument that runs in the opposite direction to the one in which the entire book moves. It could be said that the drug argument, a close relative of Descartes’ dream and madness arguments, is the last resort of the solipsist who, alongside the realist, forms the metaphysical pair against which all the effort in On Certainty is turned. In any case, this stylistic gesture points to the dialogical nature of Wittgenstein’s text. Let us venture a formula: the texts of the second Wittgenstein resemble Plato’s dialogues, except for the radical difference that dialogue is in his case always and essentially aporetic. It is aporetic not in the Platonic sense, of an investigation effectively cut short that, despite its failure, can still point toward the universalist telos of thought, outlining it negatively, as it were. It is aporetic in an essentially

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anti-Socratic or anti-Platonic sense, which shows that philosophical curiosity or disquiet can never be placated through the identification of a stable, calm, and transparent essence that absorbed without remainders or glitches all the bustle of our all too human language. As Wittgenstein himself says elsewhere, Socrates keeps reducing the sophist to silence, but does he have right on his side when he does this? Well, it is true that the sophist does not know what he thinks he knows; but that is no triumph for Socrates. It can’t be a case of “You see! You don’t know it!”—nor yet, triumphantly, of “So none of us knows anything!”3

But let us return to the argument between quotation marks. It suggests that there are borderline or pathological cases (exactly like the one in the first of Descartes’ Meditations) that call into question the idea that every error is essentially correctable, which presupposes rules. An incorrigible error would be something like an inescapable delirium, a prison from which one could not flee toward the vast world. Are artificial deliriums, dreams, and madness really not facts? Can such facts not reactivate the successive arguments from the First Meditation? Can they not lead Wittgenstein again to his older disquiet, his obsession with solipsism that was never completely placated? It is impossible not to refer, at this point, to a text from the philosopher’s notebook (an entry from April 8, 1917), in which we find a reflection that goes quite precisely against the grain of the text I have begun to comment on: We are asleep. Our life is like a dream. But in our better hours we wake up just enough to realize that we are dreaming. Most of the time, though, we are fast asleep. I cannot awaken myself! I am trying hard, my dream body moves, but my real one does not stir. This, alas, is how it is!4

Supposing (but we will return to this matter later) that the normal dream and the artificially induced one are not essentially different for the argument under consideration, we can say that §676 runs in the exact opposite direction to the thought we find in the early notebook: “If I am [drugged] and the drug has taken away my consciousness, then I am not now really talking and thinking.” Now, this statement, anti-Cartesian in its effects, nonetheless somewhat echoes the spirit of Cartesianism. It seems to belie a point of contact with the philosophy of the cogito to the extent



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that, although its aim is to limit the generalization of doubt, that limitation is apparently made thanks to the identification between thought and consciousness—for it is precisely this identification that supposedly blocks the efficacy of the drug argument. This is the point of Wittgenstein’s letzte Denken (last thought) on which I would like to focus, underscoring its apparently paradoxical character—which, from a slightly different perspective, has not escaped some commentators (e.g. Gilbert Hottois, who is surprised by the return in extremis of a metaphysical disquiet that the “therapeutic” method of grammatical analysis should have eliminated). It is paradoxical because it seems to reveal something like a radical inconsistency in Wittgenstein’s thought that a smattering of philological good sense would make us suppose right away was merely apparent. But let me insist, if only a little, on this semblance of logical inconsistency. At first glance, the drug (or dream) argument is discarded because in these cases we find ourselves in a field that lies outside thought and language. Whoever is delirious or dreaming does not think and is beneath or beyond language. In any case, he or she is outside the field of meaning or outside the true–false alternative, which is consubstantial with the possibility of meaning. In other words, dream and delirium seem to eliminate the precondition of meaning, which, since the Tractatus, Wittgenstein had identified with the bipolarity of propositions. A proposition can have meaning (be a real proposition) only if it can be true or false; the form of meaning is either–or. Or, rather, a proposition properly speaking can exist only in the narrow range that separates tautologies (which are always true but too wide to circumscribe states of a thing or to transmit information: Sinnleere) from contradictions (which are always false and without information because they do not make room for any facts: Unsinnig). But what matters in our text is that these logical conditions of sense are expressed here in psycho-logical language, so to speak, since the deficit of sense is described as a deficit of consciousness. Paraphrasing Wittgenstein, we could say: I am not thinking and I am not talking at the moment, because the drugs have taken away my consciousness. This is what is claimed, and this is what we must understand. And it is exactly what seems scandalous at first to the reader. Is then thinking (and language itself), if not egocentric, at least consciousness-centered? Even more harshly, would consciousness finally be, once again, an ingredient of sense in general? What good

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was Frege’s austere asceticism, then, the long battle waged against psychologism in logic? To relativize things a little and make them less dramatic, we should of course note that the appeal to consciousness does not imply an immediate plunge into the swamp of psychologism. For example, Husserl’s Logical Investigations rightly saw the ideas of “consciousness” and “intentionality” as indispensable instruments with which to purify the universe of logic and sense in general of any and all commitment to psychology in particular and to nature as a whole. But it is also evident that Frege’s antipsychologism is purer and harsher than that, and Wittgenstein’s more radical still. An appeal to a “consciousness of sense” or a “consciousness of rules” would thus be the ruin of his most essential project, which, throughout its successive transformations, continues to be defined by the method of logical or “grammatical” analysis of language, always utterly opposed to the method of “natural history.” (Wittgenstein makes this explicit when, after examining the ideas of knowing and sense in light of the fact of learning, he asks himself: “Am I doing child psychology?,” only to conclude later that it is grammar that interests him, not natural history.)5 But let us continue reading the text, which closes with the following words: I cannot seriously suppose that I am at this moment dreaming. Someone who, dreaming, says “I am dreaming,” even if he speaks audibly in doing so, is no more right than if he said in his dream “It is raining” while it was in fact raining. Even if his dream were actually connected with the noise of the rain.6

What is disquieting in these sentences is that they seem to suggest that the meaning of a proposition (the alternative between its truth and its falsehood), unlike Frege’s drittes Reich,7 depends on the state or some determination of the real and singular subject who utters it. The same proposition, uttered in a dream or in a state of wakefulness, is the same proposition only in appearance. Or rather in one case it is a proposition, in the other a mere phonetic emission or physical phenomenon. Let us imagine the following situation: it is raining outside and it is nighttime; the same sentence, “it is raining,” uttered by Pedro, who is awake, and by Paulo, who is asleep, does not enter the same semantic register in both cases. In the first it is true, in the second neither true nor false. In the second case what is



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said is only a fact. It may even be really and causally connected to another fact: the anonymous and universal rain that falls outside, in the middle of the world and of the night. But it can never be connected to it (or projected on it) in a symbolic or thinking manner (two things that appear here to be equivalent). It is rightly suggested that this real relation—the contiguity, on the same worldly plane, of fact with fact—does not open up the hiatus or distance between symbol and fact that is indispensable to semantic operations. There must be something like an ontic–semantic “decompression” without which words cannot be projected upon things, a minimum distance between words and things that allows the former to be super­ imposed, thus making things sayable. With this observation we are perhaps on the way to dissolving the paradox, which it is nonetheless useful, if not indispensable, to keep exploring. If we are somehow led to that paradox, it is a very human and “natural” intuition that leads us to it: an intuition, if we can call it that, that tells us that a rule that cannot be disobeyed would be not so much a rule as a law. In other words, it is the intuition that the idea of an “automatic” obedience to rules lacks meaning, or rather that, without consciousness (or without freedom, as the Sartrean or Kantian nostalgic would say), there is no rule—which is saying the same. But, if we continue down this path, we would slide imperceptibly into a conception of consciousness and rule that transforms the latter into an object or noēma—and not into the kind of operator, at once practical and transcendental, that Wittgenstein apparently wishes to describe. In any case, it seems clear, in Zettel, for example, that a rule cannot be conceived of as pre-existing or existing outside its application. Perhaps even the opposite is the case, as if the rule emerged only from its application, manifesting the reflexive character of language or thought that J. A. Giannotti likes to underscore. In any case, a “consciousness of rules” appears to invite the idea that meaning is somehow external to its expression or precedes it—an idea that Wittgenstein vigorously combats, just like Merleau-Ponty. For him, the thing to avoid is always the notion of some conscious logical or egological beacon that, no matter how sublimated it may or may not be, still fundamentally refers to the substantial soul of psychologia rationalis.8 Where do we stand, then? How can we discriminate between the situations in which there is thought and the situations in which there isn’t, without incurring the deviations that I have just denounced? This is no simple task, especially we if consider, against the backdrop

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of the genesis of Wittgenstein’s thinking in all its twists and turns, his successive attempts to settle the score on the question of solipsism. One need not return to the notebook I mentioned earlier (where he also said: “The I, the I is what is deeply mysterious!”)9 to notice that the suppression of psychologism and solipsism does not come easily. In the Tractatus itself there is some difficulty in the connection between Satz (proposition) and Gedanke (thought). This is what Jacques Bouveresse analyses in detail in the first chapter of his book Le mythe de l’intériorité [The Myth of Interiority], where he examines the possible psychologist contamination of semantics through an inadequate definition of Gedanke. (One could in fact say that, when Wittgenstein returns to philosophy at the end of the 1920s, he does so only in order to clarify this definition with precision, as if he discovered that the Tractatus had not adequately answered the question “Was heist Denken?”)10

II In these preliminary comments I linked the apparent paradox of the return of the dream argument to the problem of an eventual psychologizing contamination of semantics; and it is precisely this question that I would like to visit in my reading of the last paragraph of On Certainty. But before we go back to it, and in order to reformulate or finally formulate my question, I must take you on a long detour. Before we revisit Wittgenstein’s revisiting of the dream argument, it might be useful to consult the use that his disciples have made of it. My suggestion is that a good part of so-called analytical philosophy derives from a bad reading of some of Wittgenstein’s sentences (as well as from a bad reading of Descartes). Among these sentences, the one we are discussing is paradigmatic. Let us therefore temporarily distance ourselves from On Certainty §676 and examine some of the effects that the second Wittgenstein’s thought has had. If a certain tendency within the Anglo-American posterity of the Austrian philosopher is to be trusted, everything takes place as if the deconstruction of the dream argument corresponded, in our century, to a formidable theoretical revolution. I am thinking here in particular of Gilbert Ryle’s beautiful old book, The Concept of Mind, and of another one by Norman Malcolm, published under the title of Dreaming. In both cases, we are dealing with uses of Wittgenstein’s analyses. What these uses assert is that



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the skeptical arguments of Descartes’ First Meditation border on stupidity—for what is stupidity, if not categorial confusion?—and that only the style of logical analysis can free us from the Cartesian ghosts that have burdened philosophical thinking until today. I would like to stress, in a quick review of Wittgenstein’s posterity, what seems to me to be a historiographical and philological error (as well as a logical–grammatical one): a certain blindness to the metamorphoses of philosophy.11 Ryle and Malcolm tell us something more or less like this: “With Descartes and his unreasonable idea that the subject has a privileged access to herself (an access that is not guaranteed in the same way to the so-called external world), philosophy was led astray. From this primordial error, a whole conceptual or pseudo-conceptual teratology followed: if it were not for the unreasonable admission of the dream argument’s sense, we would not be haunted by a mysterious ghost in the machine until this day.” It would not be difficult to show that the Descartes to whom Ryle and Malcolm refer critically is a chimera and that this criticism ignores the structure of the Meditations. Since there is no place for that demonstration here, I will limit myself to making two points, which suggest that this tradition suffers from a double deficiency: (1) it reads Wittgenstein’s own texts poorly; and (2) it reads the tradition of metaphysics very poorly.12 Let us take Norman Malcolm, who in this regard is no different from Ryle and others. He opens his book Dreaming with a perfunctory description of the evolution of the notion of mental activity throughout the history of western philosophy. The great error in this whole tradition would consist in admitting that dreaming is part of the continuum of mental life. It is clear that this elementary nonsense appears in pure form only in Descartes’ work. Nonetheless, it is the whole tradition that is invoked to confirm the vigor and persistence of this childish or primitive categorial error: from Aristotle to Bertrand Russell, everyone—and almost all contemporary psychology besides (perhaps with the sole exception of behaviorism, which cancels the idea of mental activity altogether)—is the victim of an error. In any case, it is certain that Malcolm closes the preface to his book with something of an exaggeration: “It is no exaggeration to say that it is the received opinion, among philosophers and psychologists, that dreams are ‘the activity of the mind during sleep.’” And he adds, defining the book’s target: “I wish to examine this opinion.”13

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Against Malcolm, and without much exaggeration, we might perhaps even say that, after Descartes’ initiative in the Meditations, all modern philosophy in all its different strains (Malebranche, Spinoza, Locke, Kant, Husserl) repeats in a chorus that anyone who dreams does not think “I can never say ‘I dream,’ at most I can say ‘I dreamt.’” Thus we read in Locke’s Essay: If any one say, a dream may do the same thing [as the senses, to the extent that they produce an idea in the mind], and all these ideas may be produced in us without any external objects; he may please to dream that I make him this answer, 1. That it is no great matter, whether I remove his scruple or no: where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.14

I only draw attention to this paragraph by Locke because it corresponds to the spirit of Malcolm’s argument (apart from coinciding with the letter of §676). Here too, it is the common sense opposition between sleeping and waking that is contrasted to the dream argument as unquestionable evidence. But this paragraph conceals what seems to me to be the deepest reason for denying the Cartesian argument: the connection, progressively woven in different ways across the whole of modern philosophy, between the ideas of subject and world, the latter increasingly defined as the horizon rather than the totality of things. What is denied here, as we will see further on, is the idea of a subject without a horizon, and what is affirmed is the necessary connection between the subject and its horizon. What is forbidden is the possibility of someone’s saying: I will suppose then, that everything I see is spurious. I will believe that my memory tells me lies, and that none of the things that it reports ever happened. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are chimeras. So what remains true? Perhaps just the one fact that nothing is certain.15

In an old essay on which I am drawing freely and extensively here, I took a few steps in the delimitation of this roving anti-Cartesianism that runs through the centuries.16 The starting point was the surprising convergence among the theories of the imagination expounded in books as different as Ryle’s The Concept of Mind and Sartre’s The Imaginary. Indeed, is it not strange that such different and inimical methods as phenomenology and the logical analysis of



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language can end up in the same philosophy of psychology, at least in one of its essential chapters? In that essay I returned in fact to the classical philosophy of the seventeenth century to try to clarify this curious overlap. More precisely, I went back to the scholium on the last proposition in Part 2 of Spinoza’s Ethics, which states: “There is in the mind no volition or affirmation and negation, save that which an idea, inasmuch as it is an idea, involves.” And the corollary says: “Will and intellect are one and the same thing.”17 Evidently, these are anti-Cartesian texts aiming directly at the idea of doubt. To the possibility of suspending judgment, Spinoza opposes the following argument: that which is normally described as suspension of judgment is nothing but a perfectly affirmative perception (idea), albeit inadequate and obscure; despite being inadequate, it is still essentially a perception and a thesis (positing). At no time can a free will retire to a neutral territory that precedes the ineluctable alternative between “yes” and “no.” What is curious in this text, which thus tries to show the inseparability between simple representation and position (there is no noēsis or lexis without thesis), is that it seeks support precisely in the phenomenon of dreaming: it is a phenomenology of dreaming deployed against the dream argument and the possibility of the suspension of judgment. At first, Spinoza seems to make a concession to Descartes, when he admits that there is at least one case in which we can think we have the freedom to practice epochē (suspension): it is the case in which we dream that we are dreaming. Is it not true, in effect, that in a second-degree dream, so to speak, we suspend our belief in the first-degree dream? And, if that is so, would there not be, at least here, a minimum distance between simple representation and thesis or affirmation? Spinoza, however, continues: But I deny that a man makes no affirmation insofar as he has a per­ception. For what else is perceiving a winged horse than affirming wings of a horse? For if the mind should perceive nothing apart from the winged horse, it would regard the horse as present to it, and would have no cause to doubt its ex­istence nor any faculty of dissenting, unless the imagining of the winged horse were to be connected to an idea which annuls the existence of the said horse, or he perceives that the idea which he has of the winged horse is inadequate. Then he will either necessarily deny the existence of the horse or he will necessarily doubt it.18

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Before coming back to this Spinozan passage, it would be interesting to refer to the pages that Sartre dedicated in The Imaginary to the Cartesian dream argument or, more generally, to the very essence of dreaming as such. If Sartre appeals to Descartes’ text, it is because the latter presents difficulties for his theory of the imagination and the imaginary. He reformulates the argument in the following manner: “if it is true that the dream world is given as a real and perceived world, even though it is constituted by mental imagery, is there not at least one case where the image is given as a perception?”19 Now, if Descartes’ description of consciousness—the determination of natura mentis humanae (the nature of the human mind) that can be made independently of any worldly reference—is correct, Sartre’s way of presenting the image must be incorrect. Since the beginning of the book, he has characterized consciousness according to its radical opposition to perception. Thus, in the first chapter, the following items have been established as its essential traits: (1) the phenomenon of quasi-observation; (2) the position of the object of the imagining consciousness as a nothing; (3) the spontaneity of the imagining intention. All three are radically opposed to perception, since in the latter the object is essentially observable, posited as positive (or as existing) and as imposed on the passivity of consciousness. It is therefore indispensable for Sartre to encounter the fallacy of the dream argument and to uncover the essence of dreaming. Examining more closely the question, we can see the inconsistency of the dream argument in the heterogeneity of the effects that reflection has, in dream and in vigil. In the case of a wakeful and perceiving consciousness, reflection adds or changes nothing. Against Descartes, Sartre says: Now, this reflective consciousness gives me invaluable knowledge (connaissance) at once: it is possible that, in the dream, I imagine that I perceive; but what is certain is that when I am awake I cannot doubt that I perceive. Anyone can try to feign for a moment that they are dreaming, that the book they are reading is a dream book, but will see soon enough, and without being able to doubt it, that this fiction is absurd. And, to tell the truth, its absurdity is not less than is that of the proposition “Perhaps I do not exist,” a proposition that, just as for Descartes, is genuinely unthinkable.20

This assimilation between the evidence of perception and the evidence of the cogito does not interest us here. What interests



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us is that which it allows Sartre to then go on to affirm, referring to Spinoza for the first and only time in this book: “In reality, perception, like Spinoza’s truth, is index sui and can never be otherwise. And the dream also closely resembles error in Spinozism: error can be given as truth, but to possess the truth is sufficient for the error to dissipate itself.”21 It dissipates, I would add, like the vampire who dissolves into ashes at the first rays of the sun. What opposes dreaming to perception for Sartre—and what would have escaped Descartes—is therefore the essential fragility of the dream, its incapacity to resist reflection or to compete with perception. A judgment such as “I am dreaming” is, at most, impossible or contradictory; those two consciousnesses cannot coincide or coexist in one single moment. The only judgment that we can formulate, according to Sartre, is “I dreamt.” This is precisely the conclusion that Malcolm reaches in Dreaming along a very different road—not a phenomenology of the imagining consciousness but a grammar of the psychological predicates in the first-person singular of the present indicative: “The proof that the sentence ‘I am asleep’ cannot have a correct use as a present indicative amounts to a proof that it cannot express a possibility.”22 The fragility of the dream has exactly the same meaning in Spinoza, Sartre, Ryle, and Malcolm. In all cases, fragility means incapacity to compete with other representations (in the case of analytic philosophy, the statement lies before or beyond the sphere of bipolarity). Spinoza explicitly tells us that the child will believe in the winged horse when and only when he perceives nothing beyond this image. In all cases, the consciousness that is dreaming differs from the consciousness that is awake inasmuch as the former isolates a representation while the other is turned toward the horizon of possible experience. In Husserl’s language, we would say that every perception is indissociable from Urglaube (primary belief), from the thesis of the world—just as, for Spinoza, every representation is a judgment in the infinite order of ideas. What is more, for Husserl the perception of a thing is always the perception of a “constancy” in the variable relation of the thing to its “circumstances” (Umstände), and ultimately to the world as a final or ultimate horizon. I refer the reader to the analyses of the idea of a “thing” that are made in volume 2 of Husserl’s Ideas: isolated from its circumstances, the thing loses its substance (the “substance” that perception attributes to it, “placing it” as existing) and dissolves itself, as a pure “ghost.” To perceive something, to perceive its connection to other things,

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to perceive the thing within the horizon of the world, all these are one and the same thing. The same goes for Spinoza: to have an idea, to perceive this idea adequately, in the order of ideas or in the connection with its cause, to lend it assent—these are all the same thing. Thinking of the child who represents only the winged horse, we can say that, for Spinoza, to dream is to suppress the world or to implode the order of ideas—or, alternatively, to claim that dream and imaginary have no order or world of their own. Sartre explicitly makes this claim: Nevertheless, these few remarks [on dreaming] by no means contradict that great law of imagination: there is no imaginary world. In fact, it is solely a case of a phenomenon of belief. We do not scrutinize this world as imaged, do not presentify details to ourselves, do not even consider doing so. In this sense, the images remain isolated from one another, separated by their essential poverty, subjected to the phenomenon of quasi-observation, “in the void.”23

III But, when all of that has been said, what do we gain from this erratic journey, which has led us so far from the last paragraph of On Certainty? It may at least have clarified the perspective from which I approached §676. Perhaps this digression, which drafts the outline of a tradition, has given a minimum of meaning to the Wittgensteinian denial of the dream argument, as well as to the manner in which the Tractatus brings together the notions of subject and world. In any case, I have tried to suggest that, contrary to what Ryle and Malcolm propose, everything takes place as if the refutation of the dream argument (resumed in the present by analytic philosophy) did not correspond to a recent theoretical revolution (the most beautiful example of the analytical dissolution of the illusions of metaphysics), but to a venerable commonplace, ceaselessly revisited from Spinoza and Locke in the seventeenth century until German and French phenomenology. But before returning to our text it might be fitting to present another instance or figure24 of the neutralization of the dream argument—that is, of the theme of a worldly horizon inseparable from the very structure of the cogito—and one that brings us even closer to Wittgenstein’s style of reflection. I am thinking here of



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the dismantling of the dream argument (or of the reformulation of the cogito) that takes place in a paragraph that Kant dedicated to the refutation of idealism in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, in response to the Göttingen review of the book’s first edition. It matters little here whether Kant could refute Descartes’ problematic idealism only through the expedient of interpreting the cogito as an empirical statement or truth—an operation that the letter of Descartes’ text seems to preclude, at least if we follow Guéroult’s almost Kantian interpretation, which posits the cogito as a “transcendental” entity, or at any rate not as an empirical one. Caricaturing Kant’s argument somewhat, his claim would be that self-consciousness depends logically on the consciousness of the object, in other words that the cogito can operate only against the backdrop of possible experience. Inner sense, which was endowed with a kind of anteriority over outer sense in the transcendental aesthetic, is so to speak subordinate to it once we get to the analytic. The consciousness of time (and therefore self-consciousness) depends on the perception of a permanence in time that, for its part, presupposes a thing (Kant stresses the word) that is external to the thinking subject. The final sentence of Observation 1, which follows the demonstration of the theorem that refutes Descartes’ problematic idealism, states precisely that “inner experience itself is consequently only mediate and possible only through outer experience.”25 What Kant wishes to demonstrate is that the cogito can operate only against the backdrop of possible experience, or within the limits of the phenomenal; or, alternatively, that the cogito, understood empirically (as factual truth), is possible only on the back of a transcendental “I think” that is the very cement that gives unity to possible experience—this merely logical–transcendental clause, indissociable from empirical realism, which stipulates that “the I think must be able to accompany all my representations.”26 In other words, Kant seems to sublimate, desubstantialize, and depsychologize the cogito while connecting it to the empirical at the same time, and in this way he avoids solipsism and dogmatic realism simultaneously. In order to perform this double operation at the intersection between the empirical and the transcendental self, however, it is necessary to block the efficacy of the dream argument. Are we that far from Wittgenstein here? It is clear that the status of the metaphysical self in the Tractatus is problematic. But the examination of the propositions on solipsism (from 5.6 to 5.641) can help us—and here I am fortunate enough to count upon the

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introduction that Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos added to his translation of the book: If it tries to speak its truth, solipsism inevitably becomes entangled in paralogisms. The projection of reality onto the sign (symbolization) cannot be made into an object of representation. It is as though there were a reflexivity in thought that is not a representation, but something analogous to that which Kant defined as apperception: the consciousness of representation in the act of representing, when the representative activity recognizes itself in its product. In this sense, it is an irreducibly subjective reflexivity, through which the subject does not show itself as an object among others but as a point of convergence of the projective lines that make the sign into a symbol.27

The subject of whom I speak here is not demiurgic, “constative,” constitutive, or regulative. It is, so to speak, only a space of transparency (a clearing?) in which the consistency of the world “transpires,” transversally or obliquely illuminating the projective game between propositions and states of things. In the end everything takes place as if this figure of the subject as a limit of language and of the world—the subject, we know, is not within the world, just as the eye is not within the field of vision—were the ultimate form in a long process of sublimation or depsychologization of the cogito. Descartes was a “psychologicist” for Kant, as Kant was for Husserl and as Husserl himself was for Wittgenstein. Everything happens as if this secular to-and-fro between solipsism and dogmatic realism came to find its final place of rest or exhaustion in Wittgenstein. If this is so and the purification of the psychological subject leaves room for this ineradicable residue of subjectivity and reflexivity, perhaps it is not difficult to solve the difficulties that I indicated at the start of this exposition. Is this not actually how we could understand the statement “if I am not conscious, I am neither thinking nor speaking”? Not because consciousness mysteriously produces meaning or truth, as in some romantic superabundance of genius or through some form of operating intentionality, but perhaps because it is impossible to think or speak meaningfully without being aware that we are doing so—as if the shadow of reflection necessarily accompanied the practice of thought and language. But then again, if this is so, our exposition ends in a disappointing anticlimax. After suggesting the presence of a disquieting paradox in Wittgenstein’s text, not only have we deflated that paradox, we have



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also arrived at the image of a perfectly classic Wittgenstein whose thought is devoid of drama—just a new and more radical formulation of the critiques of Descartes developed by Malebranche, Locke, Spinoza, Kant, Husserl, and all those who came later.28 After reconstituting in this fashion something like a respectably traditional “minimal meaning” of Wittgenstein’s dismantling of the dream argument, let us return to the formulation that Malcolm has given to it; and let us take into account the voluminous critical literature this formulation has sparked, in order to show that the paradox has not been completely dissolved29—or at least not dissolved the way some disciples of Wittgenstein thought they had done it. According to Putnam, Malcolm’s steps are as follows: (1) there are two “concepts of sleep,” with their corresponding “methods of verification”; (2) somnambulism and violent nightmares can be considered instances of sleeping only if the concept of dreaming is reformed or unjustifiedly extended; (3) inductive methods (such as scrutinizing the cerebral correlates of dreaming) are inconclusive as criteria; (4) the descriptive testimonies of private states do not allow for the discrimination of truth from error; (5) we can say that dreams and waking impressions are different but not logically independent; (6) the association between eye movements during a dream and the dream itself is merely “stipulated” by scientists (William Dement and Nathaniel Kleitman) and entail a reformulation of the concept of dreaming. Here is not the place, of course, to share and discuss all the objections raised against Malcolm’s arguments in each of these topics, or his replies. Let us limit ourselves to Malcolm’s use of the notion of criterion and to the consequent mapping of the concept of dream in his book and in the essay that preceded it.30 In any case, I will not be the first to point out the oddity of the decision to limit the concept of dreaming to cases in which one is sound asleep,31 and hence of the exclusion of somnambulism, violent nightmares, delirium tremens and so forth, especially when the author’s intention is to protect the common meaning of this concept from the deformations brought into it by the arbitrary reflections of philosophers, who distance themselves from the common use of language. Is it not this new conceptual geography (instead of neurophysiological theories, for instance) that introduces a disconcerting and unjustified conceptual change? Only this categorial redistribution, with the linear and exclusive assimilation between deep sleep, dreaming, and unconsciousness that it promotes, can lead us to identify dream

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narratives as the only criterion proper to dreaming, and thus to exclude the possibility of using the dream argument in a defense of skepticism.32 But the result of this operation, which removes any enigmatic character from the supposed dream experience (since, for Malcolm, dreaming does not correspond, in essence, to any experience whatsoever), is that it leaves us facing the enigma of the queer phenomenon of dream-telling,33 which is born who knows where. What do we gain by substituting one enigma for another? Malcolm has an answer at hand: In a lecture Wittgenstein once said that it is an important thing in philosophy to know when to stop. If we cease to ask why it is that sometimes when people wake they relate stories in the past tense under the influence of an impression, then we will see dream-telling as it is—a remarkable human phenomenon, a part of the natural history of man, something given, the foundation for the concept of dreaming.34

Let us make a purely literary or stylistic point. Let us say that the texts that Wittgenstein dedicates to dreaming are much more like Lichtenberg’s than Malcolm’s. They express a certain perplexity, which is never extinguished (there are phenomenological problems …), and they never aspire to become a concrete theory of dreaming. By contrast, Malcolm, without intending to establish this theory positively and essentially basing himself on what dreaming is not, sweetly and surreptitiously allows a behaviorist theory of mind to slip under the door. Neither Lichtenberg nor Wittgenstein seem to seek a “natural foundation” for the concept of dreaming, nor do they seem to indicate that the phenomenon of dreaming is interesting only because it marks the limit of the conceivable. Let us return to the texts. Wittgenstein says, for example, that “[i]t is a strange kind of remembering when in broad daylight you remember one of last night’s dreams which you never thought of earlier on waking.”35 Or even this: Is a dream a hallucination?—The memory of a dream is like the memory of a hallucination, or rather: like the memory of a real experience. This means that sometimes you would like to say: “I just saw this and that,” as if you really had just seen it.36

At stake here is an interrogative attitude that aims at the unthinkable, a little like in Lichtenberg, who speaks of the dreamer’s reflection:



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“When in dream I argue with someone, and he refutes me and enlightens me, it is I who enlighten myself; so I reflect.”37 Is anyone here defending the caricatural Cartesian philosophy of the solitary or monological subject? On the contrary, it is perhaps suggested that we should say es denkt (“It thinks”) rather than ich denke (“I think”). Perhaps we could say that the enigma of thought resides in the imprecise border that at once separates and brings together ich denke and es denkt. In essence, it is the idea of thinking that remains an enigma, even if the main intention is always to dissolve it.

IV Docet etiam natura, per istos sensus doloris, famis, sitis et coetera, me non tantum adesse meo corpori ut nauta adest navigeo, sed illi arctissime esse conjunctum et quasi permixtum, adeo it unum quid cum illo componam. Descartes38 Are we that far from Descartes? Certainly, but not as some imagine. How does the dream argument function in the First Meditation? If we read the original Latin version, we will note the bit of irony with which the argument is introduced. Descartes says Age ergo somniemus! In English this would become, more or less, Come now, let’s dream, then!, or in French Allons, donc, rêvons!, which is very different from the duke of Luynes’ supposons donc maintenant (“let us now suppose”) translation.39 This cannot but evoke a paradox: an imperative that deploys the will in the direction of the involuntary? How to will not to will? The paradox disappears only when one recognizes precisely the dialogical or pedagogical character of the First Meditation and the place of the dream argument as a piece of demonstration ad absurdum. This is a feature that Guéroult fails to highlight in his monumental Descartes’ Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order of Reasons, which actually dwells little on the First Meditation, but which is examined at length by Frankfurt, in his beautiful book Demons, Dreamers and Madmen.40 Would it be unreasonable to imagine that Descartes never doubted the existence of the outside world, that he was arguing and resorting to the imagination, just as Wittgenstein did when he assembled his fictitious language games? Or perhaps people imagine that Plato did not believe in the existence of singular and empirical rabbits, or that

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Zeno of Elea suffered from a severe neuromuscular disease that kept him from going from his room to the kitchen in his house? The great error seems to lie in a metaphysical, scientific, or dogmatic reading of Wittgenstein’s texts on the asymmetry between statements with psychological predicates in the first-person singular of the present indicative and statements with psychological predicates in the third person, or in another tense. This is a “metaphysical” reading because it interprets the disqualification of the dream argument as an instrument meant to restore the good realism of common sense, contrary to Wittgenstein’s deepest intention. Above all, however, with Malcolm and Ryle this mistake unfolds into an erroneous interpretation of the use of the dream argument in Descartes’ Meditations, as if they had not read more than the first two meditations. For both interpreters go directly (or at least Ryle does) from the epistemic dimension (privileged access to oneself in the cogito) to the metaphysical or ontological dimension of the relation between body and soul—whereas with respect to the second topic Merleau-Ponty noted, somewhat in opposition to Guéroult, the positivity of the union between the body and the soul, which is not ensconced within it like “a sailor in a ship” or “a ghost in a machine.” Docet natura.41 In short, if one must oppose Wittgenstein to Descartes, it will not necessarily be on these terms. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. I recall here the conclusion of an essay by Lilli Alanen, which converges with what I have tried to suggest, even in the restrictions she makes to Malcolm’s undertaking: When asking Princess Elisabeth to abstain from meditation and the study of mathematics to turn instead back to daily life and ordinary conversation in order to understand the body–mind union, Descartes could as well [have] said[,] with Wittgenstein[,] God grant the philosopher insight into what lies in front of everyone’s eyes.42

In fact it is the dissolution of the paradox that is apparent. By rereading §676, as I have done, in light of the tradition of critiques of Descartes and the “theory” of the subject in the Tractatus, we leave aside the transformation of Wittgenstein’s philosophy—which, by virtue of altering the conception of language, could not leave the ideas of subject and world intact. With the ruin of the idea of logical form, it is the transcendental style (its “passing to the limit,” as Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos observes) that changes signs. Among



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other things, we will now speak in the plural: language games and forms of life. The transcendental is mixed with the empirical, freely disregarded in the Tractatus; and the philosopher, who deals essentially in “grammatical analyses,” does not thereby entirely disregard “natural history,” since the style of a form of life is rooted in the biosocial situatedness of the humanity that “lives” or practices it. In On Certainty, the alternative between solipsism and realism, despite all the changes, is not treated much differently from the Tractatus. Here too, the point is to undo the alternative. If we follow the spirit of the Anglo-American reception of Wittgenstein, the text combats Cartesian skepticism, but also, above all, Moore’s philosophy of common sense and any form of dogmatic or metaphysical realism. Both Moore’s “here is one hand” and the Cartesian cogito are disqualified as uncertain—and, besides, as meaningless statements. The basis of a language game is not constituted by propositions susceptible to truth or falsity but corresponds only to something like a choice without any rational foundation. There is therefore no single world or language that the philosopher can locate (from within this world or this language). That is why even the mystical—that which falls outside limits, that which cannot be said but is the true target of logical–philosophical askesis—can no longer seem as soothing as it did in the Tractatus. There the philosopher who threw away the ladder that had led him to silence could somehow still find ataraxia and beatitude, a wisdom beyond knowledge and understanding. In the second Wittgenstein, what comes closest to the mystical is perhaps the purely “animal” terrain that separates the different language games, that savage or pre-grammatical terrain where there are no rules and therefore no meaning either, where we plunge when we go mad, dream, and … philosophize. So we seem to proceed in the direction of a limitation of the harmonious overlapping of solipsism and realism that neutralizes both. Thus arises the problem of the transition (which is ultimately impossible) from one language to another. The problem of otherness, which is entirely absent from the Tractatus, irrupts here with a violence that helps bring the idea of violence into the field of philosophical reflection. This is evident in the paragraphs of On Certainty that are dedicated to the ideas of persuasion and conversion.43 If different language games running up against one another (for example, different cultures) are in some way incommunicable, how will I be able to persuade the other to play my game? Wittgenstein’s

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answer is simple: beyond a certain limit, only by force, as the missionaries do with the natives. Here we may turn to the famous sentence that appears both in Culture and Value and in the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics: “If in life we are surrounded by death, so too in the health of our understanding by madness.”44 Madness, if we understand the sentence correctly in the context offered by Wittgenstein’s last texts, is all the space that surrounds (so to speak) a language game or the cluster of grammatical rules and practices that constitute it. If that is true, however, we can perhaps say that, if Wittgenstein undoes the dream argument in his last writings, he ends up reformulating in stronger terms the madness argument that Descartes had discarded; not to derive skeptical arguments from it, but to situate—or to critique, in the Kantian sense—through the idea of madness, the very idea of reason. 45

3 Wittgenstein Culture and Value*

We are struggling with language. We are engaged in a struggle with language. Wittgenstein, 19311 To struggle with words Is a vain mistake. Still and all, we fight From daybreak on.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade, 19412

* “Wittgenstein, Culture and Value” is a lecture given at the conference “Cultura: Substantivo plural” [“Culture: Plural Noun”], held at the Bank of Brazil Cultural Centre (CCBB) and published in Márcia de Paiva and Maria Ester Moreira, eds., Cultura: Substantivo plural, Rio de Janeiro, CCBB/Editora 34, 1996, pp. 79–105. In this text I have worked from a recording of my presentation at the round table that I shared with JeanneMarie Gagnebin, adding several references to the improvised exposition and trying to retain the original oral tone, in its zigzagging and often repetitive movement. I hope the reader will understand the circumstances and forgive the uneven result.

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I To address the proposed theme of this conference—“Culture: Plural Noun”—I have chosen to limit myself to a particularly narrow field, in the hope of maybe gaining some precision, even if at the price of voluntarily sacrificing breadth. In fact I will limit myself to commenting on a few passages in Wittgenstein—more precisely, a few passages taken from a book that is apparently peripheral in his work. I refer to the Vermischte Bemerkungen [Miscellaneous Remarks]3 that G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman selected from among the passages that the Austrian philosopher dedicated to culture, art, religion, and ethics. Seemingly peripheral—if we consider, as one should, the philosophy of logic as the almost technical heart of Wittgenstein’s work—they nevertheless provide an exclusive key into what is most central in their author’s thought.4 These apparent marginalia gather more than the outer fringes of his thinking or the strays that lie far from its strong conceptual center. One of the central topics of Culture and Value is precisely the spatial and temporal dispersion of cultures, including Hellenism, Christianity, and Judaism. But could Wittgenstein be considered a cultural theorist on this account? Of course not. Speaking of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of culture or of values is not an option. Since the Tractatus (and on this point there is no change throughout his work), value is unobjectifiable, it cannot be conceptualized, it is outside the world; art, religion, and ethics cannot therefore become the objects of a theory. As he remarkably put it in his “Lecture on Ethics,” “I can only describe my feeling by the metaphor, that, if a man could write a book on Ethics which really was a book on Ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books in the world.”5 At the same time, however, and equally without change throughout his work, ethics retains its place as the limit of logical or grammatical analysis, the telos and main part, if unwritten, of the Tractatus. Without a theory of culture—that is, without aesthetics, ethics, and theology, all of which are logically impossible—there is room left for ideas, conceptions of art, morality, and religion. And Culture and Value constitutes a space for the exposition of these ideas, which, without ever being constitutive, constantly point to the lived experience of decadence: “My own thinking about art & values is far more disillusioned, than would have been possible for people 100 years ago. However, that does not mean that it is more



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correct on that account. It only means that there are examples of decline in the forefront of my mind, which were not in the forefront for those people then.”6

II We have already entered our topic. In order to explore it better, then, let us take a paragraph written as a preface to Philosophical Remarks, a text that deserves to be read at length. The paragraph opens with the following statement: “This book is written for such people as are in sympathy with its spirit.”7 What it says is significant and illuminates the author’s catastrophist pathos. Wittgenstein is here somewhat like Rousseau in the Dialogues, who begins to explain himself to his insensitive interlocutor by saying, “I’ll explain what I mean, but it will be either the most useless or most superfluous of efforts, since everything I will say to you can be understood only by those to whom there is no need to say it”;8 or else like Nietzsche, who added the subtitle A Book for All and None to Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In all three cases, the author addresses the public in a problematic way, as if anticipating that the readers would not understand his book or would be incapable of accepting it. But there is one difference: while Nietzsche and Rousseau turn their gazes to the future, to a future reader free from the extreme cultural poverty of the present, Wittgenstein seems to turn to a lost past, whose only trace in the present is the ashes scattered by the winds of decadence, even though a handful of spirits like his own can still be found: This spirit is, I believe, different from that of the prevailing European and American civilization. The spirit of this civilization the expression of which is the industry, architecture, music, of present day fascism & socialism, is a spirit that is alien & uncongenial to the author.9

The object of reflection here is of course the immediate present and, through it, the single spirit that expresses itself in technoscience, economy, politics, and art in general. The goal is to single out what is sick or deadly in the soul of the West today, to diagnose the greater evil that surrounds us on all sides, to announce the apocalypse—Wittgenstein himself speaks of an “apocalyptic view of

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the world.”10 But to diagnose also means to combat, thus addressing only those few who share the same hostility toward the spirit of the present.11 Yet, once the diagnosis of decadence has been made in this way and the hopeless war declared, Wittgenstein adds: “This is not a value judgment.”12 To show antipathy is not to disqualify (we will return to this essential topic). It is as if the styles in conflict unfolded in a single worldly plane that, by definition, cannot rest on or claim value, which, if we can put it like this without contradiction, is situated outside the world. And Wittgenstein explains himself: This is not a value judgement. It is not as though I did not know that what today represents itself as architecture is not architecture & not as though he did not approach what is called modern music with the greatest mistrust (without understanding its language), but the disappearance of the arts does not justify a disparaging judgement on a whole segment of humanity.13

Wittgenstein explains himself, but at the very least appears to set up a paradox, above all because, by describing the age of decadence, he lists its merits or demerits without making a value judgment. Thus he adds, on the same page: “For in these times genuine & strong characters simply turn away from the field of the arts & towards other things.” (Without daring to enter the dubious literary genre of psychobiography, how can one not think of the strong figure of his father, a captain of industry? As if the philosopher wanted to say: “my ideas on culture and value do not at all cause harm to the image of my father, an energetic businessman.”) But the problem remains intact. Running ahead of myself a little, I would like to suggest that a subtle dialectics between the world and its limit allows for a metamorphosis of value judgments that suppresses and preserves them at the same time. Dissolving the paradox, such a metamorphosis can perhaps be understood through something like the idea of a “magnetization from above.” In effect, speaking of faith, Wittgenstein says: What fights doubt is as it were redemption. Holding fast to it must be holding fast to this belief. So this means: first be redeemed & hold on tightly to your redemption (keep hold of your redemption)—then you will see that what you are holding on to is this belief. So this can only come about if you no longer support yourself on this earth but suspend yourself from heaven. Then everything is different and



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it is “no wonder” if you can then do what now you cannot do. (It is true that someone who is suspended looks like someone who is standing but the interplay of forces within him is nevertheless a quite different one & hence he is able to do quite different things than can one who stands.)14

Do not be fooled, dear reader, it is not Pascal who is speaking, but Wittgenstein himself. To sum it up (again), it is impossible to discriminate, in terms of value, between two behaviors or two forms of life, if we stay at the same worldly level. Indirectly, however— that is, by touching the limits of the world or by plunging into the chaos that surrounds it—we can discriminate between that which rests on the ground (a precarious basis) and that which has been magnetized by the only thing that is above nature.15 This is, certainly, an indirect discrimination, which we could perhaps trace back to Wittgenstein’s interest in Kierkegaard. I believe that this is the only way in which we can combine the logical–grammatical prohibition of an intraworldly hierarchization of different forms of life with the irrepressible movement of protest, combat, and struggle against what appears as an inexorable degradation of life. Let us note, for a start, the obsession with the theme of decadence, which was commonplace at the turn of the twentieth century, and to which Wittgenstein returns emphatically until after World War II. It is an old topos dating back to the nineteenth century, and one that certainly impregnated Wittgenstein’s theoretical imagination from early on; Spengler’s famous two-volume book,16 published between 1918 and 1922, put its author among the few whom Wittgenstein identified as having left a deep imprint on his own critical undertaking.17 And it is not only the old theme, but Spengler’s very language that Wittgenstein takes up again. But even more important than the reconsideration of the opposition between culture and civilization, or than the idea that the expansion of technical–scientific civilization exterminated western culture, is the subtle nuance that Wittgenstein introduces when he asks himself: “But then what is the relation between an approach like Spengler’s & mine?”18 It is clear that what matters to us is, above all, this difference. But we cannot establish it without showing the backdrop of an identity or continuity, which we could characterize as the sharing of a single romantic anticapitalist spirit. For the end of culture is the end of spirit, that is, the end of art or the disenchantment of the world. This is an essentially romantic spirit whose hostility to the Aufklärung

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(Enlightenment) is summarized in an arrogant, belligerent passage that emphasizes the meaning of Philosophical Remarks’ abandoned preface: “It is all one to me whether the typical western scientist understands or appreciates my work since in any case he does not understand the spirit in which I write.”19 This declaration of war against the spirit of the Enlightenment reaches its paroxysm in a later text, whose violence requires that it be quoted at length: The hysterical fear of the atom bomb the public now has, or at least expresses, is almost a sign that here for once a really salutary discovery has been made. At least the fear gives the impression of being fear in the face of a really effective bitter medicine. I cannot rid myself of the thought: if there were not something good here, the philistines would not be making an outcry. But perhaps this too is a childish idea. For all I can mean really is that the bomb creates the prospect of the end, the destruction of a ghastly evil, of disgusting soapy water science and certainly that is not an unpleasant thought; but who is to say what would come after such a destruction? The people now making speeches against the production of the bomb are undoubtedly the dregs of the intelligentsia, but even that does not prove beyond question that what they abominate is to be welcomed.20

Is it not curious that logical empiricists were inspired by Wittgenstein to propose the ideal of a scientific philosophy? Or that some of his enemies consider him as positivist or “scientificist” (even when the flaw of positivism is sympathetically nuanced, as happens in Lukács’ Ontology when, in a discreet homage, the Austrian philosopher is described as a desperate positivist?) But what interests me here is not the evidence of romanticism that pervades his constant and well-known polemic against scientism and the modern industrial society. What is curious is that, right after expressing his visceral dislike or disdain for what he calls Amerikanismus (in the same traditional vocabulary that Heidegger also employed in his romantic struggle against capitalism),21 Wittgenstein warns his reader, by then justifiably stunned, that no value judgment is implied. So, when I say “science, this horrible filth”—a seemingly reasonable translation for der ekelhaften, seifenwässringen Wissenschaft (“disgusting, soapy-water science”)—am I not in some way making a value judgment, whether I like it or not?



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And yet Wittgenstein systematically makes this very unexpected restriction, which creates the paradox we must understand or eliminate. He insists that the eclipse of art and religion in his time (or in any other period of history) does not prevent human strength and authenticity—this is the kind of vocabulary in which the preface of the Philosophical Remarks is written—from expressing themselves in other ways. In other words, he suggests, against the current of traditional romantic or para-romantic diagnosis (and it is enough to think of Nietzsche here), that a strong and authentic, or normal, humanity is possible even in the absence of culture or under the hegemony of civilization. On the one hand, we recognize that there are several different styles of humanity and that some of them are detestable and disgusting; on the other, we refrain from ranging them in a hierarchy dictated by the criterion of value. How is it possible to escape this obstacle? Is there not an evident contradiction between the style of the utterance and its propositional content? Or between the diagnosis of decadence and the prohibition of any value judgment, of any form of hierarchization of the different forms of life? What about the clinical diagnosis that there is a distinction between culture and civilization? It would be easy to dissolve the paradox if we moved in the direction of a culturalist reading of Wittgenstein, which some of his texts and legions of innocent commentators and followers endorse without too many scruples. Let us take, say, the paradigmatic case of Rorty, who claims some Wittgensteinian heritage anyway. If we are to trust his take on Wittgenstein, we can rediscover in the latter the royal road of American pragmatism; that is, we can uproot, with Wittgenstein’s help, the myth of truth, of adaequatio (adequation or correspondence), and of philosophy as something similar to a purely contemplative identification with the thing in itself or with a prelinguistic reality, prior to praxis or to human social existence. This is a position that disqualifies from the start any idea of value or of a system of values over and above the different forms of social organization. Thus, inspired by Wittgenstein among others, Rorty rejects adaequatio in favor of redescription. It is a new way of arranging or organizing things. What is true is of the order of poiēsis (making, production) more than of alētheia (truth as unconcealment). From this perspective, the world is never ready and finished in itself, waiting for our speculative inspection. On the contrary, it is or molds itself onto our consensus or our efficacious practices, in a

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sort of practical–epistemological Darwinism; hence there will be as many truths and values as there are viable forms of life. With Rorty, Protagoras takes his revenge on Plato. But things are not that easy, since tolerance, thus infinitely extended, eliminates any idea of criteria or measure. How is it possible to justify one’s own style of existence, or at least one’s inevitable disdain for some forms of life? And so the mafia, or industrial society (whether capitalist or not), becomes an ethical– philosophical problem. And Rorty solves it with a sweet appeal to ethnocentrism, more or less along the lines of: “If God does not exist, why not practically adhere to the form of life that has shaped me, seeing that late capitalism and parliamentary democracy, by comparison to the forms of life that exist in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa, at least guarantee a minimum of dignity to those who participate in their game?” The reasonable takes the place traditionally occupied by reason and gives free rein to the exercise of value judgments, even if emancipated from any ultimate metaphysical foundation. Would there be something similar in Wittgenstein’s strategy? Let us play devil’s advocate for a moment. Of course, we cannot speak of ethnocentrism in Wittgenstein. But could we not speak of egocentrism? What can he oppose to the contemporary course of civilization, after all, if not this tense subjectivity that says, Ist es mir so klar, daß das Verschwinden einer Kultur...?22 It is a subjectivity that is not entirely solipsistic, given that, even if it moves against history, it still believes itself capable of addressing a handful of readers, friends scattered across a large, hostile world.23 An intimate point of view, as opposed to that of the public world? Let me return for a moment to the idea of ethnocentrism, which I prematurely set aside. Since Rorty pragmatically privileges a way of life, could we not say that, against the prosaic course of the world, Wittgenstein opposes a Lebensform (form of life) that is dead or dying? Could we not suppose that he could not resign himself to the disappearance of fin de siècle Viennese culture? If one follows the clues provided in Janik and Toulmin’s beautiful book,24 which rightly insists on how rooted the philosopher’s thought was in Vienna’s cultural climate at the turn of the twentieth century to which his English and American disciples were so insensitive, it would not be absurd to imagine that the idea of cultural decadence had something to do with the end of that culture, with the downfall of the empire and the rise of Nazism.



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It is impossible to deny that, in post-World War II texts, one finds traces of a nostalgia for the world before World War I. It is certain that the few readers Wittgenstein addresses directly are his contemporaries, survivors of a world that has ended, and not the future reader whom Rousseau and Nietzsche speak to, each for his own reasons. But it is also impossible to deny that his ideas of culture and value had been defined from the start, that they precede the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and, finally, that Wittgenstein had always dated the end of culture to the mid-nineteenth century. Thus, in 1948, he observed: My own thinking about art & values is far more disillusioned, than would have been possible for people 100 years ago. However, that does not mean that it is more correct on that account. It only means that there are examples of decline in the forefront of my mind, which were not in the forefront for those people then.25

1848? No need to be dramatic; let us just recall that it was in the second half of the nineteenth century that the Gründerzeit (founding epoch) and old Austria’s leap to industrialization took place,26 instituting a solid industrial bourgeoisie that adopted, among other roles, that of patrons of culture and of the arts, as happened in Wittgenstein’s own family. It is as if, for Wittgenstein, the arc of great culture (essentially German, judging by his critical–aesthetic references as a whole) spanned roughly the period between Sturm und Drang and Schopenhauer or the end of romanticism.27 Clearly this arc, as well as the contemporary experience of decadence, stands out against the backdrop of classical antiquity and JudeoChristian religious tradition. I will return to this at the end. Although Janik and Toulmin clearly show the thematic and stylistic solidarity of Wittgenstein’s work with Austrian fin de siècle culture, there is no reason to transform the recognition of this “elective affinity”28 into the attribution of any form of localism, relativism, or culturalism. This common cultural atmosphere does not really decide anything at the conceptual level. The culturalist or pragmatist tone of several propositions in the later Wittgenstein does not effectively entail culturalism or pragmatism—as I have shown elsewhere.29 There are indeed several forms of life, and Wittgenstein does return to Goethe’s pragmatistic adage “in the beginning was the deed.” But it is Wittgenstein who, in this context, also asks himself: Pragmatischer, Ich? (“I, a pragmatist?”)—and answers

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emphatically: Nein (“No”).30 What interests him in Spengler’s work is not just the diagnosis of decadence (commonplace, as we have seen, in Mitteleuropäische [Central European]31 culture), but the basic method of historiography. And it is hardly a relativistic method, since it requires a synoptic view, which identifies similarities and differences between cultural forms that are distant from one another. The morphologist of culture is not bound to any cultural bubble, but rather surveys the diversity of cultural forms as if from Sirius. What Wittgenstein appropriates from Spengler, it seems, is his comparative method. Let us recall that, on more than one occasion, Wittgenstein spoke of his own ethnological or synoptic method, which neutralizes relativism without paying the price of classical dogmatism or universalism. Wittgenstein’s challenge, or his dissent from Spengler—his answer to the question: “But then what is the relation between an approach like Spengler’s & mine?”—would be something like this: it is possible to be a perspectivist without being a relativist. (This takes us back, by the way, to a definitive remark already made by Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos.) In order to achieve this, one needs to strip the evaluation of cultures of any epistemological or theoretical weight. Once again, value is not a worldly fact and cannot be made into an object of knowledge. That is what can be read in two paragraphs from Culture and Value, which it is necessary to quote in full: Spengler could be better understood if he said: I am comparing different periods of culture with the lives of families; within the family there is a family resemblance, while you will also find a resemblance between members of different families; family resemblance differs from the other sort of resemblance in such & such ways etc. What I mean is: We have to be told the object of comparison, the object from which this approach is derived, so that prejudices do not constantly slip into the discussion. Because then we shall willy nilly ascribe what is true of the prototype of the approach to the object to which we are applying the approach as well; & we claim “it must always be …” This comes about because we want to give the prototype’s characteristics a foothold in the approach. But since we confuse prototype & object we find ourselves dogmatically conferring on the object properties which only the prototype necessarily possesses. On the other hand we think the approach will lack the generality we want to give it if it really holds only of the one case.32



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Confusion between paradigm and object, between ways of seeing and ways of being: such is the essence of the dogmatism into which Spengler falls, even though he is capable of seeing and describing the decadence of classical bourgeois culture. This is not the place to reconsider technically the properly philosophical question of the tension between relativism and universalism or between criticism and dogmatism in Wittgenstein’s work, or the transformations implicit in the transition from his early to his later phase. Just allow me to insist, schematically and against the tradition, on the continuity between these two moments of his work: without it, it will not be possible to understand his writings on culture.

III What interests me here is the transformations that occur, albeit against the backdrop of continuity, between the Tractatus and Wittgenstein’s later work, as well as their effects on his conceptions (never a theory) of value and culture. Nobody ignores the incredible change in language that takes place between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations. There is, of course, a change from a universalist and “dogmatic” style to a pluralistic and critical style.33 Yet it is also clear that such a change does not at all alter the implicit epistemology of his philosophy of logic and its ethical, aesthetic, and metaphysical consequences. On the contrary, we could perhaps speak of a process of purification, as if the whole of Wittgenstein’s later work were a sublimation more than a rejection of his early thought. In what regards the (admittedly subaltern) terrain of epistemology, nothing really changes with the implosion of logical form and an essentially representational conception of language. Already in the Tractatus, logical universalism could coexist with some form of epistemological pluralism, as the propositions related to the foundations of mechanics demonstrate. Already there the modern superstition of a “natural law” or of scientificism was contrasted with the wisdom of ancient mythology: both worldviews, like every worldview, are neither true nor false, they are only worldviews. But the older one does not confuse logical principles and natural regularity and, above all, knows that it is necessary to stop somewhere, that there is no absolute foundation. If the early

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Wittgenstein was thus capable of appropriating the wisdom of his master Hertz while preserving the idea of the truth of Newtonian mechanics (and thus avoiding the historical and relativist excesses that his idea of paradigm would promote in more recent times), the later Wittgenstein will not dissolve the truth of natural science, for the simple reason that he recognizes that the truth of science is inscribed on a pre-propositional and pre-scientific ground or tolerates more than one projective system.34 From this one can see, among other things, that the idea of paradigm incommensurability, as explored by a certain epistemology, has little to do with Wittgenstein. What matters is the question that I have been delaying: What is a value? And it is important to highlight the continuity of Wittgenstein’s thought over time, for the way in which his conception of language changes (the ruin of the idea of the universality of logical form) will not alter his conception of value and, with it, of art, ethics, and religion. To demonstrate this, we must go back, however briefly, to the Tractatus. What do we find there? In the end, little is said, or really nothing is. But many things are shown. It is shown that language has a logical form and that this form is isomorphic to the form of the world; or that language and world, in having the same form, have the same limits. Everything that one can say meaningfully refers to contingent facts or intraworldly states of affairs. If we said all that can be meaningfully said, it would be as if we had scientifically covered the whole surface of the world. And yet not a single essential problem would have been resolved, and we would still be empty-handed as far as what has value is concerned (in what regards metaphysics: ethics, aesthetics, religion). By delimiting the field of the sayable and the thinkable, the philosopher points to the ineffable as the telos of his undertaking. It is more or less as in the Critique of Pure Reason, where the ideas of God, soul, and world are placed outside the knowable but nonetheless constitute the ultimate target of reason, even if it is unattainable by metaphysics. The same goes for Wittgenstein: just as Kant said that he had to limit knowledge in order to make room for faith, Wittgenstein could say that he had to define the bounds of the sayable in order to make room for ethics, art, and religion—that is, for life. To be sure, some things will change in this picture from the 1930s onwards, for instance the idea of logical form, and the beautiful, transcendentally established harmony between language and the world will fall apart. In their place, different language games and



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forms of life will proliferate and stand out in conflict against the backdrop of natural history. The essential, however, remains unchanged. No matter whether the conception of language we are dealing with is that of the Tractatus or that of the Philosophical Investigations, it is always the case that the task of philosophy is that of critique, conceived of as a delimitation of the sayable, and it is always true that the essential is beyond the sayable. In the first scenario, the essential that is revealed beyond the limits of language and the world, beyond science, is the silent experience of that which Wittgenstein calls “the mystical”: 6.521 The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem. (Is not this the reason why men to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear, could not then say wherein this sense consisted?) 6.522 There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.35

In the second scenario, that is, roughly after 1930, things get complicated. We already know that there is not just one language; there are several. But what matters is still what transcends each and every language game, each and every form of life. This is perhaps what Wittgenstein suggests when he says: “When philosophizing you have to descend into the old chaos & feel at home there.”36 Instead of the limit of the world (the mystical), we have the space that precedes and separates the several worlds built through human practice. Despite all the changes, and even after the eclipse of the quasi-solipsistic style of the Tractatus and the irreversible inscription of subjectivity into linguistic collectivity, we still have here the notion of a solitary access to the sublime (to continue with the Kantian references). Keeping the contrast between the early and later Wittgenstein, I wish to suggest a profound continuity with regard to the ideas of value and life. In the Tractatus, it is said that, If good or bad willing changes the world, it can only change the limits of the world, not the facts; not the things that can be expressed in language. In brief, the world must thereby become quite another. It must so to speak wax or wane as a whole. The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy.37

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This passage precludes any true or false judgments that would allow us to establish a hierarchy of the happy and the unhappy, but it affirms the ineffable difference between their worlds most of all. Could we not say that the same happens, years later, with the contrast between civilization and culture, or between those forms of life endowed with culture and those deprived of it? If we cannot hierarchize them, we can appreciate—without a concept, somewhat as in the Kantian judgment of taste—the expressive capacity of different language games. If I am not entirely mistaken, this allows us to return to my initial observations on the paradox implicit in making a “disparaging judgment on a whole segment of humanity”38 or in resorting to the notion of decadence even as one refuses to hierarchize the different forms of life. It is as if all forms of life were endowed with the same coefficient of force and authenticity (since one cannot deny that the happy and the unhappy are equally wholly human). Perhaps, recalling the Cartesian thesis of a constant quantity of thought (in the sphere of res cogitans) in symmetrical relation to a constant quantity of motion (in the sphere of res extensa), we could speak of a quantity of force and authenticity that remains constant in all forms of life but is differentially expressed, just as individuals differentiate themselves from one another—for example, the genius from the simply well-educated person. This is what Wittgenstein’s metaphor appears to suggest: “There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest human being—but the genius concentrates this light into a burning point by means of a particular kind of lens.”39 It was impossible not to notice this Cartesian trace in such a markedly anti-Cartesian philosopher. Is it not true that the idea of clarity and distinction is not a privilege of the philosopher (natural light or the quantity of thought being perfectly and evenly distributed among people), but the result of a method of analysis and concentration? Here, too, the genius is superior to the honest person to the extent that she focuses all her “natural light” on a single magnifying lens, small as it may be. In any case, we must agree that something is being said here, and not only about the limits of language (and of life). It also touches upon the matter of expression, now seen as the effect of the vain and efficacious effort, if the reader will forgive me the apparent contradiction, or the wise and unreasonable attempt to challenge the limits of language—that is, of expression—as Wittgenstein used to tell the Viennese in the early 1920s, without being understood.



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As a matter of fact, can we not say about the opposition between culture and civilization the same thing that we say about the opposition between the genius and the honest person? In both cases, the amount of force or energy is the same, but is invested differently: one pole differentiates itself from the other by concentrating all its light on something local or intraworldly, but without losing sight of the world’s limit. Such a feat may come at the cost of making us cross-eyed, but is essential to the indirect expression of value. If culture has died and given way to civilization—a diagnosis that is similar to Spengler’s, but much more interesting—it is because art and religion no longer allow us, as they once did, to challenge the limits of language unreasonably. Only exceptionally can we cast ourselves into the old chaos [Urchaos] and come back with a few shells or signs to give others, since it is absolutely impossible to return with propositions. A form of life that is incapable of art and religion does not have any less value than one that is open to its limit. Yet those who experience the latter know, in an oblique and non-conceptual way, that the world has no value—and for this very reason they live better, or more happily, in their own world, which is the same as that of all people and all societies. Thus we finally arrive at our real topic (its “strictest kernel,” as Guimarães Rosa would say). As always, we are late. After all, Culture and Value speaks of transcendental things, of course, but rather concrete ones, we could say: ethics, art, and religion, all in the twentieth century. In what regards religion, it is necessary to stress how little Wittgenstein changes after his first writings, even against the backdrop of his evolving philosophy of language. In its different forms, religion (as a cultural expression, or as an expression of a better form of life) can be considered to be better than science (which resolves nothing). It is clear that, like Kant, Wittgenstein can think about religion only within the limits of reason or language. But there is something contingent or historical in his appraisal, as only two forms of religiosity are considered, Judaism and Christianity, with some injustice to other styles of relation to the limit. It appears that it is not true that Wittgenstein became a Roman Catholic in extremis, as some disciples reported. Like his fellow Jewish philosopher Bergson, he resisted this temptation in his last days. Yet it is certain that his ideas imply a typology of forms of religiosity that gives some pride of place to Christianity over Judaism (at least as

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its complement), and to both over other religions. Let us recall this curious proposition from Culture and Value: The Old Testament seen as the body without its head; the New T.: the head; the Epistles of the Apostles: the crown on the head. If I think of the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament on its own, I should like to say: the head is (still) missing from this body The solution to these problems is missing The fulfilment of these hopes is missing. But I do not necessarily think of a head as having a crown.40

Saint Paul is of course the crown; and Wittgenstein, like his master Kierkegaard, wishes to turn the spirit of Christianity against modern times and the church at once. Come to think of it, what would the difference be between Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard? Perhaps it is that, for one of them, aesthetics, ethics, and religion make up successive and progressive stages on the path of life, whereas for the other these three dimensions are absolutely confused and superimposed in their opposition to the terrible contemporary predominance of scientific reason and philistinism in general. Music would be another essential chapter for us to examine in Culture and Value, because of the abundance of references to it and the centrality of this art form in Wittgenstein’s life and thought. Here we encounter the same spirit of opposition to the present world, which leads Wittgenstein to a diagnosis rather different from Adorno’s in Philosophy of New Music. Although Wittgenstein was a literary vanguardist—he was more enthusiastic about Karl Kraus than about Rainer Maria Rilke even if, in his traditional role as patron, he generously granted the latter a kind of scholarship—his musical–aesthetic judgment was that of a traditionalist. Or a belated romantic: as we have seen, everything ended with Schumann. What must be stressed in this apparent mish-mash of judgments on music, literature, and religion is that such forms of expression are always referred to the ethical content of the lifestyles on which they are based. Everything unfolds as if romantic music and Christianity, stripped of its Pauline and institutional crown and even of the belief in God and in another life, expressed “the Same.” It is the same solitary experience that manifests itself in an exemplary manner in the literature of Tolstoy. Wittgenstein, an individualist narodnik (populist)? The pride of place that Wittgenstein gave Tolstoy, but also Wittgenstein’s entire biography, appear to confirm that. So do his constant attempts to dedicate himself to “manual labor” (even in



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the Soviet Union!) and his frequent individualist declarations; “The revolutionary will be the one who can revolutionize himself”;41 “No one can think a thought for me in the way no one can don my hat for me.”42 How can one not recall, in this whole context, the figure of Naphta in The Magic Mountain? To be sure, Thomas Mann had Lukács in mind when he created that character. But the features Naphta shares with the Viennese philosopher—his antiEnlightenment attitude, his romantic anticapitalism, his sympathy for a primitive Christianity, his mysticism, and his apocalyptic view of the world—are so numerous that it is impossible not to compare the two, especially when this comparison allows us to discern an essential difference. There are countless texts in which Wittgenstein, despite his catastrophism, indicates an indifference to the spirit of tragedy. Shakespeare appears at least eight times in Culture and Value, always as an object of perplexed incomprehension. And if Wittgenstein states that he does not understand the English playwright, it is not for the same reasons that he says, in the same book, that English women are incomprehensible to Europeans… The essentially political dimension of tragedy seems to fundamentally escape Wittgenstein, whereas Naphta considered the tragic dimension of politics to be essential. For Wittgenstein, tragedy is not a category of the Jewish spirit: “You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks. Tragedy is something unjewish.”43 Besides, there is no place in Wittgenstein’s philosophy for the concept of tragedy itself: In this world (mine) there is no tragedy & with that all the endlessness that gives rise to tragedy (as its result) is lacking It is as though everything were soluble in the ether; there are no harnesses. This means that hardness & conflict do not become something splendid but a defect.44

To close these disordered observations on Wittgenstein’s ideas on culture and value, I will add a comment to a short essay by von Wright on the theme. In it he identifies “three aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought”: The first is the view that the individual’s beliefs, judgments and thoughts are entrenched in unquestioningly accepted languagegames and socially sanctioned forms of life. The second is the view

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that philosophical problems are disquietudes of the mind caused by some malfunctioning in the language games and hence in the way of life of the community. The third is Wittgenstein’s rejection of the scientific–technological civilization of industrialized societies, which he regarded as the decay of a culture.45

Von Wright’s intention, like mine, is to demonstrate the internal connection among these three aspects, and thus to make the reflection on culture something more than a collection of unimportant marginalia external to the corpus, as it could be mistakenly regarded. Fully subscribing to the spirit of von Wright’s essay, I would nonetheless like to add in my conclusion a small nuance that strikes me as essential to understanding Wittgenstein’s ideas about culture and its philosophical expression. On the one hand, von Wright denies that the Wittgensteinian conception of philosophy aspires to be applicable to all historical forms of philosophy. On the other, he concedes that Wittgenstein saw himself as an “heir” to the philosophical tradition, and thus found at least a certain “family resemblance” between his work and that of the philosophers of all time. He goes on to say that we cannot ignore either Wittgenstein’s “historical awareness” or his hostility to a philosophia perennis, and then adds: If Wittgenstein had claimed a non-historical, timeless validity for his view of philosophy, then again there could be nothing more than a psychological connection between it and his attitude to his times. Because then the claims would entail that good philosophy went with the decline in culture. This is obviously wrong: the great philosophies mark the peak of a culture, or at most the beginning of its decline. But Wittgenstein made no such claim. His conception of philosophy is intimately allied to a way of viewing contemporary civilization. This much we must concede. But whether this had to be a Spenglerian form of seeing our times as a dissolution of those traditions in art, religion, science, and philosophy which had constituted the relative unity of Western culture is, of course, another matter.46

What can we add to this lucid diagnosis? Maybe that the family resemblance that Wittgenstein notices between his work and the philosophical tradition is no more than a family resemblance, and one should search in it for the essential—that is, for the difference. Maybe we can note, against a hasty identification with Spengler, a certain distancing from the very idea of the West. Maybe we can



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also note, in a style that recalls Nietzsche and Kierkegaard at the same time, that philosophy, throughout all its essentially western history, tends to be blind to the essential—that is, to what is vital to religion and religious in life. Wittgenstein’s anti-Socratism, for example—or is it anti-Hellenism?—is undeniable. (The recently converted Saint Augustine is the only figure from antiquity to seduce Wittgenstein’s imagination, in his capacity of critic of Augustine’s theory of language.) To wit, Socrates, who always reduces the Sophist to silence—does he reduce him to silence rightfully?—It’s true, the Sophist does not know what he thinks he knows; but that is no triumph for Socrates. It can neither be a case of “You see! You don’t know it!”—nor, triumphantly, “So none of us knows anything!”47

The point here is not, as in Nietzsche, to bring Socrates down in order to push the spirit of tragedy up, but to place him on the same plane as his adversaries, thus imploding the hierarchy that serves as the basis for the construction of classical Greek philosophy, or the root of what is normally defined as “western culture.” Reminding us of Kierkegaard once again, Wittgenstein says: “If Christianity is the truth, then all the philosophy about it is false.”48 We should not let that proposition’s conditional form minimize its radical reach; for, in the passage that immediately follows the remark on the futility of the struggle between Socrates and the Sophists, Wittgenstein adds: Wisdom is something cold, & to that extent foolish. (Faith, on the other hand, a passion.) We might also say: wisdom merely conceals life from you. (Wisdom is like cold, grey ash covering the glowing embers.)49

IV In the end, I have just described an anti-Enlightenment conception of culture that has points of convergence with another gloomy diagnosis of modernity and the West: that of the Frankfurt School. Yet this may even be the gloomier of the two, since the “magnetiz­ ation from above” that I introduced at the beginning has nothing to do with the spirit of utopia. Reflecting on the ruins of the past, Wittgenstein expects nothing of the future. Salvation? Let us recall

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the quotation from Drummond in this chapter’s epigraph: “To struggle with words is a vain mistake. Still and all, we fight from daybreak on.” Perhaps the only salvation to which we can aspire is the one that takes place in the present and in the moment, against the world and against history: an ethical feat imagined, in the most complete solitude, by an individualist narodnik steeped in his reading of Tolstoy.

4 The Plane of Immanence and Life

Philosophy is a constructivism, and constructivism has two qualitatively different complementary aspects: the creation of concepts and the laying out of a plane. Concepts are like multiple waves, rising and falling, but the plane of immanence is the single wave that rolls them up and unrolls them. The plane envelops infinite movements that pass back and forth through it, but concepts are the infinite speeds of finite movements that, in each case, pass only through their own components. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari1

I The text quoted above is, at least at first sight, enigmatic, for how can ideas like “infinite movements”2 or “infinite speeds of finite movements,” which originally have a physical meaning, apply to notions like “the plane of immanence” and “concept,” which are clearly metaphysical? My aim in this chapter is to try to elucidate this text. If I succeed, even if only precariously, I may also shed some light on Deleuze’s conception of philosophy and on its relation with the history of philosophy, with pre-philosophy, and, perhaps most importantly of all, with non-philosophy. I will limit my discussion to the analysis of a short text—“The Plane of Immanence,” which is the second chapter of What Is

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Philosophy?—and proceed in two stages. First I will discuss the way in which Deleuze defines the idea of a “plane of immanence”; then I will evaluate the most important effects of his conception of an “instauration” or institution of philosophy.3 To do this I will need to adopt a perspective that is at once comparative and contrasting. This point of view is external to Deleuze’s work and situates itself within a triangle defined by three proposals that are themselves located at varying distances from Deleuze’s: phenomenology, considered in very general terms and discounting the many different ways in which it has been formulated; Foucault’s archaeology; and the grammatical analysis of the later Wittgenstein. If comparison with the first two seems necessary and is often made— as contrast and similarity, respectively—comparison with the third may seem both arbitrary and startling. Nonetheless, it is precisely from this comparison that I hope to reap the most interesting and fruitful results of this investigation. Perhaps the best unifying thread is Deleuze’s claim that philosophy is essentially constructivist in style. Among the many different ways in which this notion can be understood, I believe Deleuze has in mind the meaning it has been given in the intuitionist philosophy of mathematics, in the course of its battle against logicism and Platonism, dominant in the French tradition since Poincaré.4 For Deleuze, there is no such thing as a concept in itself; a concept is always the result of work on a matter;5 or, in the words of Difference and Repetition, “[i]n every respect, truth is a matter of production, not of adequation.”6 Obviously the idea of construction here (if indeed it has anything in common with how that concept is employed in the philosophy of mathematics) is given a considerably broadened sense, and in a certain way returns to its ordinary, intuitive basis: the relation between the plan—the diagram—of a house and the bricks that will give it material form. But it is also clear that it rekindles connections with the properly philosophical notion of “constitution,” not to mention the various meanings of “work” or “labor.” All these perspectives should be kept in mind, mostly because, although Deleuze defines the plane as a diagram, he has previously defined it as both horizon and ground.7 That is, the plane of immanence is essentially a field in which concepts are produced, circulate, and collide with one another. It is successively qualified as an atmosphere (almost like Jaspers’ “encompassing,” which Deleuze rejects),8 as something formless and fractal, as a horizon



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and reservoir, and as an indivisible medium. Together, all these features of the plane of immanence seem to make Deleuze’s philosophy a “field philosophy”—in a sense similar to that in which one speaks of “field psychologies” such as Gestaltpsychologie (gestalt psychology)—except that we are dealing with a virtual infinite field (or infinite horizon).9 This field, wherein concepts are constructed and circulate, cannot, however, be thought of in and of itself or on its own. It can be defined and mapped only with reference to the concepts that populate it. If concepts need a prior virtual field, the plane does not subsist without the concepts that inhabit it and wander in it like nomads in the desert or dot it as the islands of an archipelago dot the ocean. But, to avoid being misled by metaphors, let us not forget that there can be uninhabited deserts, and oceans need not have their surfaces dotted with islands. Thus, once again, if there are no concepts without a plane, there is no plane without concepts to inscribe surfaces and volumes into this fluid and virtual element, to mark it as series of events, and to cover it with countless paving stones, thus unfolding this indivisible medium. We have still not left the field of metaphors completely. Perhaps we can throw some conceptual light on these images with the help of two external points of reference, which correspond to two essential dimensions of the plane of immanence: Kant and Foucault. Indeed, it is as if there were a certain parallel between “philosophical instauration” according to Deleuze and the instauration of science in the Critique of Pure Reason. The plane of immanence is, among other things, a kind of intuitive ground whose “infinite movements” are fixed through “coordinates” constructed by the finite movements of the concepts. The plane of immanence, unpopulated by concepts, is blind (at the limit, it is pure chaos); concepts, removed from their intuitive “element” (in the sense of milieu or atmosphere), are empty. I would add that, just as Kant attributes the function of mediation to the transcendental imagination,10 which allows an intuition to be subsumed under a concept, so Deleuze introduces the intermediate instance of “conceptual personae” in the transition from the “diagrammatic traces” of the plane to the “intensive coordinates” of the concept. But this comparison can lead to error. If, with Kant, we are trying to provide a foundation for scientific, mathematical, or physical knowledge in the determination of the matter of intuition in the field of possible experience, with Deleuze we are trying to describe

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the institution of philosophy (or philosophies) in the field of real experience—the fact of the philosophies of Plato, Descartes, Kant, and so on. And, above all, we are not dealing with knowledge, but with thought. The question “What is philosophy?” is identical with the questions “What does it mean to think?,” “What does it mean to orient oneself in thought?” Thus the investigation of the idea of the plane of immanence does not lead us to the field of epistemology, but to the relations that philosophy entertains with its history, with pre-philosophy, and with non­ philosophy. As we shall see, these relations intertwine in a single knot. Here it is necessary to correct our perspective through a twofold reference, on the one hand to the phenomenological tradition and, on the other, to the archaeology of Foucault, in particular to The Order of Things. Has not phenomenology always been concerned with the “ground” of thought? Does not this ground end up being defined as a pre-predicative sphere to which all conceptual constructions must ultimately be referred? Is not this ground the “earth that does not move,” that is, earth as an element of the immanence of the Lebenswelt (lifeworld), of Urdoxa (primary belief)?11 (Let us not forget that the earth is a notion of fundamental importance in Deleuze’s thought.) Just as the determination of essence refers back to the pre-predicative, the construction of concepts refers back to the pre-philosophical field of the plane of immanence. Yet this superficial approximation conceals a deeper divergence. Although phenomenology had an obscure glimpse of the plane of immanence, it lost sight of it right from the start and turned it into an ego­centered field,12 bringing the transcendent into its very heart, in the form of communication or intersubjectivity. The universal of communication opens, in the very heart of the plane of immanence, a breach through which immanence empties itself out in an uncontrollable haemorrhage, pouring itself over the transcendent, of which the plane becomes a mere predicate. This repeats the process of confiscation carried out in the past by the universals of contemplation (Plato) and of reflection (Kant).13 The parallel with the Foucault of The Order of Things is different. There epistēmē is also a kind of pre-theoretical and pre-philosophical ground, which, in its implicit diagrams, underlies and prefigures forms of knowledge that can be understood only from the perspective of this anterior field. Foucault’s archaeology has no epistemological vocation, all the more as the suspension of the truth values of discourse is an integral part of its method. Just as



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it cannot be identified with Husserl’s Urdoxa,14 this socle (bedrock) cannot be identified with any form of doxa in the traditional style of the history of ideas either, for Foucault as well as for Deleuze. This kind of basic “unthought” is not the “fact” of an ideology, of a forma mentis or a mentality; for, even if we are immersed in the facticity of history (of given thought), our investigation is always guided by the question quid iuris? (by what right?).15 To pose the question differently, we can ask: Why can I no longer think like this? What can I think now, in the light of the future? How does what is thinkable today arrive at its extreme limit, where it comes into contact with the unthinkable? Is the plane of immanence a new avatar of Foucault’s epistēmē, then? Various texts seem to suggest this, above all when Deleuze points out that different philosophies may share the same plane of immanence. But such points of convergence in strategy should not blind us to important differences. At no point in Deleuze’s description of instauratio philosophica is there a suspension of truth values, and the style of his philosophizing history of philosophy never reaches the almost ethnographic perspective of The Order of Things. Deleuze is perhaps closer to Heidegger’s history of metaphysics than Foucault, in whose work we nonetheless find Heideggerian echoes; and, while he does not insist on the topos of the forgetting of being, he does discuss a perversion or deformation of the plane of immanence. Does not the confusion between being and beings bear some similarity to the confusion between the plane of immanence and the universals that lead it back to transcendence? Is not the new philosophy of difference founded on the thought of a difference that is a close relative of “ontological difference”?16 This at least is my impression, and this idea could perhaps be tested by comparing the different uses that each of the three philosophers— Deleuze, Foucault, Heidegger—makes of the works of Nietzsche. It is this slight difference vis-à-vis Foucault that raises a difficulty for Deleuze—one that Foucault not only ignores, but neither must nor need confront. Let me quote Deleuze: But if it is true that the plane of immanence is always single, being itself pure variation, then it is all the more necessary to explain why there are varied and distinct planes of immanence that, depending upon which infinite movements are retained and selected, succeed and contest each other in history. The plane is certainly not the same in the time of the Greeks, in the seventeenth century, and today (and

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these are still vague and general terms): there is neither the same image of thought nor the same substance of being. The plane is, therefore, the object of an infinite specification so that it seems to be a One-All only in cases specified by the selection of movement. This difficulty concerning the ultimate nature of the plane of immanence can only be resolved step by step.17

One notes that the similarity between the two projects and even the complicity between the two thinkers cannot hide a fundamental difference. What creates a problem for Deleuze is unproblematic for Foucault; indeed, it is the starting point of his work (and here, as always, I have in mind only the Foucault of The Order of Things). Perhaps we can undo this knot, if it is not imaginary, by paying attention to the different ways in which these two philosophers answer the question “What does it mean to think?,” although both connect this question to a reflection on what is radically unthinkable. Foucault’s archaeology, on the one hand, has, so to speak, a propaedeutic nature: it amounts to something like the prolegomena to any future thought that does not wish to retain the ontotheo-anthropological style. Suspending the truth values of discourse, it confines itself to opening a space for a thought that is “other” or future. On the other hand, Deleuze’s analysis of the instauration of philosophy already understands itself as thought in action, and the question of the essence of philosophy is already its own answer, simultaneously a compass and a magnetic pole. In other words, a style that is critical and reflexive is contrasted with a style that wishes to be immediately metaphysical and dogmatic (without ascribing any pejorative sense to either of these terms, of course). It is perhaps this vertiginous, Nietzschean impatience of thought that constitutes the most central feature of Deleuze’s philosophy: this desire to plunge, through the thousand layers of the plane of immanence (this pre­ philosophical dimension that nevertheless comes to be only with the instauration of philosophy), in the direction of the chaos that is cut across and filtered by these sheets, there to coincide with thought and its limit, its “absolute outside,” taking Deleuze down a path that goes from the “unthought” to the “unthinkable.” Let us emphasize that, Deleuze’s battle against dialectics notwithstanding, it was Hegel who had already said that, in order to become reason, simple understanding must “dive into the Dionysiac delirium of Substance.”18 In short, this path takes



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philosophy from its seduction by the un-thought toward its fascination with the unthinkable. The plane of immanence, in Deleuze’s words, “is, at the same time, that which must be thought and that which cannot be thought. It is the non-thought within thought. It is the base of all planes, immanent to every thinkable plane that does not succeed in thinking it. It is the most intimate within thought and yet the absolute outside.”19 We have taken a first step toward an understanding of Deleuze’s concept of the plane of immanence, but are still far from grasping its full meaning. Our next step must be to examine the relation between the plane of immanence and chaos.

II Let me begin with the following crucial text: The plane of immanence is like a section of chaos and acts like a sieve. In fact, chaos is characterised less by the absence of determinations than by the infinite speed with which they take shape and vanish. This is not a movement from one determination to the other, but, on the contrary, the impossibility of a connection between them, since one does not appear without the other having already disappeared, and one appears as disappearance when the other disappears as outline. Chaos is not an inert or stationary state, nor is it a chance mixture. Chaos makes chaotic and undoes every consistency in the infinite. The problem of philosophy is to acquire a consistency without losing the infinite into which thought plunges (in this respect chaos has as much a mental as physical existence).20

In our earlier discussion of the plane of immanence and its relation to the notion of concept, we already encountered the idea of chaos. We saw that chaos and the plane of immanence are, so to speak, contemporaneous, since one cannot be instituted without the other. In other words, the definition of the plane of immanence as a reservoir or container should not lead us to think of it as anterior to the concepts that pass through it, or as a saucepan into which the sauce has not yet been poured, or, again, as the logical space of the Tractatus, which can be conceived of without the states of affairs that fill it. “Each thing is, as it were, in a space of possible states of affairs. This space I can imagine empty, but I cannot imagine the thing without the space” (Tractatus 2.013). It is here in fact

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that the opposition between Deleuze’s idea of the virtual and the classical idea of the possible is located, an opposition captured so well by Bergson’s metaphor of the anterior canevas du vide (canvas of the void) on which being itself will be embroidered.21 Without the concepts that inscribe a spinal column and a bone structure on it, the plane would dissolve into pure flux without consistency and, at the limit, into pure chaos. What we must do now is situate the connection between the plane of immanence and chaos. We know that there are various planes of immanence, that they are superimposed in layers, and that they may even intersect and partially communicate. In any case, we speak of them in the plural, although Deleuze also speaks, and in capital letters, of a kind of ultimate plane—LE plan—of which the others are merely variations or specifications, and even of a “best” plane of immanence, one that is freest from any kind of reference to transcendence and was incarnated in the history of philosophy by Spinoza, the prince or the Christ of philosophers.22 Nevertheless, with reference to chaos Deleuze always speaks of the plane of immanence in the plural. It matters little, for the time being, what we understand by chaos. It is sufficient that we remember, since almost all these metaphors are spatial, that the plane of immanence cannot cover, or superimpose itself on, chaos (even if one assumes that its horizon is infinite). Deleuze says that the plane of immanence is a “section” across chaos in the same sense in which a plane sections a cone. “To section” can only mean to capture (to define or retain) a “slice,” so to speak, of a chaos that remains free (and infinitely so) in all other directions or dimensions. Otherwise thought could not have this “outside” that we are told is inseparable from it. As well as a “section” through chaos, however, the plane is also a sieve: to cut is to select and fix—in a word, to determine, to contain the river of Heraclitus or the world ocean, of which one can also say that it is comme la mer toujours renouvelée (“like the ever renewed sea”).23 Here we have already encountered a problem. In describing the plane of immanence in this way, are we not projecting outside or beyond the plane of immanence a new transcendent universal, which is certainly not Plato’s One, the Christian God, the subject of reflection or of communication, but something dangerously similar to the classic omnitudo realitatis (totality of reality)—namely the real world or nature in itself, both of which are older than thought and privileged candidates to fulfil the role of the transcendent par



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excellence, left vacant after the successive demises of God, the soul, and the subject? We shall deal with this question later and spend some more time on the schematic relation that has just been sketched, since by doing this we may be able to prepare an answer to the problem. Deleuze addresses this question by means of the distinction between science and philosophy—two rather different ways of reacting in the face of chaos. If the plane of immanence cuts across chaos, or if philosophy plunges into it, it is, as we know, by giving it consistency without “losing anything of the infinite” at the same time.24 It is this philosophical feat that is emphasized when Deleuze draws the contrast with the peculiar way science has of diving into chaos (for it does that, too). What does science do? It “provides chaos with reference points, on condition of renouncing infinite movements and speeds, and of carrying out a limitation of speed first of all. Light, or the relative horizon, is primary in science.”25 It is impossible not to recognize a Bergsonian reminiscence here. For, if philosophy gives consistency to chaos without losing anything of the infinite or of becoming, science sacrifices becoming (or duration) so as to make room for reference—that is, the pinning down of states of affairs. This is a Bergsonian reminiscence duly brought up to date. In place of the old opposition between intuition and intelligence, or between duration and space, we find the opposition between the non-referential and referential uses of language, between the selfpositioning of the concept and a propositional function essentially linked to its truth values; and, at the object level, the opposition between events, on the one hand, and facts or states of affairs, on the other. Note that évènement (event) does not translate Tatsache well; Tatsache is related to Sachverhalt and, more directly, to Sache, whereas for Deleuze évènement has little to do with states of affairs, and perhaps more to do with history—at least as understood by Charles Péguy, Bergson’s best disciple, especially in his Clio.26 This is where we can bring into play the counterpoint with Wittgenstein mentioned earlier, which is not as surprising as might appear (and, I imagine, as would have seemed to Deleuze himself). In fact J. C. Pariente had already made an illuminating comparison between Bergson and Wittgenstein in 1969, insisting of course on the difference between the two conceptions of language and space, but pointing out something like a “logical dispositif” (apparatus) that is common to the two philosophers and consists in the same “threefold division of statements into nonsense statements, meaningful

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statements, and statements without sense.”27 Now, this approximation can be somewhat extended, via Bergsonism, though now with Wittgenstein and Deleuze in mind, toward the “metaphysical dispositif” that appears in both cases to link philosophy and chaos (and that resembles the “historical–metaphysical” Schopenhauer– Nietzsche dispositif to which we will return later). It is in order to better understand the Deleuzian intersection between the plane of immanence and chaos that we begin by recalling a sentence that Wittgenstein wrote in 1948, from Culture and Value: “When philosophizing you have to descend into the old chaos & feel at home there.”28 The metaphor is the same; however, I believe that we are not dealing only with a metaphor (or, as J. C. Pariente put it when comparing the metaphors of Bergson and Wittgenstein, “[y]ou will say that we are only dealing with a metaphor; but then why this metaphor?”). What does chaos mean for Wittgenstein? Nothing but a kind of “experience” that is not supported by a system of rules and, at the limit, plunges into madness, which is defined, in contrast with both error and illusion, as a “blindness to rules.” Do we not encounter, once again, a complicity between thought and madness? Deleuze says, when defining the means of thought, that “[the plane of immanence] implies a sort of groping experimentation, and its layout resorts to measures that are not very respectable, rational or reasonable. These measures belong to the order of dreams, of pathological processes, esoteric experiences, drunkenness, and excess.”29 This seems to echo another remark of Wittgenstein’s: “If in life we are surrounded by death, so too in the health of our understanding by madness.”30 I do not underscore such texts out of any enthusiasm for romantic or para­romantic pathos. What interests me is whether Wittgenstein’s idea of rule or system of rules can or cannot shed light, by some kind of isomorphism, on the relation that Deleuze establishes between the notions of chaos and the plane of immanence. As is well known, the idea of rule, for Wittgenstein, can be understood only in the context of the notions of language game and form of life. The concept of language game has all the characteristics of the celebrated empirical–transcendental doublets in Foucault’s The Order of Things.31 The “very general facts of nature” and the logical and grammatical conditions of meaning or of the use of language converge on it, making it the point in which life, language, and action or labor intersect. It is an intersection, one might add, whose undeniable “facticity,” explicitly affirmed, does not imply any



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ordinary form of empiricism, but rather something like a “transcendental empiricism.” As Bouveresse aptly put it, “Wittgenstein’s position on this point is … that certain facts may make our language games impossible or without interest, but that none of the facts that we can mention or verify makes them necessary.”32 Each of the many language games (and here we should speak in the plural, as in the case of planes of immanence) is a practical–symbolic set (or rather a bundle) that, in its symbolic dimension, is distributed between propositions and pseudo-propositions, between bipolar and polar propositions. Polar propositions, which are neither true nor false, serve as a base: they open the space that will be populated by certain tribes of genuine propositions and prohibit the entry of any other tribe. In sum, the basic pseudo-propositions—that base that ignores the distinction between the true and the false—stand to genuine propositions as the plane of immanence stands to the concepts that circulate in it. And we may add that each language game, to the extent that it creates the space in which propositions can become meaningful—that is, can become propositions as such— cuts across chaos according to its particular plane and functions like a sieve, transforming events into states of affairs. Once again, basic pseudo-propositions set up a net that, when cast on chaos, may give it consistency. Nevertheless, if the parallel between the plane of immanence and the base pseudo­-propositions is to reveal its full scope, it is necessary to emphasize how Wittgenstein connects those pseudo-propositions to the very practice of philosophy. For it is exactly in relation to them—as well as to science and art—that Wittgenstein situates philosophy and the tension between philosophy and common sense. To understand this parallel fully, we need to make a distinction between Weltbild (world picture) and Weltanschauung (worldview), which, far from being synonymous, refer to completely different horizons.33 What is a Weltbild? It is that amalgam of pseudo-propositions crystallized at the base of a language game that, at one and the same time, precedes the distinction between true and false and opens up the space for its arrival. In a word, it is the plane in which concepts circulate and collide.34 Common sense spontaneously supports itself on the Weltbild and appears to do so by taking it as “truth,” thus conflating Weltbild and given knowledge. This does not mean that common sense is completely mistaken, since such an illusion is necessary for the course of everyday life. The “philosophy of

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common sense,” on the other hand, has no recourse to such an alibi and extends this illusion into ill-conceived enterprises such as G. E. Moore’s, which ends up turning the Weltbild into a Weltanschauung or trying to ground common sense in rational certainty. In Deleuzian language, Moore confuses plane of immanence and concept. In any case, all philosophers (Plato, Kant, Husserl …) take the Weltbild, which is a grundlosige Grund (groundless ground) that does not go beyond a provisional and arbitrary halt in the infinite flux of chaos, for the most solid of archai (principles), creating the conditions for a universalist theory capable of dominating omnitudo realitatis through knowledge. At the end of the day, philosophy and common sense share the same illusion, but only philosophical illusion has disastrous effects for thought and, above all, for life itself. A Weltbild, it is worth repeating, is a net cast over chaos that arrests its infinite flux, choosing and fixing certain points that define a plane, or even a way of life. But there are as many Weltbilder as there are language games and forms of life, and thus thousands of ways in which chaos can be cut or in which the movements that criss-cross it can be slowed down. We also find these fluvial, Heraclitean metaphors in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, where he writes, for example: “The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thought may shift.”35 And we may put to Wittgenstein the same question that Deleuze puts to himself concerning planes of immanence: can there be one Weltbild that is better than all the others? Yet Wittgenstein’s answer would be negative, which is something that has led many commentators to mistakenly attribute to him some form of relativism, which would take us in the direction that Deleuze wishes to avoid at all costs. These relativist interpretations of the multiplicity of Weltbilder have also led to an opposing, “universalist” interpretation, put forward by authors such as Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas in Germany, and José Arthur Giannotti in Brazil),36 which strikes me as equally mistaken, as I have tried to show elsewhere.37 I shall limit myself, for the time being, to a comparison between Wittgenstein’s description of the proliferation of Weltanschauungen against the background of Weltbilder and Deleuze’s description of the instauration of philosophy on the plane of immanence. In both cases, what is being denounced is a kind of original sin at the very heart of the philosophical tradition, and what is being heralded is a new path that would allow us to redeem this sin without giving up philosophy. Combining the two diagnoses and



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the different vocabularies of these two philosophers (for could it be that behind the same metaphors we find the same diagnosis?), we can say the following. The sin of traditional philosophy, which degrades it into a mere Weltanschauung, is to understand itself as theory or representation and to understand the Weltbild, or the plane of immanence, as a set of propositions that refer to transcendent objects or states of affairs, entities in the regime of Übereinstimmung or adaequatio (adequation or correspondence), instead of understanding itself as a “doing” or constructive practice that introduces a minimum of consistency into chaos and expresses the immanent form of “a life.” Here I am not inventing anything, nor making an arbitrary combination. This can be seen from the splendid passage in On Certainty §559 where Wittgenstein says: “You must bear in mind that the language game is so to say something unpredictable. I mean: it is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable). It is there—like our life.” Bearing in mind the title—though much more than the title—of Deleuze’s last work, “Immanence: A Life …,”38 this is no small claim. In fact, it is only within a language game, in all its brute facticity, that concepts in general and the idea of rationality in particular, which is never erased, make sense. With the Grundlosigkeit (groundlessness) of language games, endowed as they are with that same facticity that affects our anonymous everyday life, it is the very idea of rationality that is found to be subordinated to a kind of “principle of contingent reason,”39 as some have already pointed out in relation to Deleuze. Moreover, a language game is not merely contingent, just “like our life”; it is the expression or unfolding of this life or of this form of life. We might say that, in its at once symbolic and practical dimension, a language game is the work of a life that folds back on itself.40 But there still remains the question of the multiplicity of language games. It is clear that in Wittgenstein there is an idea that almost approaches that of a single “ground” underlying the multiplicity of language games, like the ultimate plane of immanence, which varies and becomes specific in a thousand layers. This is the idea of a minimal humanity, humanitas minima, a concept that has been investigated in detail by Jose Arthur Giannotti,41 or a kind of interface between human and animal. Like Deleuze, the later Wittgenstein—and I have in mind those who talk about his alleged culturalism42—is not particularly concerned with purely anthropological properties and, despite retaining the transcendental style

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that characterized the Tractatus, is undaunted by the ill repute of naturalism. What is important, however, is the comparative evaluation of different language games and different forms of life. Let me repeat Deleuze’s question: Is there a best plane of immanence? Or, to put it another way, who is Wittgenstein’s Spinoza? Is it Frege … or Kierkegaard (who also figures in Deleuze’s family album)?43 But this provocation will not take us far; nor will it take us in the right direction. Perhaps what matters is to fix two lines of thought and consider their possible convergence: (1) the constructivism of Wittgenstein’s conception of language and knowledge; (2) the idea of chaos (or of a “world” without rules, which occupies the place that was once reserved for the sphere of the mystical); and, finally, (3) perspectivism, a philosophy that seems to emerge from the combination of (1) and (2). Or, better, “perspectivism without relativism,” to use Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos’ lapidary phrase. But what could such a position be, perspectivism without relativism? Does this not immediately refer us back to Nietzsche? In any case, such an idea appears to shine through Deleuze’s definition of the plane of immanence as a very special kind of horizon: “but the plane is the horizon of events … not the relative horizon that functions as a limit, which changes with an observer and encloses observable states of affairs, but the absolute horizon, independent of any observer, which makes the event as concept independent of a visible state of affairs in which it is brought about.”44 In Wittgenstein’s case, the non-relativist nature of his perspectivism must be reconciled with the prohibition of any kind of value judgment, which is not without paradox. For how can Wittgenstein describe, as he does, the contemporary form of life, or techno­ scientific–industrial civilization, as “decadent” on the grounds that it is impregnated with that “terrible evil—our disgusting soapy water science,”45 and at the same time say that he is not making a value judgment? It does not seem unreasonable to try to resolve this question by appealing to what Wittgenstein says about the relation between genius and the mere honest person, anticipating the comparison between forms of life of equal value. Wittgenstein writes: “There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest human being—but the genius concentrates this light into a burning point by means of a particular kind of lens.”46 And what goes for individuals goes for forms of life. Without explicitly setting down forms of life in a hierarchy (they have the same “amount of force



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and authenticity,” just as the genius and the honest person have the same “quantity of thought”), Wittgenstein cannot help making the comparison and indicating his preference for the form that is most congenial to him. This is the one that does not prohibit us from throwing ourselves insanely against the limits of language even when we know full well that they are limits, and thus from creating the space for ethics, art, and religion. These limits invite us “to descend into the old chaos & feel at home there,”47 to bring back some seashells, some traces, despite the absolute—that is, logico-grammatical—impossibility of bringing back propositions. This is an operation that is ethical, aesthetic, and religious, but it is also the telos of philosophy when it renounces the condition of theory or representation and becomes a vision of its own limits and of the limits of the world or of life—the famous Übersichtlichkeit,48 a vision at once mute, perspicuous and synoptic—or when it approaches music or poetry. No one ignores the importance of Nietzsche’s first master49 in the genesis of Wittgenstein’s thought, from his first writings to his last.

III To conclude, we need to explore the importance of the articulation between philosophy and life, for only this investigation can give us a more precise measure of the use of the notion of plane of immanence. Let us consider the ethical dimension of this notion. In trying to do this, I am following a path foreshadowed by Foucault in relation to one of Deleuze’s works, though I am applying it to Deleuze’s oeuvre as a whole. I refer to what Foucault wrote in the preface to the English translation of Anti-Oedipus (where he also described the book as an “Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life”): “I would say that Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics.”50 Let us return to the last pages written by Deleuze, “Immanence: A Life …” What is of interest here is the idea of a life, qualified as it is with the indefinite article. After describing the plane of immanence as a dimension that precedes the subject and the object and institutes them as transcendent, he defines it as a life: “Pure immanence is a life, and nothing else. It is not immanence to life, but the immanence which is in nothing is itself a life.”51 If it were immanence in life it would immediately lose its essential aseitas

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and plunge into abalietas, it would dissolve itself in life qua transcendent—becoming an object of biology, for example.52 What is necessary is to think life as transcendental. A scandalous idea? No more paradoxical than proposition 6.421 (and its context) in the Tractatus: “Ethics is transcendental.” But let us not be overhasty. There is no need to hark back to Wittgenstein in order to find the same connection, which has a tradition in the history of philosophy, from Fichte to Husserl, being made outside of Deleuze’s philosophy. As always, Deleuze, somewhat hostile to the phenomenological tradition, stresses that even Husserl arrived at the idea that all transcendence “only constitutes itself in the life of consciousness as inseparably linked to this life.” But he notes that Fichte, before that, had already meant by “life” an unobjectifiable precondition of objectivity that cannot be assimilated to a fixed res (thing or object). For Fichte as for Husserl, the meanings of “transcendental” and of “life” superimpose themselves on those of temporality and the absolute (a living, “restless” absolute).53 Although seeking support in this way from the tradition of German philosophy, Deleuze distances himself from it in order to define his own conception of immanence and life. And the non-German element in his thought, so to speak, consists precisely in the identification of immanence and the transcendental with the purely empirical, in a lineage that extends from Hume to Maine de Biran, William James, and Bergson. Perhaps the best description would be to say that this is a philosophy that is transcendental but not Kantian.54 What, then, was Kant’s mistake? It is as if he had simultaneously discovered the dimension of the transcendental and then covered it up again. Deleuze’s criticism is as follows: the Kantian construction of the transcendental in effect duplicates the level of the empirical. Deleuze confronts Kant the same way Aristotle confronted Plato: once the hiatus between the empirical and the transcendental has opened up, the infinite and desperate task of mediation imposes itself—a task of syntheses of syntheses of syntheses—and the Third Man argument resurfaces. Just as, for Aristotle, the potential–actual structure dissolved the Platonic aporia of participation, the virtual–actual structure found in Bergson allows Deleuze to remodel Kant’s transcendental aesthetics and analytics while avoiding the problem of the synthesis of the manifold of sensibility. The sensible, no longer understood in the manner of “simple empiricism,” as simple sensation, is given under the form of a “singular essence.”



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What could this expression—a “singular essence”—mean? Recalling a story by Dickens, Deleuze writes in his last text: A good-for-nothing, universally scorned rogue is brought in dying, only for those caring for him to show a sort of ardent devotion and respect, an affection for the slightest sign of life in the dying man. Everyone is so anxious to save him that in the depths of his coma even the wretch himself feels something benign passing into him. But as he comes back to life his carers grow cold and all his coarseness and malevolence return. Between his life and his death there is a moment which is now only that of a life playing with death. The life of the individual has given way to a life that is impersonal but singular nevertheless, and which releases a pure event freed from the accidents of inner and outer life; freed, in other words, from the subjectivity and objectivity of what happens: homo tantum, a mere human with whom everyone sympathizes and who attains a soil of beatitude. This is a haecceity, which now singularizes rather than individuating: life of pure immanence, neutral and beyond good and evil, since only the subject that incarnated it in the midst of things rendered it good or bad. The life of such an individuality effaces itself, to the benefit of the singular life that is immanent in a human who no longer has a name and yet cannot be confused with anyone else. Singular essence, a life.55

Let us return to the problem of articulating the empirical and the transcendental outside the tripartite scheme of Kantian philosophy. This is where we once again encounter Wittgenstein, who, whatever other changes his thought may have gone through, from the Tractatus onward pursued a maximum approximation between the empirical and the transcendental, and also included the term “life” in the lexicon of the transcendental. In the Tractatus, too, the ternary structure of the Critique of Pure Reason56 is avoided and the necessity of a tertium quid (third term) to guarantee the application of the understanding to the sensible is removed. In propositions 1 to 1.21, with the circumscription of facts to logical space, pure contingency accommodates itself immediately and without friction within the blueprint of the necessary. Moreover, in states of affairs, “participation” among things does not require any intermediate term, since they are joined together “like the links in a chain.” Once again we are freed from the Third Man argument, and we need not allow the hierarchy of types of entity to proliferate indefinitely heavenwards. Above all, this articulation between logic and the empirical (projection or

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picturing) implies a new vision of the subject and of life as being essentially transcendental. The subject, for its part, cannot be thought of as “worldly” and situates itself at the limit of the world or of language. (“Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted? You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the visual field. But you do not really see the eye. And from nothing in the field of sight can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye”: Tractatus, 5.633.) The world, for its part, is, as a limited totality, my world—the correlate of my life. But this life, which is singular because it is mine, is neither personal nor individual, since this “I” has no psychological substance, nor anything to do with the “accidents of internal or external life.” This can be seen clearly from propositions 5.621 and 5.63, where Wittgenstein writes: “The world and life are one. I am my world. (The microcosm.).” A singular essence? Hence, for Wittgenstein, life is quite precisely a transcendental field or a plane of immanence, except that in the Tractatus it is viewed sub specie aeternitatis: it is an absolute,57 like life according to Deleuze, but stripped of the dimension of time. We must wait until the crisis of logical atomism and the reworking of the Tractatus’ picture theory of meaning at the start of the 1930s for temporality to become an essential part of his thought.58 The logical and the empirical are always combined, but now they follow the flow of time. “Words have meaning only in the stream of life,”59 and reason becomes contingent, like life. In other words, in the new conception of meaning, language games are essentially linked to forms of life and, as von Wright observes, Because of the interlocking of language and ways of life, a disorder in the former reflects a disorder in the latter. If philosophical problems are symptomatic of language producing malignant outgrowths which obscure our thinking, then there must be a cancer in the Lebensweise, the way of life itself.60

Through philosophy we must free the flow of life and expand its sphere. We must remember that Wittgenstein saw in Frazer’s theoretical blindness the expression of a limited form of life.61 Philosophy is a kind of ars (art or skill) of dismantling the systems of power that individualize us and paralyse thought in a narrow form. Thus Wittgenstein considered Ramsey a “bourgeois thinker” for wishing, in opposition to Brouwer’s “Bolshevism,”62 to give a



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foundation both to mathematics and to the state in its present and contingent form. In the same way, philosophy has meaning for Deleuze only when provoked by life or by the world. Recall the celebrated sentence in Difference and Repetition: “Something in the world forces us to think.”63 This kind of violence requires an answer that is a kind of “clinic of oneself.” It is the ethical aspect emphasized by Foucault, which makes philosophy closer to poiēsis or ars than to theōria (contemplation). Following Bergson’s critique of classical metaphysics, here too philosophy amounts to the dissolution of false theoretical problems, the invention of new problems or proliferating paradoxes that make the classical conception of sense implode, by means of a “dramatization of logic” and of the concept of “the expressed,” which is no longer an undefined mist between the proposition and the state of affairs. Before The Logic of Sense, which develops this drama systematically, the basis of this critique of the postulate of the privileged role of designation—which restores sense to the flux of “living thought,” and thus parallels the movement that took Wittgenstein from logic to grammar, or from the world of eternal “things” to temporal forms of life—was already present in Difference and Repetition.64 Declaring war on all forms of foundationalism in a spirit that is both anarchontic and nomadic,65 and recalling Hume’s splendid phrase about the skeptic, who has “no fixed station or abiding city, which he is ever, on any occasion, obliged to defend,”66 let us avoid at all costs transcending the plane of immanence. Let us glide along its surface, nihil absconditum (nothing being concealed)—be it heaven or hell. To think is not to determine objects or to subsume the sensible under concepts of recognition; this task, which transforms the plane of immanence into a system of states of affairs, belongs to science. To think is to throw oneself against the limits of representation and to subvert it; it is, if you pardon my insistence, to free the flow of life and expand its sphere. In a word, to think the idea of plane of immanence is to bring philosophy back to life, or—and this is the same thing—to bring life back into philosophy. Translated by Michael B. Wrigley and revised by Rodrigo Nunes

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Acknowledgments In this chapter I investigate further the idea of the plane of immanence in relation to the idea of life as reworked by Deleuze, taking as my point of departure an earlier essay of mine, published in Brazil as “A ideia de ‘Plano de Imanencia,’” in F. Evora and O. Giacoia, eds., Figuras de subjetividade (São Paulo: ANPOF, 1997), pp. 79–106, and in France as “Le plan d’immanence,” in Eric Alliez, ed., Deleuze: Une vie philosophique (Paris: Synthelabo, 1998), pp. 305–23. I owe Jean Khalfa innumerable suggestions that enabled me to make this text clearer.

Translator’s note The translator would like to thank Laura Rónai and Jairo José da Silva for their numerous detailed comments on earlier versions of this translation, which eliminated many mistakes. Ruben Pela, Donald Peterson, Simon Thompson, and Richard Wrigley also provided invaluable assistance.

Values and the Plane of Immanence Commentary by Arley Ramos Moreno

Dear Bento, I received your two articles, but only now have I been able to finish my commentaries, which I wrote with eagerness and pleasure. Between starting and finishing them I had to move house, and so had no time. I really liked your two texts, not because I fully agree with them, but in the first place because, on the contrary, I do not agree on points that seem to me very pertinent and should be raised; you have raised them, and this has given me a good reason, as well as eagerness and pleasure, to comment at length on your texts. Secondly, I liked them because your articles are a beautiful example of the idea that, when one does history of philosophy well, one is also doing philosophy. Since the themes on which I would like to comment are very broad, demanding a large number of concepts as well as more or less extensive reasoning, I will proceed not analytically but thematically, developing my argument—which I fear may be too long—around the theme of the ethical choice made by Wittgenstein. I then build on that, and conclude with a new point about the plane of immanence–Weltbild theme. I will begin with the preface of Philosophical Remarks: the book was written for whoever is “in sympathy with its spirit.” This phrase indicates that, for Wittgenstein, the reader shares the same values, being sensitive to therapeutic argumentation. This means, in particular, that she is willing to change her “way of

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seeing,” to doubt and critique the images present in her own forms of expression; willing, even, to be persuaded by the therapist of grammar. This is the idea that seems to me to be condensed in the preface and expressed, besides, in Wittgenstein’s personal refusal of the new “Americanist” spirit, which includes his decision to waive the fortune he could have inherited, choosing instead to live only on the wages he earned from teaching. But, if we want to be more precise, what would be the spirit in which the book was written? This spirit essentially corresponds, as I have already said, to changing the “way of seeing.” It is important to note that this same willingness is present both in the perception of forms (seeing a figure as this or as that, for example) and in the acceptance of the possibility of intermediate cases—that is, of imagined situations that are specifically created for the therapeutic purpose of making explicit what it is in a problematic situation that causes contradictions. We are talking about the willingness to accept other rules or ways of acting as equally possible, without this acceptance implying any type of valorization or hierarchization. Such willingness will always lead, according to Wittgenstein, to imagining unsuspected situations that are considered strange and that we accept solely according to the criterion of whether the concepts under discussion are applicable. And this criterion, mind you, depends on the will more than on the imagination. For me to be able to imagine something that I myself consider unimaginable but that my interlocutor considers perfectly imaginable, it is enough to be supplied with the instructions that allow me to interpret the expression “imagine such a thing” and to imagine said thing according to the instructions. The power of my imagination becomes, from this point of view, unlimited—or rather no longer limited to a single game of expressive rules, since it is relative to the different sets of rules for the use of linguistic expressions given in each imagined content. For me to be able to exercise this unlimited power of the imagination, I must then accept the condition of relativizing my imagination in every case to which I apply it, which depends on my will. It will be possible to imagine this something that my interlocutor proposes, as long as I follow the rules of what he means by “imagining such a thing.” To do so, I must accept the need to follow them. What is the therapeutic function of this willingness? It is to clarify the state of the concepts in the situation that led to philosophical confusion in the first place. Only to clarify, not to provide a solution.



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This seems to me to be the important point that leads Wittgenstein, in the preface to the Philosophical Remarks, to reject one form of life and opt for another. The reader who shares the same values and for whom the book was written is someone who attempts only to clarify confusing situations, not someone who is just looking for solutions. Therapy does not end with solutions, since these will not clarify our confusion but will make us abandon it. Therapy does not abandon confusion; on the contrary, it seeks it, instigates it, and keeps reflecting on it, leaving the philosopher at home in the conceptual chaos. Wittgenstein’s ideal reader is someone who learns from the deepening of conceptual confusions, that is, learns from their clarification: someone who stays with the same questions until she exhausts them, until she hits the “bedrock” against which her “spade is turned,”1 not someone who progresses by accumulating new solutions. In the first case, the appropriate metaphor would be clarification by deepening; in the second, it would be progression through accumulation. The first kind of reader would seek to understand the meaning; the second would look for a theory of truth. But why does Wittgenstein reject the spirit of this second reader? Why does every truth lead to a dogmatic exclusivity or an ontological dogmatism? This seems to me to be the point; and it explains the opposition between culture and civilization adopted by Wittgenstein—one in which “culture” contains the idea of an ethical willingness to modify one’s actual “ways of seeing” with the purpose of clarifying conceptual confusions. This is the ethical value to be preserved: a willingness to change one’s own values through the exhaustive exploration of conceptual confusions rather than through the accumulation of new solutions. This seems to be Wittgenstein’s ideal reader—a reader steeped perhaps in something of an early nineteenth-century atmosphere, as you suggest in your article, but certainly not the kind who will understand what Wittgenstein says about the grammar of lexical uses. For that part, according to statements from students and friends, Wittgenstein imagined a future reader. This leads me to a second point. If a reader with some determinate ethical virtues is needed for the Philosophical Remarks to be conveniently read and understood, what will be said in it, and how will values be treated? This question is extremely delicate since, in the Tractatus, the linguistic situation for the expression of values was very clear: they belong to a domain whose contents—lived experience in general—cannot be legitimately uttered. In that book, the world

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was the standard of measurement for linguistic meaning: what is part of the world and what is outside, facts and experiences, legitimate propositions and the ineffable. After the Tractatus, many more things than the young Ludwig intended can be said. The world no longer has the same criterial function for meaning, and the difference between inside and outside no longer coincides with the difference between expressible and ineffable contents. The criterion is now pragmatic: it covers everything that has to do with language or everything with which language has to do—or, technically speaking, everything that is caught up in “language games.” Among the things that can be said after the Tractatus are the linguistic forms of expression of values regarded as means of understanding our relation to these values. This is no longer a matter of situating values outside the world; it is, if we wish, one of even introducing them into the world so as to make them available for legitimate philosophical reflection through language. The spatial analogy itself—outside and inside—is in fact no longer pertinent; values and experiences in general are thus restituted to language, from which they had been excluded in the Tractatus. It is through this new attitude that Wittgenstein gives us some indications about values, for instance by commenting on the case of the person who is willing to be persuaded and change his way of seeing—which is precisely the case of his ideal interlocutor. Whoever is dissatisfied with her own forms of expression will accept being persuaded. Now, this personal dissatisfaction is not theoretical as much as essentially ethical: it is a dissatisfaction with one’s own values. It so happens that, according to Wittgenstein, we build certain propositions attributing to them a peculiar use, namely that of expressing contents considered necessary. Ethical dissatisfaction with our forms of expression interferes with the experience of something’s being necessary when that experience leads to belief in values. In the epistemological field of logic, mathematics, natural sciences, and psychology, necessity is also experienced in the form of a belief that truths such as “a = a,” “2 + 2 = 4,” “white is lighter than black,” “love is not a feeling (a sensation located in the body), but something more profound, an emotion,” and so forth, because they are necessary, rest upon ultimate foundations. Wittgenstein exercises his therapy more efficiently precisely in the epistemological field, where belief in values—that is, the lack of grounding in reasons—is harder to demonstrate. Ethical dissatisfaction with the linguistic forms of expression of values thus disposes the



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individual to change his own “way of seeing,” to allow himself to be persuaded. Now, this ethical dissatisfaction leads Wittgenstein to apply philosophical therapy, first of all, to himself and his own beliefs. Self-therapy seems to legitimize ethically, in his eyes, the application of therapy: one needs to modify one’s own images before trying to persuade interlocutors to modify theirs. But what are the devices that grammatical therapy can use to persuade both the individual herself and her interlocutor? In short, I believe they consist in making clear the following things: first, that the belief that leads us to certain thought contents and to the act of ascribing to them epistemic, or even ethical values necessarily rests upon our experience of necessity; secondly, that necessity is inherent in the linguistic forms that express those thought contents, or rather is a direct function of the uses we make of linguistic expressions; thirdly, that, as a consequence, this necessity is neither absolute nor of an extralinguistic nature. Once this path has been taken, one must perform the task of persuading: what I believed to be a value founded on the absolute necessity of the content itself—for example, the logical form of language—I now come to see as resting upon conventions without any foundation beyond language use. I may persist in some of my beliefs, but I will know now that they are beliefs and not rational grounds. This is what a change in the “way of seeing” essentially consists in, for whoever allows themselves to be persuaded, as was the case with Wittgenstein himself. It would not make sense, in fact, for him to expect philosophical therapy to lead the patient to modify his beliefs, replacing them with others: the diseases of thought do not refer to our beliefs, but to the dogmatic generalizations that we make on their basis. Even if therapy is successful, after it we will still persist in attributing necessity to our habitual beliefs—that every body is extended, that my feelings are private, that every object is identical to itself, and so on; but now we will do so without dogmatism. It so happens that such truths continue to be useful for our forms of life and their suppression would have disastrous practical and theoretical consequences. I believe that this is how Wittgenstein approaches the question of values after the Tractatus: by describing their linguistic forms of expression when they force our thinking to make dogmatic generalizations because of the “one-sided diet,” as Wittgenstein says, to which we restrict the use of language. This restriction leads to the experience of necessity as an extralinguistic foundation.

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Such dogmatism is consequently reflected both in epistemological values—theories of truth—and in ethical values, in the name of the idea of a definitive foundation. This is the situation in which the philosopher of grammatical therapy finds herself: he preserves many of his basic beliefs, which he learned in the cultural environment where he was educated, and repudiates others; yet in his state of permanent dissatisfaction with the risk of generalizations that threaten him at every moment, and given the temptation of definitive foundations, he wishes—or thinks that he should wish—to choose, criticize, and judge the values presented by different cultural paradigms. And here we arrive at one of the thematic points you discuss in your article on values. How would it be possible, in the face of different cultural forms, to take a side without hierarchizing or valuing? This, it seems, would be a paradox. I propose asking the question in the following terms. The ethical dissatisfaction that predisposes the individual to being persuaded by philosophical therapy indicates that this individual lives in a state of doubt about his forms of expression and his values; the question is to know how it would be possible to choose while still doubting, and therefore while not valuing or hierarchizing. The paradox that Wittgenstein presents us with is in fact created by the close connection between the states of doubt and certainty, on the one hand, and the acts of valuing and hierarchizing, on the other. Indeed, when, moved by certainty or by doubt, we choose or reject something, we value and hierarchize the object of our choice or rejection—this is what we do; and we do it without doubt or without certainty, as the case may be. Consequently there is, as you say, a conflict between the propositional content and the force of the act of uttering it. Now, since Wittgenstein states that he is not valuing or hierarchizing, I believe it would be better to look for a solution to the paradox that, unlike the “magnetization from above” that you propose, avoids any appeal to some determinate language game, chosen more or less arbitrarily or at any rate independently of any grammatical criterion. For that amounts to privileging a certain form of life, that of the religious person, on top of situating values outside the world once again, still in the old spirit of young Ludwig. I would therefore prefer to describe the situation as follows. In combatting, protesting, and judging negatively the new American and European capitalist–industrialist spirit, Wittgenstein is not being moved by certainty as to the lack of ultimate rational foundations for this particular form of life, simply because there is no other



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candidate endowed with solid foundations that could take its place. This means that Wittgenstein continues to be motivated by doubt, even when explicitly or only indirectly choosing a form of life whose values are opposed to those of “Americanism.” Only then, I believe, is it possible to understand that he does not hierarchize or value different forms of life without having to privilege a language game or return to the Tractatus. But, if this is so, it would seem that we have fallen into relativism! The difficulties are piling up, as you can see. If it is already difficult to understand how it may be possible to make the kind of choice that Wittgenstein intends to make—namely to discriminate between cultural values while continuing to doubt the grounds on which the values that have been chosen, or at least indicated as preferable, rest—another difficulty arises if we wish to free Wittgenstein from relativism as well as skepticism, as I would like to do. Let us proceed step by step. Consider extralinguistic contents—values, mental, empirical, linguistic, mathematical, or logical entities. Since, according to Wittgenstein, we cannot attribute to such contents the meaning of concepts independently of their linguistic expression, these expressions are what becomes the raw material for philosophical reflection and for therapeutic activity with respect to the contents in question. In our case, it is the concepts of certainty and doubt embedded in the acts of moral judgment that are at stake. So, as I have said, to avoid the solution you propose, I will interpret Wittgenstein’s reflections on “Americanism” as immersed in that same ethical attitude that characterizes his ideal reader: a dissatisfaction with his own forms of expression and his values. In other words, his ethical reflections constantly express an attitude of doubt about the foundations of the forms of expression of values in general—even when there are indications of a preference or choice. On this point you could object, seemingly not without reason, that I am still privileging, in my interpretation, a certain form of life: that of Wittgenstein’s ideal reader, always dissatisfied and therefore always doubting her foundations, as opposed to the religious person, whose thinking is marked by the mystical experience of redemption that leads to faith. However, I do not believe that the state of the former characterizes a form of life, for it only corresponds to the conception of philosophy and philosophical activity that Wittgenstein presents to us. I propose that we just interpret his ethical reflections in light of the use he himself suggests for the word “philosophy.” It is clear that this particular grammar of the word is included in a complex system

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of values; nevertheless, it does not characterize a form of life comparable to that of the religious person, who expresses and experiences faith through concepts. If I am allowed this maneuver, it will be possible to indicate, however briefly, the analyses that Wittgenstein presents of the different linguistic situations that express doubt and certainty, so as to try to situate his own statements on ethical and cultural values. Grammatical therapy shows, first, the situations in which doubt is not linguistically pertinent, or rather the application of the concept of doubt is not pertinent—even though it is possible, you see, to doubt by mistake, jokingly, or philosophically and psychologically (each of these situations is analysed by Wittgenstein). These are the basic situations of language games in which initial patterns of linguistic meaning are established through conventions. Such patterns or paradigms will be used as expressive norms for the construction of complex propositions, given that they themselves do not have meaning; they are only initial conventions for any language game. Well, in these basic situations, the concept of doubt cannot be applied meaningfully—or that of certainty, as a matter of fact—for we are in the realm of conventions. One may agree or disagree about these conventions, but not doubt or be certain about their truth. As I have noted, in these basic situations doubt will be considered the expression of some mistake in the application of the paradigm, of some joke or word play, of some incapacity to learn how to apply the paradigmatic rules, or even of the one-sided diet, that is, the habit of ignoring the conventional daily uses of words. In other words, doubt is not pertinent in these situations because it corresponds, not to the grammar of the concept of doubt, but to that of other concepts and language games. We doubt or are certain about the true and the false, but not about the conventional. Secondly, therapy shows that games involving the concepts of doubt and certainty are more complex: they are descriptive games that manipulate true or false propositions. Thus doubt and certainty become pertinent, or rather the linguistic expressions of doubt and certainty become meaningful in language games; better still, the words “doubt” and “certainty” come to be effectively used, acquiring a meaning and engendering the respective concepts. Now, therapy also shows, thirdly, that there is an intermediate stage, at which only certainty, but not doubt, appears to be pertinent. It is the stage at which propositions of a special type are constructed from paradigms. Despite their descriptive appearance, they describe



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nothing, and at the same time, if confronted with facts, they are always true or, even more, they cannot be falsified. These are in fact the famous and duly re-elaborated synthetic a priori propositions, which Wittgenstein calls “grammatical” propositions because—and there resides, in my view, one of the most interesting results of therapy, when it allows us to avoid critical dogmatism—they are used as if they were conventional norms, to select those that will be considered legitimate descriptive propositions, whether true or false. We have, then, the following panorama that is presented to us through therapy: paradigms, which are manifestly conventional, are used as regulative norms for meaning; grammatical propositions are used as constitutive norms for objects—which, for their part, are described by propositions with a truth value. This intermediate stage of language use presents us with what I call “images”: the philosophical conception of the foundation of objects created by the experience of necessity. Whoever has doubts at this stage does not partake in the same Weltbild: the “impertinence” of doubt will be expressed here through the attribution of heresy or madness to whoever has doubts. It is in fact understood that to have doubts in these situations is different in nature from doubting only the truth or falsity of descriptive propositions. What is put in doubt here is something that seems to carry the certainty of necessity: one doubts the object, not its description—one doubts the what, not the how. I believe it is worth adding a couple more things here. It is at this intermediate stage that, according to Wittgenstein, the philosopher, when he raises doubts about well-established images, will be called a “savage” by the person of common sense, but when he seeks to substitute images with other images, which are perhaps unusual, even strange, but have solid foundations after all, he will be called a “dogmatist” or a “metaphysician” by Wittgenstein himself. The philosopher will be a savage when she doubts the foundation of certain images, a metaphysician when she is certain of the foundations of those images she proposes. However, there are also the cases of the heretic and the madman, individuals qualified in those ways because, without being philosophers, they, too, dare to doubt the necessity of the images. At this intermediate stage, then, we find the field of therapeutic activity par excellence. To explore it, Wittgenstein will systematically and exhaustively exercise the doubts of the savage, exacerbating this confusion until he arrives at a state of conceptual chaos. His goal is to cure dogmatic thinking through the relativization of images, both those proposed by

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philosophy and those of common sense when they are taken up by some philosopher—indicating, for example, that heresy and madness are concepts with their own rules of use rather than predicates whose definitive foundations would justify, in certain situations, discarding or simply eliminating legitimate forms of life. At this intermediate stage, doubt is therapeutically pertinent: Wittgenstein plunges into conceptual chaos and feels at home there because he savagely abandons even the images of common sense, applying doubt to and questioning everything that is presented as a foundation for meaning. It would also be possible to say that, at this intermediate stage, doubt is pertinent from a grammatical point of view, as it allows one to highlight the importance of word use in the formation of concepts, and thus to substitute concepts as definitive foundation with word use. On the other hand, this shows that this same doubt is not pertinent within the Weltbild in which it expresses itself; according to the rules and images that govern that Weltbild, the individual will be called a heretic, a madman, or a professional savage at best—that is, a philosopher. On the contrary, as I have said, only certainty appears to be pertinent there. Now, it is in relation to this intermediate stage that I believe one should interpret the preference and disdain that Wittgenstein manifests in relation to certain ethical and cultural values, and consequently also the expression of doubt that comes with them. Coming back to my point, then, I think it is clear that, by disdaining certain exclusively civilizatory values and by manifesting his preference for other values of a cultural nature, Wittgenstein is not expressing any metaphysical certainty about a given set of grammatical propositions, that is, a given Weltbild. His choice expresses the option for a conception of culture that covers, among other things, philosophical activity understood as a therapy of thought: an attitude of dissatisfaction and doubt toward the forms of expression and the foundations of values in general, independently of the results and style that this activity may display in each author. It is around this point that we may—finally—begin to discern a solution to the paradox around which your article revolves. The choice made by Wittgenstein does not apply to the forms of description, but to the actual definition of the objects. In other words, he does not disdain or devalue the forms of life built on a certain Weltbild or a certain set of grammatical propositions, but the actual set of these propositions and the “mythology” in which they are implicated when they are inadvertently generalized



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in a dogmatic way. It is in the realm of grammatical propositions that the choice occurs, not in that of descriptive propositions. It is not because we do not agree with the base mythology present in the descriptions of nature offered by the peoples whom James George Frazer studied, for instance, that we will be entitled, according to Wittgenstein, to devalue these descriptions and value only the ones provided by a physicist; the latter, too, contain a base mythology. We may disagree with the paradigms of a Weltbild, refuse its definitions of objects, and still recognize the efficacy and importance of the forms of life built on these same definitions. It is the same with psychoanalysis: we may disagree with, or not accept, the mythology upon which it is built, and yet recognize the richness of the point of view it introduces or the importance of this discipline for therapeutic practice. In each case, one criticizes only the eventual claim to veracity that all mythologies strive for, as if they were the definitive foundation of the descriptive propositions built on them. Only the latter can be either true or false, even if they are ultimately contingent. Now, in the case of “Americanism,” it is not just a matter of not accepting its grammatical propositions, but one of treating them with disdain, and therefore also the very point of view that they express. This disdain, however, does not affect the set of descriptive propositions built from this particular point of view. This means that, properly speaking, forms of life are neither hierarchized nor positively or negatively valued if one disdains grammatical propositions, for the latter are only preparations for the actual language games. As Wittgenstein says of mathematics, with grammatical propositions we have not yet begun to measure time, but only agreed on how to set our watches. Forms of life are theories, systems of measurement, methods of research, techniques for building artifacts, and so on. By disdaining the Weltbild that implies a certain form of life, Wittgenstein disdains the object definitions contained there, insofar as such definitions have consequences that he deems disastrous for the forms of life themselves: for example, the abandonment of in-depth reflection and its substitution with the idea of making progress exclusively through the accumulation of results; or the abandonment of cultural forms of life and their substitution with forms of life that are exclusively civilizatory. These forms of life are not devalued by the philosopher who studies the grammar of concepts; nor could they be, for he does not choose or judge on the basis of any metaphysical presuppositions. There are

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no philosophical criteria that allow one to devalue the conceptual systems of primitive tribes, or the system of psychoanalysis, or even that which characterizes “Americanism,” even though we may disagree with, and even disdain, the respective object definitions they presuppose. It is one thing to disdain points of view and the grammatical propositions that express them—because of the perceived disastrous consequences that they can have on forms of life—and quite another to disdain, value, and hierarchize the forms of life themselves—which Wittgenstein could not do according to grammatical criteria. It would not be philosophically pertinent to criticize or disdain the grammar of concepts, that is, the forms of life; but it is pertinent to criticize, even disdain, the dogmatic use of mythologies, of grammatical propositions, or of the linguistic foundations that define what an object is, its essence. One criticizes obliviousness regarding the linguistic nature of essence and the consequent illusion about its ontological nature. By defining essence, one starts constructing concepts and descriptive propositions about the object, which is grammatically legitimate; but one also starts building certain forms of life, or cultural values, to the detriment of others—which may be worthy of ethical disdain. Let me try now to be less verbose and summarize: one may appreciate but disagree with, or only disagree with, and even disdain, certain sets of grammatical propositions. Even appreciating but disagreeing with is an option, as is the case with psychoanalysis, if the mythology expressed there corresponds to an interesting and fecund way of theorizing the facts. We do not appreciate, however, and may even disdain, the dogmatism that might follow from there, namely that of reducing our way of seeing the facts to be described to the definition of the object provided by the grammatical propositions. This means reducing the very facts that a theory seeks to explain to that theory’s paradigm, or reducing a way of seeing that is regulative of meaning and constitutive of objects to a way of seeing that is descriptive of facts, as if objects were extralinguistic and absolute foundations. And this is certainly why Wittgenstein criticizes not only Freud but also Spengler, Helmholtz, gestalt theory, and Goethe—although not, of course, for the interest and fecundity of the new points of view that they introduced. This is not the case of “Americanism,” which inaugurates a point of view that is despicable in Wittgenstein’s eyes. For him, any theory that proposes to explain facts must make explicit the explanandum and apply to it the point of view defined by the theory itself—by its



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paradigm—while refraining from submitting or reducing it to that theory. The point of view introduced by grammatical propositions may remain fecund for as long as it is tested on public theoretical constructs or on objects of comparison that are to be explained—as in the actual language games that Wittgenstein employs in their therapeutic capacity. This is a condition for avoiding dogmatism. For it is not that values fall, so to speak, outside the mundane world and lie only in the sacred world, or in chaos; values are introduced by paradigms and by grammatical propositions—that is, through language—in the mundane and linguistically chaotic world of our conceptual confusions. Wittgenstein does not value or hierarchize forms of life simply because he seeks to avoid dogmatism, because he has been magnetized from above, or because he has plunged into prelinguistic chaos. There are more things that can be said after the Tractatus—for example values, expressible through their incarnation into paradigms and grammatical propositions in the guise of necessity. Avoiding dogmatism, the valorization and hierarchization of forms of life, and the reduction of facts to the paradigms present in theories or Weltbilder is a task of grammatical philosophy, not the result of an experience of the sacred or of ontological chaos. It is an ethical effort to be accomplished—in fact, as in the Tractatus, it is the task of individual life itself. Wittgenstein’s solution is, as I have said, to create new perspectives, public objects of comparison, language games, intermediate cases, and so on in order to attain, without dogmatism, a panoramic view of the facts and of the forms of life, that is, of the different perspectives that the same facts contain, as well as of the different explanations or ways of making sense of them. Freud, Spengler, Goethe, not to mention Frege himself and Russell, failed (among others) to do this … and so did Ludwig. There are two aspects, then, to be distinguished and highlighted. One is the critique of the foundational role that one wishes to attribute to certain Weltbilder—the passage to a Weltanschauung— and that is a task of grammatical therapy. The other is the personal but also philosophical choice of a certain set of grammatical propositions that define what the object is, together with disagreement with, and even disdain for, another set of such propositions. In this last case, disagreement and disdain do not affect the descriptive propositions of the object, that is, the theories, concepts, systems of measurement that follow—just as preference does not express certainty about the solid foundations of other descriptive propositions of the object, thus differently defined.

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Ethical doubt is guided by philosophical doubt here: doubt about the foundations of grammatical propositions, doubt about values. Ethical choice, for its part, is guided by the conception of philosophy proposed by Wittgenstein: a disdain for certain Weltbilder, on the grounds that they encourage one way of seeing progress, namely as an accumulation of results, while eliminating another way of seeing it, namely as a deepening and clarification of the same questions. This is how, in my interpretation, we can explain the apparent conflict between the propositional content and the force of Wittgenstein’s statements about values: the content of those statements concerns ways of seeing values, which are inaugurated by grammatical propositions rather than by descriptive ones, which come later. I shall take the opportunity, then, to develop my interpretation a bit, always paying heed to the impossibility of dissociating a therapeutic critique of foundationalism and a personal philosophical choice. First step: the therapeutic philosopher gets to know the two sides of images. On the one hand, there is their negative power over thought. Starting from grammatical propositions about the difference between emotive and sensorial psychological states (between love and the sensation of a toothache, for example) or about arithmetical operations (say, “2 + 2 = 4”), the one-sided diet to which we submit the expressions of our language leads thought to interpret grammatical expressions under the form of images. Love is an emotion, an intimate movement of the soul. It is therefore a psychological state that is deeper than the sensations distributed across the different regions of our body, just as the opposition between black and white is a necessity of the geometry of colors that it is enough for thought to recognize; the same is the case for arithmetical and mathematical operations in general, when taken independently from their actual application, which can be performed virtually by an algebraic formula. Starting from legitimate, undeniable, and metaphysically innocuous grammatical propositions, we construct explanations to justify and solve the difficulties that arise when we dare to doubt and question such propositions. According to Wittgenstein, what we do then is to present dogmatic solutions, houses of cards, as a foundation for concepts. Yet these same images are very important for forms of life. For instance, it is important for us to think and act in accordance with the notion of love as a deep and intimate emotion, which should be respected and admired very differently by comparison with the



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respect and admiration one ought to have for the sensations of pain in the body. This idea is so important that we have built ethical, aesthetic, and religious systems around it. The same applies to the images about the geometry of colors and about the logical form that presides over mathematical entities and operations. The therapeutic philosopher is equally aware of this positive and very important side of images. What is it possible to do with them, then? An even more embarrassing question is, how can one situate oneself in relation to images, when what is at stake is choosing a certain Weltbild and the set of images tied to it? When in doubt, how can one choose between such ambiguous images? Second step: the therapeutic philosopher describes the use that is made of images. The point is not to eliminate them through therapy, since they are important to our forms of life, but only to relativize them; and this is achieved when the therapeutic philosopher describes the use that is made of each image. As for Wittgenstein himself—who, when he chooses a certain Weltbild, describes the use he makes of the corresponding images, which he is therapeutically willing to take on—this is what Wittgenstein proposes that we see ethical values as. As a consequence of the therapeutic process, Wittgenstein’s personal choice must express his choice for certain uses of images that, in describing, he also qualifies and judges: a disdain for metaphysical uses and a presentation of the consequences deemed disastrous for forms of life. Thus, certain images that could lead to dogmatism when explored by science or philosophy may be conveniently explored by literature, art and music, and vice versa—such as those mentioned earlier. All this will be done with the only certainty that the reasons that can be given to justify a belief eventually come to an end: they are without definitive foundations. These reasons will correspond in large part to Wittgenstein’s use of the concept of philosophy, with all its consequences for the concepts of art, religion, literature, science and so on, as well as for how we conceive of the relations between their respective forms of life. This is a proposal, not a foundation; despite the lack of better or more convincing reasons, we may still allow ourselves to be persuaded by Wittgenstein’s argument and accept to change our way of seeing willingly—that is, if we see ethical and cultural figures other than the ones he suggests. Now that I presented my interpretation, I can go a step further: the “magnetization from above” solution, which appeals to the language game for the expression of contents of faith, apart from having the

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problems that I pointed out already, tends to exclude the expression of doubt! Nothing could be less “therapeutic,” it seems. In discussing the experience of the divine and the faith that arises from personal redemption, Wittgenstein still is, in my view, describing word uses and expressions that aim to clarify the meaning of concepts—not presenting a set of theses or descriptions of contents or personal experiences, whether of the sacred or of the prelinguistic chaos. On this point, Bento, you will protest indignantly. “But Wittgenstein does not limit himself to discussing mere words, to describing empirically their uses! His philosophy isn’t as empty as you make it out! You didn’t understand anything, you analytic positivist!” In fact, my dear Bento, your imagined indignation gives me the opportunity to comment on the comparison between Weltbild and plan d’immanence that you proposed in your other article. Everything said up to this point will now allow me to comment succinctly on some themes in your interpretation of Wittgenstein. I do not know whether I am an analytic positivist, but I know that, were I a good reader of Deleuze, I would have had the same inspiration that you had, of seeking to clarify the philosophical concepts of chaos, plane of immanence, and its relations through Wittgenstein’s concepts of rules or systems of rules. Indeed, the former seem to me somewhat obscure and in need of an enormous metaphorical field to come to their aid, while the latter, despite being vague and similarly enlisting the help of metaphors toward their clarification, are much more clarifying. I attribute this difference to the fact that Wittgenstein’s concepts can always be surgically explained or, if you prefer, they allow for explicit symbolical manipulation. This being the case, they become philosophical concepts that clarify obscure situations. I believe this is why you sought inspiration in Wittgenstein to unobscure Deleuze (perhaps you are an analytic positivist too!). I think that your article pulls this feat off—and in so doing it shows, at least as far as I am concerned, that Wittgenstein is much more interesting. But let us go to the points on which I do not agree in your interpretation of Wittgenstein. I would like to reconsider that distinction, perhaps very subtle, which nonetheless has important consequences for a better characterization of the concept of Weltbild vis-à-vis that of plane of immanence. Actually every language game admits, broadly speaking, two propositional levels or, if you prefer, two levels of word use: bipolar and polar propositions, as you put it—or, in my terminology, descriptive propositions, which can be true or false, and



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grammatical propositions. Now, these two levels perform different functions: the grammatical is a condition for the descriptive, while the descriptive is the means to cultivate concepts and descriptions of facts. The grammatical level is that which Wittgenstein indicates as expressing a Weltbild and as defining, as you highlight, a “lifestyle.” Clearly there is no language game without a grammatical level, without a Weltbild, just as every Weltbild triggers a language game as such, that is, descriptions and concepts. There is thus a relation of conditioning of the descriptive by the grammatical level, such that there would be no descriptions or concepts without basic grammatical norms—norms that are regulative of the meaning and constitutive of the object, as I pointed out earlier. And, reciprocally, without those descriptions or concepts, grammatical propositions would remain empty, like axioms in search of an absent mechanics; they would be without any use, pure thought contents in the hands of a philosophical contemplation that takes language on holiday. This, as I have noted, is a subtle distinction because, according to Wittgenstein, grammatical propositions are in constant transformation: hitherto descriptive propositions are able to become grammatical ones, and vice versa. However, there is a clear relation of conditioning between the two levels, since the uses that we make of the propositions are different: an a priori use conditions the a posteriori use, the necessary conditions the contingent. I agree with you that it would be possible to advance a functional analogy between Weltbilder and planes of immanence: they are instruments that imprint a first organization on “chaos”—an organization that, at a later stage, will be better developed through concepts and descriptive propositions. I do not see, however, how one can draw an analogy between thought processes for building grammatical propositions as Deleuze presents them—“pathological processes, esoteric experiences, drunkenness, and excess”2—and the “experience” of chaos as presented by Wittgenstein, and draw it by using for that purpose the situation of madness, as you suggest. Please note, I am not saying that Wittgenstein would disagree that these thought processes are the ones that lead to grammatical propositions; I am only saying that, grammatically speaking, he would have nothing to say on the subject, for that would amount to an empirical description. What I intend to say is that the “experience of chaos,” according to Wittgenstein, does not seem to me to correspond to such processes, or to the situation in which one can apply the concept of madness. If this is so, then I cannot see any

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analogy between Weltbild as plane of immanence and chaos—the latter being connected to empirical processes such as madness or “blindness to the rules.” Indeed, madness, as opposed to error and illusion, corresponds to a situation in which one is not guided by rules (because the individual is blind to any rule) or one does not seem to be guided by rules (because the individual, without being blind to rules, dares to doubt grammatical propositions). As I said earlier, in this second case the individual is considered almost mad, a “savage”—a philosopher, according to Wittgenstein. Thus the concept of madness is defined by a pathological condition: an incapacity to learn rules, just like a color-blind person’s incapacity to see certain colors. But I ask myself, would this be the “experience of chaos” into which the philosopher-savage plunges and where she feels at ease? Would philosophical doubt, which makes the individual into a savage, coincide with the incapacity to learn rules, and consequently to follow them? From my vantage point, I think that in that case there would be no philosopher but simply a mad person: that is, an individual incapable of doubting and thus, necessarily, also incapable of doubting the grammatical propositions of Weltbilder— as opposed to the philosopher of grammar who, as a “savage,” would systematically exercise this capacity even over grammatical propositions. But what might chaos be to this philosopher? I believe, as I said earlier, that chaos would consist of those situations in which the philosopher systematically doubts descriptive propositions, and keeps doubting even the grammatical propositions of which he comes to make use in order to obtain the solution to the difficulties raised by his reiterated doubts. Difficulties and contradictions arise inside conceptual systems, among their descriptive propositions; and the solutions, since they are not found at this propositional level, are referred to the conditioning level of grammatical propositions—at which the philosopher of grammar nonetheless continues to doubt. That is the chaos in which he feels at ease—just like … a good savage. But note, chaos erupts inside the Weltbilder themselves, and this is perhaps why the philosopher feels so much at ease, for it is there that foundations should be found but are not. He feels at ease because he then realizes that the chaos is merely linguistic. The illusion of an ontological chaos is undone and healthy thinking is recovered. In other words, a clear vision of linguistic or conceptual chaos is the beginning of the cure for the illusion about the existence



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of an extralinguistic chaos, or of unsolvable contradictions, or of deep-seated difficulties that, according to Wittgenstein, are characteristic of philosophy. Well, if the philosopher of grammar installs conceptual chaos within Weltbilder too, then these are not comparable with Deleuze’s plane of immanence. For in this plane, if I understand it correctly, the chaotic and chaoticizing process would be suspended, even if punctually and temporarily. The analogy does not seem pertinent to me because chaos, according to Wittgenstein, is of a linguistic nature and pertains to the application of concepts and their uses, not to the extralinguistic contents to which one intends to apply them, as does the Deleuzian chaos, for example, which seems to be of a different nature. On the other hand, if we do a Deleuzian reading of Wittgenstein, I believe it is reasonable to think that Weltbilder would correspond to an initial, punctual interruption in the ontological chaos. However, what is unsettling to me in this interpretation is exactly this: What can we do with it? If I cannot clarify it better, except through metaphorical intuitions, if I consequently am not able to create philosophical concepts that can be made explicit operationally, such as that of plane of immanence, it seems that I cannot move beyond those intuitions. Wittgenstein’s metaphors, in contrast, are operable: for example, the Weltbild corresponds to a very precise set of propositions, namely those that bear some degree of a priori use, some degree of necessity. This can be analysed in detail, in mathematics as well as in logic, physics, psychology, and everyday life: the propositions in question are the axioms of science, the truths of common sense. Another example: language games correspond to situations of symbolic labor that are fixed in one of their aspects—the one we wish to submit to comparisons—and that can then be particularized and analysed, in science as well as in everyday situations. These are not simple intuitions, but concepts whose application can be made explicit case by case. We may have the intuition of an ontological chaos, but with linguistic chaos we know how to operate: how to give precise examples of it, manipulate it, explore it, and even escape from it without falling into a new original ground. It seems that we cannot do this with the other chaos. So, if we follow Bento, Weltbilder would correspond to a moment of philosophical instauration, an initial, punctual interruption in ontological chaos; but they are not, if we follow Wittgenstein, interventions in conceptual chaos—even if, again following Wittgenstein, they also correspond to the instauration of philosophical reflection on the grammar of

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concepts. I am therefore not certain that the analogy is pertinent, though I acknowledge that it allows us to clarify, perhaps even render operable, the Deleuzian intuition of a plane of immanence as a section in a pre-predicative and chaoticizing chaos. Joining you now, I agree that the grammatical propositions of Weltbilder do indeed express, as you say, a constructive— symbolic—practice that “introduces a minimum of consistency into chaos,” which I would qualify as ontological by way of contrast with conceptual or grammatical chaos. Now, we could, or even should, scrutinize the details of this symbolic practice—as Wittgenstein did at least in part, for example when describing primary language games such as naming—in order to better understand its consistency. We would then be led to a philosophical theory of symbolic representation that proposes to answer questions such as “What does it mean to think?” or “What does it mean to orient oneself in thought?” This is something that Wittgenstein would never do, for his conception of philosophy is exclusively therapeutic: before these very questions, he would limit himself to describing the grammar of the concept of thought, that is, the uses of the word “to think.” Perhaps Wittgenstein could acknowledge, as corresponding to a particular use of the word “to think,” those basic symbolic practices (or pathological processes, drunkenness etc., as Deleuze would have it) that organize experience by introducing a minimum of consistency into chaos. Except that this would not be the most fundamental use, the one that could finally capture the essence of what it is to think, of that thinking that inaugurates a glimmer of order amid the ontological chaos. Therapeutically paraphrasing the Stagirite, I would say that “thinking” is said in many ways, none of which is the most fundamental, for the idea of a more fundamental sense is a grammatical illusion. Or rather, paraphrasing Wittgenstein himself, the philosophical clouds that involve inaugural thinking dissolve in a drop of the grammar of the verb “to think.” Let me now go on to the other point, which is actually the same as the one from the chapter on values: the choice between different Weltbilder. As I have already commented on this theme—perhaps even too much—I can now be more concise. You ask whether there can be one Weltbild that is better than all the others, and you answer, rightly, that there cannot. But this answer and, to a certain extent, the question itself are formulated in a Deleuzian spirit: is there a given Weltbild that is more fundamental? Well, it would be possible



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to present your question, now in the Wittgensteinian spirit of grammatical therapy, in these terms: Is it possible to choose between forms of life, judging but not valuing or hierarchizing them? And the answer, as I said, seems to me to be positive. I come back to this same point because in your text you recover a guiding thread for interpreting the paradox that is different from the “magnetization from above” argument—a guiding thread that becomes clearer in light of the preceding discussion. And this, it seems to me, is the right path, or at least one that supports the overlong argument I developed so far. It is possible to choose therapeutically, that is, while doubting, and to judge among different Weltbilder without valuing or hierarchizing forms of life when one considers the expressive capacity of their paradigms and grammatical propositions, the fecundity of the perspectives that they introduce, the new ways of seeing facts and the new uses they propose, the way their vision is concentrated in a few “burning points.” This is the idea that you evoke in the example where Wittgenstein compares the genius and the common person: the difference is only in the more or less intense and guided concentration of the gaze. Forms of life are not at the origin of our present apocalyptic situation. They are, on the contrary, the result of an “apocalyptic view of the world,” a certain way of seeing objects and values. It is even laudable that they have arisen and established themselves within such a situation. There is no reason to devalue them grammatically, but one should devalue ethically and disdain the apocalyptic view inaugurated on the basis of certain Weltbilder. It is here that the therapeutic practice fulfills its ethical function, which is to try to persuade the reader or the interlocutor, whether ideal or not, to change her way of seeing, to perform the therapy of her own Weltanschauung. As a consequence of the previous point, there is another one that I would like to stress in passing, in the last part of your chapter: the relations that, for Wittgenstein, exist between philosophical activity and its ethical–political effects. It is clear that Deleuze’s political engagement runs much deeper. Yet it is possible to find in Wittgenstein the reflexes of that activity on forms of sociability, or forms of life, which, although they are more tenuous, are not for that reason less profound or interesting, as you rightly emphasize. It seems to me, however, that your focus is not duly centered on the “burning point”; and this is due to the mediation of Georg Henrik von Wright, to whom you resort. In spite of the respect that I have for the authority of this disciple and close friend of Wittgenstein’s

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(not to mention the importance of his own work on deontic logic, of course), I dare to disagree with the interpretation he proposes— and you take on board—for Wittgenstein’s account of the origin of philosophical problems as symptoms of diseases of thought. According to von Wright, philosophical problems are symptoms of the poor use of language that occurs in thought. But what is, according to him, the origin of the poor use of language, if not something like a cancer that must exist in the form of life itself? Once you have taken this interpretation on board, you go on to claim that philosophical activity, according to Wittgenstein, should wage a war against the forms of sociability that are the basis of these foundationalisms or that these foundationalisms express in a sublime or sublimated manner—it being understood, therefore, that the attitude that leads to foundationalism corresponds to such a cancer, which is immanent in certain forms of life. Consequently, forms of sociability would be, in Wittgenstein, the target of therapy through grammar, just as they are, for Deleuze, the target of his philosophical critique through the use of the category of difference. As you must have already realized, this is the point with which I take issue: the idea of focusing on the forms of life themselves as the target, the “burning point” of philosophical combat through grammatical description. Indeed, if this were the target, then Wittgenstein’s disdain for certain civilizatory values and his preference for other, cultural ones would manifestly be a valorization and hierarchization of forms of life. But, as you yourself point out, forms of life are, according to Wittgenstein, equally rich and authentic—of course, when they are not artificially imposed on individuals, independently of the “general facts of nature” with which we coexist. The “cancer” is not inherent in forms of life, even though they may be a benign consequence of it. A form of life that carries such a disease would certainly not survive, perhaps not even establish itself. Healthy forms of life may be surrounded by disease, just as healthy thinking is surrounded by madness and conceptual clarity by the chaos of language. This time, Bento, I confess that I have gone too far! I shall stop here. P.S. Since I have returned to the text to correct my errors, I am dangerously tempted to continue—but, have no fear, I shall allow myself to be persuaded to be more than brief. Where, then, should the disease of thought be situated, according to Wittgenstein? Or rather, if the dogmatism of the Weltanschauung



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is neither in the Lebensform nor in the Weltbild, where is it? It seems to me that this dogmatism is a process triggered by the attribution of necessity—whatever empirical cause or motivation this act may have. This does not imply, however, that every attribution of necessity triggers the same process. Where can one situate, then, and how can one characterize the particular form of attribution that leads to dogmatism? Wittgenstein answers: when we forget, or no longer perceive, that which we ourselves do with words. In these cases, we are deluded by the image of the reference of words—the Augustinian model of language—and this causes all the consequences that, for example, the Philosophical Investigations explore. Well, this same process takes, has taken, and will continue to take place whatever the form of life or sociability may be, even though the images regarding the functioning of words will vary. Why? I have persuaded myself to be more than brief. I will comply.

5 Relativism as a Counterpoint*

To Anna Lia Amaral de Almeida Prado, soror et magistra We have an inability to prove that no dogmatism can overcome. We have an idea of truth that no Pyrrhonism can overcome. Blaise Pascal1

I Perhaps we can say that the fight against relativism spans the whole history of philosophy. At least in two crucial moments of this history this fight was essential. I am thinking of the fourth century bc (with the formation of classical Greek philosophy) and the turn * “Relativism as Counterpoint” was a lecture presented at the international conference “O relativismo enquanto visão do mundo” [“Relativism as a Worldview”], held in 1994 as part of the Banco Nacional de Ideias [National Bank of Ideas] series. It was published in Antonio Cícero and Waly Salomão, eds., O relativismo enquanto visão do mundo, Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1994 (pp. 71–94). The commentaries by Sérgio Cardoso and Paulo Eduardo Arantes that follow correspond to the oral interventions that they made on the occasion, which were published in the same volume, pp. 95–134. They reappear here in a revised and expanded form.



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of the twentieth century (with several attempts to return philosophy to its fundamentum absolutum (absolute foundation)). In both cases, philosophy seems to prescribe for itself the same critical and positive task: dismantling the relativism that checks the universality of rational knowledge, so as to make possible the institution of philosophy as a strenge Wissenschaft (strict science). In the sequence that leads from Socrates to Plato to Aristotle, it is the counterpoint to the epistemological relativism expounded by sophistics (and to the ontological nihilism associated with it: think of Gorgias) that leads from the theory of the concept and the distinction between rhetoric and dialectics to the institution of analytics or logic. With Aristotle, the sophists’ apparently suicidal verbal incontinence is replaced by a combination of logic and ontology that guarantees the necessity and universality of rational knowledge on the one hand, the autonomy of the object of knowledge (of being) or realism on the other. Universalism (or absolutism) is thus opposed to relativism, just as objectivism is opposed to subjectivism. Likewise, at the turn of the twentieth century, philosophers such as Edmund Husserl, Henri Bergson, and Bertrand Russell, each in his own way, resumed the struggle against several forms of relativism: against psychologism, which is blind to logic’s demands for justification, and against a half-Kantian, halfpositivist epistemology that bars our access to things in themselves or to the absolute. Unlike classical Greek philosophy, one must add, these three initiatives no longer culminate in a simple restoration of objectivism or realism in the classical sense; in their case, defeating the subjectivism implicit in relativism also means abandoning a realist ontology, surpassing the alternative between subjectivism and objectivism, between idealism and realism. But this great foundational ambition would not go on for the rest of our century. In fact all the tendencies of European philosophy—analytical philosophy, phenomenology, and, one must add, neo-Kantianism (Russell, Husserl, and the Marburg School, in short), each after its own fashion and through different appeals to the rationalist tradition (Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant)— identify reason with the absolute, casting to the night of unreason or nonsense the domain of the empirical, the natural, the psychological, and the historical. And yet, in each of these traditions, a movement seems to emerge around the 1920s that leads to a broadening of the idea of reason, accompanied by a growing attention to pre-epistemic or pre-predicative forms of consciousness or to the pre-logical roots

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of knowledge and language. It is something like the search for an “aesthetic logos” (to employ Merleau-Ponty’s expression), or Heidegger’s exploration of the Lebenswelt (lifeworld), or even Ernst Cassirer’s phenomenology of expression. Or it is something like the search for a “practical logos” (to borrow José Arthur Giannotti’s expression) that is implicit in the later Wittgenstein’s notions of Sprachspiel (language game) and Lebensform (form of life). With this movement, it is foundationalism and its absolutism that are eclipsed. Heidegger repeats the Hegelian wordplay: zu Grund gehen (to go in search of a foundation) is equivalent to falling into the Abgrund, the bottomless abyss. Wittgenstein affirms that, when we reach rock bottom (the solid pierre et l’argile upon which Descartes wanted to erect the edifice of science), we find only the fluid swamp of perfectly contingent conventions (or we discover that it is the building that supports the cornerstone). Cassirer transforms his theory of science into a philosophy of culture or of symbolic forms that covers myth, art, and science in a single act of reflection. To this we could add the relativizing effects of reflection on the history of science (the famous “scientific revolutions” and the distinction between “normal science” and “revolutionary science”). It therefore looks as though absolutism’s struggle is not over, and relativism is still alive and ready to pounce as soon as the slightest crack appears in the armor of foundationalism. It was perhaps in this sense that Ernest Gellner said that relativism is a “specter” that “haunts human thought.”

II How can one explain this immortality of relativism, if relativism is what the textbooks say it is? Is it not true that relativism, like skepticism, is a suicidal theory? In saying that the truth of every theory is relative to the subject, individual or collective, who states it, does relativism not ruin its own claim to truth, aligning itself with the theories it relativizes? This refutation, as Rorty observes, is too easy. Or it would be easy if there were relativists of this stripe, who affirmed that “every belief on a certain topic, or perhaps about any topic, is as good as every other.”2 If no one is a relativist in this sense, in order for us to be able to determine a minimal positive sense for relativism as a possible or sustainable philosophical attitude, it is necessary that



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we fix our gaze on a historically given someone—and certainly the best candidate is Protagoras himself, the founding hero of the relativist tradition. The point here is not to do philology or history of philosophy—something that is out of my reach—but to resort to historians of philosophy in order to test the potential consistency of a relativist philosophy; more precisely, to resort to two books in order to try to apprehend the meaning of Protagorean relativism.3 Protagoras’ proposition reads: “Man is the measure of all things, of those that are that they are, of those that are not that they are not.” In other words, if something appears to me as such and such, it will be as such and such. If I have a fever and the wind seems cold to me, the wind will be cold, even if it seems hot to you—in which case it will be hot, as in the title of Pirandello’s play Right You Are (If You Think So). This is a scandalous proposition, which receives an identical refutation from Democritus and Plato: it is guilty of involving a peritropē (“turning around”: literally, a revolution of the stars; here, the movement whereby a proposition revolves around itself and annuls itself). Sextus Empiricus summarizes the argument thus: No one can say that all phantasia is true, because of the peritropē, as Democritus and Plato taught us in their attack on Protagoras; for if every phantasia is true, then even the proposition that not every phantasia is true, being itself subject of phantasia, will be true, and thus it will turn out false that every phantasia is true.4

Barnes’ analysis of Protagoras is interesting because he attempts to use modern logical analysis so as to subtract that proposition from the reach of the Democritean–Platonic argument, making it appear no longer as a peritropē. Barnes’ thesis is that the proposition not only is not self-destructive, but clears the way for “a systematic and sophisticated epistemology, and represents in part an original, and not uninteresting, contribution to philosophy.”5 An easy way to absolve the proposition of the accusation of contradiction would be to insist on the “phenomenological” or pre-predicative dimension of phainetai (“it seems” or “it looks” to me, let’s say, or in my eyes), taken in opposition to dokei (“it seems” in the sense of “I am of the view that,” “I believe that,” “I incline to judge that”). But this path is discarded by Barnes, who wishes to preserve the judicative sense of Protagoras’ proposition. And here is how Barnes reformulates the proposition:

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For any man, x, and object, O, if x judges that O is F, then O is F; and if x judges that O is not F, then O is not F.6 Once the meaning of the proposition has thus been established, Barnes introduces the Protagorean theory according to which, for each topic, there are two equally strong opposing arguments. If the two arguments are unequal in strength, the art of the sophist consists precisely in making the weaker argument stronger. In other words, “for any object O and apparently objective predicate F, any reason for judging that O is F can be matched by an equally strong reason for judging that O is not F.”7 It is not a matter of contradicting the principle of non-contradiction, but rather of suggesting that simple logic is perhaps not enough to settle quaestiones disputatae (controversial matters). And “to say that contradiction is impossible is not to assert that a proposition and its contradictory may both be true at the same time; it is to assert the perfectly distinct thesis that you cannot contradict me.”8 Thus translated, the proposition loses something of its scandalous aspect. It is enough for us to think of the famous “indestructibility” of philosophical systems, upon which the French structural historiography of philosophy (Guéroult and Goldschmidt) insisted so much. To say that philosophical systems are argumentatively invulnerable monads or fortresses is to say that logic is not an instrument that allows us to falsify any of them to the benefit of a privileged philosophy. This is, at least, the consequence that Oswaldo Porchat derives from his reflection on the “conflict of philosophies.”9 And, indeed, the text that serves as the starting point for his metaphilosophical reflection, or his philosophy of the history of philosophy, is the defense of Protagoras from Plato’s Theaetetus. On the one hand, there is the decision to study the philosophies non-dogmatically, that is, to interpret them ad mentem auctoris (on the author’s terms), respecting the initial order of their reasons. On the other, there is the realist recognition of the fact of diaphōnia (disagreement)—the recognition that “different philosophical discourses are built according to different ‘logics’ that become constitutive in the process of being constituted, thus making the theses that they engender indissolubly bound to the methods that produce and found them.”10 We could translate: “For any philosopher x (if interpreted ad mentem auctoris), and for any object O (the world in its totality), if x judges that O is F, then O is F; if she judges that O is not F, then O is not F.” Like sophistics,



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this metaphilosophy—which can hardly be considered irrationalist, since it insists so much on the logical–argumentative construction of theories—appears to privilege the idea of the production (poiēsis) over that of discovery of the truth (alētheia). Are we too far from Protagoras, then? Like Oswaldo Porchat, I do not think so. Who could, for example, positively knock down the walls of solipsism, since nobody, not even a battering ram, stands outside it? The thesis becomes even stronger if we combine the idea of opposing arguments of equal strength with a theory of “relativity,” that is, of the crypto-subjective character of propositions. In this case, “[i]t is an elementary truth that not every pair of sentences of the form “O is F” and “O is not F” express contradictory propositions.”11 For example, “the Marx Brothers are funny” and “the Marx Brothers are not funny” can be interpreted as meaning the same as “the Marx Brothers make me laugh” and “the Marx Brothers do not make me laugh.”12 These are two propositions that are obviously not contradictory and clear the way for arguments from both sides and for strategies of persuasion. Focusing on the “man the measure of all things” proposition within the triangle defined by the theses of equal strength, impossibility of intersubjective contradiction, and crypto-subjectivity of propositions, we are outside the reach of an accusation of peritropē. Protagoras could retort, against Democritus and Plato, that (1) the proposition “man is the measure of all things” does not have the form “O is F,” and its negation does not predicate anything; (2) with the theory of relativity, the meaning of true judgment changes: it is true for …; (3) in the conclusion to Democritus’ and Plato’s argument (“the proposition is false”), the predicate “is false” is crypto-subjective and must be translated as “H is false for S.” In a word, there is no logical contradiction between two deixes. But what makes this new defense of Protagoras most plausible is the fact that it renders the ethical–political effects of “man is the measure of all things” more understandable. Without this minimal positivity (or with the idea that the proposition plunges us into nonsense), it would be difficult to explain the fact that, in its first great hero, sophistics could boast the first great figure of the Aufklärung (Enlightenment). To be sure, all Presocratic philosophy is aufgeklärte (enlightened) in style, and Xenophanes had already put a form of relativism to work as a weapon against tradition and mythology. Against the tradition of Homer and Hesiod, this early Aufklärer (enlightener) wrote:

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But mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form [fragment 14]. Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds [fragment 15]. The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair [fragment 16].13

With Anaxagoras, Aufklärung destroys the tradition of mythology through theological relativism. That movement of clarification was taken up again by Protagoras, who opted for agnosticism in matters of religion: we can say nothing about the gods, neither what they are nor whether they exist. The theological agnosticism of Protagoras, accompanied by the negation of ethical–political indifference, seems to confirm Barnes’ comprehensive interpretation. If there were not a minimum of positivity in Protagoras’ epistemology (or if every opinion were as valid as its opposite, in absolute terms and in all cases), mythology could not be rendered void, just one opinion among others, and no criteria for ethics and politics could be established. Some opinions are therefore better than others, even if they are not truer. Guthrie clarifies this distinction by explaining the sophistical meaning of sophia. The sophos (wise person) is the one who transforms what seems to be, or is, bad into what seems to be, or is, good. Food seems bitter to the sick person: and the sick person’s opinion is no less true than the healthy person’s, its opposite. But the doctor, who is wise and knows the rules of the art of healing, can (by acting on the situation) make the food seem (and be) sweet and appetizing. In the same manner, the educator, the politician, or the sophist uses words just as the doctor uses medicine. They do not replace error with truth or ignorance with knowledge, but lead the disciple to a better or more advantageous situation by redescribing the situation in which they find themselves. When the other is in a state of need, pain, or anguish (in the grip of “what is oppressive,” to ponēron), they give him sound thoughts (“what is useful,” to chrēston), so as to make him sound in spirit. Guthrie rightly underscores the continuity of the semantic thread woven by the adjective chrēstos: useful, efficacious, salutary, hygienic... The analogy between sophistics and medicine is particularly instructive: the irreducible difference between the healthy person



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and the sick person is not an obstacle to a pragmatic discrimination. Health is better than sickness, calm is better than anguish. And it is this discrimination that, despite epistemological and anthropological relativism, allows sophistics to be able to suggest a universalist ethics and politics, beyond the ethnocentrism that characterizes both traditional thought and classical Greek thought. In this sense, sophistics seems to anticipate the cosmopolitanism of Hellenistic thought and its Latin version. It is as if Protagoras, a foreigner who experienced exile from Athens, might have been able to say, anticipating Ovid, the Latin poet in exile, barbarus hic ego sum.14 To the foreign philosopher and to the exiled poet alike, the possibility of placing oneself outside reveals in fact the relativity of space and culture, as well as the amplitude of the world. This technique of “converting the gaze”—of distancing the gaze, Lévi-Strauss would say—or of “redescribing,” so as to invert the terms of the oppositions handed by tradition, is indeed an essential part of relativism. Is it not true, after all, that Socrates considers it necessary to submit himself to the unjust law of the city even if that costs him his life? The anti-traditionalism of the sophists entails stressing the hiatus between to nomimon (the customary) and to dikaion (the lawful), positive and moral law. Social convention no longer receives the absolute support of the gods or of a reason that, even when positive law went awry, was still sacralized by Socrates’ and Plato’s polis centrism. It is clear that the recognition of the local or conventional character of political law, as well as the idea of the progress of human techniques and institutions, did not transform Protagoras into a “revolutionary.” But one could perhaps say that he was the first to oppose polycentrism to polis centrism. Despite all the anachronism it implies, “reformist progressivist” is perhaps the best label with which to describe Protagoras. Existing laws have a rational substance even if, in their positivity, they oppose dikē (justice). Even when it is unjust, a nomos (custom, law) will always have the advantage of guaranteeing the social body’s centripetal forces. In short, transformations will be acceptable only if the new law is applied by common consent and follows due constitutional process. And it is here that the art of the sophos—the philosopher or the “wise man”—intervenes: it is up to him to convince the polis that it is better—healthier or more beneficial to the political body—to change the laws that ensure its continued existence.

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I do not wish to claim for Protagoras the role of inspiring a revolutionary critique of reason, society, and culture, as Sloterdijk has done for Diogenes. Protagoras definitely cannot have the aura, allure, or indiscreet charm of a “counterculture,” even though he is subversive in his own way, as a counterpoint to the rationalism of classical Greek culture. My goal was only, with help from historians of philosophy, to show the positive aspect of relativism, as opposed to the caricature that we usually find in the best tradition of rationalism. But what about today? Paulo Arantes recently asked: what does it mean to be a Pyrrhonist today? Sloterdijk, too, has asked, what does it mean to be cynical at the end of this century? My question is, what can a reference to ancient sophistics do for us in the contemporary debate on relativism? Jonathan Barnes emphasizes precisely the anachronism and little usefulness of labels such as “subjectivism,” “idealism,” and the like—just as Heidegger once protested, in his monumental Nietzsche, against the literally modern or “humanist” interpretation of “man is the measure of all things.” But could we not speak of pragmatism? To anyone who dislikes sophistics and has already been exposed to the appeal of William James’ thought and writing, the idea may not seem unreasonable. I am thinking here of one of the heirs of William James (certainly) and Protagoras (maybe): Richard Rorty. If we can demonstrate at least a partial coincidence between Protagoras and Rorty, we will have shown at least that ancient Greek sophistics might have some current relevance. This does not seem too difficult. I have had an earlier opportunity to point out, in discussing a beautiful book inspired by Rorty,15 the complicity between neopragmatism and “rhetoric” in the ancient sense of the term. In a nutshell, the point is that the conjunction between some realism or much needed intellectual modesty (philosophy does not demonstrate anything absolutely) and an undeniable ethical will (in McCloskey’s words, the imperative “be honest and thoughtful,” coupled with the motto “rhetoric is good for you!”) results in the decision that it is necessary to minimize or transform the rhetoric of truth, encouraging a rhetoric of change. If there is no absolute truth, or if an interesting proposition is not exactly a picture (or a mirror, or a map) of a state of things, why not value it when it can change our view of things by redescribing them, making room for a new form of life, which is perhaps better, because more democratic?



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The art of redescription is the essential art of the sophist. Let us take an example from legal rhetoric, leaving aside political and epideictic rhetoric. Someone is accused of beating up someone else, and everything indicates that this event has occurred; but the order of discourse and of verisimilitude remains. Being smaller than the accuser, the accused says: “Look at me. Would it be possible for someone like me to face a person that big and strong?” On the contrary, if the accused is a giant, they will say: “Would I be so stupid as to attack someone, when I would be the first person whom you all would suspect?” Disregarding, in both cases, the dogmatic truth of states of affairs or of the thing in itself, what matters is the consistency of the versions, descriptions, or, above all, redescriptions that clear the path for new possible ways of thinking or acting. It is precisely this idea of redescription that functions as a fundamental weapon in Rorty’s battle against the illusions of metaphysics and in favor of the restoration of a beautiful American pragmatism, unfortunately eclipsed by the outbreak of technical, professional university philosophy, which prospered in the United States after the arrival of professors who had emigrated from Europe. (It is hard to disagree with Rorty there, one must confess.) The argument goes as follows. Even analytic philosophy itself has (in suicidal fashion, but reconnecting with pragmatism or a Nietzschean perspectivism for which there are no facts, only interpretations) arrived at the conclusion that each form or style of language, understood holistically, is a way of world-making.16 If the world is not independent of the different versions we give of it, how can we hold on to the absolutism and universalism of metaphysics and logic (in its semantic pretensions), or to the idea that reason and truth retain a regulating value, in the Kantian sense of the world? In a response to Thomas McCarthy where he continues his fight against the Kantian tradition, Rorty effectively takes Kant’s critical operation to its extreme and radicalizes the thesis concerning the autonomy of practical reason.17 Where Kant had said that it was necessary to limit knowledge in order to make room for faith and morality, Rorty adds: it is necessary to neutralize the idea of truth in order to make way for the exercise of freedom. We could say that Rorty redescribes the Kantian critical project: in lieu of the regulative idea (the “infinite work of reason”), one finds the permanent possibility of offering “concrete alternatives,” or an acknowledgment of the unavoidable “fallibility” of human judgment. As in Protagoras, we have the acknowledgment of a free public sphere

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in which arguments may be exchanged and persuasion exercised without postulating any unconditional level. We also acknowledge that Aufklärung, or intellectual, moral, and political progress, does not depend on any trans-historical absolute: the death of God or the disappearance of a Platonic heaven of Forms does not have to make human history into a story told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. It is possible to be an atheist and anti-metaphysical and yet to be perfectly reasonable and civilized. It suffices that one can recognize the kairos (the exact or critical moment) of good change. But Protagoras’ and Rorty’s paths are not exactly parallel. If these two nihilist epistemologies (or anti-epistemologies) are similar, the ethical–political effects that can be derived from them are disparate. Rorty’s confessed ethnocentrism is opposed to the universalism of Protagorean ethics and politics. Rorty’s idea of good democratic culture (for him as for Protagoras, good changes are always those allowed by deliberative democracy) is related to the notion of freedom more than to that of equality. In a word, Rorty’s “naturalism” might perhaps seem excessively “culturalist” to Protagoras. Although I am sympathetic to Rorty’s response to McCarthy, I cannot follow him in his final step, where he appears to deviate from the good tradition of sophistical Aufklärung or from the radicalism of original American liberalism. The difficulty seems to lie in Rorty’s denial of the pragmatic value of social theory. If I understand it correctly, Rorty’s thesis is that, in order to understand the phenomenon of imperialism—and to try to change something in the world, as is only fair—it is not necessary to analyse the functioning of capitalism over the course of the twentieth century. Literally, the idea is that people do not need philosophy to guide their political practice—which, it should be said, is not very Greek, and not at all sophistical. What this disqualifying of “social theory” lets slip—or, owing to a voluntary ethnocentrism, fails to notice underneath the local diversity of political and cultural forms—is the global unity into which these forms are combined and that carries them all in a single movement. The very teeming of reinvigorated nationalisms and racisms today seems to be a symptom, even if one that moves against the current, of this process of unification, which is not purely economic. The point here is not to set up a complicated theory of reason or truth with a transcultural reach, or to construct a metaphysics of the social. What is at stake is the fact that the globalized economy ignores cultural borders and governs



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the different Lebensformen; and, to discover that, one needs only to read the daily news. How is it possible to promote good and desirable local changes without taking into account the great river that carries us, or everyone, adrift? I am thinking here of Robert Kurz, who shows that the destructive effects of a globalization of capitalism go as far as creating a “third-worlding” of the first world—for example in the recent 1992 Los Angeles riots, which showed the explosion of Rwanda in the heart of California. Should a disciple of John Dewey not be open to this dimension of contemporary experience? Would reading the newspapers and reflecting on what they contain mean committing the sin of regression into metaphysics?18 Everything happens as if Rorty had to inflate the epistemic pretenses of social theory in order to refuse giving American liberalism its original radicalism back. In this sense, we seem to be compelled to agree with Thomas McCarthy in the conclusion of his response to Rorty’s reply.

III But will agreeing with him necessarily entail embracing the transcendental machinery of Karl-Otto Apel? Or, to put it in less ethnocentric terms, will it be necessary to restore the sovereignty of classical reason by resorting to the idea of “pragmatic contradiction,” an update of old arguments raised against the sophists? This is what I will examine next, by looking at a paper by Apel that tries to justify the contemporary need to constitute, against the invading relativistic hordes, the wall of a “universalistic macroethics of co-responsibility.”19 In this paper, which he presented at the Federal University of São Carlos in 1992, Apel sets out to perform three tasks: (1) to show that our time (or the planetary society in which we live) urgently requires this new rational discipline that he names “macroethics”; (2) to dismantle the objections that philosophy, in its years of decadence or positivism, came to raise habitually against projects that aimed to establish the rational grounds of a universal or universalist ethics; and (3) to present a positive solution to the problem of establishing such grounds in the form of a “transcendental pragmatics of human communication or, more precisely, of argumentative discourse.” Let us start by trying to understand the vocabulary employed. The word “macroethics” was coined to indicate the most universal

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level of ethical reflection, which aims at humankind as a whole, or at a humankind that, like the crew of a ship in danger in the middle of an adverse or hostile ocean, discovers itself as a totality, so much so that it shares responsibility for its own preservation and the planet’s (the generalized ecumenon, to borrow Deleuze and Guattari’s term). This is a level of reflection above the one that Apel calls “mesoethical,” which, like most of the philosophical tradition from Plato to Hegel, delimits responsibility within the field of the polis or of the nation-state. In and of itself, mesoethics is already a leap in the direction of the universal insofar as it transcends the so-called microethics, which is circumscribed to the sectorial sphere of group, clan, or family solidarity and is expressed, for instance, in omertà, the solidarity of silence that weaves together the mafia or other similar organizations. At stake at each of these levels is the horizontal relation of interhuman communication in its intersection with the vertical relation that, through technology, connects groups, nations, and humankind itself to its natural ground or horizon, the earth—at once home and raw material for human society. It is clear that, for Apel, micro, meso, and macro levels constitute three successive stages in the social history of nature or an intersection between inter-human communication and the technical transformation of nature, and they correspond to the anthropological figures of Homo faber, Homo sapiens, and Homo universalis. The consistency of this genetic model is of little importance, just as the factual character of the hypothetical reconstruction of the genesis of human society in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality was of little importance to Rousseau. In both instances, hypothetical construction means something similar to what is called “construction” in psychoanalysis. What matters is the present fact, which one must illuminate with this or some other genetic model. And the present fact here is something like the end of the nationstate as a limit of practical reason. The transnational character of science, technology, and the economy has planetarized humankind irreversibly, putting the question of responsibility in transnational terms too. The third world (in the economic sphere) and nature itself (from the ethical perspective of ecology) are evidence of the illimitation of political and economic effects, as well as of the urgency of a planetary ethics. If the moral quality of my action can be measured by effects even when these were not intended to result, it is clear that responsibility extends as far as the effects of my gestures can



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travel, whether that expansion is voluntary or not. If the effects of European (or first world) politics impact the rest of the world so drastically, it is necessary to expand the sphere of responsibility accordingly. Aldous Huxley became uneasy after World War I with the emergence of a brave new world; today’s unease arises instead from the harsh realities of the poor third world.20 The diagnosis here is simple, but apparently it could not be truer. And it is not up to us Brazilians, as inhabitants of the third world, to protest against the demand for a planetary ethics of co-responsibility capable of protecting both nature and our societies, which revolve on an orbit at some distance from the first world’s sun, but whose life is so miserably and vulnerably exposed to the slightest instabilities and explosions of the central star. Yet what matters here is not the generosity of the intention, although we should highlight it, but the arguments that make it rational. And the argument begins negatively: it sets about dismantling two different objections that are traditionally raised against the project of a universalistic foundation of ethics. The first, which is weaker and of a purely epistemological nature, ascribes to reason an exclusively theoretical vocation, be it contemplative or descriptive, and thus forbids any opinions in the domain of values. From Max Weber to neopositivism, science and reason are in effect characterized as essentially neutral from a moral point of view. But it is not difficult for Apel to point out that the ideal of rationality, which is morally neutral, presupposes something like an implicit morality, or a hierarchy of values without which the idea of a neutral reason collapses by itself. No one really needs to be taught that objectivity or neutrality is an ideal of reason more than a fact or current practice in the scientific city. But scientific practice itself, before any explicit moral decision, seems to involve rules for the production, communication, transmission, and control of positive knowledge. The norms of the project for a humanitas universalis (universal humanity) seep insidiously in between the lines of the project for a neutral and universal knowledge. Simple epistemic collaboration, through the asceticism implicit in it, renews the idea of the submission of people and groups to the universal ends of reason. Whether one likes it or not, practical reason inevitably blooms again in the heart of cold theoretical reason. Another, stronger argument to be considered is one that I could describe as anthropological or socio-historical. It is the argument that Apel will exhume in what he calls the neo-Aristotelianism or

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neo-Hegelianism of contemporary philosophy. Against the tradition that seeks to neutralize practical reason, this flourishing literature (Apel is thinking here of the publishing boom witnessed in ethics) is nonetheless incapable of restoring the universalist ideal, because it subjects it to the practical decision to conserve the traditional ethos of a particular sociocultural form of life. Against a neutral and universal reason, we project our form of life—Apel insists on the vocabulary of the later Wittgenstein, perhaps not always for good reasons—and safeguard this particular form of humankind. We do not know whether one should speak here of conservatism or conservationism (in the sense of a maximal multiplication of socionatural reserves, with a view to preserving local humanities that are not always attuned to the cosmopolitan movement of history). Above all, Apel identifies, in this neo-Aristotelian or neo-Hegelian wave, tendencies that, from the point of view of sentiment or political tone, are more progressive in the Anglo-American world and more conservative in the German world. The reference to Aristotle—with his distinction between theōria (contemplation) or epistēmē (knowledge), which leads to the universality of reason, and phronēsis (prudence or wisdom), which circumscribes the ideal of the “good life” to the concrete circumstances of the moral subject— may not be the most adequate way to characterize this style of, let us say, regressive restoration of ethical reflection. The best paradigm would be the one provided by Rousseau in his critique of the universalism of Christianity—a religion of humanity that does not function either as cement for the cohesion of the city or as a horizon for the reconciliation of the singular individual with her own existence in its political, and always local, context. On this point, Apel’s argument seeks support in the critique of postmodern French thought, Lyotard in particular, undertaken by Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut in French Philosophy of the Sixties—a book as poor from the point of view of thought as it is interesting and informative from the point of view of the history of ideas. It is clear that the style of this book is quite distinct from that of Apel’s essay; each has its own local style and the two target their common enemies from very different perspectives. The horizon within which Apel’s critique of Rorty moves is not at all similar, of course, to that of Renaut and Ferry’s criticisms of Lyotard or Derrida. The atmosphere and the local styles are very different and communicate with their counterparts only in the rarefied atmosphere of the concept, reduced to its barest and leanest generality.21 This does not prevent the two



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books from sharing a decision of the same nature, at once philosophical, ethical, and political, about promoting the return to Kant and to the good spirit of the Enlightenment, the only heir of the good Greek tradition of philosophy. Let us imagine a planetary Athens (without slave labor, of course) in which rational argumentation predominates over individual, group, or class interests: this is the philosophical, ethical, and political ideal that one must restore now that the material conditions for its realization draw near, as a result of the internationalization of science, technology, and the economy. Just a quick word on, say, the “psychoanalysis” or genealogy of theoretical–practical projects of this kind. It would be interesting, for anyone who possessed the necessary knowledge of the different domains of history of philosophy, culture, and society in the past hundred years, to draw a periodization and a recent history of the successive “returns to Kant” that have occurred since the end of the nineteenth century, in both political philosophy and the philosophy of science. These returns do not always entail a reconsideration of the noble tradition of the Aufklärung. For instance, it was not exactly as Aufklärer (at least not according to his German or French critics) that Foucault sought to pick up again the thread of Kant’s critical undertaking through an archaeological suspension of the truth value of philosophical discourse in The Order of Things. Let us retrace our steps, for the sake of clarity. According to Apel, confronting the obstacles erected, over time, against practical reason as well as against the physiognomy of the contemporary world imposes a triple task on the philosopher: (1) establishing the grounds of a universally valid ethics that is not captive to local or national lifestyles; (2) establishing the grounds of a universally valid ethics that nonetheless refrains from doing harm to different forms of life, that is, from imposing a uniform model of good living or good life; (3) setting up a sort of tribunal of practical reason. Such a tribunal—to be situated, cum grano salis, maybe in Hague, maybe in Geneva—serves as the guarantor of the plurality of lifestyles: it limits them when they compete against one another; it ensures that they enjoy equal rights and accept equal co-responsibility; and it manages the irreducible differential of the human condition. Yet this historical and urgent necessity for a dialogical tribunal of practical reason still lacks a good, radical philosophical foundation, which is what Apel proposes to offer. This is a task that the lecture we are analysing seeks to define in a clear, though admittedly programmatic manner. The program consists in restoring the

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Kantian link between moral autonomy and Weltgeschichte—the world history of the human genus—with the instruments provided by the linguistic turn22 in analytical philosophy and by the “logical” spirit, so to speak, of Peircean pragmatism. To attain such targets, however, it is necessary to free the idea of practical rationality from an exclusively pragmatic or technical dimension. Some projects that move in the right direction, says Apel, nevertheless fail because they limit themselves to an exclusively technical conception of social rationality, the model for which is a formal decision theory unable to distinguish between the Hobbesian pact among wolves and the beautiful Kantian city of ends. But what is the Archimedean point that would allow us to separate the wheat from the chaff, or the naturalist pragmatism of a Rorty—whom Apel recognizes as subjectively progressive, though “objectively” regressive—from the good transcendental pragmatism to be erected? That is the critical point at which Apel’s argument finally targets its main enemy: historical relativism. Or, alternatively, the more general idea that rational arguments have clay feet; that they rest on fluid common sense, or on a conceptual pre-structure or infrastructure that necessarily precedes rational analysis—an idea that we can find in thinkers as disparate as Collingwood, Heidegger, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, Searle, and Rorty, if I am to draw a random list for which I cannot be held responsible. Since, at least from this point of view, almost everyone would be a relativist, Apel, being the good Kantian, resorts to the coup de force of the fact of reason in order to disentangle himself from the impasse. How can one go from fact to reason, from the empirical to the transcendental, from the pathological to the normal, if not with the Archimedean support of a fact of reason, an empirical situation whose peculiarity imposes the norm of reason? Apel’s argument is a simple trap. It is not a matter of reconsidering Democritus’ and Plato’s argument pure and simple but one of excavating, in the fact of disagreement, diaphōnia, the ideal of intersubjective communication that appears to permeate it, as it were, against its will. By arguing against someone, it seems that I am already bound by the clauses of a sort of social–communicative contract. The transcendental–pragmatic horizon thus becomes visible in the midst of the most mundane immediate experience. It is pragmatic because it is my speech act that condemns me to subject myself to the dialogical tribunal of reason; and it is transcendental because such a tribunal is asserted a priori, even if it emerges at



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the factual level. It is a sort of inverted “ontological argument,” in which the fact (or existence) implies the right (or essence). This is a style that is characteristic of critical philosophy, at least if we are to believe Nietzsche, who reminds us that Kant explains the possibility of a priori synthetic judgments as Vermöge eines Vermögens, “by virtue or a faculty,” a bit like Molière’s doctor, who explained that it is the virtus dormitiva (sleep-inducing property) in opium that makes it induce sleep. Niaiserie allemande, says Nietzsche in French in the same text: German foolishness.23 Before discussing Apel’s argument, let us recall a passage from Xenophon’s Memorabilia (4.4) that, curiously enough, opposes Socrates to Hippias. Hippias mobilizes the antithesis between natural justice and conventional legality against Socrates. Socrates, in turn, ironically praises Hippias’ familiarity with the unconditional essence of justice, which would enable him to put an end to divergent verdicts and eliminate all disputes, revolts, and wars once and for all. Here it is Socrates, not the sophist, who underscores the fact of diaphōnia or disagreement, keeping the idea of an “ideal communicative community” in check. The problem lies, perhaps, in Apel’s furtive slipping from an ethics of dialogue to a dialogical ethics. While the former is a necessary condition for the latter, it does not go as far as being a sufficient condition. Argumentative transparency does not exhaust all the possibilities open to dialogue. At least this is what Wittgenstein suggests at On Certainty §612: “I said I would ‘combat’ the other man—but wouldn’t I give him reasons [Gründe]? Certainly; but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (Think what happens when missionaries convert natives.)” It is this alternative, conversion or exclusion of the other, as described by Wittgenstein, that appears to be present in the beautiful iridescent space of the communicative community. It was in this sense, I believe, that Barbara Cassin referred to Apel’s philosophy as a “transcendental exclusion.”24 Such an exclusion corresponds precisely to the gesture by which classical Greek thought banished the sophist from logos and from humanity.

IV What have we gained from this extravagant zigzag? Simply saying “neither relativism nor absolutism” does not lead us anywhere, and

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leaves things as they are. What is the use of cobbling together a few arguments against pragmatism, be it naturalist or transcendental, if we have nothing to put in its place? By using Pascal’s beautiful text as an epigraph, however, what I sought to do was, precisely, to anticipate this objection and mark my target. The point is not to suspend or surpass the conflict presented in that passage, but to put to work the tension that traverses it. To do so is to recognize the limit of philosophy—the point where it communicates with non-philosophy—as that which defines its essence, as if the possibility of philosophy were born of its most internal impossibility; or to acknowledge that one cannot grant rhetoric everything (through the idea of redescription),25 yet cannot deny it everything either (through the demand for a transcendental restoration of the absolute and of the universal). What I wished to do was not to oppose a relativist view of the world to an absolutist one in order to problematize both, but rather to underscore an internal relation, the counterpoint structure that connects these two perspectives. When I speak of an “internal” connection between absolutism and relativism, I am also thinking of what naturalist and transcendental pragmatisms have in common, namely a conversational conception of philosophy. However different Rorty’s stance may be from Apel’s and Habermas’, they all share the liberal–positivist definition of rationality as a public place for the exchange of arguments, or the definition of the West as the tradition of the great conversation.26 As if there could be a neutral arena for the test of the truth claims of metaphysical interpretations! That amounts to ignoring the “archipelagic” nature of philosophy.27 Either way, who is excluded from the great conversational symposium? The solitary thinker. The one who is the opposite of Homo loquax, as Bergson would say; that is, Montaigne, Pascal, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Chestov, and Don Miguel de Unamuno. Even without endorsing Adorno’s dialectics, it is impossible not to subscribe here to the following proposition from his Negative Dialectics: “Dialectics is as strictly opposed to [relativism] as to absolutism, but it does not seek a middle ground between the two; it opposes them through the extremes themselves, convicts them of untruth by their own ideas.”28 Although such is not Adorno’s intention, this proposition seems to illuminate what Pascal says in my epigraph, and Pascalian dialectics in general. In the dialectic between relativism and absolutism, the target was the opposition between a philosophy and a worldview. With this in



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mind, I have effectively, and almost involuntarily, done little more than comment on those two Pascalian passages, which may have effects on the whole of the Pensées, as if from afar. Neither too much rhetoric nor too little? In the Pensées itself, Pascal more or less says: “Give him too much wine or too little, he will never find the truth.” Give her too much rhetoric or too little, too much relativism or too little … She will be left with nothing but a worldview—at most; never a philosophy. The point here is most certainly not an Aristotelian celebration of temperance and the middle ground. Rather, it is perhaps a celebration of extremisms and their twists, or a critique of the stability required by worldviews. But this is a theme for another discussion.

Bento Prado Jr.’s Lecture on Relativism Commentary by Sérgio Cardoso

The history of philosophy can effectively be seen as the terrain of the unsolvable controversy of philosophical systems. It seems certain too that, although irreducible and opposed to one another, these systems retain—mysteriously, as has been said—their value and interest for the philosophical reflection of posterity. This irreducibility and indestructibility of philosophical systems seems therefore to be enough both to engender the thesis of relativism and to corroborate its adamant opposition to philosophers’ ambitions of instituting a rational, universal, and rigorously founded sphere of knowledge. This is why, although tenaciously confronted and almost always disqualified on the grounds that it lacks interest and philosophical dignity, this thesis keeps returning in various formulations and almost invariably appears as the obstacle to be overcome if the aspiration for truth that sustains the history of philosophy is to be upheld. But its persistence and even vitality, in a century like our own, in which thought endeavors to surpass the classic alternatives of realism and idealism, objectivism and subjectivism, often seem indicative not so much of its consistency as of something else: the impasses of foundationialist projects or, today, the difficulties encountered by the attempts to broaden reason—attempts that European thought has made on various fronts. Now, if one wishes to duly appreciate the proper value of this thesis, to probe its speculative resistance and its effective reach—to evaluate its renewing effects and also to put a limit on its claim to



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cover the whole field of philosophy—it is indeed necessary to begin taking it seriously. This means considering it, in Bento Prado Jr.’s words, “as a possible or sustainable philosophical attitude” (p. 13), at least on the same footing as the rival claim to know absolutely or to guarantee to thought the universality of truth. To do so, our author indicates, we must start by avoiding the easy shortcut that the tradition has repeatedly taken, following Plato and Democritus, of a logical accusation of peritropē (turning around), which asserts that relativism’s paradigmatic proposition, Protagoras’ homo mensura (“man the measure”), turns against and cancels itself, or “ruin[s] its own claim to truth” (p. 13). Bento Prado Jr. thus refers us to contemporary studies, in particular Jonathan Barnes’ rich commentary in The Presocratic Philosophers, in order to disentangle sophistics from the caricature to which it has been reduced by rationalism and to secure for it “a minimal positive sense” (p. 13). This is done in order to allow us to appreciate with greater fairness at least some of the aspects of contemporary relativism (since the claim to a common heritage is certainly partial, and we cannot allow ourselves facile anachronisms)—particularly Richard Rorty’s neopragmatism and its ethical–political developments. The starting point is thus a reexamination of the allegation of peritropē. In this reexamination, one verifies that the statement “the truth of every judgment is relative to the subject who states it” (the critical debate on the nature of this subject, individual or collective, does not matter here) does not violate the logical principle of non-contradiction, if one understands that the oppositions that follow from it (O is F if a subject x judges that O is F, and O is not-F if x judges that O is not-F) take place on the terrain of quaestiones disputatae (understood as intersubjective contradictions), where the truth conveyed by judgment takes on another meaning. This is no longer truth in the sense of a manifestation of the real or an appropriate representation of the world, but precisely as an act of judgment in which an inextricable solidarity between the statement and the subject who states it—the crypto-subjective character of every proposition—expresses itself in the field of controversies that “simple logic is perhaps not enough to settle” (p. 132). Such a change in register would disarm the accusation of peritropē by securing for the relativist argument a broader and more pertinent appreciation. This would highlight the fact that the suspension of any external measure of the proposition’s value—the suppression of a support that transcends the subjective sphere—does not deprive statements

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of their positivity or consign them to the undifferentiated, grey zone of “opinions” deprived of truth. On the contrary, it points us back to considering their inner texture: their internal connections, coherence, ties, and, finally, own consistency. No longer benefitting from the appeal to an external instance of validation, they may then claim their own—albeit unequal—persuasive force. “Some opinions are therefore better than others, even if they are not truer,” Bento Prado Jr. concisely reminds us. Now, in what sense can a proposition impose itself as better than another? If it cannot or does not intend to make the true prevail over the false, it may at least reveal itself to be more efficacious, if measured by some pragmatic purpose; this is what the more established tradition among supporters of relativism would reply. Certain propositions turn out to be more opportune, more advantageous, or even more salutary (let us remember the connection between medicine and rhetoric that the lecture highlights). They reveal themselves as a better (or worse) fit in relation to a set of aspirations and beliefs, they point toward greater (or lesser) moral satisfaction. It is certain that this pragmatic discrimination of the value of propositions cannot be understood in a narrow utilitarian sense, as it immediately refers to a preexisting universe of virtually common beliefs and values, and it is inevitably inscribed in the universe of tradition and culture, in the thick soup that nurtures social relations. This is why this relativism, instead of resembling an incorrigible solipsism or taking the shape of an impregnable individualism, inevitably refers to a common world. And it is not difficult to see that, in its pragmatic deployment with a view to the best (the most satisfactory, the most advantageous, the most opportune for a certain set of interlocutors), it carries something like a metavalue, or at least the form of a value: the value of understanding and agreement, the value of order and harmonization of interests. Its horizon is effectively the maintenance of the social order. As we just heard in our lecture, “a nomos (custom, law) will always have the advantage of guaranteeing the social body’s centripetal forces” (p. 135). We know that the sophist presents himself, first and foremost, as a master in the art of arguing—the art, as Guthrie emphasizes, of “progressing in politics,” but at the same time the art of unifying the polis by persuading it of what is better. We know, besides, that such an art, by taking the laws of the city to be conventional, by denying them the absolute support of religion and reason, seems to adopt



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a markedly anti-traditionalist character. Nonetheless, we must ask ourselves whether such a denial of an absolute foundation for justice and laws would not result in an overly tenuous opposition to tradition. After all, the support for these legal conventions that the sophist’s art can afford—the pragmatic ends that guide agreements in the direction of the useful, the opportune, and the efficacious— are inscribed in a universe of beliefs and values that take shape in the framework of a particular tradition, even if the imperative for agreement and harmonization of interests keeps them in a formally universalist horizon that aims abstractly at humankind in general. To put it more clearly, do pragmatically oriented agreements not tend to reinstate and reassure the universe previously destabilized by the relativist philosopher’s critique, even if that universe would at the same time be deprived of its exorbitant pretension to assert itself de iure? With the appeal to “pragmatic ends,” what was knocked down with one hand is perhaps surreptitiously rebuilt with the other, for the ends that are effectively capable of catalysing adherence to the city are defined according to its beliefs. They remain subjected to its values, which is what allows us to suspect that, under the reformist appearance of the relativist strategy, we may find a genuinely conservative machinery, one that is deployed to establish new foundations for traditional values and beliefs when the faith and respect that sustain them begin to crack, putting at risk the very nexus of social life: if established laws can no longer be seen as good and just, one must at least recognize their usefulness for the maintenance of order and peace. By formulating such a question, I evidently do not intend to suggest a socio-historical interpretation of sophistics, which would require a much broader and more complex framework. However, I am thinking—as Bento Prado Jr. certainly does when he applies to Protagoras, with all the necessary warnings and precautions, the label of “reformist progressivism”—of the contemporary heirs of the Protagorean paradigm to which the lecture alludes. For I find myself tempted to ask whether good old conservativism is not hidden under the “rhetoric of change” of these epigones—“change our view of things,” “make room for a new form of life,” and so on (p. 136)—or under their rhetoric of freedom, founded as it is on the denial of any unconditional measure, on liberation from the impositions introduced by any transhistorical universality. Could we not think that the “confessed ethnocentrism” of a Rorty reveals the reality of what, in Protagoras, is a cosmopolitan and universalist

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aspiration? Let us be clear: this is not a matter of attributing to Richard Rorty, for instance, the practical decision of preserving the traditional ethos of a certain sociocultural space—that is, of saddling him with the “conservationist” attitude (to borrow Bento Prado Jr.’s word) of wishing to preserve local cultures that Apel discerns in so many contemporary projects of revaluing practical reason. Nor is it a matter of raising, against his relativism, the universalist project of a transcendental pragmatics whose difficulties have been acutely exposed by the lecture we have just heard. But it is perhaps a matter of granting Apel at least a certain acuteness in his diagnosis of Rortian pragmatism, which he describes as “subjectively progressive” but “objectively regressive” or conservative. To arrive at a real reformism, it is certainly necessary to grant beliefs less reverence than they demand, but also a little more consider­ ation, perhaps, than the relativist philosopher is willing to give them. For agreement on the “useful” remains always conditioned by some prior understanding about values—so much so that the objection raised against the relativist does not derive from the core thesis about the absence of an absolute reference for truth, but from the attempt to erect merely pragmatic parameters to support the conventions of the city or to decide on the validity of propositions. Our debt to tradition and “beliefs” is not so easily settled, as many a project purporting to be progressive and reformist has proved. Nonetheless, as Bento Prado Jr.’s rich and concise final observations make us notice, his intention is not only to oppose relativism and absolutism in order to show a constitutive solidarity between them and combine the critique of both. “What is the use,” he himself protests, “of cobbling together a few arguments against pragmatism, be it naturalist or transcendental, if we have nothing to put in its place?” (p. 146). In response, he tries to give us at least a glimpse of the alternative, to which his own vision and exercise of philosophy is dedicated. As Bento Prado Jr. shows, the articulation and the problematization of the counterpoint structure that connects the relativist and the absolutist views of the world are not external and indifferent to the actual constitution of philosophy; for they indicate its limits, they demarcate its very terrain of operation. Moving away from the two extremes, philosophy nevertheless does not seek an intermediate position (the reference here is to Adorno’s Negative Dialectics). Rather it emerges from the very tension between these extremes, from the impossibility of inhabiting them, and from the movement



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produced by the constant denunciation of their non-truth. The labor of philosophy is born from the aporia expressed in the impossibility of deciding between these symmetric alternatives, or rather from the “inhibition of the will to choose,”1 which upholds the tension that sustains this labor and runs through it. According to the Pascalian meditation that Bento Prado Jr. uses as an epigraph, this is a matter of bearing “an inability to prove that no Dogmatism can overcome,” while upholding “an idea of truth that no Pyrrhonism can overcome.” The desire to stay in one of these extremes is certainly great. Yet it is also illusory, for it would condemn us to a blind oscillation between conversion and reconversion to each, in a vicious circle, as Bento Prado Jr. has attempted to show on a different occasion in relation to the philosophical itinerary of Oswaldo Porchat (who is mentioned again here). Those who consider this undecidability a scandal and look for the certainty of knowledge, he claims, risk losing philosophy itself … “as if the possibility of philosophy were born of its most internal impossibility” (p. 146), of the incapacity to resolve its constitutive tension, to avoid the traps that its own tradition springs on us in its desire to be the truth and, precisely, to no longer be philosophy. But how are we to understand the labor of this tension? To be exact, what does it mean to keep thought between Scylla and Charybdis, as it were, in a double process of simultaneous attachment to and detachment from the rival alternatives of absolutism and relativism? (It does not matter if we associate the latter to an appeal to pragmatic criteria as possible substitutes for an unattainable good and truth.) How are we to think, finally, about the occupation of this space opened by the distancing of the two extremes—the territory of universal certainty and that of “worldviews”—a space that would delimit the very terrain in which philosophy takes place? One could certainly think of such occupation as a permanent exercise of criticism of, or opposition to, these “natural inclinations” of reason to absolutism and relativism. This would be the always recommenced task of showing their non-truth on their own premises, remedying thought’s predisposition (manic–depressive or bipolar, as we might say today) to viciously circulate around them through the uninterrupted use of the medicine of negative dialectics—at once an instrument to decipher the oscillating condition of natural reason and a hermeneutics of the human condition itself. This is the path that modernity can find in Pascal’s philosophy, which is incapable of either renouncing truth or attaining it … even if it is easily distracted

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and thrown off that search, a tendency of which Montaigne is the paradigm. We know that, from a Pascalian perspective, Montaigne—the author of the Essays—slips into the lowest and most entangled form of Pyrrhonism. His is a lax doubt, complacent, immobilized in a conformist acceptance of its own poverty, and inimical, in its nonchalance (indifference), to deepening the investigation to a level where it should become possible to dissipate the paradox and to comprehend its tragic, bipolar nature: the “heart.” Yet we could ask Bento Prado Jr. this: What if we tried to understand Montaignian doubt from a position different from the one to which Pascal is led by his attachment to an absolutist horizon? Could we not discern another figure here, could we not discover another interpretation of the tension that he acutely designates as constitutive of philosophy? Instead of the renunciation of truth or the lazy paralysis of “surplus doubt” (surcroît du doute, says Pascal: doubt that doubts itself, ignorance unaware of being ignorant, put to rest on the sweet pillow of incuriosity), does Montaigne’s reflection not testify, on the contrary, to truth’s necessary adherence to the exercise of thought, to its unavoidable connection with the act of judgment? The starting point here is not, as one could imagine, human reason’s irremediable exile from the land of truth. On the contrary, reason seems to inhabit this territory as its “natural place”: “I may indeed contradict myself now and then; but truth, as Demades said, I never contradict.”2 Montaigne recovers for the exercise of thought (in its effective, “sincere,” or unfeigned practice) a certain innocence; he enhances its internal and native connection to truth. For, if our “opinions” and “beliefs” do not possess any external criteria that can absolutely validate their reasons, they cannot be reduced to capricious motivations and particular interests of the subject either. The fact that these reasons prevail upon our conviction, that they conquer our adherence, is still a result of their intrinsic value, of the strength proper to them. If therefore Montaigne does not merrily slip into the temptation of filling the void of an absolute foundation for truth with utilitarian or pragmatic motivations, as we see happening in the relativist tradition, it is because he understands that, between the claim to divine certainty and the mundane opportunism of interests, between the Law in itself and what is useful for each and everyone, there is also the “honest.” As a moral and political category that is also epistemological, the honest implies receptivity to and respect for motives, allegations and reasons that



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thought apprehends as prevailing because they are better, more articulate, more pertinent or adequate, or even necessary. The honest communicates with the true, and thus restores the dignity intrinsic in the exercise of judgment by stressing its primary inclination toward sense, which comes before any interest or any type of “moral satisfaction.” Thus understood, the distance that Montaigne’s Que sais-je? puts between itself and absolutism would not lead us to relativism or to an impossibility of choice, to the invincible opposition between human poverty and the divine. On the contrary, it would undo this agonizing tension, removing the need to choose by revealing, in the very constitution of “opinions” and “beliefs,” a horizon of transcendence that keeps them open to truth. Would not, then, Montaigne’s worldly nonchalance set us in the direction of an effective deciphering and interpretation of our human condition more than the tragic religiosity of Pascal could—clearing, beyond rival alternatives, an affirmative path for the exercise of philosophy?

Neither Apel nor Rorty Commentary by Paulo Eduardo Arantes

On the basis of what we have just heard from Professor Bento Prado Jr., we can imagine how good the lectures at the old French Overseas Department were.1 Some—a few—know what the perfect French dissertation looks like. It is exemplified by the small masterpiece that we have just heard, which Bento himself describes, with undue modesty, as an extravagant zigzag. It is clear that it is a zigzag: all the grace, all the charm, is in the extravagance of punctiliously linking, for example, an eminent and fashionable American philosopher to the figure of Protagoras. I learned how to perform this Parisian haute couture—along with other sleights of hand, of course—from Professor Bento Prado Jr. and others, some twenty-five or thirty years ago, at the University of São Paulo. If you have all paid attention, you will have noticed that the symmetry is a false symmetry: the exposition is not impartial. It is clear that all of Bento’s sympathy goes to the side of relativism. Like a good German, poor Karl-Otto Apel was treated very kindly but with ridicule, just like another illustrious German, named Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, a German Aufklärer (enlightener) at the turn of the nineteenth century who edited pamphlets and books and was so kindly mocked by Jena’s young romantic avant-garde that he was finally driven to despair and, it seems, suicide. This was only a stylistic description, not in any way an argument; it was just an impression designed to help me situate myself.



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Bento has reactivated an old French trope from the University of São Paulo: it consists in contrasting the good sophist, who in this case is Protagoras, with a numpty, who in this case is poor Apel. I will change the characters, because Apel is too heavy-handed. It is easy to knock him around; his intentions are good, evidently, but good intentions are not enough. I will move on to Apel’s associate, who was his student and has become one of the most eminent figures on the contemporary philosophical scene: Jürgen Habermas. Let us say, then, that this is a game for two heavyweights to play. Yet ultimately Bento Prado Jr.’s exposition is not impartial; it is clearly favorable to relativism. This is to be expected, for it was precisely a relativist perspective such as the sophists’—which is a cosmopolitan perspective—that deprovincialized us at a time when this philosophical style became established in São Paulo. What one needed to combat was exactly doctrinarianism, dogmatism, an absolutist conception of truth, and the like—that is, one needed to show that philosophies did not refute one another as it could be imagined. At the most, they were decidedly irrefutable, as Bento Prado Jr. rightly reminds us with reference to structural historiography, which consists precisely in showing that Protagoras was right. Every philosopher was the measure of her own philosophy, and therefore what we have to do is understand what the philosopher is saying and not try to refute her; and this generates a lesson in good philosophical manners. This was decisive for us and explains why Bento’s scales tip toward this relativist side, construed not in the strictest sense but in broader terms that are more sympathetic to Professor Rorty, who—Bento would say between the lines, though he cannot say it too emphatically—finally discovered the charm of French philosophy, thirty years after us. One of our own, then! That being said, since we are among friends, and with all due respect to Bento, I would like to make one or two observations on the content of his exposition and then change the topic a little. My goal is not to counterpose but to juxtapose some observations on his text. Inverting the order of what I have just said, let us say that I would like to draw attention to the following question: What is the current debate on relativism really about? Of course, Bento knows perfectly well that it is not about a philosophical commonplace or controversy that is 2,500 years old. This is not what is at play here. Bento made the connection but did not take it to the end. We want to know what is effectively at stake in the current debate or dispute between relativism

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and anti-relativism. How does it happen, why and how does an exemplary USP philosopher such as himself feel at ease (or not) in this dispute, and what is his view? We saw how he dealt with the theme: in a promising, ingenious, and obviously inimitable way. Few have managed to attain this degree of stylistic sparkle. Anyway, the topic under discussion is one that I would not say is strictly American but that represents a great ideological debate, of the greatest reach and importance, whose scene is set in the United States. Somehow this North American scene concentrates various contemporary ideological protagonists who come from various places and illustrate tendencies that are not simply American but Franco-American. One is Richard Rorty’s neopragmatism, which has already been mentioned. Another is deconstructionism, which comes from the field of literature and incorporates trends in French philosophy that Rorty reads differently. To this we might add, in the opposite camp, so to speak, a sort of eclectical mix of German– American philosophy: the local implantation of the latest version of critical theory that began in Frankfurt in the 1920s or 1930s and had very precise positions on capitalism. These are the protagonists. And here we are, in the audience for now: we have to find a way, a door, a crack—an opening from which we may be able to give some pertinent opinion on this debate. Bento has already chosen his fighters: Apel and Rorty, these are the two contenders. We need to discover the real topic that is at stake. This is what I would like to do. But first I would like to draw attention to the general structure of Bento’s text; I cannot comment on it in detail, for it is enormous, yet there are very curious, entertaining things, reminiscences … But that is not really the point. One of the tricks of this French dissertation that Bento has converted into the little masterpiece we just heard is the following. What he is really saying is something like this. “Actually, as a Brazilian, je m’en fous, I couldn’t care less if Professor X or Professor Y said this, or if the German said this or the German said that; what I really want is to take this opportunity to write a gloss on the Pascalian motto that has been my personal favorite for three or four decades and that I have used on other occasions to argue with my friend, Oswaldo Porchat, who is at times a Pyrrhonist, at times a dogmatist and who at the moment apparently wants to be both … This is what I want to talk about. So I go from Pyrrhonism or Protagorean–Rortian relativism to Apelian– Habermasian dogmatism and vice versa.” Everything gets a little



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complicated because Bento cites Adorno—and this is when he and I should make peace. But it will not happen this time, Bento, or else we will never have anything to discuss again. In this case, you have tried to show, by citing Adorno, that there is an internal connection between the two positions, which are thus disqualified, since both display their non-truth. But, since you are glossing Pascal’s aphorism, I must say that in Pascal we are dealing with a different kind of dialectics (if we use this term in the broadest possible sense): an undecidable and actually Christian dialectics, in the sense that it is agonistic and agonizing. I have my reasons and am unable to prove what I want; I have a certain idea of truth and I cannot prove it. This at once shows the impotence of dogmatic proof and constitutes an idea of truth that no Pyrrhonism can beat. I thus define myself in this indefinite oscillation, and there is no solution in sight. God is hidden: if he were not, a solution would exist. And it is precisely in this alternation that one finds a serious Christian element, which occurs again in another form of degraded or mitigated dialectic, namely the indefinite Aut Aut that Kierkegaard will oppose to Hegel: I do not know whether Abraham chose or not, and so on. The joke here lies precisely in showing that this is how our friend Porchat works: he will oscillate eternally. We will enter a new millennium and he will still be at times Pyrrhonian and at times dogmatic, and switch again successively, without there being any progression properly speaking, so that the term “dialectics” would be out of place. You added something to the conclusion of your oral exposition that was neither in the first nor in the second written version. You said that, between these two positions, relativism and antirelativism—let us call the latter, improperly, “absolutism”—there is an internal connection and they refute each other. Pascal was right, one sends us back to the other. It is a paradoxical structure, but there is a convergence: both are philosophies centered on the idea of conversation or communicative action. Differently put, they share the same final chapter of the famous linguistic turn, which is pragmatic. They are both pragmatic philosophies: one transcendental, in Apel’s case, another quasi-transcendental, even ashamedly so, in Habermas’. It is this convergence that interests me, this convergence that you point out and that was not in your earlier text, with which you have therefore just enlightened me. It was the hook that I needed. It is in this convergence that we need to explore what they agree on and where they part company. Let us then return

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to the metropolitan debate; then we will see how the periphery can intervene in it. I recall an essay by Richard Rorty himself on this. Notice how peculiar is our position on the sideline, discussing him and his friends, American Habermasians and Habermas. Regarding the inverted symmetry between them, Habermas often says something like this (it is Rorty who cites him): “Curiously, in Germany people take me for an Aufklärer. I am a universalist, an Enlightenment thinker, I believe in reason, except that it is a different reason, not that of the classics, a reason with its bones taken out, so to speak, a more flexible reason. Anyway, I am on the side of a tradition that, in Germany, has always been the minority, in opposition, subaltern or subordinate. I feel comforted, I feel confirmed in my positions, because my adversaries on the right are historicists and relativists: they belong to the old German tradition, which is anti-West—that is, anti-French, anticapitalist, anti-liberal, and so on. It is the philosophy of historical particularity, of national particularity, and hence the defense of the original Prussian way, which deviates from modern rationalization.” On the American side, Rorty claims in turn basically the same thing: “I also feel, say, reassured in the progressive vocation of my so-called historicist choice, because my adversaries on the right are what, precisely? They are Aufklärer who want me to ground myself in the truth of things, to find justification in the just order of American society, of American capitalism, and so on.” This is how they intersect. If I am not mistaken, Rorty’s conclusion is somewhat like this. “What separates me from Habermas’ socio­ political perspective is nothing, it is just a philosophical question.” A philosophical question, fancy that! The philosophical debate is the least important thing here. Habermas would not like that, he is still a philosopher. In Rorty’s case it’s fine, since he is a neopragmatist; for him, philosophy is something that has already been left behind. It was left behind, to be exact, by the quick march of Aufklärung (Enlightenment), taken in the sociological, Weberian sense of a rationalization of the traditional, metaphysical, humanist state inherited from the ancien régime. Thus we can perfectly well put to one side this philosophical divergence between a naturalist neopragmatism of a more sociological or naturalizing bent (in the sense of Quine’s naturalized epistemology) and a more transcendental pragmatist (in the similarly North American Peircean sense).



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Distractions apart, then, what we find is not an oscillation between two antagonistic extremes but a convergence, as you rightly put it, except that you located it only on the plane of the philosophical model of paradigm change. On what do these extremes converge? Well, obviously I cannot give a circumstantiated explanation of this convergence here, because it would be necessary to narrate the two evolutions, their trajectories. One of them came from a Marxist tradition, but arrived at conclusions that no longer have anything to do with Marxism—and he is alright with that.2 The other comes, let us say, from the tradition of American or Anglo-American analytical philosophy, whose strange, very curious peculiarity is that it is a kind of internal overcoming of analytical philosophy by means of now classic arguments from the likes of Quine, Davidson, Sellars, and so forth. This resulted in a sort of spring clean whereby the last transcendental philosophy—American neopositivism, a postwar descendant of the Vienna circle—could at last be put on the shelf, sent on retirement. The general picture that I have in mind is as follows. We have a kind of convergence or intersecting history between, on the one hand, a process of modernization, of rationalization of the social relations of production—that is, the expansion or transformation of capitalism—that takes place at the same time on both sides of the Atlantic, in the United States and in Germany; and, on the other hand, a process, a trajectory, an intellectual history of detranscendentalization of philosophy. I believe both Rorty and Habermas would agree with that. And what is the result? I would say that their actual object, the real topic, what actually interests us here is an ethical and political question. It is therefore no longer an epistemological question, it no longer concerns the theory of knowledge. This is why Richard Rorty says, at a certain point: I am interested in going back to the American pragmatic tradition of the public intellectual, of the public philosopher. The transformation of philosophy, of which I am one of the protagonists, is propelled by an explicit political intention. I want to go back to influencing education, I want to go back to influencing public knowledge, I do not want to leave this at the mercy of French literary deconstructionists, who sell a different approach. Habermas’ itinerary is equally complex and I cannot summarize it. But there, too, what is at stake is a political turn in which the goal is to clarify, justify, legitimize a new state of things that began to be shaped since World War II. When capitalism changes and comes to

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be organized by the state, as it were, and this reorganization puts an end to what one used to call systemic crises, the old apocalyptic prophecies of Frankfurtian critics such as Adorno become obsolete. The case is closed, things have changed. What has changed, then, and why do Rorty and Habermas converge on this point? I must be brief, possibly unfair, and seemingly arbitrary. What makes them coincide, what do they coincide on? The current cultural logic of capitalism either dispenses with or no longer admits—depending on which of the two is talking—what old-timers used to call “immanent critique.” Because there is no so-called reason at work, there are no longer any definite historical tendencies set by the existing mode of production in its development, there is no longer the possibility of an immanent critique, there is no longer a philosophy of history. The famous contradiction between productive forces and social relations of production no longer exists. That is another question. What was immanent critique based on? On the supposition that there is something like a natural rational right. It was on its foundation that one could practice critique from within capitalism itself, through the theory of value, the exchange of equivalents that was not really an exchange of equivalents, owing to the expropriation of surplus value. This could be brought to light because it was spoliation in the classical sense. Now, when the state intervenes to regulate spoliation, it controls it and makes it explicit; it is then that, as the Germans say, the dominant capitalist class becomes cynical and knows it. Ideological critique does not enlighten anyone anymore; they are tired of knowing it. Peter Sloterdijk’s aphorism is right on the mark here: “Cynicism is enlightened false consciousness.”3 Well then! In the American case, I could name ten, fifteen examples in epistemology. Quine, the most eminent of them, through the gesture of detranscendentalizing epistemology or naturalizing it, simultaneously dissociates norms of justification or procedures and the justification of knowledge from the idea of truth, which becomes entirely disposable. Now, this politicization of neopragmatic philosophy that we find in Rorty and that departs from analytic philosophy just wishes to say this: in good, liberal American society, the ideas of justification and truth are dissociated from each other in the description of how capitalism works. Rorty’s adversaries on the right, these Reaganites, are liberals in the classical, eighteenth-century sense, associated with Reaganite cynicism. This social order, the order that he is in solidarity with, is



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not founded on the objectivity of a truth, although Rorty can legitimate it by describing the procedures that bind this society together: the maximization of profit, the laws of the market, and so on. But this legitimation has nothing to do with the idea of truth, and thus he will not go around declaring war on Saddam Hussein in the name of truth. It is scandalous, but it is in fact not a step backwards; it is one more step in the development of Aufklärung, of this rational­ ization that presupposes fewer scruples (and not in a moralistic sense) when it comes to justifying the new international order. It is thus, then, that the two antagonists in Bento’s exposition, the two antagonistic philosophical positions at the center of his account, converge on the same pragmatic–linguistic paradigm, to show how it is possible for us to live together, or how we will be able to manage something that they suppose is already given: the normality of capitalism, which is here to stay. This is, finally, how we have luckily rid ourselves of those great bores: ideologues, theoretical or philosophical intellectuals in the old sense of the term. And this is why those who demand coherence from Rorty, saying that he is abandoning the old radical tradition of political thought that has existed since the United States’ foundation, since the constitution, are mistaken. If there is such a thing as pragmatism, in the strict political sense that the word has in the United States, it begins at this moment; it appears for the first time in the interpretation of the American constitution, when the farmers, the small landowners, are defeated. There is in fact a beautiful essay by Rorty about the priority of democracy over philosophy. Fancy that! Democracy is more important than the idea of truth in philosophy. Why? He begins with a commentary on what Thomas Jefferson says. Jefferson separates the justification for some form of political organization from the idea of truth. The idea of truth no longer matters, it is not founded on nature. Yesterday, at this event, Ernst Gellner made a sarcastic remark on how, in the preamble of the American constitution, it is self-evident that all people are created equal. It is clear that, at that time, at the end of the eighteenth century, this was not self-evident for absolutely everyone in the world. What was actually evident? It was evident that, in elaborating the constitution, its framers were in agreement that this was the best way to live for freedom, for the prosperity of business, and so on. So the famous American radicalism is already there. The rest will be “betterments,” a matter of social engineering, of perfecting an order that is already legitimated by this procedure of justification.

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Well then! This refers back to this convergence between Rorty and Habermas on the subject of capitalist normalcy, the scene of which is American. Except that it is everything but normal, because the economy is in shambles and everything is in flames, even in the United States. So, what is the big problem in the United States? It is the social disintegration caused by this apparent normalcy; the problem is that the world economy is disintegrating the country and, by doing so, it exposes the fact that the periphery is beginning to sprout there, so to speak—and for a number of reasons. It is when postcolonialism becomes present on the American scene that the idea of cultural relativism appears. The epistemological problem has become secondary. This is the problem that American philosophy has at home. Thus, when Quine, for example, replaces the Kantian program and undoes the opposition between the empirical and the transcendental, the synthetic and the analytic, and so forth, he comes to replace this program with a description of social practices of justification. These social practices may be understood in a cultural manner. So the problem is the confrontation of various social practices and the justification of beliefs. Then we will encounter two great strategies on the American scene: on the one hand, one that we could call “neopragmatism”; on the other, one that has been called the “American cultural left.”4 I have already said too much, but I insist. In this American cultural model, the conflict takes place around the idea of cultural relativism. Some insist on cultural bargaining, on negotiation; others insist on separatism, on confrontation, on breaking hierarchies, and the like. It is as if, in the social disintegration underway in the United States, when nobody knows anymore what the Americans are because their economic relations span the whole world, the problem were transferred to the cultural plane. The material question, the terrestrial basis of the problem, as old nineteenth-century folk would put it, is hidden. Everything will take place in a great cultural conversation that will be more uncompromising and unhinged in the enclave of American campuses and a little more ventilated on the plane of highbrow culture, which is where Richard Rorty circulates. And this is when, in the face of this cultural idealism, if you pardon me the ugly word, the pressing question of cultural relativism arises. Yet, since relativism is demonized, one sees that everyone knows that the problem is not only cultural; it is a serious, global problem that repeats itself everywhere in culture on the



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American scene, which is currently where everyone is concentrated, because this is the capital of the empire. Now, it would be necessary to show how this unfolds at the periphery and what our experience is. As an illustration of the perspective we can have on the question of relativism, I think that Bento Prado Jr.’s text is an extraordinary starting point.

6 On Deleuze An Interview*

FOLHA DE S. PAULO: In Foucault’s words, perhaps one day this century will be known as Deleuzian. What place does Deleuze occupy in twentieth-century philosophy? And, if you allow me, what place should he occupy in future philosophy? BENTO PRADO JR.: It is still early to decide on the place of Deleuze in twentieth-century philosophy. To situate a contemporary of ours in this way, we would have to fly over our time and ourselves. A fortiori, it is strictly impossible to anticipate the assessment that the twenty-first century will make of ours. (Bergson, in an interview, refused to answer when asked what the essential features of the theater of the future would be—and he added that, if he could anticipate them, he would make this theater, which would thus become present. In the same way, if I could anticipate the perspective of twenty-first century philosophy, I would write it, introducing it into the twentieth century.) In any case, something can be said. Deleuze’s work runs against the grain of the dominant movement in philosophy in the second half of our century, which is characterized by an increasing technicization of its methods and a corresponding evaporation of its real subject matter: like Aristotle’s God, contemporary philosophy non curat sublunaria (is not interested * This interview was partially published in the Mais! supplement of Folha de São Paulo, June 2, 1996.



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in the sublunary world). All of Deleuze’s work, even the books dedicated to the history of philosophy, ultimately have as their goal the clarification of our experience of the contemporary world: politics, science, art. He takes in all these subjects, guided by the intention to detect the governing logic behind anything that happens in this experience—ultimately, capital. Foucault’s celebrated statement should be taken cum grano salis; more than a boutade, it was a provocation against the enemies of this demystifying conception of philosophy that he shared with his friend Deleuze. FOLHA DE S. PAULO: You are the author of a book on Bergson, Presença e campo transcendental [Presence and Transcendental Field]. How do you assess Deleuze’s appropriation of Bergson’s work? BENTO PRADO JR.: Before appropriating Bergson’s philosophy, Deleuze wrote some essays and a book on Bergson as a historian of philosophy (though it is necessary to add some nuance here, as I will do in a minute). In the voluminous literature dedicated to the author of Matter and Memory, these pieces are definitely among the most notable, the best of the best. I must say that my own book owes much to Deleuze’s small essay “Bergson’s Conception of Difference.” And I would add that, had Deleuze published his Bergsonism in 1964 rather than 1966, it would have taken the subject of my PhD thesis away from me. In any case, what matters is that, by providing an inspired and rigorous interpretation of Bergson’s philosophy, Deleuze connects it to other philosophies (those of Nietzsche, William James, Whitehead, Hume …), assembling a system of mutual crosslightings and creating the field for a new initiative in thought. History of philosophy and philosophy converge here to the point of becoming indiscernible. To answer your question literally, let us say that this appropriation is legitimate not only because it enriches what has been appropriated but also because it frees the appropriated work from biased or poor readings, thus reopening the channels for its immanent understanding. FOLHA DE S. PAULO: What does Deleuze mean when he asks us to think of the world under the logic of change, of becoming? BENTO PRADO JR.: Like Bergson (for example, in the last chapter of Creative Evolution), Deleuze sees in the history of philosophy the development of a single idea of philosophy, subordinated to the principles of identity or sovereign representation, which,

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according to him, is broken only in exceptional moments (ancient materialism, Stoicism, Spinoza, Hume, Nietzsche …). What the whole tradition of philosophy has in common is its blindness to the irreducibility of the sensible to the logical or the conceptual, which cannot reabsorb the sensible without leaving a remainder, and to the singularity of the event, which cannot be anticipated, recognized, or (p)represented. This is what constitutes the very being of becoming. On this point converge the Bergsonian idea of heterogeneity between two kinds of multiplicities (quantitative and qualitative) and the Humean idea of the imagination as the ground of the spirit, a chaos that precedes the normalization and establishment of the principles that transform it into human nature. These two radical forms of empiricism, Bergsonian and Humean, lead Deleuze to a remodeling of transcendental aesthetics that frees the sensible from its domestication, its conceptual or formal–intuitive unification, by disconnecting it from transcendental analytics and connecting it directly to the critique of the faculty of judgment and to the analytics of the sublime. What is thus made visible is the immeasurable, the sensible without a concept, a chaotic dispersion or mad becoming. Becoming cannot be anticipated, domesticated in the recognition of the concept, and comes to be the true sign of being. Only the idea of becoming can return, with its rebellion against representation, against the density of being—against the cosmos placed against a backdrop of chaos. FOLHA DE S. PAULO: Bergson apart, what is the role of Nietzsche’s thought in Deleuze’s constitution of a philosophy of difference? BENTO PRADO JR.: What I said about the Deleuze–Bergson relation applies just as well to the Deleuze–Nietzsche relation. First of all, there is a beautiful book, Nietzsche and Philosophy, which provides an interpretative network capable of showing the consistency of this protean work, which seems to resist all efforts to impose a structure on it. Deleuze evidently does not hide the limits of his attempt; he even singles out the enigmatic, albeit central, idea of the “eternal return” as something in the nature of a limit for the complete application of his dynamic model of active versus reactive forces in the explanation of Nietzsche’s work. Secondly, Nietzsche figures as one of the heroes of thought, one of the shining beacons in Deleuze’s own project. As Vincent Descombes rightly observes in a text that is nonetheless critical to the point of bitterness, it is Nietzsche rather than Kant who



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represents, for Deleuze, the true critical revolution in philosophy at the dawn of our modernity.1 It was not enough to dissolve the illusions of metaphysics or the cognitive value of the ideas of soul, God, and world, as Kant did in his transcendental dialectics. Is it not true that the Chinaman of Königsberg2 restored, in the domain of practical reason, what he had dethroned in that of theoretical reason? True critique, or critique taken to its limit, becomes a critique of culture, of the institutions that produce that culture and of the values they attribute to it, including science and morality themselves. Critique ceases to be an effort to establish limits in order to provide justification; it becomes an instrument for diagnosing a form of life in the process of decay. A book like The Anti-Oedipus, which provides a diagnosis of the contemporary form of life with the help of psychoanalysis and Marxism (even Vincent Descombes acknowledges it, although without much sympathy), still has Nietzsche’s genealogy of values running all the way through it like a red thread. Once again, this is an appropriation that frees what has been appropriated and reworks an old obsession: one of Deleuze’s first publications was a small anthology of classical texts for use at school, and its title was Instincts and Institutions.3 FOLHA DE S. PAULO: What is the meaning of Deleuze’s reconsideration of Bergsonian concepts in his books on cinema? Why was Deleuze interested in cinema? BENTO PRADO JR.: This same question received an explicit answer from Deleuze in three interviews reproduced in Negotiations.4 The writings on cinema can be seen from two perspectives: that of an effort at local conceptualization (an extraction of adequate aesthetic concepts, based on cinematographic practice itself, in its quasi-technical specificity), and that of the effects that such a work can have in the more general field of philosophy. It is this second aspect that matters for the question at hand, and it can be schematized in the following manner: when examined immanently, the specificity of cinema (as an intersection between image and movement) renders possible a refinement of the ideas of non-linguistic sign and image and, with them, a critique of classical theories of signification and the imagination. (An earlier formulation of the same problem appears in Foucault’s preface to the French translation of Ludwig Biswanger’s Dream and Existence, first published by Desclée de Brouwer in 1954.) But why Bergson? Was not cinema, for Bergson, precisely the

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best metaphor of the way in which blind understanding deals with the reality of duration, of the rationalism that, since Zeno of Elea, has represented movement as a succession of still moments and thus made it rigorously unthinkable? Deleuze inverts the terms of the Bergson–cinema equation: although Bergson was himself blind to the aesthetic–metaphysical novelty of the cinema, in Matter and Memory he unknowingly provided the necessary concepts for an immanent analysis of this form of art. The materialism of Matter and Memory—the thesis that vision is not external to the thing seen but is a limitation of that thing itself, or even the thesis that the subject finds itself somehow imbedded in the object (Deleuze will say that the eye is not a camera, it is the screen itself)—is what allows Deleuze to oppose a new aesthetics to those of a phenomenological or linguistic–structural kind. No phenomenology of the imaginary, no analysis of the discursive structure of film will be able to reveal the actual productivity of cinema and open the field for the necessary taxonomy of images and signs in which this production is expressed or distributed. Let us venture a formula: what is at stake here is a materialist semiology, a theory of non-linguistic signification built on the movement–matter– image triad that Bergson proposed in his greatest book as an instrument for a new aesthetics of cinema. FOLHA DE S. PAULO: What is the importance of the Deleuzian critique of subjectivity as foundational? BENTO PRADO JR.: Deleuze’s critique of subjectivity as foundational is not so much an original trait of his philosophy as a point of consensus for every philosophical reflection of an antiphenomenological bent, from analytic philosophy to so-called deconstructionisms, to neopragmatism in both its naturalist (American) and transcendental (German) varieties, and to all the different structuralisms and poststructuralisms. What distinguishes this critique is perhaps the fact that Deleuze sees the founding subject (Cartesian, Kantian, Husserlian, and even Hegelian, as per Gérard Lebrun’s comments in L’envers de la dialectique) as essentially representative and submitted to the regime of identity, a unifying archē and synthetic operator that is capable of exorcising every form of rebellious difference.5 The point is, then, to reverse direction so as to lead thought toward something like a prior, pre-subjective and pre-objective field, in which both subject and object are constituted. Against the



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philosophy of the subject, this is a matter of reconsidering the reflections of Hume and Bergson, of Sartre, of William James: Hume’s imagination, understood not as a system but as an anonymous collection of data or ideas, a set without a structure or center, “a collection without an album, a play without a stage, a flux of perceptions,”6 like the field of epistemologically neutral images at the start of Bergson’s Matter and Memory, in which for-itself and in-itself have not yet been separated; the Sartre of The Transcendence of the Ego, who casts the ego outside consciousness, as transcendent as a chair or a stone; James’ stream of thought in the Principles, the same James who regretted that one could not say “it thinks” in the same way one says “it rains,” since the grammar of the statement “I think” creates the illusion of a substantial cogito. Was it not Nietzsche who saw the identity of the cogito or the founding subject only as the effect of a grammatical illusion? FOLHA DE S. PAULO: What place does this critique occupy in the formulation of an ethics and a politics? BENTO PRADO JR.: In the field of ethics and politics, to criticize the self-founding subject (moral autonomy, for example, in the Kantian sense) means denouncing heteronomy under the appearance of autonomy. Once again, Nietzsche is the key (or the main instrument) in the Deleuzean operation. In essence, the supposed autonomy would be only a sublimated form of heteronomy, or the interiorization of an external transcendental power, law, or master. From a political point of view, Deleuze’s stance is perhaps the most perfect expression of anarchist leftism. Could a philosophy whose essential vocation is to establish a metaphysics that is “anarchontic” (lacking a central organizing principle) express itself politically in any other way? The critiques addressed to Deleuze’s politics are many and varied. Although Deleuze was allergic to dialectics, some see in his politics the unwitting resurgence of the phraseology of the leftleaning Young Hegelians (Max Stirner, for example). Others are crueler and regard it as a disheveled, dramatic version of the radical yet retrospectively very well behaved and ethical rather than political positions of someone like Alain: the individual or citizen against the powers that be. A particularly harsh critic, Vincent Descombes, returning to Raymond Aron’s remarks about the “imaginary Marxisms” of the French existentialists, identifies in Deleuze a pseudo-Marxism who, after describing the

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destructive effects of capitalism, “politely consigns class struggle to the museum.”7 (Deleuze himself would nevertheless reassert his Marxism in Negotiations.) It is not up to me to act as judge here, situating myself in between prosecution and defense. But I can recall that what is most alive in Marxism today also appears to have consigned at least the idea of the organization of class struggle to the museum, after the proletariat’s acknowledged failure as universal class. Vincent Descombes is perhaps too hasty in identifying Marxism with its doctrinal expression at a particular moment in history. Without judging anything, if I am not completely mistaken, I think that maybe we could say that Deleuze would not be in such bad company today. FOLHA DE S. PAULO: Seen from today’s angle, what remains relevant in Deleuze’s critique of psychoanalysis? BENTO PRADO JR.: Although I am interested in the theoretical aspect of Freud’s work, I believe I lack the resources to judge the reality of psychoanalytical practice, which is what Deleuze is interested in. He perceives this aspect as just another strategy of reterritorialization through familialization: Oedipus, daddy-mommy. Considering the formidable proliferation of psychotherapies in the contemporary world, however, it is hard not to recognize here the sign of a vast process of psychologization and privatization of social life, which does not necessarily mean a strong civilizational advancement. For more about this, see my essay “O neo-psicologismo humanista” [“Humanist Neo-Psychologism”], in Alguns ensaios. FOLHA DE S. PAULO: What are the implications of the theory of multiplicities and the concept of the virtual for the reformulation of the concepts of knowledge and truth? BENTO PRADO JR.: According to Deleuze, the concepts of different multiplicities (and I stress the plural) and of virtuality are essential if we want to avoid two pitfalls in which thought can get trapped. These are two rival conceptions of philosophy that nevertheless share the same epistemology and ontology, since they both see knowledge as an endpoint in which thought attains its final rest without remainders, in its coincidence with an object that has been fixed for all time and has always waited, well behaved and in silence, for the light that finally reveals it as it is, identical to itself. Phenomenology and analytical philosophy, that is, an insight into essence and a logical–functional circumscription of states of affairs, both seem to share this kind



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of epistemological and ontological optimism, which identifies thought and knowledge. Deleuze’s ideas on thought, knowledge, and truth are most clearly expounded in What Is Philosophy?,8 where philosophy is defined in terms of the tension that at once connects it to and separates it from science and art. It is not a matter of privileging any of the angles of the triangle thus defined, but of showing the peculiarity of the relation that each one of them establishes with truth. What the book offers us is a sense of what is vertiginous in philosophy, and likewise in science and in art. Philosophy, science, and art are irreducible planes that can nonetheless be explored according to a single strategy. Instances of philosophical instauration will symmetrically correspond to instances of artistic and scientific instauration: “plane of immanence of philosophy, plane of composition of art, plane of reference or coordination of science; form of concept, force of sensation, function of knowledge; concepts and conceptual personae, sensations and aesthetic figures, figures and partial observers.”9 But it is necessary above all to highlight the book’s main political target, which is the conception of philosophy as logical analysis of language. Deleuze’s response is to assert the non-propositional character of philosophical language. Contrary to the proposition or the propositional function, which necessarily refers to a real or possible state of affairs or yet an external referent, in the language of philosophy the concept is not attributed to anything external to it; it is addressed to itself and is thus self-referential. The style of philosophy is more of the order of poiēsis (production) than alētheia (the revelation or unconcealment of truth). Thought and knowledge are thus once again distinguished. Of truth one will be able to say that it is differently portrayed in the different planes of science, art, and philosophy. FOLHA DE S. PAULO: What is the meaning, for philosophy, of the Deleuzian subversion of the paradigm of transcendence, which has been dominant since Plato? How is this proposal related to the so-called death of metaphysics? In short, what does it mean to think, according to Deleuze? BENTO PRADO JR.: It is obvious that it means first of all reconnecting to the initiative, and even to the language and “conceptual characters,” of Nietzsche’s thought; but Deleuze is above all interested in making the German philosopher into a “conceptual persona” of his own philosophy, as if Nietzsche

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were something like Deleuze’s Zarathustra, to be deployed in the war against contemporary forms of the philosophy of identity and repetition. Nietzsche used to say that, for as long as we continue to believe in grammar, the death of God would not be consummated. Deleuze would say, perhaps, that the metaphysics of identity will not be dead for as long as one believes that the logical analysis of language is the method of philosophy. FOLHA DE S. PAULO: Foucault was Deleuze’s most prominent interlocutor. After Foucault’s death, however, Deleuze proposed that we abandon Foucault’s concept of “disciplinary society,” suggesting “society of control” as a replacement. To what forms of power visible today is it pertinent to apply the Deleuzian concept? BENTO PRADO JR.: This question is also clearly answered by Deleuze in the postscript to Negotiations. The point is not to oppose or to criticize the concept of disciplinary societies but, following the steps of Foucault’s analyses and in continuity with them, to indicate a transformation in contemporary society. Foucault says that the model of confinement, which emerges in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to replace what he calls “societies of sovereignty,” culminates at the start of the twentieth century. Deleuze’s suggestion is that this model begins to undergo transformations after World War II, when the confinement model is substituted with the control model. I quote: The family is an “interior” that’s breaking down like all other interiors—educational, professional, and so on. The appropriate ministers have constantly been announcing supposedly appropriate reforms. Educational reforms, industrial reforms, hospital, army, prison reforms; but everyone knows these institutions are in more or less terminal decline. It’s simply a matter of nursing them through their death throes and keeping people busy until the new forces knocking at the door take over.10

Is not this idea of a society of control—it is me who is asking now—is it not akin to the Frankfurtian idea of the administered society? FOLHA DE S. PAULO: We could oppose the duplication of forms in the contemporary world, which is particularly evident in technological transformations of perception (virtual realities, informational networks, automata, etc.), to Deleuze’s dictum “we need reasons to believe in this world.”11 Is the direction



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in which contemporary ways of thinking and inventing move Deleuzian? Or are things going the opposite way? BENTO PRADO JR.: The statement “we need reasons to believe in this world” does not conflict with the duplication (or multiplication) of the world. On the contrary, the philosophy of difference is nourished by all forms of duplication and multiplication. Is not Deleuze’s philosophy itself a sort of duplication of other philosophies, as I pointed out earlier? In the preface to Difference and Repetition, for example, Deleuze recalls Borges’ little metaphysical–literary game of making Pierre Ménard, a fictional character who reproduced Cervantes’ Don Quixote word for word, into a real author, casting the Spanish writer and his work to the domain of the imaginary. What is more, the technological transformations of perception seem to him privileged ways to shed light on our perceptive access (or our immanence) to the world. Deleuze’s “naturalism” clears the way for the heuristic use of technical objects (Deleuze immediately realized the importance of Gilbert Simondon’s writings), and I actually believe that recent connectionist versions of artificial intelligence theory would be kind to him. Furthermore, in the same preface, he links the possibility of a renewal of philosophical thought and expression to the incorporation, by the philosopher, of new techniques and means of expression of arts such as the cinema and the theater, arts and techniques of duplication par excellence. FOLHA DE S. PAULO: Opponents often criticize Deleuze as an irrationalist, and he is occasionally labeled as a postmodernist. Is it necessary to defend Deleuze from these accusations? BENTO PRADO JR.: Irrationalism is a pseudoconcept. It belongs more to the language of insult than to that of analysis. What content would it have, without a previous definition of reason? Since there are as many concepts of reason as there are philosophies, one would say that irrationalism is the philosophy of the other. Or, to do a pastiche of Émile Bréhier’s witticism about the accusation of libertinism, “one is always someone else’s irrationalist.” No, my dear friend, it is not necessary to defend Deleuze from this accusation, to which it certainly would not occur to him to respond. It is enough to smile. As for the question of postmodernism, as far as I can see, it is an attribution that fits Lyotard, who transformed it into a hobbyhorse in his polemic against the Germans, better than it does Deleuze.

7 Bergson, 110 Years Later*

Ten years ago, when I decided to publish the book on Bergson that I wrote in 1964, Gérard Lebrun told me: “That is too bad. You should have published it immediately.” Implicit in his remark was how much the book was “dated,” imbued as it was with the atmosphere of the 1960s, how distant it was from the dominant philosophical debate at the end of the 1980s; in essence, that publication was pointless. This circumstance did not escape me, as one can see from the two sentences at the end of the preliminary note that opens my book: “If, despite everything, I still consider publishing it today, it is because it seems to me justified to call for the reading of great philosophers. If my book leads a reader to reread Bergson—particularly in these times of need—I would consider myself absolved of my youthful sin.” That was not a mere rhetorical gesture on my part: with the last sentence I wanted to express an actually experienced discomfort, a strongly disagreeable sensation of the growing banal­ ization of philosophy, of an education or technification that was

* This article on Bergson was published in the Mais! supplement of Folha de São Paulo on September 29, 1999. A partial French translation was published in the Magazine littéraire 386, April 2000, in a special edition dedicated to the author of Time and Free Will. Bergson’s first great book, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, was published in 1889.



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choking thought, the lack of interest in Bergson being a symptom of it. I will give an example of the atmosphere in which the book was written, which has since dissipated. In 1959, in an address in Bergson’s honor at a congress dedicated to him, Merleau-Ponty drew attention to the paradoxical fortunes of Bergson’s work in the twentieth century and the progressive forgetting of his importance and virulence. He identified three stages: (1) militant Bergsonism in the making, which unnerved Catholics and radicals, eliciting universal resistance; (2) the moment of glory and recognition; and, finally, (3) reconciliation with the establishment through his spiritualist heirs. Merleau-Ponty thus showed the process through which a thinker who revolutionized philosophy and literature became canonical, losing the smell of sulphur that emanated from his books. Between the lines, Merleau-Ponty presented the philosophy of existence as the true heir of the living spirit of Bergsonism. Let me just read to you the last sentence of Merleau-Ponty’s lecture: “His effort and his works, which put philosophy back in the present and showed what today can be an approach to being, also teach us how a man of former times remained irreducible. They teach us that we must say nothing but what we can ‘show’….”1 Since then, from the 1970s until very recently, an eclipse has obscured Bergson’s work as well as the lively philosophy of postwar France. Nonetheless, a radical change of perspective seems to take place at the end of the twentieth century that once again brings the figures of Bergson and Merleau-Ponty to the forefront, satisfying my hope that philosophy can be revitalized: in France, of course, where academic papers and publications on Bergson multiply2 (let us leave aside Deleuze’s seminal Bergsonism in 1966), but also a little everywhere, even in English-speaking countries, where, with William James’s honorable exception, he did not always receive the best reception. To give just one example, F. C. T. Moore, a disciple of Gilbert Ryle and Michael Dummett, strove in a recent book to show, as we will see, the importance and relevance of Bergson for readers of the “analytic tradition,” demonstrating the incomprehension and misunderstandings that permeated Bertrand Russell’s harsh attacks on this philosopher, the twentieth century’s best.3 In a word, it seems that, by different paths (phenomenology, logical analysis, cognitive structure theory), contemporary thought came to find a few of Bergson’s fundamental ideas at its farthest limit, where each tradition confronts itself and its other. To venture a claim,

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it is Bergson’s effigy that looms on the horizon of post-computational philosophy of mind, post-phenomenology, and post-analytic philosophy. We find proof of this starting with the cognitive sciences. In Bergson: Thinking Backwards, F. C. T. Moore, who makes an effort specifically to déniaiser—wise up, or, let us say, “unfool”—readers with a strictly analytic background, does not explore sufficiently the clues that he nonetheless offers on Bergson’s relevance in this field. This was suggested to me by João Fernandes Teixeira, my colleague at the Graduate Program in Philosophy at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), in a personal note that will serve here as my guide. Indeed, if Moore aptly shows that Bergson, while contemplating other problems, had literally anticipated the arguments that would be mobilized again at the end of the 1980s against a computational conception of the mind (in which cognition is regarded as a symbolic operation disconnected from action), he does not take this observation to its most suggestive consequences. More positively, for example, he could have traced the evident parallelism between Bergson’s theory of the genesis of intelligence and the cognitive theories that reconstruct its evolution on the basis of action and perception (as does Rodney Brooks’ new robotics and the Chilean school of Maturana and Varela).4 The same could be said about ideas concerning the structure of the organism and the selective nature of the sensory devices that are currently popular among some cognitive scientists who are critical of the idea of representation, for example Andy Clark in his 1997 Being There. Clark refers explicitly to Merleau-Ponty, but he could or should refer to Bergson, as Merleau-Ponty himself would recommend. The same could be said about Bergson’s notion of consciousness as “a field structured in terms of potential actions,” for it is precisely this idea that is reconsidered and developed by important contemporary neuroscientists such as William Calvin, for example in his 1990 The Cerebral Symphony. Finally, the same João Fernandes Teixeira worked in the United States with Daniel Dennett and points out that the latter’s criticism of E. O. Wilson’s sociobiology—as a kind of reductionism that deforms the principles of evolutionary psychology and the genesis of moral judgment—involves an implicit reconsider­ ation of the analyses put forward in Bergson’s Creative Evolution and Two Sources of Morality and Religion. In his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Dennett would somehow reencounter, albeit reluctantly, the critical spirit of Bergsonism.



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In phenomenology the relation with Bergson is more complex, since there was some complicity from the start. According to a witness (Roman Ingarden, if I am not mistaken), upon reading Time and Free Will, Husserl allegedly identified his own philosophy in it. But it is above all with Heidegger that a distance, polemical rather than critical, begins to emerge (for obvious reasons, given that, against the most pressing philological evidence, Heidegger still manages to equate Bergson with Aristotle and Kant in his deconstruction of the vulgar signification of time in Being and Time on account of a shared temporal structure). For Heidegger, it is Bergson’s “biologism” that is the bête noire to be brought down, as I could see in detail in 1963, reading a German doctoral dissertation on (or against?) Bergson under Heidegger’s supervision.5 Some echo of this anti-Bergsonism is found, of course without as much hostility, even in the work of French existentialists—Sartre, for instance, even though he confesses to having discovered the importance of philosophy by reading Time and Free Will. What is underscored in this new context is the hiatus separating the “vital” from the “existential.” Now, Merleau-Ponty’s aforementioned tribute to Bergson is indicative of something like a rescue attempt, more precisely a rapprochement and a self-critique, an acknowledgment of deep currents of complicity underneath the superficial appearance of a radical opposition between Bergson’s naturalism and the transcendental style of phenomenology. Was not Matter and Memory precisely a transcendental analysis that tried to avoid the pitfalls of the philosophy of representation, clearing the way for thought as it was before, or beyond, the dogmatic–metaphysical alternative between idealism and realism? That was what the later Merleau-Ponty would correctly recognize, saving a spot for Bergson in The Visible and the Invisible and proposing a new philosophy of nature that entails rethinking the sharp earlier distinction between the three orders of the physical, the vital, and the human. (Here one could also see the imprint of that other form of Bergsonism that was Whitehead’s philosophy.) The way some contemporary philosophers end up reencountering and reactivating the Bergsonian project follows very much on the trail of the later Merleau-Ponty, which leads in the direction of a “non-idealist” version of Husserlian phenomenology—that is, one that avoids the second-degree objectivism implicit in an unreflected, exclusive valorization of objectifying acts in the life of consciousness and in a privileging of the kosmotheōros (spectator of

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the universe). I am thinking here of the work of Renaud Barbaras, especially in his last book Desire and Distance.6 In this attempt to produce a phenomenology of perception that recedes further than classical phenomenology to a point before the partition between the thing and its “appearing” (which reiterates the subject–object opposition), we rediscover Bergson in his version of transcendental reduction: the critique of the idea of nothing. A reduction that opens up a field that is at once pre-subjective and pre-objective,7 this operation consists in “seek[ing] experience at its source, or rather above that decisive turn where, taking a bias in the direction of our utility, it becomes properly human experience.”8 This passage from Bergson provides what is perhaps the summary of Barbaras’ project for a phenomenology of perception. One should add to this list the heirs of Wittgenstein who, demanding the return to the forgotten ethical or therapeutic dimension of their master’s new method, perhaps unwittingly stumble on one of the essential vectors of Bergsonism. A case in point is Gordon Baker, one of the best Wittgenstein scholars, for whom this essential dimension, which he finds well expounded in Waismann’s How I See Philosophy, “has no place whatever in the sophisticated technology of modern analytic philosophy.”9 This convergence in the definition of the telos and style of philosophy is luminously revealed in the way both face the “fundamental question of philosophy,” that is, why is there being rather than nothing? The crucial texts are Wittgenstein’s “A Lecture on Ethics,” from 1929, and Bergson’s 1930 “The Possible and the Real” (note the dates!). For Bergson, this “fundamental” question refers to a false problem, which derives from a confusion between the domains of theory and practice. The premise that being is problematic supposes the possibility of representing an absolute nothing, which is an impossibility both logically and psychologically and expresses no more than a theoretical and vital deficit. The search for an absolute foundation or certainty is not a sign of technical rigor but of blindness before the impossibility of absolute doubt, a disease of the will. In his lecture, Wittgenstein likewise disqualifies the question of the foundation of being or the principle of sufficient reason: “But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing.”10 For both philosophers, in any case, philosophy is an activity that essentially consists in conceptual analysis, or rather in an analysis that targets the derailment of concepts that results from a



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bad use of the understanding or of language, or from a paralysis of the theoretical imagination that makes us prisoners of hypnotic and misleading images. It is an analysis that, dissolving the false problems of metaphysics (of philosophy as a theoretical possession of the world), restores to us a clearer vision (a synoptic vision or intuition) and a healthier, cleaner life. It is as if the two philosophers—the twentieth century’s greatest— reminded us of philosophy’s essentially ethical vocation, which, while necessarily implying the technicity of analysis, cannot become merely a technical professional activity without losing its essence. I can close my commentary by endorsing the desire that Gordon Baker expresses in the final sentence of his essay: “A renewal of Waismann’s vision of philosophy11 would surely transform the whole post-Wittgensteinian intellectual scene—both the self-image of soi-disant analytic philosophers and their être pour autrui”!12

Notes

Notes to Foreword 1 [Translator’s note: The military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985 officially pardoned everyone it had persecuted on August 28, 1979. This amnesty is very polemic in Brazil because it also included state agents who had killed and tortured under the regime. The two-way nature of the pardon was one of several conditions that the military put in place when negotiating the reinstatement of civilian government.] 2 Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, “Cinema: A Trajectory within Underdevelopment,” in Brazilian Cinema, ed. Randall Johnson and Robert Stam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 245. 3 Bento Prado Jr., Ipseitas (Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2017), p. 82. 4 [TN: I-monde in the original involves an untranslatable play on monde “world” and immonde “mucky.” See n. 17.] 5 Bento Prado Jr., “Le dépistage de l’erreur de catégorie,” in Lógica e ontologia: ensaios em homenagem a Balthazar Barbosa Filho, ed. Fátima Évora et al. (São Paulo: Discurso, 2004), pp. 347–8. 6 Ipseitas, published in 2017. [TN: See n. 3.] 7 Bento Prado Jr., Alguns ensaios: filosofia, literatura, psicanálise (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2000), p. 210. 8 Prado Jr., Alguns ensaios, p. 205. 9 Prado Jr., Alguns ensaios., p. 210. 10 [TN: The reference to Whitehead in Bento Prado Jr. that Vladimir Safatle picks up on here probably has Maurice Merleau-Ponty as its



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hidden mediator: “the edges of nature are always ragged” [les bords de la nature sont toujours en guenilles] is how the latter translated Whitehead’s statement “nature as perceived always has a ragged edge.” See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, trans. Robert Vallier (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003), p. 114; Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), p. 50.] 11 Prado Jr., Ipseitas, p. 90. 12 Prado Jr., Ipseitas, p. 181. 13 Prado Jr., Ipseitas, p. 196. 14 Prado Jr., Ipseitas, p. 86. 15 Prado Jr., Ipseitas, p. 88. 16 Prado Jr., Alguns ensaios, p. 187. 17 “As is the case with other American peoples, our formation is not natural, spontaneous, or, so to speak, logical. Hence the muck of contrasts that we are.” Mario de Andrade, Aspectos da literatura brasileira (São Paulo: Martins, 1974), p. 8. [TN: The word for “muck”—imundice, itself a corruption of imundície—echoes Bento Prado’s play on i-mundo (at once “unworld” and “mucky”). See n. 4.] 18 As Paulo Arantes would say in relation to this phantasm: “In short, in an ‘amorphous and dissolved’ social environment, to borrow Tobias Barreto’s words in Um discurso em mangas de camisa, everything conspired to produce listless souls, a certain weariness felt by all, an invitation to a voluntarism drawn hither and thither by the flickers of curiosity, as lacking in fiber as the matter of the formless social body was ‘soft, excessively plastic and ductile.’” Paulo Arantes and Otília Fiori, Sentido da formação: Três ensaios sobre Antonio Candido, Gilda de Mello e Souza e Lúcio Costa [The Meaning of Formation: Three Essays on Atonio Candido, Gilda de Mello e Souza and Lúcio Costa] (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1997), p. 18. 19 Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 100–1. 20 Prado Jr, Alguns ensaios, p. 96. 21 See page 63 in this volume. 22 [TN: Fernando Henrique Cardoso—like Bento Prado Jr., a former professor at the University of São Paulo persecuted by the military regime—was the president of Brazil from 1995 to 2002.] 23 See page 20 in this volume. 24 Prado Jr., Ipseitas, p. 88. 25 See Paul Celan, “Todtnauberg,” Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Pierre Joris (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 254–6: Arnika, Augentrost,

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Notes to pp. xxiii–xxvi

der / Trunk aus dem Brunnen mit dem / Sternwürfel drauf / in der / Hütte, / die in das Buch / wesen Namen nahms auf / vor dem meinen? / die in dies Buch / geschriebene Zeile von / einer Hoffnung, heute, / auf eines Denkenden / Kommendes / Wort/im Herzen, / Waldwasen, uneingeebnet / Orchis und Orchis, einzeln, / Krudes, später im Fahren / deutlich, / der uns fährt, der Mensch / der’s mit anhört, / die halb- / beschrittenen Knüppel- / pfade im Hochmoor / Feuchtes / viel. 26 Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 224. 27 Martin Heidegger, “Why Poets?” in idem, Off the Beaten Track, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Hayes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 224. 28 Heidegger, “Why Poets?,” p. 224. 29 Heidegger, “Why Poets?,” p. 220.

Notes to Preface 1 Opening remarks at the debate promoted by the Collège International de Philosophie to celebrate the launch of Présence et champ transcendantal: Conscience et négativité dans la philosophie de Bergson (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2002). This brief presentation on the origin and structure of my thesis was translated and published in the Mais! supplement of Folha de São Paulo on March 29, 2002. 2 This is the same Raggio—an Argentinian logician of international prestige, who identified himself as a citizen of the world—who said that he saw greater philosophical interest in Herder than in the whole analytic tradition. 3 In a working note from January of 1959, Merleau-Ponty wrote: “Our state of non-philosophy—Never has the crisis been so radical.” In March 1960, describing this “malaise of culture” still further, he added: “There is a danger that a philosophy of speech would justify the indefinite proliferation of writings […]—the habit of speaking without knowing what one is saying, the confusion of style and of thought etc. Yet: (1) it has always been that way in fact—the works that escape this profusion are academic works (2) there is a remedy, which is not to return to the American analytic–academic method—which would be to retreat from the problem—but to proceed over and beyond by facing the things again.” See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston:



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Northwestern University Press, 1968), pp. 165, 239. Perhaps Merleau-Ponty did not suspect, in his diagnosis of the state of non-philosophy, how much worse the crisis would become in the following decades, culminating in the misery of today’s absolute hegemony of university philosophy. 4 [Translators’ note: decentered, without a ruling principle.] Regarding this term, see Bento Prado Jr., “Os limites da Aufklärung” [“The Limits of Aufklärung”], Estudos Cebrap 15, January–March 1976, p. 173. 5 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, ed. and trans. Roger Ariew (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004), p. 208. 6 From Michael Armstrong Roche’s comment on the etching in the exhibition catalogue: Alfonso E. Perez and Eleanor A. Sayre, eds., Goya and the Spirit of Enlightenment (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1989), p. 351. 7 José Gallardo Blanco, Diccionário crítico–burlesco (Madrid: Repullés, 1812), p. 88. 8 Gallardo Blanco, Diccionário crítico–burlesco, p. 88. 9 [TN: In English in the original.] 10 A philosophy of ambiguity, as in Merleau-Ponty? Certainly, if we recall, with Heidegger, that eidos, before the great objectification performed by Plato, which made it synonymous with an eternally determined essence, meant no more than “visible aspect” or the variable shape in which things present themselves to us. 11 I am not thinking here of the aesthetics of reception currently being produced in Germany, but of older texts such as Malraux’s and Merleau-Ponty’s. 12 I am thinking of Kant’s ambiguous attitude toward Swedenborg as analysed by Monique David-Ménard, La folie dans la raison pure: Kant lecteur de Swedenborg (Paris: Vrin, 1990). 13 [TN: The reference here is to a collection, under this title, of Heidegger’s short texts; it was translated into English as Off the Beaten Track.] 14 See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), §78. 15 See the analysis of the ekphrastic style in Barbara Cassin (in Portuguese translation), Ensaios sofísticos [Sophistical Essays] (São Paulo: Siciliano, 1990), pp. 244–8. 16 Let us be clear: the opposition between entering philosophy and leaving it is not simple. Even in the Tractatus, the dissolution of philosophy’s “false” problems did not entail merely dismissing them or replacing with some form of positive knowledge. On the contrary, it aspired to be the introduction of a new lifestyle, characterized by

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a good relationship with the ineffable through a silent, perspicuous, and synoptic view of the world, of language and its limits. Later on, Wittgenstein not only renounced the idea that philosophy may be “overcome” in a single stroke, but suggested that, if I eliminate an itch, this does not mean that it never existed. Furthermore, as per Antonia Soulez’ sharp suggestion, the “remedy” that cures us of philosophy is of the same nature as the disease it eliminates. Similia similibus curantur—“likes are cured by likes.” Maybe the ideas of entering philosophy and leaving it are internally connected in the form of a chiasma. 17 After writing this preface, I had access, courtesy of Roberto Schwarz’s kindness, to Fred Licht’s beautiful Goya: The Origins of the Modern Temper in Art (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), which provides solid support to what I had timidly defended. If we accept Licht’s analyses, I was not actually distancing myself from the author’s intentions when I changed the title of Goya’s painting from They Do Not Know the Way to We Do Not Know the Way, the painter’s ties to the spirit of the Enlightenment notwithstanding. By doing so, instead of retrospectively metamorphosing the work’s original meaning, as if in an imaginary museum, we can in fact discover the more remote roots of our contemporaneity. Thus, contrasting Goya with the learned satirists of the eighteenth century, Licht says: “Goya may pillory the waywardness of men and women, but he never assumes as the self-righteous Hogarth does that this waywardness is alien to him. Even in his broadest, most farcical satirizations, one always feels distinctly that Goya has direct personal experience of the error that is being satirized and that it is not just something he has observed from a detached vantage point” (p. 93). There is no step back here: to break with the theological, cosmological, ethical, and political optimism of the Baroque or the Enlightenment, or with David’s neoclassicism, means, on the contrary, making room for the disconnection of the estranged and alienated world that was made somewhat opaque in modern art. Without even commenting on They Do Not Know the Way, Fred Licht nonetheless points out that the same strange ambiguity of space (the suppression of the horizon and of perspective) that I have tried to point out in the etching under discussion can be found throughout Goya’s work. Commenting on the Caprichos, for example, Licht writes: “The ambiguity of setting and of lighting is what lends to the Caprichos an air of irrationality, of a world gone awry, of figures that have lost their bearings” (p. 96). This ambiguity in the determination of space, with the combined use of black, white, and gray (which eliminates the luminous perspective transparency of the world), is examined countless times in the book



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(cf. pp. 94–103, 142, 145–6, 180, 182, 187, 210–12, 214–15, 232, 279–81). 18 A metaphysical question, but one that also concerns the present state of culture, as it appears to be used in the title of a book by Roberto Schwarz, Que Horas São? [What Time Is It?] (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1987). It is a question that concerns the pendular movements of today’s philosophy between the opposite extremes of skepticism and naturalism, of phenomenology and logical–grammatical analysis; and, finally, it is a question that leads me to interrogate (in a work to be carried out at a later date) the way in which each of these tendencies reconsiders and reinterprets critical philosophy’s transcendental argument. 19 Luís de Camões, “Tenho-me persuadido” [“I Have Accepted as Evident”], in The Collected Lyric Poems of Luís de Camões, trans. Landeg White (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 245.

Notes to chapter 1 1 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, ed. and trans. Roger Ariew (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004), p. 6. 2 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value: A Selection from the Posthumous Remains, ed. G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman, trans. Peter Winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 74. 3 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 165. 4 I am thinking here of books such as Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism, trans. Mary Schnackenberg Cattani (Amherst: University of Massachussets Press, 1990) and Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, We Are Not Nietzscheans, trans. Robert de Loaiza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). Years after the present essay was first published, Lukács’ old disciple István Mészáros helped me dissolve the paradox surrounding this “bad book by a great author.” After hearing my observations on The Destruction of Reason, he explained: “You need to take into account that the author was forced to make a thousand concessions to the political police to be able to publish his work.” Lukács is therefore not the sole author of the book in question. 5 See “Neither Apel nor Rorty,” Paulo Eduardo Arantes’ commentary to chapter 5 in this volume. 6 See Herbert Marcuse, “On Science and Phenomenology,” in Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science (New York: Humanities Press, 1965), vol. 2, pp. 279–90.

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7 See Gérard Lebrun, Kant et la fin de la métaphysique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970), p. 67. 8 José Arthur Giannotti, Apresentação do mundo: Considerações sobre o pensamento de Wittgenstein [Presentation of the World: Considerations on the Thinking of Ludwig Wittgenstein] (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995). 9 See Paulo Roberto Margutti Pinto, “O problema da necessidade da fundamentação última não-metafísica em Karl-Otto Apel,” Kriterion 91, 1995, p. 25. 10 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks, ed. Rush Rhess, trans. Raymond Hargreaves and Roger White (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), p. 7. 11 See Bento Prado Jr., “A gramática da reflexão,” Folha de S. Paulo, 1995, July 3, pp. 10–11. 12 Giannotti, Apresentação do mundo, pp. 245–6. 13 Giannotti, Apresentação do mundo, p. 245. 14 Jacques Bouveresse, Le mythe de l’intériorité: Expérience, signification et langage privé chez Wittgenstein (Paris: Minuit, 1987), p. 593. 15 Giannotti, Apresentação do mundo, p. 246. 16 [Translators’ note: A reference to the aria “La donna è mobile” (“Woman is fickle”) from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto.] 17 Giannotti, Apresentação do mundo, p. 245. 18 Giannotti, Apresentação do mundo, p. 245. 19 Giannotti, Apresentação do mundo, p. 254. 20 See Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974): §124. 21 G. E. Moore, “A Defence of Common Sense,” in Contemporary British Philosophy (second series), ed. J. H. Muirhead (George Allen & Unwin: London, 1925), pp. 192–233, here p. 194. 22 Gilbert Hottois, Du sens commun à la société de la communication: Études de philosophie du langage: Moore, Wittgenstein, Wisdom, Heidegger, Perelman, Apel (Paris: J. Vrin, 1989), pp. 32–3. 23 See chapter 5 in this volume. 24 See, for example, the following observation by Gilles-Gaston Granger: “It is this approach that Wittgenstein calls a Beschreibung, a description. The simple language games that he imagines are therefore ‘the poles of a description, not the ground-floor of a theory.’ A method that is confirmed by another text from the same manuscript: ‘I learn to describe what I see; and here I learn all sorts of language-games.’” Gilles-Gaston Granger, Invitation à la lecture de Wittgenstein (Aix-en-Provence: Alinéa, 1990), p. 265. 25 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 123.



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26 Let us note how unfair is Apel’s description of Kant’s philosophy as monological. Here we could perhaps speak of a mistake that is at once historiographical and philosophical. 27 Giannotti, Apresentação do mundo, p. 248; italics added. 28 Giannotti, Apresentação do mundo, p. 254. 29 With respect to this asymmetry and the importance that Saint Augustine’s work (particularly his De magistro) had for Wittgenstein, see the insightful pages that Sílvia Faustino dedicated to the African bishop: Sílvia Faustino, Wittgenstein: o eu e sua gramática (São Paulo: Ática, 1995). 30 See Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Penguin, 1991), Part I, Chapter 3. 31 [TN: Bento Prado Jr. is alluding here to Martin Heidegger’s 1957 Der Satz vom Grund, a title that can be translated both as “the principle of reason” and “the principle of ground.” See Martin Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, trans. Reginald Lily (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991).] 32 [TN: All quotations from the Tractatus come from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden (London: Kegan Paul, 1922).] 33 Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos, “A essência da proposição e a essência do mundo,” in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, trans. into Portuguese by Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos (São Paulo: Edusp, 1993), p. 100. 34 Although it is undeniable that a few texts by Wittgenstein point in this direction. 35 Hottois, Du sens commun à la société de la communication, p. 49. 36 See also Monk, Duty of Genius, p. 230. 37 Hottois, Du sens commun à la société de la communication, p. 50. The insolubility of philosophical problems (or pseudo-problems) does not suspend them forever; rather the opposite. Perhaps Wittgenstein would support Simone Weil’s beautiful definition of philosophy: “The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting. By this standard, there are few philosophers. And one can hardly even say a few.” Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 335. 38 In chapter 2 of this volume I examine in detail the last aphorisms from On Certainty against the backdrop of the history of the critique of the Cartesian dream argument, from Locke to Wittgenstein via Spinoza, Kant, Sartre, and Gilbert Ryle. 39 See the section “Refutation of Idealism” in the B edition (of 1787)

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of the Critique of Pure Reason: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 40 I am thinking here of the polemics that opposed Martial Guéroult to Ferdinand Alquié, Jacques Derrida to Michel Foucault, and Harry Frankfurt to Henri Gouhier, in which it is also essentially the argument of the malin génie that is at stake. 41 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason: A298/B355. 42 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value: A Selection from the Posthumous Remains, ed. G. H. von Wright, trans. Peter Winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 50.

Notes to commentary to chapter 1 1 Stephen Hilmy, The Later Wittgenstein: The Emergence of a New Philosophical Method (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). 2 [Translators’ note: This is an allusion to Claude Lévi-Strauss, who taught at the University of São Paulo from 1935 to 1939.]

Notes to chapter 2 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, rev. edn., ed. G. H. von Wright, R. Rhees, and G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978), p. 205; italics added. The italics aim to emphasize the similarity with Descartes’ second meditation (et fallat quantum potest, “let him deceive me as much as he can”). 2 [Translators’ note: A remark made after hearing G. E. Moore speak, as reported by John Wisdom in “Other Minds,” Mind 51(1), 1942, p. 431.] 3 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value: A Selection from the Posthumous Remains. ed. G. H. von Wright, trans. Peter Winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 64. 4 Paul Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein: With a Memoir, trans. L. Furtmuller (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), p. 7. 5 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), p. 74. 6 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), §676. 7 [TN: “Third realm” is how Gottlob Frege referred to the sphere of abstract objects, as opposed to the external world and the world of internal consciousness; leaving it in the original German highlights



Notes to pp. 49–51

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the unfortunate coincidence that makes the expression equally translatable as “Third Reich.”] 8 [TN: Latin name of a branch of metaphysics that ­­ purports to develop a science of the human soul on a priori grounds and would come under mortal criticism in Kant’s first Critique. It furnished the eponymous title for a treatise published in 1734 by the German rationalist philosopher Christian Wolff.] 9 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914–1916, ed. G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Harper, 1961), p. 80. 10 [TN: “What is” or “what is called thinking” is a reference to Heidegger’s lecture course by this name. See Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking? trans. Jesse Glenn Gray (New York: Harper, 1952).] 11 This assertion may sound brutal and as if in need of being nuanced, particularly in relation to Norman Malcolm, who is a target here. Let me clarify that I do not ignore the finesse of his interpretation of Wittgenstein’s work, as he offers it in several places; see e.g. Norman Malcolm, Nothing Is Hidden: Wittgenstein’s Critique of His Early Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). Thus, when I speak of a “poor reading” of Wittgenstein, I am referring rather to the use that Malcolm makes of his teacher’s thinking in the construction of his own text. If I proceed in this way, it is to avoid replicating what Hilary Putnam does when, in a very interesting essay, he nods to the possibility of a critique of Wittgenstein based on the theoretical effects that Malcolm believes he can take from Wittgenstein’s work: “His [sc. Malcolm’s arguments] are also of interest in that they can be read as simple versions of some famous arguments of Wittgenstein’s as he is interpreted by Malcolm. If this interpretation of Malcolm’s is faithful to what Wittgenstein had in mind, then these famous arguments are bad arguments and prove nothing. But this relation to Wittgenstein’s philosophy may, in the present years, be a further reason for finding Malcolm’s book interesting to discuss.” Hilary Putnam, “Dreaming and ‘Depth Grammar,’” in his Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), vol. 2, p. 304. Putnam’s critical analysis in this text seems perfect: broadly speaking, he identifies, in the use that Malcolm makes of the idea of criterion, something like an extremely harsh form of verificationism, as radical as Reichenbach’s formulations in 1930. Somehow—but I will return to this question later—everything in “Dreaming” is as if meaning had its precondition in a de facto truth, a thesis that collides with the most central spirit of Wittgenstein’s thought.

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12 It was only after I presented this text at the international conference “Descartes: 400 Anos” in Rio de Janeiro that I had access to Gordon Baker, “La réception de l’argument du langage privé,” Acta du Colloque Wittgenstein: Collège Internationale de Philosophie, 1988, ed. Fernando Gil (Mauvezin: TER, 1988), later published in English as “The Reception of the Private Language Argument” (chapter 5) in Gordon Baker, Wittgenstein’s Method: Neglected Aspects, ed. Katherine J. Morris (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 109–18. In this essay, Baker demolishes readings of Wittgenstein that are centered on a mistakenly hyperbolic interpretation of the place of the argument of private language and that result in an amalgam of his philosophy and Ryle’s, as presented in The Concept of Mind. Among other things that converge with my analysis, Baker says: “Wittgenstein was not acquainted with the works of Descartes, and, besides, he does not think that the confusions of today’s philosophers arose from the sins committed by the great philosophers of yesterday. … There are then powerful reasons to conclude that Wittgenstein is not engaged in a battle against a more or less definite ‘Cartesian’ adversary” (p. 117 in the English edition). Baker’s venerable text diminishes whatever originality mine may have (if any), but it offers me strong and unexpected support in exchange. 13 Norman Malcolm, Dreaming (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), p. 4. 14 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Roger Woolhouse (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 477. 15 René Descartes, “Second Meditation,” in Meditations on First Philosophy: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), vol. 2, p. 24. 16 See Bento Prado Jr., “A imaginação: Fenomenologia e filosofia analítica,” in his Alguns ensaios (São Paulo: Max Limonad, 1985), pp. 56–75. 17 Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, in The Complete Works of Spinoza, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002): IIp49c. 18 Spinoza, Ethics: IIp49s. 19 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination, trans. Jonathan Webber (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 160. 20 Sartre, The Imaginary, p. 160. 21 Sartre, The Imaginary, p. 163. 22 Malcolm, Dreaming, p. 18. 23 Sartre, The Imaginary. p. 167. 24 This is just another side of the figure previously examined.



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25 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): B277. 26 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason: B131. 27 Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos, “A essência da proposição e a essência do mundo” [“The Essence of the Proposition and the Essence of the World”], in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, trans. into Portuguese by Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos (São Paulo: Edusp, 1993), p. 105. 28 On this historical series, see the last chapter (on Husserl, Kant, and Descartes) in Gaston Berger, Le cogito dans la philosophie de Husserl (Paris: Aubier, 1941). 29 In addition to Putnam’s “Dreaming and ‘Depth Grammar,’” mentioned earlier, see Charles E. M. Dunlop, ed., Philosophical Essays on Dreaming (London: Cornell University Press, 1977), a multicontributor volume with fifteen essays preceded by the editor’s introduction and an exhaustive bibliography on the debate. 30 Norman Malcolm, “Dreaming and Skepticism,” in Dunlop, Philosophical Essays, pp. 103–26. 31 [TN: In English in the original.] 32 This distribution immediately seems to create problems. To maintain it against Yost’s and Kalish’s arguments (in Dunlop, Philosophical Essays, pp. 81–102) regarding the continuity between the asthma sufferers’ dream of suffocation and their later awakened experience of the same, Malcolm (Dreaming, p. 99) is forced to say: “Their condition falls in a doubtful border region between fully asleep and not being fully asleep. One can describe the thing only by means of some makeshift formula as ‘Their feelings of suffocation are partly dreamt and partly real.’ Because there is a criterion in present behavior for this feeling of suffocation it does not belong to the content of a dream, in that pure sense of ‘dream’ that has as its sole criterion the testimony of the awakened person.” Would brightness in the eyes and the smile that extends across the face (behaviorist criteria?) not be a criterion for the happiness that is immediately expressed in the face, as Wittgenstein so often insists? What is it that is strange in this argument—very queer, indeed? It is that the artificiality of the “makeshift formula” is attributed to the phenomena of transition from dreaming to wakefulness (and vice versa), and not to the artificial categorial redistribution that transforms the common notion of dreaming and thereby creates insoluble problems of transition. Malcolm even says, always thinking of the transition, that “the continuity of sensations and emotions is not very puzzling or interesting when what we are given is a transition between sleeplike states and states of full awakedness, and where the criterion

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of continuity is more or less similar behaviour in the two states” (Dreaming, p. 100). Since, like Putnam, I target the problematic continuity between Malcolm’s and Wittgenstein’s reasoning, with the intent of showing that the latter does not need to face the difficulties that the former creates, let me say right away that there is nothing heterodox in acknowledging that concepts have porous and fluid boundaries. The problem is to acknowledge it and to lose what one normally gains from such an acknowledgment by multiplying hard and non-porous boundaries, as Malcolm does. He pulverizes the “common concept” of dreaming by marking rigid distinctions of essence among dreaming, somnambulism, nightmares and hallucination, which intuitively present an undeniable “family air.” When Wittgenstein insists on the porousness of categorial boundaries, he does so precisely in order to underscore the essentially Platonic illusion of philosophy, which is usually ascribed the role of being a rigorous customs agent. Let me add here, with Wittgenstein, that, if there is no phenomenology, there are phenomenological problems. And would such phenomena of transition not be typical cases of these problems? Could reflection not allow itself here to be guided (as phenomenology itself does) by the literary testimony of transition? I am thinking, for example, of Edmund Husserl’s fragment “Das bewusstlose Ich—Schlaf—Ohnmacht,” edited by Jan Linschoten in Tijdchrift voor Philosophie 14, 1952, at pp. 261–3 (Linschoten’s whole article is at pp. 207–64). There the Husserlian idea that falling asleep is a “loss of horizon” is also guided by the Proustian description of sleep and its oscillations. I owe access to these texts to the kindness of my friend José Henrique Santos, who gave me his translations of them. 33 [TN: In English in the original.] 34 Malcolm, Dreaming, p. 87. 35 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, ed. G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman, trans. C. G. Luckhardt and Maximilian Aue (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), §962. 36 Wittgenstein, Last Writings, §965. 37 Albert Béguin, L’âme romantique et le rêve (Paris: Corti, 1939), p. 14. 38 “Nature also teaches me, by means of these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on, that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it, so much so that I and the body form a unit.” René Descartes, “Sixth Meditation,” in Mediations on First Philosophy: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), vol. 2, p. 81.



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39 Right before the presentation of this text at the international conference “Descartes: 400 Anos,” Michelle Beyssade told me that her new translation of the Meditations restored the original tone of the Latin text, which had been erased by the standard, classic translation. 40 Harry G. Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers and Madmen: The Defense of Reason in Descartes’ Meditations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 41 In his 1947–8 course at the École Normale Supérieure dedicated to the problem of the union of body and soul, Merleau-Ponty at once relied on and distanced himself from the Guéroultian interpretation of this aspect of Descartes’ philosophy. The text he relied on (but also criticized) was Martial Guéroult’s great Étendue et psychologie chez Malebranche (Paris: Vrin, 1939). Merleau-Ponty’s objection was that its consequence would be the reduction of the “internal connection” between thought and being (and thus also between body and soul) to an “ideal connection between two simple ideas.” It is as if Guéroult were insensitive to the passages in the Sixth Meditation and elsewhere that, much to the contrary, present substantial union as a kind of raw and inescapable fact, almost in empiricist style—as if he ignored the Descartes who underscored the positivity of this essentially obscure knowledge (more or less like the inexact or “morphological essences” of which Husserl spoke), which is necessarily situated before or beyond the clear knowledge of the distinction among substances. Lívio Teixeira did not eschew these problems, as I tried to show in my preface to the second edition of his book; see Lívio Teixeira, Ensaio sobre a moral de Descartes (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1990). 42 Lilli Alanen, “Descartes’s Dualism and the Philosophy of Mind,” Révue de Métaphysique et de Morale 3, 1989, p. 400. [NT: Reading “have” for “had.”] 43 Ideas that I examined in greater detail in chapter 1 in this volume. 44 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 50. 45 Monique David-Ménard’s La folie dans la raison pure could support the analogy to which I alluded here between Wittgenstein and Kant with respect to the function of madness in the delimitation of reason.

Notes to chapter 3 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value: A Selection from the Posthumous Remains [1931], ed. G. H. von Wright, trans. Peter Winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 13.

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2 Carlos Drummond de Andrade, The Minus Sign [1941], trans. Virginia Peckham de Araújo (Redding Ridge, CT: Black Swan Books, 1980), p. 56. 3 [Translators’ note: the German title of the work known in English as Culture and Value.] 4 A bit like the second, unwritten part of the Tractatus. Let us recall Wittgenstein’s letter to Ficker: “In reality, it isn’t strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I’ll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one. For the Ethical is delimited from within, as it were, by my book; and I’m convinced that, strictly speaking, it can ONLY be delimited in this way” (as quoted in Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, London: Penguin Books, 1991, p. 178). 5 See Ludwig Wittgenstein, “A Lecture on Ethics,” in Philosophical Occasions, ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), p. 40. 6 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 91. 7 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks, trans. Raymond Hargreaves and Roger White (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), p. 7. 8 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues, vol. 1 of The Collected Writings of Rousseau, ed. Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, trans. Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, and Roger D. Masters (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1990), p. 9. 9 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 8. Combatting the present civilization, which is strange to him, he does not expect to be understood in the future: “At present we are combatting a trend [that of western scientific–technical–industrial civilization]. But this trend will die out, superseded by others. And then people will no longer understand our arguments against it; will not see why all that needed saying” (p. 49). However, a few possible readers remain: “I once said, & perhaps rightly: The earlier culture will become a heap of rubble & finally a heap of ashes; but spirits will hover over the ashes” (p. 5). 10 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 64. 11 A combat that does not aim at reform or revolution, as von Wright observes, quoting from Wittgenstein the passage that I have chosen as an epigraph to the present chapter: “We are struggling with language. We are engaged in a struggle with language.” Von Wright also quotes another text that is crucial for an understanding of this



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form of non-reformist critique of the present world: “Human beings are deeply embedded in philosophical—i.e., grammatical—confusions. And freeing them from these presupposes extricating them from the enormous number of connecting links that hold them fast. A sort of rearrangement of the whole of their language is needed.— But of course that language has developed the way it has because some human beings felt—and still feel—inclined to think that way. So the tearing away will succeed only with those in whose life there already is an instinctive revolt against the language in question and not with those whose whole instinct is for life in the very herd which created that language as its proper expression” (Wittgenstein, as quoted in G. H. von Wright, “Wittgenstein in Relation to His Times,” in Brian McGuinness, ed., Wittgenstein and His Times, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 113). 12 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 8. 13 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 8. 14 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 8. 15 “Just let nature speak & acknowledge only one thing higher than nature, but not what others might think” (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 3). 16 Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1926). 17 This is how, in 1931, Spengler comes to be cited (along with Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weiniger, and Sraffa) among the authors who have influenced Wittgenstein. See Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 16. 18 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 39. 19 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 9. 20 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, pp. 55–6. 21 Do not be surprised, dear reader, by this attribution of anticapitalist traits to Heidegger. See, for example, the paragraphs that Lukács dedicates to the “everyday world” in his Esthetics. After all the usual restrictions are made and before he instrumentally borrows from Heidegger the categories of Being and Time in order to ground his own fundamental ontological undertaking, Lukács grants that “some readers might resist the idea of seeing Heidegger ranged among the Romantic critics of capitalist culture” (Georg Lukács, “Cuestiones preliminares y de principio,” in idem, Estetica, vol. 1, trans. Manuel Sacristán, Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1966, p. 70). Perhaps what he has in mind here is readers with the bad habit of ideological censorship. 22 “[I]t is clear to me then that the disappearance of a culture …” Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 9, emphasis added. 23 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 9.

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24 Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973). 25 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 91. [TN: This passage was also quoted at pp. 66–7 (see note 6).] 26 Janik and Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna, p. 42: “As the Good Old Days drew to a close, Vienna was above all a city of the bourgeoisie. Most of her leading figures in all fields came from a bourgeois background. Though Vienna had been a commercial center from time immemorial and had been the center of large-scale public administration since the reign of Maria Theresa, the Viennese bourgeoisie acquired its individual character during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. This was the period of industrial expansion, when vast fortunes were made and lost by the investor, the industrial organizer, or the man with an innovative manufacturing technique— the Gründerzeit, which created the material fortunes on which the next generation depended for leisure in which to cultivate the arts.” 27 If we are to put a date on this period, the following passage is crucial: “I often wonder whether my cultural ideal is a new one, i.e. contemporary, or whether it comes from the time of Schumann. At least it strikes me as a continuation of that ideal, though not the continuation that actually followed it then. That is to say, the second half of the nineteenth century has been left out.” Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 4. One will note that the end of romanticism coincides with the beginning of the Gründerzeit, which would impact the economic fortune of the Wittgensteins. 28 See also Michael Löwy, Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian thought in Central Europe: A Study in Elective Affinity, trans. Hope Heaney (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992). Here, without making any reference to Wittgenstein, the author lists the common features of the romantic critique of capitalism, allowing us to see, in spite of the book’s emphasis on the libertarian vector, the continuous line that leads from Spengler and Heidegger to Lukács and Adorno when it comes to the critique of contemporaneity or to the description of the decadence of bourgeois culture. 29 See chapter 1 in this volume. 30 See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), vol. 1, §266. 31 [TN: Mitteleuropa has roughly the same referent but not the same sense as Central Europe. It is a geopolitical term in vogue precisely during the period that Bento Prado is referring to. Its use here conveys the idea that he is making a claim about a certain social stratum and cultural understanding of Central Europe that were active then, not now.]



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32 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 21. 33 It should be clear that, in speaking of “dogmatism” in connection with the Tractatus, I am thinking of a definition in which dogmatism is synonymous with an ontology founded on a universalist conception of logic and language—not the one implicit in a hasty reading such as that of Jean Cavaillès, who from the 1930s onwards denounced the “naïve realism” of the Tractatus, without paying attention to the Kantian style of Wittgenstein’s first book. It is as if Cavaillès took the Presocratic appearance of that book’s opening quite literally. 34 See chapter 1 in this volume. 35 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden (London: Kegan Paul, 1922), 6.521–2. 36 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 74. 37 Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.43. 38 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 8. 39 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 41. 40 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 40. [TN: Here and passim, the punctuation reproduces that of Wittgenstein’s original notes, as published.] See also Gérard Granel’s beautiful commentary on this text: Gérard Granel, “Ludwig Wittgenstein ou le refus de la couronne,” Acta du Colloque Wittgenstein, Collège International de Philosophie (Paris: TransEurop-Repress, 1988), pp. 49–72. 41 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 51. 42 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 4. 43 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 3. 44 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 12. 45 G. H. von Wright, “Wittgenstein in Relation to His Times,” p. 118. 46 G. H. von Wright, “Wittgenstein in Relation to His Times,” pp. 119–20. 47 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 64. 48 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 89. 49 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 64.

Notes to chapter 4 1 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia Unversity Press, 1994), pp. 35–6. Henceforth WP. 2 The idea of an infinite movement, which defines the plane of immanence, has an undeniable cosmological and “vitalist” dimension. It refers to nature as becoming, in the footsteps of Bergson and Whitehead. But two other authors also had a marked influence on Deleuze through their incursions into the field of philosophy of biology (individuation, ontogenesis, the relation organism–medium,

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the folds of the brain): Raymond Ruyer, The Genesis of Living Forms, trans. Jon Roffe and Nicholas B. de Weydenthal (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) and Gilbert Simondon, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, trans. Taylor Adkins (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2020). Embryogenesis, which Deleuze considers, is an example of “infinite movement”— ontogenesis or the genesis of being. The transcendental nature of Deleuze’s philosophy does not prevent it from being impregnated with an atmosphere that is, if one may say so, Presocratic. 3 When he defines the relation between concept and plane, Deleuze is referring to Étienne Souriau, L’instauration philosophique (Paris: Alcan, 1939). [Translator’s note: “Instauration” is used throughout this text in the specific sense of “instituting,” which is the primary meaning of this word’s counterparts in Romance languages but not in English.] 4 Henri Poincaré is not, strictly speaking, an intuitionist, as this term is understood in contemporary mathematics and logic. Nevertheless, he was opposed to Russel’s logicism and to Hilbert’s formalism. A similar opposition can be found in the works of Brunschvicg and Cavaillès, although to different degrees and in different styles. They all place more emphasis on the creation of a theory than on its logical or axiomatic exposition, and they insist on an “internal history” of concepts. See Henri Poincaré, Science et méthode (Paris: Flammarion, 1908); Léon Brunschvicg, Les étapes de la philosophie mathématique (Paris: Alcan, 1912); and Jean Cavaillès, Sur la logique et la théorie de la science (Paris: PUF, 1947). 5 A “matter of being,” as Deleuze puts it, referring to the other pole of the “doublet” it forms with the “image of thought.” And this doublet is the movement that criss-crosses the plane of immanence. [TN: Matière de l’être is rendered in the English translation as “substance of being” rather than “matter.” See WP, p. 38.] 6 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 154, emphasis added. Henceforth DR. 7 WP, pp. 39–43. 8 WP, p. 47. The notion of “encompassing” (Umgreifende) interests Deleuze to the extent that it points to the impossibility of thinking a “horizon of all horizons,” which would reduce the plane to an omnitudo realitatis (a totality of reality) or to a noumenal one-all. But, if this notion prohibits access to the transcendent lest it be indirect, by means of “ciphers,” this would be the very reason why the encompassing ends up turning into “a reservoir for eruptions of transcendence.” 9 The relation virtual–actual should be thought of in opposition to the relation possible–real, where the first term is conceived



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of as logically and ontologically prior to the second. At the root of Deleuze’s concept of the virtual is Bergson’s idea of a creative and essentially unpredictable becoming. As Eliot puts it in the lines of Four Quartets, “What could have been is an abstraction / Remaining a perpetual possibility / Only in a world of speculation.” 10 See the chapter titled “The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding” in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The best analysis of the relation between Kant and Deleuze that I know of is Gérard Lebrun’s “Le transcendental et son image,” in E. Alliez, ed., Gilles Deleuze: Une vie philosophique (Paris: Synthelabo, 1998), pp. 207–32. 11 According to Deleuze, the original sin of philosophy is that, although itself born out of combat with doxa, it preserves its enemy’s orientation: the notion of common sense as concordia facultatum (harmony of the faculties). It is not the philosophy of common sense that he has in mind here, but rationalism in its more radical form: Plato, Descartes, and Kant, all sharing the common assumption that the identification of the object by a recta mens—orthodox or “straight” thought—is founded on the identity of the I and directed by the model of recognition. Husserl, for example, by following Kant’s Copernican inversion, arrives at an Urdoxa, namely the idea that “the Ur-arche earth does not move,” sublimating the commitment of philosophy to common sense, even though he intends to break radically with the “natural attitude.” See Edmund Husserl, “Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum phänomenologischen Ursprung der Räumlichkeit der Natur,” in M. Faber, ed., Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 307–25. 12 To anticipate my comparison between Deleuze and Wittgenstein, recall Wittgenstein’s remarks in his lectures of the 1930s, as reported by G. E. Moore: “[Wittgenstein] quoted, with apparent approval, Lichtenberg’s saying ‘Instead of saying “I think” we ought to say “It thinks,”’ ‘it’ being used, as he said, as ‘Es’ is used in ‘Es blitztet.’” G. E. Moore, “Wittgenstein’s Lectures, 1930–33,” in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Occasions, ed. James Klagge and Alfred Nordmann (Hackett, IN: Indianapolis, 1984), pp. 100–1. As we shall see later, perhaps both Wittgenstein and Deleuze would also have recommended that we say es lebt (“it/one lives”) instead of ich lebe (“I live”). 13 Whether they be noetic, eidetic (Plato’s Forms), reflexive (the Kantian “I think”), or communicative (the intersubjectivity of Husserlian phenomenology), universals—which completely reabsorb and domesticate the currents and differences that criss-cross the plane of immanence—turn into transcendent entities themselves: respectively the object of contemplation, the subject of reflection, and

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the other subject of communication. See WP, p. 52. To the extent that it promotes the identification of concept and communication, Husserlian intersubjectivity is a sublimated form of the universalistic illusion. Jules Vuillemin pointed to the roots of this illusion in a circularity in the determination of concept and communication: J. Vuillemin, L’heritage kantien et la révolution copernicienne (Paris: PUF, p. 253). In Deleuze’s philosophy, this objection develops into a critique of the practice of philosophy as communication (the “civilization of papers,” as I have called it elsewhere) in the contemporary society of control. 14 We can locate with precision the reasons that both separate and bring together Deleuze and Husserl in their conceptualization of the transcendental. Husserl writes: “In truth, Hume’s psychology is the first systematic attempt at a science of what is purely given in consciousness; I would say that it is the attempt at a pure Egology, if Hume had not held the Ego, too, to be pure fiction” (Edmund Husserl, First Philosophy: Lectures 1923/1924 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts (1920/1925), trans. Sebastian Luft and Thane M. Naberhaus (Berlin: Springer, 2019), p. 16. Deleuze is closer to Sartre’s version, which gives back to the ego its non-originary character and understands it as both psychological and transcendent: compare Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego (New York: Hill & Wang, 1991). Deleuze finds other models for a pre-subjective and impersonal field of consciousness. These models are the first chapter of Bergson’s Matter and Memory, the “stream of consciousness” in William James (who also thought that it would be better to say “It thinks” than “I think”), and Nietszche, who saw in the cogito nothing more than a grammatical illusion. 15 The facticity of epistēmē is directly considered by Foucault; see, for example, his definition of “archive”: “Instead of seeing, on the great mythical book of history, lines of words that translate in visible characters thoughts that were formed in some other time and place, we have, in the density of discursive practices, systems that establish statements as events (with their own conditions and domain of appearance) and things (with their own possibility and field of use).” Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 145. In his book on Foucault, Deleuze insists on the facticity of his friend’s concept of statement. Statements are not propositions, and archaeology aspires neither to formalize nor to interpret them—its aim is neither logical analysis nor hermeneutics—but rather to describe them as forms of practice. However, the difficulty that remains for Deleuze is that of the articulation between practice and truth. Thus Deleuze goes as far as to say this: “Hence the problem of the intellectual for Michel and his way of



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reintroducing the category of truth, since, in renewing it completely by making it dependent on power, he finds ammunition which can be turned against power? But I don’t see how.” Gilles Deleuze, “Desire and Pleasure,” in Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Ame Hodges and Mike Taormina (Los Angeles: Semiotexte, 2006), p. 128. 16 For Heidegger, the idea of ontological diference, that is, the difference between Being and beings, is also an operator in the deconstruction (Abbau) of metaphysics. The history of metaphysics is the history of the forgetting of Being. If Being is defined as the “horizon” of the appearance of beings, it is precisely a “transcendental field,” like the plane of immanence in Deleuze. According to Heidegger, one loses one’s way in philosophy when Being is thought of as a privileged existent (Ens realissimum), and, according to Deleuze, when the plane of immanence is objectified, or made transcendent, for the construction of a sovereign and universal concept. 17 WP, p. 39. 18 Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), §47: “The True is thus the Bacchanalian revel in which no member is not drunk; yet because each member collapses as soon as he drops out, the revel is just as much transparent and simple repose.” For a detailed examination of the relationship between Deleuze and Hegel, see Michael Hardt, Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). In DR, pp. 49–50, Deleuze admits the merit of his “adversary” Hegel, even though immediately afterwards he emphasizes the superiority of his “ally” Leibniz. 19 WP, p. 59. 20 WP, p. 42. 21 For Bergson, the illusion of the priority of the possible over the real is in solidarity with another one, that of the priority of nothingness over being, of emptiness over the plenum. The metaphor in question is to be found in Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (New York: Modern Library, 1944), p. 300: “In short, I cannot get rid of the idea that the full is an embroidery on the canvas of the void, that being is superimposed on nothing, and that in the idea of ‘nothing’ there is less than in that of ‘something.’ Hence all the mystery.” 22 WP, p. 60. 23 [TN: A play on the verse La mer, la mer, toujours recommencé! (“The sea, the ever recommencing sea!”) in Paul Valéry’s “Le cimetière marin” (“The Graveyard by the Sea”).] 24 WP, p. 42. 25 WP, p. 42. In the Tractatus, an event (Tatsache, Sachveralt) is

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defined as an articulation between things (Dinge, Sache) or objects (Gegenstände) whose properties are internal, fixed like Platonic Forms, and which determine the substance of the world. In this case, the emergence of events cannot deform or scratch the smooth surface of the immutable essence of things. 26 DR opens with a reference to Péguy’s Clio and its conception of repetition (pp. 6–7). Deleuze’s conception is constructed with the help of Péguy, Kierkegaard, and Nietszche: “Kierkegaard against Hegel, Nietszche against Kant and Hegel; and from this point of view, Péguy against the Sorbonne” (p. 7). 27 Cf. J. C. Pariente, “Bergson et Wittgenstein,” in G. G. Granger, ed., Wittgenstein et le problème d’une philosophie de la science (Paris: CNRS, 1971). 28 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value: A Selection from the Posthumous Remains, ed. G. H. von Wright, trans. Peter Winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 74. 29 WP, p. 41. 30 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 50. 31 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 347–50. 32 Jacques Bouveresse, Le Mythe de l’intériorité (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1987), p. 593. 33 For the concept of Weltbild, see e.g. Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, translated by Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), §94: “But I did not get my picture of the world [Weltbild] by satisfying myself of its correctness: nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited back­ground against which I distinguish between true and false.” For Weltanschauung, see §422: “So I am trying to say something that sounds like pragmatism. Here I am being thwarted by a kind of Weltanschauung.” Note that both the English and the French translations retain the word Weltanschauung in §422, but they translate Weltbild—namely as “picture of the world” and image du monde. I can avoid a Weltanschauung that seems to hinder my reflection and infiltrates itself into my thought, but I cannot rid myself of a picture of the world unless I change it for another, through conversion or cultural change. 34 Concepts can only coexist—be compossible, combine, or form contradictory pairs—against the background of the plane. Thus, on the plane of immanence instituted by the Kantian critique, there is a “collision” between intuition and intellectual knowledge; the very concept of intellectual intuition, which circulates freely on the plane of classical metaphysics, is excluded from the new plane. 35 Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §97.



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36 José Arthur Giannotti, Apresentação do mundo [Presentation of the World] (S. Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996). 37 See Chapter 1 in this volume. 38 Gilles Deleuze, “Immanence: A Life …,” in Introduction to the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, ed. Jean Khalfa (New York: Continuum, 2003), pp. 170–3. 39 In the Tractatus there is no room for the principle of sufficient reason. For all their necessarily emerging against the necessarily prior framework of logical space, facts are no less contingent. In the later Wittgenstein, this prior framework itself becomes contingent in a way. Here we have something like an ultimate (or first) level that is nonetheless contingent––the almost Pascalian paradox of an ultimate bedrock that could still have been otherwise. 40 Deleuze’s metaphor of the “fold” (pli), which he uses in his book on Leibniz, is implicit in Foucault’s “empirico-transcendental doublets,” and is also illuminating for understanding the articulation between praxis and symbolization in the thought of the later Wittgenstein. A form of life folds upon itself in the rules of a language game. To use another metaphor, life and language are the two sides of a Möbius strip. 41 Giannotti, Apresentação do mundo. 42 Let us remember, among other examples, the pragmatist and historicist reading proposed by Rorty in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979) that more than once identifies the styles of Wittgenstein, Dewey, and Heidegger (of course, the Heidegger of the “history of Being”). 43 On Kierkegaard and Deleuze, see n. 26. On Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, see Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, pp. 36, 37, 43, and 61. Kierkegaard is also mentioned—together with Heidegger— in Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann, ed. B. F. McGuinness, trans. B. F. McGuinness and Joachim Schulte (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979); see the notes for December 30, 1929. 44 WP, p. 36. 45 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 56. 46 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 41. Compare Wittgenstein’s remarks on Heidegger in Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, pp. 68–9. [TN: See also this passage at p. 78 in the previous chapter.] 47 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 74. 48 [TN: A term of Wittgenstein’s that is notoriously difficult to translate; see G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), pp. 531–2 for a discussion of the problems involved and an explanation of this

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key Wittgensteinian concept. The best solution, adopted here, is to leave it in German.] 49 Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, which had strongly impacted the young Nietzsche, profoundly influenced Wittgenstein’s propositions on solipsism and ethics in the Tractatus. Even Schopenhauer’s language is to be found there, in the opposition between world and will (see proposition 6.372). 50 Michel Foucault, Preface, in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (London: Athlone, 1983), p. xiii. 51 Deleuze, “Immanence: A Life …,” p. 171. 52 Deleuze uses this scholastic terminology in order to define the plane of immanence: aseitas designates a being that possesses in itself the reason for its being; abalietas is its opposite, a being whose existence depends on that of another. 53 In German idealism (Fichte, Hegel), the absolute, “become subject,” experiences (as did Christ on the cross) the Unruhe of the human subject, the uneasiness (Locke) or fear of death (Hobbes) of the psychological subject of British empiricism. 54 As I have already pointed out, Deleuze takes upon himself the task of reconstructing the idea of the transcendental from the perspective of Bergson’s critique of the Kantian aesthetic, or of the “spatial” conception of time presented there. In Time and Free Will, Bergson opposed to Kant the idea of an essential difference between quantitative and qualitative multiplicities. It is in this idea, although reworked, that Deleuze finds one of the supports for his theory of the “asymmetric synthesis of the sensible” in DR. 55 Deleuze, “Immanence: A Life …,” pp. 171–2, translation slightly modified. 56 Here I have in mind the structure of the Critique of Pure Reason—the aesthetic, the analytic, and the dialectic—but also the architectonic trinity of the three Critiques, which express different games or combinations between these three faculties: sensibility, understanding, and reason. This threefold game of faculties is central to Deleuze’s book on Kant. 57 In the strictest sense of the word, given that, outside the world or life, there is rigorously nothing. 58 On the one hand, grammatical propositions are zeitlos (timeless), whereas propositions strictly speaking are zeitlich (temporal). This may perhaps imply a change in Wittgenstein’s conception of death. In the Tractatus (6.43 11) we find the Epicurean thesis that “[d]eath is not an event in life … Our life has no end just in the way in which our visual field has no limits.” In 1944 Wittgenstein added: “If in



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life we are surrounded by death …” (Culture and Value, p. 50). Has anything really changed? 59 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), vol. 1, §913. 60 G. H. von Wright, “Wittgenstein in Relation to His Times,” in G. H. von Wright, Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), p. 216. 61 Wittgenstein writes: “What narrowness of spiritual life we find in Frazer! As a result: how impossible it was for him to conceive of a life different from that of the England of his time! Frazer cannot imagine a priest who is not basically a present-day English Parson with the same stupidity and dullness.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough,” in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Occasions, p. 125. 62 See Wittgenstein on Ramsey in Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 17, and Ramsey on Brouwer’s “Bolshevism” in F. P. Ramsey, The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays, ed. R. Braithwaite (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1931). 63 DR, p. 139. 64 DR, pp. 153–67. 65 In the chapter titled “Geophilosophy,” Deleuze writes, thinking mainly of Hume: “The English nomadize over the old Greek earth, broken up, fractalized, and extended to the entire universe” (WP, p. 105). An enemy of all eternally fixed foundations, of every Ur-archē, the nomad is by definition “anarchontic.” 66 David Hume, Dialogues on Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1947), p. 187.

Notes to commentary to chapter 4 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), §217. 2 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 41.

Notes to chapter 5 1 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin Books), 1995), p. 5. [Translators’ note: Altered to replace “skepticism” with “Pyrrhonism,” in greater fidelity to the original and in line with the discussion that follows.]

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2 Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), p. 166. 3 Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers (London: Routledge, rev. 2nd ed., 1982); W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophists (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971). 4 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos 9.56, quoted from Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, p. 432. Let me stress that, in the language of Greek philosophy, the word phantasia corresponds to what we would call “representation.” 5 Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, p. 433. 6 Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, p. 433. 7 Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, p. 435. 8 Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, p. 436. 9 Oswaldo Porchat, Vida comum e ceticismo [Common Life and Skepticism] (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1993), pp. 5–21. 10 Oswaldo Porchat, Vida comum e ceticismo, p. 15. 11 Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, p. 436. 12 Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, p. 436. 13 John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 3rd edn. (London: A. & C. Black, 1920), p. 131. 14 [TN: The full line from Ovid runs: barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis (“here I am a barbarian, because people cannot understand me”).] 15 Namely Donald N. McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). 16 [TN: In English in the original; a reference to Nelson Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978).] 17 Richard Rorty, “Truth and Freedom: A Reply to Thomas McCarthy,” Critical Inquiry 16 (1990): 633–43. 18 I would ask, can we escape either metaphysics or the Pascalian impasse? 19 [TN: The paper in question appears to be Karl-Otto Apel, “A Planetary Macroethics for Humankind: The Need, the Apparent Difficulty, and the Eventual Possibility,” in Eliot Deutsch, ed., Culture and Modernity: East–West Philosophic Perspectives (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), pp. 261–78. The two quotations (here and in the next paragraph) are from pp. 261 and 262.] 20 [TN: Both ‘brave new world’ and ‘poor third world’ are in English in the original.] 21 Paulo Arantes’ intervention as a respondent on the occasion of this lecture rigorously and exuberantly describes the differences to which I allude here. He provides us with the geopolitical–metaphysical differential that enables us to diagnose deep disagreements



Notes to pp. 144–54

209

underneath superficial agreements and deep agreements underneath superficial disagreements. 22 [TN: In English in the original.] 23 See the beautiful commentary on this passage from Beyond Good and Evil in Rubens Rodrigues Torres Filho, Ensaios de filosofia ilustrada [Essays in Enlightenment Philosophy] (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1987), pp. 30–3. 24 See Barbara Cassin, Sophistical Practice: Toward a Consistent Relativism (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), ch. 2. 25 See Bento Prado Jr. and Mark Julian Cass, “A retórica da economia segundo McCloskey” [“The Rhetoric of Economics According to McCloskey”], Revista Discurso 22, 1993: 205–21. Recognizing that McCloskey (very much inspired by Rorty) resorts to the right instruments in his crusade against positivism, which still obscures the idea that American economists have of their theoretical practice, we point out in this article the danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The question we pose is: Are we condemned to follow in Dewey’s footsteps merely on account of refusing foundationalism’s delusions of grandeur? Is all epistemology dead since the death of positivism and unified science? Is the description of epistemology that Rorty presented in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature reasonable? Being an anti-positivist does not necessarily mean becoming a Rortian. Not being a Rortian, in this case, means proposing or supposing an alternative archaeology of modernism, or accepting the nevertheless sensible idea that, for example, Humean scepticism is not superhuman or inhuman, as is made clear in Gérard Lebrun, “La boutade de Charing Cross,” Revista Manuscrito 2 (1978): 65–84. 26 [TN: In English in the original.] 27 Gérard Lebrun, Kant et la fin de la métaphysique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970), p. 504. It is curious that such a perfectly “continental” philosopher as Lebrun should affirm, against the “insular” ones, that philosophy is not a continent. 28 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 2007). p. 35.

Notes to first commentary to chapter 5 1 See Bento Prado Jr., Alguns ensaios: Filosofia, literatura, psicanálise [Some Essays: Philosophy, Literature, Psychoanalysis] (São Paulo: Max Limonad, 1985). 2 Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), p. 611.

210

Notes to pp. 156–71

Notes to second commentary to chapter 5 1 [Translators’ note: “The French Overseas Department” is how Michel Foucault jokingly described the Philosophy Department at the University of São Paulo during a visit in 1965. (“Overseas departments” is the administrative name for former colonies that remain under French control.) The department was created in the 1930s with the arrival of a number of French professors, and would continue to receive a steady influx of philosophers from that country up until the 1960s. Paulo Arantes borrowed Foucault’s ironic nickname for the title of his book on the formation of the department: Paulo Arantes, Um departamento francês de ultramar: Estudo sobre a formação da cultura filosófica uspiana (Uma experiências dos anos 60) [A French Overseas Department: A Study on the Formation of the Philosophical Culture at USP (An Experience from the 1960s)] (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1994).] 2 [TN: In French in the original: s’en félicite.] 3 Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason, trans. Michael Eldred (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 5. 4 [TN: The expression was coined by Henry Louis Gates Jr. See Richard Rorty, “De Man and the American Cultural Left,” in his Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 129–40.]

Notes to chapter 6 1 Vincent Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, trans. L. Scott-Fox and J. M. Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 2 [Translators’ note: An epithet used by Nietzsche to describe Kant in Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1989).] 3 Gilles Deleuze, ed., Instincts and institutions: Textes choisis et présentées par G. Deleuze (Paris: Hachette, 1955). 4 See Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, 1972–1990, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 46–7. 5 Gérard Lebrun, L’envers de la dialectique: Hegel à la lumière de Nietzsche (Paris: Seuil, 2004). 6 Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature, trans. Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 23.



Notes to pp. 172–80

211

7 Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, p. 178. 8 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson (London: Verso, 1994). 9 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, p. 216. 10 Deleuze, Negotiations, p. 178. 11 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Gaeta (London: Athlone Press, 1989), p. 172.

Notes to chapter 7 1 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Bergson in the Making,” in his Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 191. 2 Very symptomatic of this renaissance or spirit of renewal was the project to relaunch in 2000 the journal Études Bergsoniennes, whose publication had been interrupted in 1975. (The project was later postponed until 2002.) The first volume of the new series was published as Frédéric Worms (ed.), Annales Bergsoniennes, vol. 1: Bergson dans le siècle (Paris: PUF, 2003). 3 See F. C. T. Moore, Bergson: Thinking Backwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 4 João de Fernandes Teixeira, Mentes e máquinas: Uma introdução à ciência cognitiva [Minds and Machines. An Introduction to Cognitive Science] (São Paulo: Artes Médicas, 1998). 5 In all fairness to Heidegger, it must be said that his main target was perhaps not Bergson but his rivals, the philosophers of Nazism, who gave philosophy a “naturalistic” or “biologizing” bent that was indispensable to defending the thesis of Aryan racial superiority. 6 Renaud Barbaras, Desire and Distance: Introduction to a Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Paul Milan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). 7 See Bento Prado Jr., Presença e campo transcendental: Consciência e negatividade na filosofia de Bergson [Presence and Transcendental Field: Consciousness and Negativity in Bergson’s Philosophy] (São Paulo: Edusp, 1989), and, in a French edition, Présence et champ transcendental: Conscience et négativité dans la philosophie de Bergson, trans. with an introduction by Renaud Barbaras (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2002). 8 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1911), p. 241. 9 Gordon Baker, Wittgenstein’s Method: Neglected Aspects (Malden: Blackwell, 2004), p. 200. See Friedrich Waismann, How I See Philosophy, ed. Rom Harre (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1968).

212

Notes to pp. 180–1

10 Ludwig Wittgenstein, “A Lecture on Ethics,” in Philosophical Occasions, ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), pp. 41–2. 11 Or of his fine reading of Wittgenstein, I would add. 12 Gordon Baker, Wittgenstein’s Method, p. 204.

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Index

a-normativity ​xv Abgrund (abyss) ​xii, xvii, 130 absolutism ​xxvii, 129, 130, 137, 146–7, 159 see also universalism academic papers ​2, 177 adaequatio ​7, 71, 97 Adorno, Theodor ​159, 162 Negative Dialectics ​146, 152 Philosophy of New Music ​80 Alanen, Lilli ​62 alētheia (unconcealment of truth) ​ 71, 173 Alquié, Ferdinand ​190n40 American pragmatism ​71, 137, 161 see also pragmatism Amerikanismus (Americanism) ​ 23, 70, 111, 115–16 analytic philosophy ​xi, 55, 56, 137, 162, 170, 180, 181 anarchontic philosophy ​xxvii, 103, 171 Anaxagoras ​134 Andrade, Carlos Drummond de ​ 65

Andrade, Mário de ​xviii, 183n17 anticapitalism ​69, 70, 81, 160 Apel, Karl-Otto ​5, 9, 13, 96, 139–45, 152, 156–7, 158, 159 Arantes, Paulo ​3, 136, 183n18, 208n21, 210n1 archaeology of knowledge ​86, 88, 90, 143, 202n15 Aristotle ​10, 51, 100, 129, 142, 166, 179 Armstrong Roche, Michael ​ xxvii–xxxi atom bomb ​70 Aufklärung see Enlightenment Augustine, Saint ​83, 189n29 Bachelard, Gaston ​9 Baker, Gordon ​180, 181, 192n12 Barbaras, Renaud Desire and Distance ​180 Barnes, Jonathan ​131–3, 134, 136 The Presocratic Philosophers ​ 149 Barreto, Tobias ​183n18

224 Index Beckett, Samuel ​xii Benjamin, Walter ​xxvii Bergson, Henri ​xii, xxv, xxvii, 79, 93, 103, 129, 146, 176–81 canvas of the void ​92 on cinema ​169–70 on consciousness ​178 Creative Evolution ​167, 178, 203n21 Deleuze and ​167 Heidegger on ​179 Matter and Memory ​167, 170, 171, 179, 202n14 Merleau-Ponty on ​177, 178, 179 phenomenology ​179–80 Sartre and ​179 “The Possible and the Real” ​ 180 Time and Free Will ​179, 206n54 Two Sources of Morality and Religion ​178 virtual–actual structure ​ 100–1n9 Wittgenstein compared with ​ 93–4, 180–1 Biswanger, Ludwig Dream and Existence ​169 Borges, Jorge Luis ​175 Bouveresse, Jacques ​9, 50, 95 Bréhier, Émile ​3, 175 Brooks, Rodney ​178 Brouwer, Desclée de ​102, 169 Brunschvicg, Léon ​200n4 Camões, Luís Vaz de ​xxxi capitalism ​72, 110, 138, 139, 158, 160–4, 172 anticapitalism ​69, 70, 81, 160 Cardoso, Fernando Henrique ​xx Cassin, Barbara ​145, 185n15 Cassirer, Ernst ​130

categorial metamorphoses ​xiii, xiv Cavaillès, Jean ​199n33 Celan, Paul ​xxii–xxiii Cervantes ​175 chaos ​91–9, 168 conceptual ​107, 113–14, 121–4 linguistic ​122–3 prelinguistic ​117, 120 Christianity ​79–80, 81, 92–3 cinema ​169–70 civilization culture and ​69, 71, 78, 79, 82, 107 Clark, Andy Being There ​178 classical Greek philosophy ​1, 2, 10, 83, 128, 129, 135, 136, 145 cogito ​xiv, 46–7, 54, 56–8, 61, 62, 63, 171 colonial oppression ​ix common sense Kant and ​7, 18 Moore and ​14–19, 22–4, 63 realism of ​24, 38, 62 Vernünftigkeit ​11–12 Wittgenstein’s critique of Moore ​14–19, 22–4 consciousness ​46–9, 54–5, 57–8 constructivism ​xxx, 85, 86, 97, 98, 124 conversational conception of philosophy ​xx, 146, 159, 164 conversion ​xx, 19, 21, 33–6, 63, 145, 153 correspondence (adaequatio) ​7, 71, 97 crisis of reason ​3, 25 critique ​xvi, 169 Croce, Benedetto ​xvii cultural idealism ​164

Index cultural relativism ​164–5 culture civilization and ​69, 71, 78, 79, 82, 107 Culture and Value ​64, 65–84, 94 decadence ​69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 139 literature ​80–1 music ​80 religion ​79–80 cynicism ​136, 162 David, Jacques-Louis ​186n17 David-Ménard, Monique ​ 185n12, 195n45 de Biran, Maine ​100 decadence ​69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 98, 139 decentering ​xiv–xv, xvi decolonization of thought ​ix Deleuze, Gilles ​xii, xiii, xxvii, 166–75 Anti-Oedipus ​99, 169 Bergson and ​167–8, 169 Bergsonism ​167, 177 on cinema ​169–70 constructivism ​85, 86, 97, 98 Difference and Repetition ​86, 103, 175 field philosophy ​87 Foucault and ​166, 174 Instincts and Institutions ​169 irrationalism ​175 Kant and ​100 multiplicities ​168, 172–3 Negotiations ​174 Nietzsche and ​167, 168–9, 171, 173–4 phenomenology ​86, 88 plane of immanence ​85–103 on psychoanalysis ​172 society of control ​174 on subjectivity ​170–2

225

virtuality ​172 What Is Philosophy? ​86, 173 Demades ​154 democracy ​72, 138, 163 Democritus ​131, 133, 144, 149 Dennett, Daniel ​178 Darwin’s Dangerous Idea ​178 Derrida, Jacques ​xi, 142, 190n40 Descartes, René ​xxx, xxxi, 2, 4, 6, 129, 130 age of reason ​20 cogito ​xiv, 46–7, 54, 56–8, 61, 62, 63 dream argument ​24, 43–64 Meditations on First Philosophy ​24, 44, 51, 52, 61, 62, 194n38 Wittgenstein and ​4, 6 Descombes, Vincent ​168, 169, 171, 172 Dewey, John ​139, 209n25 dialectics ​5 Adorno ​146 Christian ​159 Deleuze and ​171 negative ​13, 153 Pascal ​146–7, 159 transcendental ​4, 169 Dickens, Charles ​101 Diogenes ​136 dream argument consciousness ​46–9, 54–5, 57–8 Descartes and ​24, 43–64 Malcolm and ​50, 51–2, 55, 56, 59–60 Sartre and ​54–5 Spinoza and ​53–4, 55–6 Wittgenstein and ​xxx, 23, 24, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43–64 Drummond de Andrade, Carlos ​ 65, 84 Dummett, Michael ​177

226 Index earth (Ur-archē) ​5, 201n11, 207n65 Eckhart, Meister ​xi Eliot, T. S. ​201n9 embryogenesis ​200n2 empirical–transcendental doublets ​ 9, 28–9, 94–5 Enlightenment (Aufklärung) ​ xxix, 138, 143, 160, 163 dialectic of ​3 Merleau-Ponty and ​2 mythology and ​133–4 presocratic philosophy ​133–4 Wittgenstein and ​69–70, 81 Epicureans ​206n58 epistēmē  ​6 Aristotle ​142 Foucault ​88, 89, 202n15 epistemology ​75, 76, 129, 131, 134, 172 Quine ​160, 162 ethnocentrism ​72, 135, 138, 139, 151–2 Faustino, Sílvia ​189n29 Ferdinand VII of Spain ​xxix Ferry, Luc ​142, 187n4 fiber, lack of ​xii, xviii, 183n18 Fichte, Gottlieb ​100 Sun-Clear Statement ​44–5 Ficker, Ludwig von ​196n4 film see cinema forms of expression ​xviii, 80, 106, 108–11 forms of life (Lebensform) ​6, 72, 76–9, 110–17, 125–7, 130, 142 images and ​118–19 language games and ​xxi, 63, 94, 96, 97, 102 Weltbild and ​114–17 Foucault, Michel ​xi, 190n40, 210n1 on Anti-Oedipus ​99

archaeology ​86, 88, 90, 143, 202n15 Archaeology of Knowledge ​ 202n15 on cinema ​169 Deleuze and ​166, 174 empirical–transcendental doublets ​9, 28–9, 94 epistēmē ​88, 89, 202n15 The Order of Things ​9, 88, 89, 90, 94, 143 plane of immanence ​87–90 Frankfurt, Harry ​190n40 Demons, Dreamers and Madmen ​61, 195n40 Frankfurt School ​3, 13, 83, 158, 162, 174 Frazer, James George ​34, 41, 102, 115, 207n61 Frege, Gottlob ​48, 98, 117, 190n7 Freud, Sigmund ​23, 33, 34, 116, 117, 172 see also psychoanalysis fundamental principles of human enquiry ​12, 17, 19, 20, 31–3, 35–6 Gagnebin, Jeanne-Marie ​65 Galileo ​5 Gallardo Blanco, José ​xxviii Gellner, Ernest ​130, 163 geophilosophy ​207n65 Gestalt psychology ​xxix, 87, 116 Giannotti, José Arthur ​130 Wittgenstein’s language games ​ 4–14, 97 globalization ​38, 139 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von ​ 39, 40, 73, 116, 117 Gomes, Paulo Emílio Salles ​xiv Gorgias ​2, 129 Gouhier, Henri ​190n40 Goya, Francisco ​xxvii–xxxi, 186n17

Index grammatical therapy ​27–8, 31–3, 38–9, 109, 110, 112, 117, 125 Granger, Gilles-Gaston ​29, 188n24 Grund (ground) ​xi, xii, xvii, 20 grundlösiger Grund (groundless ground) ​5, 11, 96, 97 Grundlösigkeit (groundlessness) ​ 5, 97 Grundprinzipien (fundamental principles) of human enquiry ​12, 17, 19, 20, 31–3, 35–6 Guattari, Félix ​85 Guéroult, Martial ​57, 61, 62, 132, 190n40, 195n41 Guimarães Rosa, João ​ix, xvii, xviii, 79 Guthrie, W. K. C. ​134, 150 Habermas, Jürgen ​xi, xix, 3, 5, 13, 96, 146, 157 Rorty and ​159–62, 164 Hardt, Michael ​203n18 Hegel, G. W. F. ​xi, 7, 130, 159, 203n18 Heidegger, Martin ​xi, xxii, 23, 89, 130 Amerikanismus ​23, 70 Being and Time ​179 on Bergson ​179 Celan and ​xxii–xxiii Nietzsche ​136 ontological difference ​203n16 phusis ​xxi–xxiv The Principle of Reason ​5, 189n31 romantic anticapitalism ​70 Heraclitus ​92, 96 Herder, Johann Gottfried ​184n2 Hertz, Heinrich ​76 Herz, Marcus ​21

227

Hesiod ​133 Hesse, Hermann The Glass Bead Game ​13 Hilbert, David ​xxx, 200n4 Hilmy, Stephen ​38 Hippias ​145 Hogarth, William ​186n17 Homer ​133 Hottois, Gilbert ​16, 22–3, 47 Hume, David ​xii, 9, 100, 103, 167, 171, 202n14, 207n65 Husserl, Edmund ​5, 58, 59, 96, 100, 129 on Hume ​202n14 Ideas ​55–6 Logical Investigations ​48 phenomenology ​179–80, 201n13 Urdoxa (primary belief) ​88, 89 Huxley, Aldous ​141 Hyppolite, Jean ​xxvi ideal reader ​107, 111 idealism ​xiv, 4, 39, 44–5, 57 cultural ​164 illusion ​22, 24–5 imperialism ​138–9 Ingarden, Roman ​179 intersubjectivity ​xxvi, 88, 133, 144, 149, 201n13 ipseity ​xv, xvi, xxiv, xxv, xxxi language and ​xvi irrationalism ​3, 25, 175 James, William ​xiv, 100, 136, 167, 177, 202n14 Principles of Psychology ​171 Janik, Allan ​72, 73 Jaspers, Karl ​86 Jefferson, Thomas ​163 Judaism ​79–80, 81 Kalish, Donald ​193n32

228 Index Kant, Immanuel ​xxix, xxxi, 2, 59, 96, 129, 179 cogito ​57, 58 common sense ​7, 18 Critique of Judgment ​9, 18 Critique of Pure Reason ​57, 76, 87, 101, 206n56 Deleuze and ​100 plane of immanence ​87 religion ​79 Rorty and ​137–8 transcendental dialectics ​4, 169 Wittgenstein and ​4, 7 Kierkegaard, Søren ​69, 80, 83, 98, 146, 159 Kraus, Karl ​80 Kurz, Robert ​139 lack of fiber ​xii, xviii, 183n18 language ​xv–xviii critique of ​xvi ipseity and ​xvi misunderstandings ​xxi “of my own” ​xvi poetry ​xvii–xviii private language ​xiv, xvi, 192n12 untranslatability ​xvii–xviii language games ​4–14, 17, 36, 63–4, 94–8 basis of ​xx, 5 changes in ​10 communicability of ​5–6, 13–14 conventions ​112 dialectics ​5 expressive capacity ​78 forms of life and ​102 Giannotti and ​4–14, 97 harmony ​7–9 madness ​41, 42 ontological reach ​7 perversion of ​xxi

plurality of ​5, 7, 12 propositional levels ​120–1 therapy ​34, 38 translation among ​11 understanding all ​17, 25, 29–31, 40 vernünftiger Mensch ​6–7, 26–8 Weltbild and ​10 Lebensform see forms of life Lebenswelt (lifeworld) ​5, 88, 130 Lebrun, Gérard ​4, 31, 170, 176, 201n10, 209n25, 209n27 Leibniz, Gottfried ​129, 203n18, 205n40 Monadology ​9 Lévi-Strauss, Claude ​135 libertinism ​3, 175 Licht, Fred ​186n17 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph ​ 60–1, 201n12 literature ​80–1 Locke, John ​52, 56, 59 logic, philosophy of ​xxvi, 4, 66, 75 logical empiricists ​70 Lopes de Santos, Luiz Henrique ​ 21–2, 25, 37, 58, 62, 74, 98 Löwy, Michael ​198n28 Lukács, Georg The Destruction of Reason ​3, 187n4 Esthetics ​197n21 The Magic Mountain and ​81 Ontology ​70 Lumières ​3 Lyotard, Jean-François ​142, 175 McCarthy, Thomas ​137, 138 McCloskey, Donald N. ​136, 209n25 macroethics ​139–40 madness argument ​23, 24–5, 38, 39–42, 45, 64

229

Index “magnetization from above” ​68, 83, 110, 119–20 Malcolm, Norman ​191n11 Dreaming ​50, 51–2, 55, 56, 59–60, 62, 193n32 Malebranche, Nicolas ​52, 59 Mallarmé, Stéphane ​xxiii Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain ​81 Mannheim, Karl ​12 Marcel, Gabriel ​xi Marcuse, Herbert “On Science and Phenomenology” ​3 Marx, Karl ​xi Das Kapital ​xxvi Marxism ​23, 161, 169, 171–2 mathematics ​xxx, 23, 38, 42, 86, 103, 115 Maturana, Humberto ​178 medicine sophism and ​134–5, 150 meontology ​2 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice ​xxxi, 62, 130, 182n10, 184n3 on Bergson ​177, 178, 179 body and soul ​195n41 The Visible and the Invisible ​2 mesoethics ​140 Mészáros, István ​187n4 Montaigne, Michel de ​154–5 Moore, F. C. T. ​177, 201n12 Bergson: Thinking Backwards ​ 178 Moore, G. E. ​6, 44, 96 “A Defence of Common Sense” ​14 common sense ​14–19, 22–4, 63 conversion ​21 Wittgenstein and ​14–19, 22–4 music ​80 mythology ​37, 75, 116 Aufklärung and ​133–4 language games ​10, 11, 17

persuasion ​xxi, 34–5 relativism and ​133–4 Weltbild and ​20–2, 96, 114–15 national philosophies ​x–xii natural laws ​21, 22, 36, 75 Nazism ​72, 211n5 neopragmatism ​130, 149, 158, 160–2, 164, 170 rhetoric and ​136 see also pragmatism Newtonian mechanics ​21, 36, 76 Nicolai, Christoph Friedrich ​156 Nietzsche, Friedrich ​xi, xii, 71, 73, 83, 89, 99, 145 Deleuze and ​167, 168–9, 171, 173–4 Thus Spoke Zarathustra ​67 nuclear weapons ​70 Nyman, Heikki ​66 ontogenesis ​200n2 ontology ​2, 129, 145, 172 otherness ​xiii, xv, 25, 39, 41, 63 Ovid ​135 Pariente, J. C. ​93 Pascal, Blaise ​xxvii, 1, 69, 128, 153 dialectics ​146–7, 159 Pensées ​147 Wittgenstein and ​4, 16 Paul, Saint ​80 Péguy, Charles ​93 Peirce, Charles Sanders ​13 peripheral countries ​ix perspectivism ​25, 74, 98, 137 persuasion ​xix–xxi, 12, 63, 133, 138, 145 authority and ​20 justification and ​20 mythology ​xxi, 34–5 Weltbild and ​19 Wittgenstein and ​19–21, 33–6

230 Index phenomenology ​56, 129, 172, 194n32 Bergson ​179–80 Deleuze ​86, 88 of dreaming ​53 of expression ​130 Husserlian ​179–80, 201n13 philosophia perennis ​xxvi, xxvii, 2, 82 philosophical therapy ​22, 23, 35, 37–8, 41, 109–10 phusis ​xviii, xxi–xxiv Pirandello, Luigi ​131 plane of immanence Deleuze ​85–103 Foucault ​87, 87–90, 88, 89, 90 Kant ​87 values and ​85–103 Weltbild and ​95–7, 113–27 Wittgenstein and ​93–9, 102–3, 105–27 planetary ethics ​140, 141 Plato ​10, 61, 92, 96, 100, 129, 144, 173, 185n10 Protagoras and ​131, 132, 133 Theaetetus ​132 poetry ​xvii–xviii, xxii–xxiii Poincaré, Henri ​86, 200n4 Porchat, Oswaldo ​132, 133, 153, 158, 159 postcolonialism ​164 postmodern thought ​xxvii, 3, 4, 16, 142, 175 poststructuralism ​xi, 170 pragmatism ​73–4, 136 American pragmatism ​71, 137, 161 neopragmatism ​130, 149, 158, 160, 162, 164, 170 private language ​xiv, xvi, 192n12 Protagoras ​4, 72, 131–8, 149, 151–2, 156, 157

psychoanalysis ​33–5, 115, 116, 140, 143, 169, 172 psychologia rationalis ​49 Putnam, Hilary ​59, 191n11, 194n32 Pyrrhonism ​128, 136, 154, 158–9 quantity of thought ​78, 99 Quine, Willard van Orman ​160, 161, 162, 164 Raggio, Andrés ​xxvi Ramsey, F. P. ​102–3, 207n62 rationalism ​25, 129, 136, 149, 170 realism ​4, 15–16, 39, 129 of common sense ​24, 38, 62 dogmatic ​57, 58, 63 empirical ​57 solipsism and ​58, 63 redescription ​71, 135, 137, 146 relativism ​128–65 cultural ​164–5 historical ​144 mythology and ​133–4 Protagoras and ​131 Rorty and ​130–1 Wittgenstein and ​4–14, 16–17, 29, 74, 96, 98, 111 religion ​79–80 Christianity ​79–80, 81, 92–3 Judaism ​79–80, 81 Renaut, Alain ​142, 187n4 rhetoric ​xxvi, 136–7, 146, 147 of change ​136, 151 medicine and ​134–5, 150 of truth ​136 see also sophistic philosophy/ sophistics Ribeiro de Moura, Carlos Alberto ​3 Rilke, Rainer Maria ​80 romanticism ​69–70, 71, 73, 80, 81, 94

Index Rorty, Richard ​3, 71, 130, 136–9, 146, 157 Apel’s critique of ​142, 144 ethnocentrism ​72, 135, 138, 139, 151–2 Habermas and ​159–62, 164 on Kant ​137–8 neopragmatism ​130, 149, 158, 160–2, 164 Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature ​205n42, 209n25 Protagoras and ​131–8 redescription ​71–2, 137 social theory ​138–9 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques ​xxvii, 73, 142 Dialogues ​67 Discourse on the Origin of Inequality ​140 intersubjectivity ​xxvi Russell, Bertrand ​24, 51, 117, 129, 177, 200n4 Ryle, Gilbert ​55, 177 The Concept of Mind ​50, 51, 52, 56, 62, 192n12 Sá-Carneiro, Mário de ​viii, xxxi Santos, José Henrique ​194n32 Sartre, Jean-Paul ​171 Bergson and ​179 dream argument and ​54–5 The Imaginary ​52, 54–5 The Transcendence of the Ego ​ 171, 202n14 Schopenhauer, Arthur ​73, 94, 146 The World as Will and Representation ​206n49 Schumann, Robert ​80, 198n27 Schwarz, Roberto ​xvi, 186n17, 187n18 scientific philosophy ​70 scientific revolutions ​130 self-therapy ​38, 109

231

Sextus Empiricus ​131 Shakespeare, William ​81 Silesius, Angelus ​5 Simondon, Gilbert ​175 Sloterdijk, Peter ​136, 162 social theory ​138–9 sociobiology ​178 Socrates ​46, 83, 129, 135, 145 solipsism ​4, 44, 45, 50, 57–8, 133, 150 realism and ​58, 63 sophistic philosophy/sophistics ​ xxx, 1, 4, 129, 131, 132–9, 145, 157 art of argument ​150–1 Barnes and ​149 medicine and ​134–5, 150 new sophist philosophy ​3 redescription ​71, 135, 137, 146 rhetoric see rhetoric Socrates and ​46, 83, 145 Souriau, Étienne ​200n3 Spengler, Oswald ​69, 74–5, 79, 82, 116, 117 Spinoza, Benedict de ​xii, 52, 59, 92, 98, 168 dream argument and ​53–4, 55–6 Ethics ​53–4 sufficient reason ​21, 180, 205n39 Swedenborg, Emanuel ​185n12 Teixeira, João Fernandes ​178 Teixeira, Lívio ​195n41 therapy grammatical ​27–8, 31–3, 38–9, 109–10, 112, 117, 125 psychoanalysis ​33–5, 115, 116, 140, 143, 169, 172 self-therapy ​38, 109 therapeutic philosophy ​22, 23, 33–4, 35, 37–8, 41, 107–20 Third Man argument ​100, 101

232 Index Tolstoy, Leo ​28, 80–1, 84 Torres Filho, Rubens Rodrigues ​ 209n23 Toulmin, Stephen ​72, 73

Whitehead, Alfred North ​xvi, 167 Wilson, E. O. ​178 Wittgenstein, Ludwig ​xiii, xxvi– xxvii, xxix–xxx, 1, 2, 3–4 Übersichtlichkeit ​99 “A Lecture on Ethics” ​180 unconcealment of truth (alētheia) ​ Amerikanismus (Americanism) ​ 71, 173 23, 70, 111, 115–16 universalism ​7, 16, 19, 21, 74, Bergson compared with ​93–4, 75, 129, 137, 138, 142 180–1 mesoethics ​140 common sense ​14–19, 22–4 see also absolutism critique of Moore ​14–19, 22–4 untranslatability ​xvii Culture and Value ​64, 65–84, Ur-archē (earth) ​5, 201n11, 94 207n65 Descartes and ​4, 6 Urdoxa (primary belief) ​88, 89, dream argument ​xxx, 23, 24, 201n11 38, 39, 40, 42, 43–64 duck–rabbit ​xxix Valéry, Paul ​203n23 Enlightenment and ​69–70, 81 Varela, Francisco ​178 fundamental principles of vernünftiger Mensch ​6–7, 26–8 human enquiry ​12, 17, 19, von Wright, Georg Henrik ​66, 20, 31–3, 35–6 81–2, 102, 125–6, 196n11 Giannotti on ​4–14, 97 Vuillemin, Jules ​202n13 ideal reader ​107, 111 Kant and ​4, 7 Waisman, Friedrich language games see language How I See Philosophy ​180 games Weber, Max ​141 literature ​80–1 Weil, Simone ​189n37 madness argument ​23, 24–5, Weltanschauung (worldview) ​ 38, 39–42, 45, 64 16–17, 21–2, 24–5, 95, 96, mathematics ​xxx, 23, 38, 42, 117, 125, 126–7 64, 103, 115, 123 Weltbild (world picture) ​7, 35, music ​80 36, 40 On Certainty ​4, 6, 7, 8, 10, form of life and ​114–17 12, 13, 14–22, 23–4, 44, 45, images and ​118–19 50, 63, 96, 145 irreducibility of Weltbilder ​16, Pascal and ​4, 16 17 perspectivism ​74, 98 language games and ​10 persuasion and conversion ​ mythology and ​20–2, 96, 19–21, 33–6 114–15 Philosophical Investigations ​ persuasion and ​19 34, 75, 77, 127 plane of immanence and ​95–7, Philosophical Remarks ​6, 67, 113–27 70, 71, 105–7

Index reading works of ​45–6 relativism and ​4–14, 16–17, 29, 74, 96, 98, 111 on religion ​79–80 Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics ​64 seeing-as ​xxix Spengler and ​69, 74–5, 79, 82, 116, 117 therapy see therapy Tractatus ​4, 7, 9, 10, 21–2, 23, 36, 37, 44, 47, 50, 56, 57, 62–3, 66, 75–8, 91, 98, 100–2, 107–8, 111, 117

233

Übersichtlichkeit ​99 values and plane of immanence ​93–9, 102–3, 105–27 Wolff, Christian ​191n8 world picture see Weltbild worldview see Weltanschauung Xenophanes ​133–4 Xenophon ​145 Yost, R. M., Jr. ​193n32 Zeno of Elea ​62, 170

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