Questions on Wittgenstein 9781138025202, 9781315775241, 0415002990

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Routledge Revivals

Questions on Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein, possibly the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century, is often labelled a Neopositivist, a New-Kantian, even a Sceptic. Questions on Wittgenstein, first published in 1988, presents a selection of nine essays investigating a matter of vital philosophical importance: Wittgenstein’s relationship to his Austrian predecessors and peers. The intention throughout is to determine the precise contours of Wittgenstein’s own thought by situating it within its formative context. Although it remains of particular interest to Anglo-Saxon philosophers, special familiarity with Austrian philosophy is required to appreciate the subtle and profound influence which this cultural and philosophical setting had on Wittgenstein’s intellectual development. Professor Haller has spent his career exploring these themes, and is one of the foremost authorities on both Wittgenstein and contemporary Austrian philosophy. Questions on Wittgenstein thus offers a unique insight into the twentiethcentury tradition of Austrian philosophy, and its importance for Wittgenstein’s thought.

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Questions on Wittgenstein

Rudolf Haller

ROUTLEDGE

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

First published in 1988 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd This edition first published in 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1988 Rudolf Haller The right of Rudolf Haller to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 88004718 ISBN 13: 978-1-138-02520-2 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-77524-1 (ebk) Additional materials are available on the companion website at [http://www.routledge.com/books/series/Routledge_Revivals]

QUESTIONS ON WITTGENSTEIN RU DOLF HALLER

I~ ROUTLEDGE

First publishedin 1988by Routledge a division of Routledge,Chapmanand Hall 11 New FetterLane,London EC4P4EE Publishedsimultaneouslyin the United States by the University of NebraskaPress © 1988 Rudolf Haller

Printedin GreatBritain All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reprintedor reproducedor utilized in any form or by any electronic,mechanical,or othermeans,now known or hereafterinvented,including photocopying and recording,or in any information storageor retrievalsystem,without permissionin writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguingin PublicationData Haller, Rudolf Questionson Wittgenstein. I. Wittgenstein,Ludwig I. Title 192 B3376.W564 ISBN 0-415-00299-0

Typesetin TimesRomanby Leaper& GardLtd, Bristol, England Printedand boundin GreatBritain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn

Contents Preface List of Abbreviations 1. WittgensteinandAustrian Philosophy

vu IX

1

2. WasWittgensteina Neopositivist?

27

3. WasWittgensteina Neo-Kantian?

44

4. Philosophyand the Critique ofLanguage: WittgensteinandMauthner

57

5. WasWittgensteinInfluencedby Spengler?

74

6. What do Wittgensteinand Weiningerhave in Common? 90 7. WasWittgensteina Sceptic?or On the Differences BetweenTwo 'Battle Cries'

100

8. The CommonBehaviourof Mankind

114

9. Form ofLife or FormsofLife? A Note on N. Garver's 'The Form of Life in Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical Investigations'

129

Bibliography Index

137 146

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Preface The presentvolume contains a selection of nine articles which primarily addressquestionson Wittgenstein.Although some of them were conceivedor completedas much as a decadeago, they appear here essentially unchanged, reflecting the path along which my engagementin Wittgenstein'swork has taken me, as weIl as the current state of Wittgenstein scholarshipin Austria and Germany. I shall not deny that I would have preferredto wait another few years before presentingthese questionson Wittgenstein to thoseof the English-speakingworld who might be interested.My hesitationis due to the fact that a further set of questions,unduly neglectedin the literature until now, have impressedthemselves upon me as worthy of immediateattention. Among the historically interestingquestionsare thoseof the natureof Boltzmann's influence upon Wittgenstein, the unique relationship between Karl Kraus and the Viennese philosopher, and (perhapsmost importantly) the nature of Piero Sraffa's contribution to the developmentof the Philosophicalremarks. The frequentclaim that critici sm of the position in the Tractatus logico-philosophicuson the isomorphic picture has been answeredby a Neapolitangesture only showshow insecureour stancemay becomewhen we seeka betterposition. QuestionsconcemingWittgenstein'sown philosophical position areevenweightier: the questionofhis estimation of the statusof philosophical propositions,and that of the disappearanceof philosophical problems. FinaIly, the background of his philosophy of psychology remains largely a riddle to us. Who or what inspired him to attempt the 'classification of psychologicalphenomena'?What is the purposeof the second part of the Philosophical investigations?What role is played by Russell'sphilosophy of mind, and his later works? Enough has been said to make clear that I seethat my own path and that of Wittgenstein scholarshiphave led to a mountain of unresolved, and to some extent unfamiliar, issues;a mountain shroudedin mist. This picture may seemoddly out of place in the context of the discussionof a philosopherwhosesole end in philosophywas to achieveclarity and perspicuity on the philosophicalquestion and its answer. It was Stuart Shankerwho expressedthe publisher'swish VII

Preface who indeed insisted - that i have a volume of my works on Wittgenstein translatedinto English. I owe him my gratitude, therefore,for putting my initial doubtsto rest. I thank the translator of Chapters 3 through 9, Jane Braaten, for delivering thoughtswoven in complex Germanicconstructionsinto what I judge to be a readableEnglish. The original articles - with the exceptionof Chapter6 - are publishedtogetherin two volumes of my edition, Studienzur oesterreichischenPhilosoPhie,as Volume 1 (1979) and Volume 10 (1986). The latter volume carriesthe same title as the presentvolume. For the transferof rights, I thank my Dutch editor, Fred van der Zee, as sincerely as I thank Philosophia-Verlag,München-Wien,for permissionto reprint Chapter 1, which appearsin English in Austrianphilosophy: texts and studies, editedby j.C. Nyiri, and translatedby Barry Smith. I am grateful to Mrs Hilla Hueberand Mr Barry Smith for their help. As always, special thanks are due to Mrs Helga Michelitsch, whosehelp was indispensableto the preparationof the work and the typescripts,and who attendedto the bibliography. I thank my wife for her careful work on a rainy holiday in Cortina (and, unfortunately,also during the sunny spelIs) revising with me all the chaptersof the book, thereby helping me to avoid several obscurities. I hope that not too many of these obscuritiesremain in the Questionson Wittgenstein. R.H. UniversitätGraz

Vlll

Abbreviations NB TLP PI RFM

BB LA

Z OC PG CV

Notebooks 7974-7976, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1961). Traetatus logieo-philosophieus, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness(Atlantie Highlands,NY: Humanities Press,Inc., 1974). Philosophiealinvestigations,ed. G.E.M. Anscombeand R. Rhees,trans.G.E.M. Anscombe(Macmillan Publishing Co., 1958). Remarkson the foundations of mathematies,ed. G.H. von Wright, R. Rhees and G.E.M. Anscombe, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1983). The blue and brown books,ed. R. Rhees(Harperand Row, NY,1958). Leclures and eonversations on aestheties, psyehology and religious belief, ed. C. Barrett (University of California Press,1967). Zettel, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, trans.G.E.M. Anscombe(U niversity of California Press, 1970). On certainty, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1969). PhilosoPhieal grammar, ed. R. Rhees, trans. A. Kenny (Oxford University Press,Oxford, 1969). Culture and value, ed. G.H. von Wright, trans. P. Winch (University of Chicago Press, 1980; first published as VermisehteBermerkungen,ed. G.H. von Wright (Frankfurt a.m.: SuhrkampVerlag, 1977).

IX

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1 Wittgenstein and Austrian Philosophy

Philosophicalschools frequently arise in the emulation or imitation of a teacherwhose power of conviction lies in his having asked new questions and often also in his having found or invented an adequateresponseto new methodsof arguing. He succeedsin carrying over paradigmcasesof such methods- to labour a themeof T.S. Kuhn - into the phaseof normal science wherein their fundamental theoretical and methodological contentwill not be modified or called into questionin any principal way. Modifications which manage to suggest themselves nonethelessare thereafterjustified by appeal to the previously acknowledgedauthorities. And this is not so remarkableif one takesthe view that from time immemorial mankind has found it easierto take on new ideas if thesecome to him in the guise of tradition, than in the awarenessof a total break with existing forms of thought. For this reason also philosophical currents deviating from familiar traditions, either by modifying them or even by seeking to bring them to an end, attempt to legitimate themselves through some tradition or other. And there is in deed a rational basisfor this kind of searchfor historicaljustification, which may be seenin the empirical needfor a cognitivetradition. Without such a tradition scientific researchwould be consignedto an eternally Sisypheantask, since it would repeatedlyhave to begin again from the start, with no recollectionof its past. The investigation of a school-traditionreducesin the end to the simple problem of giving a geneticaccountof a phenomenon of the history of ideas: ideaswhich determinepresent-daythinking. But let us turn from the question of historical legitimation back to the problem of our own time. Even if we are awarethat

1

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy no claims as to the truth of ideascan be derived from geneticconsiderations,still they occasionallyhelp us to achievea shift of the aspect in which thoughts, argumentsand theories are experienced. It is just such a shift of aspect that 1 treat in this present contribution to the history of the BrentanoSchool, a movement which both initiated and defined the history of Austrian philosophy. It is against its backgroundthat one must understandthe Vienna Circle, as 1 have already tried to show elsewhere.!That Wittgenstein is to be understoodexclusively from this perspective, as somewould argue(perhapsoverstatingtheir case),would yield a too one-sidedpicture of this great thinker. But that it is impossible to evaluatehim adequatelywithout this perspective seemsto me of little doubt. It is not my aim here however to investigatethe genesisof Wittgenstein'sthought and the evolution of the Vienna Circle. 1 wish insteadto defendtwo theses:first, that in the last 100 years there has taken place an independentdevelopmentof a specifically Austrianphilosophy,opposedto the philosophicalcurrentsof the remainderof the German-speaking world; and secondlythat this developmentcan sustainà geneticmodel which permitsus to affirm an intrinsic homogeneityof Austrian philosophyup to the Vienna Circle and its descendants.In the treatmentof such a topic a certainlimitation is necessary,as also is a statementofthe presuppositionunder which the thesis, which must naturally have the status of a hypothesis, is valid. This presupposition consists in the conviction that if they are to be influential and effective, philosophicalideas,like thoseof otherdisciplines,stand in needof institutionalisation.For many centuriesthe institutions of schools and universities formed the proper (most recently in fact the only) realm of historical influence, not only for this, the oldest of sciences,but indeed for practically all disciplines. It is only against this backgroundthat a continuous history of the republic of letters, whose geographicallocation is the totality of universitiesand their surrogates- academicchambers,editorial offices, salons- that an explanationof philosophicalideologies and of fashionsin philosophicalliteraturebecomespossible.But then, preciselybecauseinstitutions also act as a stabilising force, such that within them the winds of intellectual changeblow less strongly than elsewhere,schoolsand higher institutesof learning not infrequently becomethe refuge of old and out-dated,petrified theoriesand traditions. What the obsoleteand petrified taste

2

Wittgensteinand AustrianPhilosophy of an establishedaudiencesignifies for the daring and spirit of an artist protesting against traditional forms and contents,namely an icy lack of understandingor an angry resistance,is not infrequently proffered by the republic of scholarsand by institutesof learning to completely 'new' scientific ideas and theories. The history of the arts, as of the sciences,is to a large extent nothing but a collection of examplesof this relationship. So much for presuppositions.As far as limitation is concerned, I shaU, in what follows, limit myself only to certain especially important philosophers,without thereby wishing to deny that others could have been included besidesthose here mentioned, nor to suggest that only 'important' philosophers may have historical influenceswhich are worthy of discussion. The birth of Austrian philosophycan be seento lie in the appearanceof the Psychologyfrom an emPirical standpoint in the year 1874. In the sameyear its author, FranzBrentano(1838-1917),nephew of the romantic poet Clemens,and elder brother of the famous economist and politician Lujo Brentano, was called to the University of Vienna. In what respectcan the Psychologyfrom an emPirical standpoint be conceivedas signifying the terminusa quo of an independentlyAustrian developmentof philosophy?In what respectcan a philosopherwho attacheshimself to Aristotle and recogniseshimself as his first masterserveas forefatherto champions of neopositivismwho were to inscribe upon their banner the caU of deathto metaphysics?Can Brentanoreally belonghere to the sameextentas, say, theearlypositivist Ernst Mach? In the answerto this questionwe can anticipatea significant contribution to the solution ofthe problem in hand.2 And the answeris at bottom a simple one, for Brentano'sphilosophical programme was announcedalready in the fourth thesis of his Habilitation (1866): 'Vera philosophiaemethodusnulla alia nisi scientiaenaturalis est ('The true method of philosophy is none other than that of the natural sciences').This involves a two-fold claim: first, that the separation of an empirical and a transcendental method proposedby Kant was to be revoked,in favour of the former; and secondly that with the bringing to end of the methodological separation,as for examplewithin the hermeneutictradition from Dilthey onward, scientific standards- in the strict senseof the natural sciences- shouldat all eventsbe retained. In Psychologyfrom an empirical standpoint the epistemological foundationof an empirical psychologyis laid down. In particular,

3

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy a cri/mon is sought which would fix the distinction between psychical and physical. This criterion is that of intentionality. It asserts that we never conceive, judge, love or hate without conceivingsomething,judging something,loving or hating something. In short, that all psychicalgoings on are directedtowardsobjects and that in their possessionof this property psychical acts are distinguishedfrom everything physical. In the words of Chisholm, a contemporaryinterpreterof Brentano, 'we can desire or think abouthorsesthat don't exist, but we can ride on only those that dO'.3 In other words, whilst intentional objectsdo not imply existent objects, intentional acts, like propositionalattitudes,do imply intentionalobjects.Accordingly Brentanomodifies also the traditional classificationof the psychicalacts of thinking, feeling, and willing, and proposesinsteadpresentationandjudgementas two fundamentally separate types of thinking, whilst the emotional acts of feeling and willing are not fundamentally distinguishedfrom eachotherto the sameextent, and are in deed conceived together in a single class of emotional acts. What distinguishesthe methodologyof Brentanoand makesit capable of further developmentis the 'researchrule' (F. Hillebrand), or as one would say today - the 'researchprogramme'(I. Lakatos), which underliesit. The injunctions commandedby this rule fall essentiallyinto three: first, disciPline; secondly,to carry out one's researchempirically and thus to conceive also the evidenceof inner perceptionas a basic kind of fact-perception;thus, it is a consequence ofthis rule, accordingto the later Brentano,that the only mode of existenceis that of real things. Thirdly the research rule enjoins the application of critical and analytical methodsto language as a means of discovering and removing fictions and pseudo-problems from philosophy. Grantedthat the Kantian tradition of speculativephilosophy, too, was concemedto proceedscientifically, and grantedalso that Kant himself, like his successors, wished to warrantexperiencein that they investigatedthe conditions of its possibility, still there are two essentialdifferenceswhich can be madeout from even a superficial comparisonof the two traditions. Kant's Copemican Revolution- that is, the derivationof the laws of naturefrom the laws of humanunderstanding,of a transcendentalsubject- was a philosophicalrevolution which was not undergoneby Austrian philosophers. Austrian philosophy is largely characterised indeed, in opposition to all transcendentaland idealistic tendencies, by its realistic line. 4

WittgensteinandAustnOanPhilosophy This realism had already before the appearanceof descriptive psychologyattainedan influence in the Austria of that time, in the form of Herbartianismand aboveall in the logical realism of the great Bernard Bolzanoo Both ]ohann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841)and Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848)had been able to exert, through their studentsand especially in the mark which they made upon the method of teaching philosophy, a lasting influence upon the formation of the philosophicalconsciousness of the Austrian school. Herbarthad inferred his realist theory of a world of subject-independent atomsfrom the impossibility of any coherentidealistic alternative,and had perceivedthe property of objecthoodas inhering in concepts,which for him formed the exclusive objects of knowledgeo But for Herbart who, like Bolzano, saw himself as belongingto the pre-Kantiantradition of Leibniz, these objects of knowledge must first be legitimised throughcritical analyses. In the sameway Bolzano, the important theorist and Vormärz social revolutionary thinker, presentshis thought as standingin sharp opposition to Kant and the German idealists. He reveals his realism not only in that the doesnot interpret the opposition betweenthe sensibleand inteIligible world in a subjectiveidealist way and in that he could regardtime and space'by no meansas forms of our sensibility', but above all in his having laid the groundwork of logical realism. This is presentedin his Theory of science(1837)which puts forward a conceptionof ideasand propositions in themselvesresting on an account of meaning as an object independentof thought and speech, something which merits Bolzano'stitle as grandfatherof the modernfoundationof logic.4 The modern conception of logical objects as this burst forth, on the one hand in the work of Gottlob Frege, the most important logician of recenttimes and, on the other hand, in the triumph over psychologism in logic achieved in Edmund Husserl'sLogical investigations(1900), is to be found in fuIl clarity in Bolzano'swritings. Thus it is not at all surprising that the work of this great thinker should havereceiveda greatdeal of attentionin the Brentano School, their appreciationof it having been further facilitated through Robert Zimmermann,a studentof Bolzano who also taughtin Vienna. This will suffice as to the first of the essentialdifferences.The second,as alreadystated,is a matterof methodology,since neither the method of 'transeendentalreductions',nor that of 'synthetic 5

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy constructions'gainedadmittancewithin the tradition of Austrian philosophy.Much more havein vestigations there beenguided by the so-calledinductive methodof the natural sciencesand by the methodsof analysisand criticism of language.Thus while Kant and those who have followed in his wake seem largely to have ignored the problem of language,the philosophersof the Brentano School have, like the English empiricists(and indeedunder their influence, particularly that of ].S. Mill), broughtthe necessity of an investigationof linguistic conditionsinto the very centre oftheir interests. Brentanobegan,as we have stated,with the work of Aristotle. The modesof thoughtof linguistic analysishad beenknown and indeed familiar to him ever since his dissertationOn the manifold senseof being in Aristotle. And of coursethe sameline is revealed also in his concernwith the works of].S. Mill (1806-1873),whose Logic had an effect upon the philosophical community of the nineteenthcentury to an extent which even today has still not been adequatelyinvestigated.Whilst the idealistic philosophies influential in Germanyhad to infer the existenceof a problem of language- the problem of the constitutivefunction of language for thought and for social interaction- largely from the pamphlets of their opponents,Austrian philosophy had, from the very beginning, been characterised,if not always by a tendency towardsthe analysisof language,still by an orientationtowardsits criticism. Af ter th is short characterisationof its differences from the Kantian tradition it seemsnow to be appropriateto follow the historical currentswhich mark the rapid establishmentof Brentano's studentsin the universities of the old monarchy. Thus Anton Marty (1847-1914), the important philosopher of language,was called first of all to the newly-foundedU niversity of Czernowitz(1875) and subsequentlyto Prague(1880), where he remaineduntil his death.ThomasGarrigueMasaryk(1850-1937) was likewise called to Praguein 1886, later becoming the first president of the CzechoslovakianRepublic. And also Carl Stumpf, the noted epistemologistand founder of the psychology of music, a studentof Brentanofrom his early Würzburg period, first held a position in the University of Prague.Around Marty thereassembieda circle of the most faithful disciplesof Brentano, Oskar Kraus (1872-1942)and Alfred Kastil (1874-1950)who were responsible for the Brentano-Nachlassafter the philosopher's death. 6

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy Kasimir Twardowski (1866-1938) was called to Lemberg (Lwow) and founded there the Lemberg-WarsawSchool of philosophy.L. Kolakowski in deeddesignateshim as being someone who, whilst not himself a positivist, 'trained and encouraged [his pupils1 in the detailed analysis of philosophical language'.5 His most important pupils include Kasimir Adjukiewicz (18901963),Jan Lukasiewicz(1878-1956)and TadeuszKotarbinski (b. 1866), philosophersand logicians who, in different ways, have had a fundamentalinfluenceupon contemporaryanalytic philosophy. That 'logical anti-irrationalism' - as the guiding idea of the Polish positivists was called by Adjukiewicz - appeared independentlyof the Vienna Circle is only anothercorroborating factor as to the intrinsic cohesionof Austrian philosophy from Brentanoup to and including the Vienna Circle. It was to some extent inevitable that Brentanostudentsshould be called also to Innsbruckand to Graz. Thus in 1896 FranzHillebrand,who had also attendedthe lecturesof Marty in Prague,receiveda professorial chair in Innsbruck and was succeededin 1906 by Alfred Kastil, whom we have already met as one of the students of Marty. In 1882Alexius Meinong (1853-1920),who had four years earlier habilitated under Brentano, was called to Graz. Like many otherBrentanostudents,Meinong grew up philosophically in the literature of English empiricism, and it was in altercation with Locke, Hume and Mill that he developedhis philosophicalpsychologicaltheoriesinto the fuUy worked-outtheory of objects, which in its turn found a congenial interpreter and critic in BertrandRussell.6 It was through Russell'swritings that an interest in Meinong's philosophical logic amongst English analytic philosopherswas awakened,until, in the last decade,we have seenwhat amountsalmost to a rediscoveryof the great philosopher.7 As regardsMeinong's studentswe shall here recall only Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932), titular father of Gestalt psychology and later professor at Prague, Alois Höfler (18531922), likewise in Pragueand later Ordinariusfor philosophyand pedagogyin Vienna, the psychoiogistVittorio Benussiwho was called to Padova in 1918, Ernst Mally (1879-1944), Meinong's successorto the chair in Graz, the inventor of deontic logic, and finally FrancVeber(1890-1975),the first philosopherat the newly establishedSlovenianuniversity in Ljubljana. Lesswell-known is the fact that SigmundFreudwas a pupil of Brentano for a number of semestersand indeed that it was through Brentano'smediationthat Freud becameinvolved in the

7

WittgensteinandAustrian Philosophy translationof the works of j.S. Mill. It was Freudwho translated Volume 12 ofthe GermanMill edition. And his interpretershave claimed, especially in regard to his earlier works, that they are able to discerna clear influence both of the intentional act structure and of the Brentanian classification of the phenomenaof H consciousness. It is of courseimpossiblein this short spaceevento hint at the theoriesof the philosophershere listed, especiallyas one of the most important pupils of Brentano, Edmund Husserl (18591938), has still to be mentioned.Husserl'speriod of adherenceto Brentano,from the Philosophyof arithmetic(1891) to the crowning work of this period, the Logical investigations(1900/1), can be clearly discernedin his philosophical development.The latter work not only signifies the decisive refutation of logical psychologism; it helpedalso, through the richnessof its analysesin the philosophyof language,in the theory of knowiedge,and in ontology (which - like Meinong's early works - spring from Husserl'saltercationwith the empiricist philosophers,especially Hume and Mill), to bring abouta new estimationof the objectivism of Bolzano and of the idea of a philosophical grammar. Finally it is this work alonewhich properly furnishesthe research programmeof pure phenomenology(somethingwhich had been anticipatedin Brentano'sdescriptivepsychology).In contrastto this work, Husserl'slater turn to the transcendentalfoundationof phenomenology,to the methodof the transcendentalreductions, showsvery clearly the passagefrom realism to idealism - as was distinctly recognisedby one of his most important pupils, the Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden (1893-1970) in his controversywith Husserl.

It might be appropriate at this point to recall our remarks concerningthe institutionalisationof research.As we have seen, and as we could easily confirm at every stage,academic geography has played an extensiverole in determining the historical dispersal of ideas. Whilst in Germany it was the influence of Husserl, and later of Heidegger, which grew, and which remaineddominantright up until the '60s ofthis century, neither the remainingBrentanoSchool,nor the philosophyof the Vienna Circle have beenable to establisha foothold in Germanuniversities; empiricism just does not seem to flourish in every climate. Thus it will be understandablethat the philosophy of the new

8

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy positivism could be disseminatedrather in the lands of the old Habsburgmonarchywhilst remainingwithout any kind of resonance - apart from the philosophical island of Berlin - in a Germanywhich was, as we have said, dominatedby transcendental philosophy. It is to this latter developmentwhich we must now turn. And at first sight it will perhapsseemabsurd,even startling, that it is Brentano'snamewhich appearsin advanceof an accountof the history of neopositivistic philosophy. Is this not a mere anachronism?Certainly it would be going too far to want to associate the birth of the Vienna Cirde with Brentano,even though there are indirect connections between the two. (Brentano was compelledon the occasionof his marriagewith Ida von Lieben in 1880, on legal grounds, to relinquish his chair. And although almost every year thereafterthe Faculty of Philosophyin Vienna proposedBrentano unico voco for the secondchair, the necessary imperial consentwas never granted. Neverthelessfor fourteen years Brentanolectured at the university as Privatdozent(!)with unparalleledsuccess,until, disillusioned, he turned his back on Vienna and settledin Florence.)It was the famousphysicistErnst Mach (1838-1916)who after having earlier held positionsin Graz and Prague,was called in Brentano'ssteadto the secondchair, speciallyestablishedfor the study of the history and theory of the inductive sciences.As Kolakowski, author of what is so far the best monographon the developmentof positivism, clearly recognises, Mach defended a presuppositionlessand hence antimetaphysicalpositivism, Iess in the senseof AugusteComtethan in that of David Hume.9 For Mach immediateexperience,which alone sanctionsthe transition from the natural to the scientific attitude to the world, becomesthe sole criterion of knowiedge: reductionto that which is experientiallygiven is the exdusiveratio cognoscendi.However, the carrier of this perceptionof the given is not a subject,but a 'constellationof elements',just as bodiesand other kinds of wholes are nothing other than phenomenalstructures of primary and secondaryqualities. The elementsthemselvesshould be regardedas neutral as betweenthe categoriesof the physicaland the psychical.Hencethe world is not a totality of sensations,but rather a structure of 'functional relationshipsof elements'.The self however - Mach said - is 'unsalvageable'. Hencethe task of scienceconsistsin nothingotherthan the fitting of thoughtsto facts (i.e. to complexesof elements)and the fitting of thoughtsto one another(a processwhich is subjectto the law 9

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy of the economyof thought). Thus here alreadywe find outlined in a certain mannerthe conceptionof a unified cognition in both the physicaland psychicaldomains. But we find that the separationof the natural and moral is attackedjust as clear!y, if with sciences(GeisteswissenschaJten) different arguments,by Brentanoin his critique of the inaugural lecture of Adolf Exner. In his work On the Juture oJ philosophy,in which this critique is to be found, Brentanodefendsonce more the unity of knowiedge, and the arguments which he turns againstthe opponentsof the unity-thesishave not hitherto been taken into account in the dispute between positivism and hermeneutics,although they can be rediscovered- e.g. in the standardwork of E. NagellO - without of course anyawareness of Brentano'swork. Brentano-revealsthreeclearcommonfactors: first, from the standpointof the objects in question one cannot disputethat even natural processesalso have a historical character; second, methodologically, it is not only mechanicswhich 'restson fundamentalprinciplesfrom which particulareventsare deductively explained', for this may be true also of other disciplines. But also not even all natural sciencesproceedin the same manneras mechanics.On the contrary, Brentanosays,the practi ce of the naturalsciencesrevealsto us that we vary our processes according to the particular nature of the objects with which we deal: thus even mathematicalanalysiscannotplay the samerole in all fields of research.Finally philosophy is itself no exception, since knowledgeis in principle always one, that is unified, knowledge. Thus such different thinkers as Mach and Brentanoreveal a theoretical tendencywhich later reachedits full developmentin the Vienna Circle and in analytic philosophy. And certain genealogicalanalogiesbecomestill clearerwhen one investigates the writings on methodologyand the philosophyof scienceof A. Höfler and A. Meinong, philosophersin whose works one can point out not only the verification principle but also the principle of falsification, later brought into the centre of considerationby Kar! Popper. Mach'ssuccessorin the Chair of Theory and History ofInductive Scienceswas, until his suicide in 1906, Ludwig Boltzmann, the founderof statisticalmechanicsand realistic methodologistof physical science.After him followed Adolf Stöhr (1855-1919)who becameprominentnot only as a philosopherof biology but also and aboveall through his writings on the logic of language.Stöhr 10

Wittgensleinand Auslrian Philosophy was of the conviction that glossomorphyand the production of metaphorswere a sourceof mistakesin thinking and he saw one of the principal tasks of philosophical researchas lying in the struggle'betweenthoughtsin developmentand prevalentspeechforms' since the forms of human thought are not identical with the forms of speech. Like Mach and Boltzmann, Stöhr too condemnedmetaphysicsin so far as the latter claims to provide knowledgeor indeedto be a scienceat all. At th is point one shouldnot forget Fritz Mauthner(1849-1923) who set out at the beginning of the century to instill fear into language.In his Conlribulions 10 a crilique of language(1901-2) he developedhis epistemologicalnominalism whose foundation, as in the caseof Mach, is basedupon the sensualisticpremisethat nothing is in our understandingwhich does not rest on sensual constituents.More decisive still for Mauthner is the belief that languageitself is unsuitedto knowiedge,despitethe fact that it is, at the sametime, the latter'smouthpiece.And from this dilemma there is only one escape:critique of language.Thus whilst it is certainly true that we order the word catalogueof reality according to the alphabetof our language,Mauthner tells us that 'it would be very unphilosophicalto believe in the objectivity of this alphabet'.The familiar call 'Back to Kant' he counteredwith the demandthat 'we must return to Hume, in order to proceedfrom therefurther into the scepticalcritique of knowiedge'. In the year 1922 Moritz Schlick was called to Vienna as the successorof Adolf Stöhr. Around him there gathereda unique circle of thinkers, including Hans Hahn, Philipp Frank, Qtto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Kurt Gödel, Theodor Radakovic, Friedrich Waismann, but also Felix Kaufmann, Viktor Kraft, Karl Menger and Edgar Zilsel, to name only the most important,who createda philosophicalmovementfrom out of which there issueda philosophicalforce strong enoughto first revolutionise philosophy and then to influence its development for half a century. For the circle of logical empiricistsfounded by thesethinkers establisheda standardof conceptualanalysisand of argumentwhich - whateverview one might otherwiseadopt concerningtheir particulartheses- has in large measuredetermined subsequentphilosophical thought, and especially all reflection on scientific research;and this standardis something below which we can now no longer fall.

11

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy 'The turning-point of philosophy'\\ which Schlick announced consistedfirstly in securing for philosophy the claim of being a rigorousscience,and this was to be achievedby eliminating those pseudo-problemswhich have found a home within it and, especially within metaphysics.The means for the overcoming of metaphysics should be provided by the logical analysis of language, whose instrument should be modern logic. To the extent that the questions of traditional philosophy concern factual mattersthey are to be answeredby emPirical sciences,and to the extent that they go beyondthis they lack any cognitivefunction, and must be eliminated from the field of cognition. The basisof the elimination processis the so-called'criterion' of meaningfulness,accordingto which a sentence is to be acknowledgedas meaningfulonly when one knows also what makesit true, when one can state how it is verified. Here too it was Hume's idea of immediatesensualknowledgewhich stood in the backgroundas the basisof cognitionsof all other types. Metaphysicalutterances had to be countedas senselesssolelyon the basisof the criterion. With regardto the conceptionof sciencethe thesisof the methodological unity of all scienceswas defendedin its full strictnessspecifically in that it was believed that it would be possible to create a unified language into which all remaining scientific languagescould be translatabie.It was the languageof physics which was first of all consideredas one such language,to which thereforeall other languageswould have to be reducible. Indubitably however the most significant influence upon the discussionsof the Vienna Circle and upon the developmentof its fundamentaltenetswas exertedby Ludwig Wittgenstein.\2 Even in an autobiographycomposedmuch later, Carnap,for example, still saw a need to correct the view that the philosophy of the Vienna Circle was actually identical with that of Wittgenstein.\3 The Tractatuswas indeedread and interpreted,sentence by sentence in the Thursday meetings of the Circle. After becoming personallyacquaintedwith Wittgenstein, Schlick came to stand more and more under the latter's direct influence. And even Carnapadmits that - besideFregeand Russel- Wittgenstein, above all thinkers, exertedthe strongestof influencesupon him. And this was in spite of the fact that the somewhatheadstrong Wittgenstein already from the beginning of 1929 had declined further meetingswith Carnapand Feigl. Thus whilst Schlick and Waismannstood most strongly under the spell of the author of the Tractatus logico-philosophicus,Neurath for his part revealedthe

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WittgensteinandAustrian Philosophy most scepticalattitude.Above all Neurathdistancedhimself critically from Wittgenstein'sconceptionof what can only be shown and not said. It was Neurath- if Carnapcan be believed- who pointed over and overbelongs aga~n to the fact that even languageitself is a phenomenonwhich belongs within the world, rather than somethingwhich effectsthe world from without. It is an interesting fact that Neurath himself seemsto have misled most peopleworking on the history of the Vienna Circle by stressinga uniform picture of its developmentas weil as of its main ideas. Propagandafor the new philosophy was, for him, more important than drawing attention to the differences betweenhis own interpretationof (Iet's say) protocol sentences and Schlick'sview. Actually ever since 1908 he had defendedastrongDuhemian argumentin favour of a holistic and historical view of science, which in our time has beendefendedby Quine. Already in 1908 the book The aim and structureofphysicaltheory was translatedinto German by Friedrich Adler and published with a preface by Ernst Mach. Someyearslater Philipp FranktranslatedL 'évolution de la mécanique(1903) into German.Neurath'smain points which he traced back to Duhem were, first, that more than one selfconsistentsystem of hypothesescan satisfy a given set of facts, and second,that any testing of a theory has to do 'with a whoIe network of conceptsand not with conceptsthat can be isolated'. And when Neurathputs forward his dictum of the sailorswho on the open sea must reconstruct their ship -a -a picture which Quine's frequent quotation has brought to our knowledge NeurathmentionsDuhemas the only sourceoftheseideas.In as far as every proposition in a scientific theory is related to all the other propositions,Neurath thinks we can retain its consistency either by changingthe proposition which does not coherewith the system, or by changingthe system.There are no sentences preferabiein themselves.Hence, wheneverwe test a theory this test wil! not haveas aresuIttrue or false propositions,becauseth is was Duhem'spoint - the physicistneversubjectsan isolated hypothesisto experimentaltest, but only a whoIe group of hypotheses - therefore if there appears a disagreementbetween predictionsand facts, the experimentnever signifies which of the propositionswas to be changed. Such a view as defendedby Neurathclearly contrastswith the Tractatusposition, which statedthat every propositionis a picture or modelof reality. But this was not the only field where the two 13

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy approachesofWittgensteinand Neurathdiffered fundamentally. I think it would be nearerto the truth to say that their views differed in almost every respect.But Neurathdoesnot say this in public. It is mainly from letters so far unpublishedthat we may grasp how deep the gap between him and the Wittgensteinian view actually was. It would lead us too far to point out thesedifferences especially since we have to look first at the Wittgensteinianconceptions which were in fact incorporatedinto the new positivism. It is of coursenot as though the Circle cameto be completely affected by the theories of Wittgenstein: but of the ideas which were essential tothem perhapsthe most essentialderived from this sourceand from the influence which Wittgenstein,from the very beginning, and to an increasing extent thereafter, exerted upon the Circle. As Herbert Feigl writes,14 the main themesof discussionwere the foundationsof logic and mathematicsas weil as the logic of empirical knowIedge. And the Wittgensteinian conceptionwas not only central for both thesetopics, it offered in addition a solution which made possiblethe fundamentaldifferentiation of the new positivism from the old variety. In what did this conceptionconsist? Now it would naturally take us too far afield here to attempteven a sketch of Wittgenstein'stheories.It will be necessaryto limit ourselvesonly to that which is absolutely necessary. The three basic conceptionswhich were taken over from Wittgensteinby this new positivism were: (1) its interpretationof logic and oflogical propositions,

(2) its theory of empirical propositions, and finally and aboveall, (3) its definition of philosophy.

Ad (7): In accordancewith the view expressedin the Tractatus, the truth of logical statementsconsistsin their structure alone. They are statementswhich are true in all possiblecircumstances, which are - as Leibniz had said - true in all possibleworlds. 'It is the peculiarmark of logica! propositionsthat one can recognize that they are true from the symbol alone, and this fact containsin itself the whole philosophy of logic' (TLP 6.113). 'The proposi14

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy tions of logic are tautologies'(TLP 6.1). 'Thereforethe propositions of logic say nothing' (TLP 6.11). Hencelogical propositions cannot be refuted by any possibleexperienceand cannot therefore be confirmed either. In opposition to the accountof a priori propositionsgiven by Kant, Wittgensteindeniesthat the mark of the logical propositionshould be its generality or generalvalidity. It is only necessitywhich determinesa tautologyand every tautology itself shows that it is a tautology (TLP 6.127). 'Outside logic, everything is accidental', and hence there are no empirical, but only logicaI impossibilities.The truth of logical propositionsdoes not reveal any connectionto the world, as does, say, the truth of non-analyticalpropositions,which rests on the accidentalexistence of factual constellations. In consequenceall tautologous (always true) propositions and all contradictory (always false) propositionsare without any empirical content. In accordancewith the logicist position, mathematics,too is then reducedto logic. Equationsin mathematics,like the propositions of logic, are pseudo-propositions.One cannot in general agree with the judgementof R. Kamitz, that logic (including mathematics)fulfils no independentfunction in the eyes of the neopositivists.15 It is true that as a result of the acceptanceof the Wittgensteinian conception, logical propositions are seen as having no emPirical content, but they do have a structure,of such a type that the limits of my language arealso the limits of logic. Logic can certainly not foreseeits own application,but it can also not come into conflict with the applicationof its tautologies. This theory of the tautologicalcharacterof logical propositions leadsalso to the identification of the latter with the classof a priori propositionsand to the denialof the possibility of synthetica Priori propositions,the startingpoint of transcendentalreflections. Ad (2): The neopositivistsalso took over Wittgenstein'sconception of empirical propositions. This is again rooted in their Humeanconviction that everythingwhich we can describeat all could also have been otherwise.There is no part of our experience which is a pn'ori (TLP 5.634).A propositionis empirical then and only then when one knows and/or when one can statewhat makes it true, or would make it true. In order to be able to say that a surface is white or black one must know what one calls 'white' or 'black', when one calls a surface white or black. 'In order to be able to say, "p" is true (or false), I must have determined in what circumstancesI call "p" true, and in so doing I determinethe senseof the proposition'(TLP 4.063). 15

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy The working-out of this idea leads to the drawing up of the verification criterion of meaningfulness,that is, of the requirement that it should be possibleto state or determinethe conditions which would make a sentencetrue. The problem of the meaning of sentencesthereby becomesthe central theme of a theory of empirical knowledgeand must be distinguishedfrom the problemof confirming that a sentence is true or false. But what Schlick in fact intendedby his demandfor verifiability he clearly expressesin the sameessayon the turning-point in philosophy. There the demand for the statementof the conditions under which a sentenceis true is identified with the state16 Again, the statementof the ment of the meaningof the sentence. conditionsneednot imply that theseconditionsshouldbe in fact supplied, but Schlick is expresslyconcernedto show that any thinkable, in deed any logically possible verification would be a sufficient criterion for the empirical-cognitivemeaningfulnessof a sentence.If one were to restrict logical possibilitieshereto empirical possibilities,then e.g. all statementsabout pasteventswould haveto be meaninglessstatements. In a conversationof 22 December1929which was led by Wittgenstein in the house of Schlick, Wittgenstein makes some commentsregardinghis own views concerningverification.17 He distinguishestwo possibie conceptions.According to the first, no sentenceis completely v.erifiable, for 'whatever we do we can neverbe certainthat we will not havedeludedourselves'.And the example he employs is: 'Up there on top of the chestthere is a book.' Is it sufficient merely to look, Wittgensteinasks,to observe the book from various angles,or must we, in order to verify the sentence,open the book, turn over its leaves, etc.? The sceptic arguesthat therewill always remainopena 'back door'. Wittgenstein in contrastdefendshis secondconception: 'If I can nevercompletelyverify the sentence,then I could havemeant nothing by the sentence.But then the sentencesays nothing at all.'18 And Wittgensteinsupplementsthis view with two remarks: first of all that scientific languagesfluctuate in the fixing of the meaningof their symbols still less than doeseverydaylanguage; and secondly- in a conversationconductedthreemonthslater19 - that also various different methods of verification can be accepted.From this we can seeclearly that Wittgenstein- and with him Schlick - held the belief that the mannerof verification dependsupon definite conditions, which we determine.Thus in the sameessaySchlick says very clearly that 'the senseof a sent16

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy enceabout physicalobjectsis strictly speakingexhaustedonly by supplying indeterminatelymany possible verifications, and the consequences of this is that sucha sentencecan never[my emphasis] be shown to be true'. And he goeson: 'it is indeed generally known that even the most certain sentencesof scienceare always to be conceived only as hypotheses,which remain open for further precisationand improvement'.20That such hypothetical statementsare neithertrue nor false in the strictestsensewas likewise made clear by Wittgenstein in the second of the justmentioned conversations,through his account of the difference betweenstatements,i.e. sentenceswhich have a truth-value, and hypotheses.'A hypothesis',he there tells us, 'is not a statement,but rather a rule for the formation of statements.'And immediately thereafter: 'A law of naturedoes not admit of verification, nor of falsification. Of a law of natureone can say neither that it is true nor false, but only that it is 'probable',and 'probable'here signifies, simply, comfortable.'21Whilst 'physical statements',insofar as they have a predictive character,can never count as having been established,can always come to be discardedor amended, statementswith truth-valuesare, in regard to those truth-values, unalterable.And this says nothing other than that such statementsare either true or false. This view of Wittgenstein's,which was taken over by Schlick and later defendedby Ryle, exemptshypothetical propositions from the very beginningfrom the chargeof being meaninglesson the basisof the criterion of meaning. Finally Ad (3): The neopositivistsacceptedWittgenstein'sconception ofphilosophy,which has its core in the view that philosophy is to be interpretedas critique of language,and hencealso of scientific language. 'Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophicalworks are not false, but nonsensical'(TLP 4.003). Philosophyhoweveradvancesno theses;it is not a theory, but rather an analysis and uncovering of the surface and deep structure of language.An analysis of this kind is an activity of making clear, of explication: 'philosophyaims at the logical clarification of thoughts' (TLP 4.112). From this the neopositivists derive (1) the name, logicaI empiricism, which they themselves accept, and (2) the definition of their task: elucidation and demarcationof empirical sentencesand criticism of all pseudopropositions.Thus we find also that the demarcationproblem is defined in full clarity in Wittgenstein'sworks, a problem whose discoveryis claimed by Popper. 'Philosophy',we are told in TLP

17

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy 4.113, 'setslimits to the much disputedsphereof naturalscience',

and the latter is for Wittgensteinempirical sciencepar excellence. The criticism and elimination of metaphysicswhich define the negativepart of the programme of logical empiricism make use, like the constructivepart, of all three of the main planks of the packageof views taken over from Wittgenstein: it rests on an analysisof logical structureand on the employmentof the meaning-criterion, and it abstainsfrom advancingany thesisof its own about reality. Whilst most of the membersof the Circle remainedfaithful to this programme, in the hope that through a purely scientific conceptionof the world and ultimately through the construction of an axiomatic languageof science,the constricting presuppositions of metaphysicsmight be laid to rest, the mentor of this movementhad alreadytakenin handan extensionof the scopeof the problemsof linguistic analysis.

One of the essentialextensionswhich Wittgensteinundertookis the applicationof analysisto non-descriptivelinguistic utterances of that ordinary, living language,whose logical orderednesshad indeed already been affirmed in the Tractatus. Thus where he there statedthat 'Logic must take care of itself (TLP 5.473) and in his notebookfor 13 October1914: 'Logic takescareof itself; all we have to do is to look and seehow it does it', we are now told that 'Languagemust speakfor itself.'22 And, as one may add, we need only look and see how it does it. The extension of the subject-mattertherefore consistsin the following: whilst for the theory of the sentence it is fundamentalthat the meaning of a namecan be determinedonly in the context of a sentence and is thus dependentupon the senseof the sentence,for the extended theory of languagethe form of sentences- now no longermerely of categorical affirmative sentences - should be explained in terms of that collectivity of rules which constitute a language. One can caU theseconstitution-rulesthe grammarof a language, and the investigationof theserules a grammaticalone. Wittgenstein thus extends the concept of grammar, which normally comprisesonly the doctrineof the parts of speechand the principies of their combination,in such a way that, as he says, 'What belongsto grammarare all the conditions(the method)necessary for comparingthe propositionwith reality. That is, all the conditions necessaryfor the understandingof the sense.'23And further: 18

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy 'Grammaris the accountbooksof language.They must show the actual transactionsof language,everythingthat is not a matterof accompanyingsensations.'24If all conditions of our understanding belongto the subject-matterof the grammaticauniversalis,then of courseone of its principal themesmust be the understanding of linguistic utterances.Now is this understandinga process,a mental process,in which that which the speakerintends by his words comes to be grasped,or is it somethingwhich must be subjectedto someotherkind of analysis?The questionas to what we are to understandby mental processesat all thus represents just as adequatea statementof our initial problem as the questi on as to the natureof utterancesaboutour sensations. The expansionin the formulation of the question naturally also gives rise to reflection upon the methodsof the investigation itself, somethingwhose very formulation has constituteda quite special hurdle for most interpreters.For Wittgensteinexpressly affirmed that his investigationcould only be a descriptiveone, not one which wants to idealise, i.e. changethe phenomenalstructure of the objects of investigation. Expressedsomewhatpointedly, Wittgensteinholds fast to the rule-govemeduseofwords as this actually takes place within the language,and this he wishes to describewithout any theoreticalpresuppositions.This description is not the generaldescriptionof a theory, but is quite deliberately a descriptionhaving a definite purpose,namely 'to remove particularmisunderstandings'.25 'For the task ofphilosophyis not to create a new, ideal language,but to clarify the use of our language,the existing language.'26 That Wittgenstein tumed to the investigation of the use of languagedoes not imply, as might be claimed,27the substitution of an a posten'ori method for an a priori one; rather, its basis lay principally in this, that on the one hand the realm of logical syntaxbecameextended,and that on the other handthe problem of meaningwas recognisedas being eliminabie. But this extension of the problem, like that of making unproblematic the difficulties surrounding the notion of meaning, does not serve the purposeof enablingthe constructionof a theory, much lessstill of an empirical theory of language;rather are they carried through in the old familiar spirit of the critique of language,they presuppose,that is to say, the samequite specialpurposes.If it were true that this method was an a posteriori (empirical) one, then in any casethe intention of extendingthe realm of empirical data and observationmust still be recognisable:thus there would have to 19

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy be a rapid process of collecting unknown facts which would precedeor go in hand with the investigation.Nothing of the like actually takesplace. Quite the opposite,since Wittgensteinnever becomestired of emphasisingthat it is only a matter of setting togetherwhat is alreadyknown of the arrangementof the phenomena, of seeing correctlyor of seeing afreshthat with which we are alreadyfamiliar. 'Our languageis in orderjust as soon as we have understood its syntax and have recognized those of its wheelswhich are running idle', he statesin a conversationwith Schlick of 29 December 1929. This image of wheels idling remainedfor a long period Wittgenstein'smetaphorfor apparently problematicformationsof languagewhich give rise particulady to philosophical confusion. When one reconstructs the syntax of the relevant linguistic systemsuch formations become recognisableas merely spurious.Let us take the frequently used exampleof an epistemologicalproblem: what holds of objectsof perceptionwhen they are not being perceived?- 'If I turn myself away does the stove disappear?'- then one is involved here in one typical ploy, that of substituting for the existence-concept appropriateto empiricalobjectsanotherconcept,which Wittgenstein calls the metaphysical.According to this interpretationthe utterance:'If I turn myself awaysdoesthe stove disappear?'is an idly running wheel. In the TractatusWittgenstein had put it thus: 3.327: A sign does not determinea logical form unless it is taken togetherwith its logico-syntacticalemployment. 3.328: If a sign is useless,it is meaningless.That is the point ofOccam'smaxim. If one wants to reconstructthe syntactically correct employment then one has to pay attention to the use of the symbols in the system, in the calculus. This in itself was already a move forward. For accordingto the Tractatusone is not allowed to talk at all in logical syntax of the meaningof the symbols.28 But if one wants to differentiate betweenspuriousand genuine utterances then one cannotavoid payingattentionto meaning,as little as we could in our analysisof the distinction betweenlogically tautologous sentencesand materially analytical sentencessuch as 'No bacheloris a married man.' In my view the majority of interpreters of Wittgenstein have not taken sufficiently seriously the fact which he admitted, that a syntactical or grammatical in vestig-

20

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy ation of meaning is an investigation having a quite definite purpose; they applied their attention instead rather to the evolution of Wittgenstein's concept of syntactical system. Not that they thereby assertedsomething false; but this evolution is more a matter of transformationsin the conceptual apparatusof the analysis than a developmentof its method and content. The methodis from the very beginningassertedto be purely descriptive and the content is the grammar of language. Of which language?Well, the languagewe speak.Granted,this languageis a highly complex structureand the tacit agreementswhich are necessary.inorder to understandit are - as affirmed in the Tractatus - highly complicated.But this cannotrelieve us of the task of laying bare those utteranceswithin it which are merely spurious utterances,namely the characteristicallyphilosophicalones. It is thesewhich bring about confusion. The problems to which theserepresentthe solutionsare not genuineproblems,as are the questionsposedby the naturalsciences,but pseudo-problems, as one can alreadyseein the fact that noneof them can be supplied with a generally acceptedsolution. In many passages,from the Philosophicalremarksof 1930 up to the Philosophicalinvestigationsof the forties, Wittgenstein's preferred characterisationfor these incriminated philosophical sentences is - as I have already remarked- that of idly running wheels. 'The confusionswhich occupy us arise when languageis like an engineidling, not when it is doing work.'29 It is thereforeconfusionscalled forth through quite specific linguistic forms which characterisephilosophical problems.And hence philosophical criticism, if it wishes to deal with theseproblemsand dissolvethe associatedconfusions,must first of all investigate, and perhaps reconstruct the system of language;in short it must describethe grammarof the language in which such utterances are formulated. IC one conceives languageas a structurewhich has as its basis the descriptionof the world, then Wittgenstein now recognisesthat we should be justified in talking of a unified structureonly if the purposewhich it serveswere in deed such. But this is not the case: 'Languageis not defined for us as an arrangementfulfilling a definite purpose. Rather"language"is for us a namefor a collection .. .'30 Thus it is not at all establishedfrom the start what the object of linguistic criticism is, the limits of languageare not fixed. And this implies that the function of linguistic expressionscannot be seen to lie exclusivelyin their representativerelation to the world, but rather that they have a wide variety of different functions, such that it

21

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy would be a seriousmistaketo supposethat thesevariousdifferent functions would all ow themselvesto be reducedto a single form. It is also not the casethat logic, as the theory of generalstructures, should have to do with anything other than our language. Already in the PhilosophicalTemaTkshe said on this: 'How strangeif logic were concernedwith an ideal languageand not with OUTS. For what would this ideal languageexpress?Presumably,what we now expressin our ordinary language;in this casethis is the languagelogic must investigate.Or somethingelse: but in that casehow would I have any idea what that would be? - Logical analysisis the analysisof somethingwe have,not of somethingwe don't have. Therefore it is the analysis of propositions as they stand.'3l Sentences 'as they are', language'as it is', are thus the 'rough ground' return to which is demandedby the PhilosoPhicalinvestigations. If now the task of philosophyis to consistin the description of ordinary language,doesit not therebyrenounceone of its most eminentgoals,namelythe explorationof the essenceof the WOTld? The Tractatusanswerto this question in the PhilosophicalTemaTks shows that even in this matter Wittgenstein did not fundamentally changehis opinion. 'What belongsto the essenceof the world cannot be expressedby language... what belongsto the essenceof the world simply cannotbe said .. . But the essenceof languageis a picture of the essenceof the world; and philosophy as custodian of grammar can in fact grasp the essenceof the world, only not in the propositionsof language,but in rules for this languagewhich excludenonsensicalcombinationsof signs.>32 Now in spite of the fact that Neurath and also Frank, Hahn, and Carnaptook an oppositeline of thinking on the foundations of scienceto that of Wittgenstein,thereare certain strongeraffinities which are worth mentioninghere. In connectionwith the problemof foundation, particularly the epistemicfoundation of science,Wittgensteinincreasinglyadopts a kind of holism similar to the one found in Neurath. However, unlike Neurath, he restricts it to the ultimate basisof our knowledge. Wittgenstein, when he reflects upon our starting point in building up a Weltansicht- a world view - arguesthat we do not simply learn TUleS, but 'a totality of judgmentsis madeplausibIe to us' (OC §140). When we first begin to believeanything, what we believe is

22

WittgensteinandAustn'anPhilosophy not a simple proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (Oe §141) It is not single axioms that strike me as obvious, it IS a system in which consequencesand premises give one anothermutual support.(Oe §142) In various passagesof his writings Wittgensteinexplainshis view that a whole systemof propositionsis bound up with our beliefs. And I regardthis view as fundamentalfor what may be called a paradigm in T.S. Kuhn's sense,since - although I shall not enter into this here - it is fundamentalfor the generalmode of justification that may be given for a certain Weltansicht.For example, take our belief that the earth is round, a belief that has increasinglybeen confirmed from the voyagesof discoveryin the fifteenth century onwards,from Amerigo Vespucci to the age of artificial satellites: We know that the earth is round. We have definitively ascertainedthat it is round. We shall stick to this opinion. (Oe §291) Furtherexperimentscannotgive the tie to our earlier ones,at most they may changeour whole way of looking at things. (Oe §292) Starting from ideas captured in the remark from Kürnberger usedby Wittgensteinas a motto to the Tractatus: 'and anythinga man knows, anything he has not merely heard rumbling and roaring, can be said in three words', Wittgensteindevelopedhis philosophyof the sayableand the unsayable,of that which can be meaningfully said and that about which we can only remain silent. This philosophyof the mystical which was a consequence of his theory of the sayablewas only partially acceptedby the neopositivists.Most of them, like Russell,regardedit with incomprehension. For Wittgenstein himself, an ambivalent neopositivist, the solution of fundamentalscientific questionswas not bound up with the solution of problemsoflife, not bound up with the question of the meaningof life. For this meaningis somethingwhich could only lie outside the world. 'Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic.' This is the view of the young 27-year-oldWittgenstein,a view

23

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy which, if I am right, he never changed,simply becausehis later philosophy hardly changedat all thesefundamentalpositions of the Tractatus. And in this respectthe philosophersof the Vienna Circle had after alliearnedsomethingfrom the theory of the unsayable,for a scientific ethics was not a constituent part of their scientific conception of the world. 'Scientific reflection', Carnap tells us, 'does not determinethe goal but only the pathway to whatever goal has been decided.>33Acting practically, in the senseof setding upon a goal, is itself somethingwhich can never itself be the result of a theoreticaldemonstration.All attemptsto furnish such questions and answerswith an empirical content are useless, since they are the expressionmerely of feelings, not of thoughts. A principle by meansof which our lives are ordered is without doubt therebydeprivedof rational control, a eonsequence which has beenmadeclearonly by the later developmentof the theories of meta-ethics.

I come now to the end of this chapter,in which I have given only a sketchof the developmentwhich hasled to the present-daysituation of philosophy.But what we sometimesseemto forget is the tradition from whieh these thoughts have issued, a tradition whieh was still clearly seenby the representativesof the Vienna Circle, especiallyby Neurath. For in their programmatiewriting The scientific conceptionof the world: the Vienna Circle (1929) we find mentioned,besidesueh familiar empirieistsand philosophersof science as Hume and RusselI, Mach and Boltzmann, Duhem and Poincaré,also Brentano, Meinong,Höfler and Mally. Thus whoever had believed that neopositivismis to be seenas having sprung exclusively out of developmentslatent in the old positivism, must accept that its essential postulates, namely (1) the nominalist-Ockhamistprinciple of the parsimonyof principles of explanation,and thus also of existentsto which one is eommitted, (2) the principle of the empirical foundation of all eognition, as weil as the principle of the unity of science,belongjust as much to the traditional stock-in-tradeof Austrian philosophyas do the methodsof critieism and analysisof languagewhieh led Brentano to his 'renunciationof the non-real'. It would be very profitable to pursuethe history of the influeneesof these philosopherswho have indeed revolutionisedthe philosophy of our time, even if this radical transformationmade

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Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy itself felt in the land of its birth much later than in other, fartherflung parts of the world. And it would be altogetherstimulating to bearin mind also the effectsof those philosopherswho do not quite fit into the picture outlined here. Neither can be offered here. What I have soughtto do is to make clear and to verify, at least in outline, the two theseswhich I formulatedat the beginning. We reservethe possibility that future researchmay fill out this picture, correct its one-sidednesses and thus provide one building-block for the future history of philosophywhich would do justice to the title 'Austrian philosophy'.

Notes 1. R. Haller, 'Meinongs Gegenstandstheorie und Ontologie', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 4 (1966), pp. 313-24; R. Haller, 'Ludwig Wittgensteinund die OsterreichischePhilosophie', Wissenschaftund Weltbild, 21 (1968), pp. 77-87; R. Haller, 'Sprachkritikund Philosophie.Wittstein und Mauthner', in A. Doppier (ed.), Die Sprachthematikin der g~nstein OsterreichischenLiteratur des 20. Jahrhunderts,Institüt für Osterreich-Kunde (Wien, 1974), pp. 41-56. These papersare now collected in R. Haller, Studienzur ÖsterreichischenPhilosophie(Rodopi, Amsterdam,1979). 2. Cf. O. Kraus, Franz Brentano (C.H. Beck, München, 1919); A. Kastil, Die PhilosophieFranz Brentanos(Francke,Bern, 1951). 3. R.M. Chisholm, 'Introduction' to Realism and the backgroundof phenomenology (Free Press,Glencoe,1960), p. 4. 4. Cf. H. Bergmann, Das philosophischeWerk BemhardBolzanos(M. Niemeyer, Halle, 1909); E. Winter, 'Bernhard Bolzano', in Bemhard Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe (Stuttgart,1969) vol. 1; E. Morscher,'Von Bolzano zu Meinong: Zur Geschichtedes logischen Realismus'in R. Haller (ed.), Jenseitsvon Sein undNichtsein(AkademischeDrückü. Ver1'lgsanstalt,Graz, 1972). 5. L. Kolakowski, The alienation of reason: A history ofpositivist thought, trans. N. Guterman(GardenCity, NY, 1968). 6. Cf. B. RusselI, Essaysin analysis, ed. D. Lackey (GeorgeAllen & Unwin, London, 1973). 7. Cf. RevueInternationalede Philosophie,2-3 (1973); Haller (ed.), Jenseits von Sein undNichtsein; M. Lenoci, La teoria delta con noscenzain Alexius Meinong (Università Catolica, Milano, 1972); K. Salamun,'Das philosophischeSeminaran der Universität Graz', HistorischesJahrbuch der Stadt Graz, 5/6 (1972); seealsoJN. Findlay, Meinong'stheory of objectsand values, 2nd edn (Clarendon,Oxford, 1963); R. Grossmann,Meinong(Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1974). 8. ErnestJones, 'Das Leben und das Werk von Sigmund Freud', Joumal of the History of /deas, 6 (1945); A. Wucherer-Huldenfeld,'Sigmund Freud als Philosoph', Wissenschaftund Weltbild, 21 (1968). 9. Cf. Kolakowski, The alienation of reason; R. Kamitz, Positivismus

25

Wittgensteinand Austrian Philosophy (LangenMüller, München-Wien,1973). 10. E. Nagel, The structure of scienee. Prob/ems in the logic of scientific explanation(Harcourt, Braceand World, N ew Vork, 1961). 11. First published in Erkenntnis, 1 (1930), pp. 4-11, repro in M. Schlick, GesammelteAufsätze7926-7936(Wien, 1938). 12. K.T. Fann, Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy (Blackwell, Oxford, 1969); A. janik and S. Toulmin, Wittgenstein's Vienna (Simon & Schuster,New Vork, 1973); cf. jörgen jörgensen'The developmentof Logical Positivism', InternationalEncyclopediaof Unified Sciences(University of Chicago Press,Chicago, 1957), vols 2/9; G. Pitcher, The philosophyof Wittgenstein(PrenticeHall, EnglewoodCliffs, Nj, 1964); A. Kenny, Wittgenstein(Penguin, Harmondsworth,1973); R. Haller, 'Ludwig Wittgenstein' in W. Pollak (ed.), Tausend Jahre Österreich. Eine biographische Chronik, vol. 3 Gugendund Volk, Wien-Munich, 1974), pp. 317-22. 13. Cf. PA Schilpp (ed.), The philosophyof Rudolf Carnap (Library of Living Philosophers),(La Salle, lil. 1963), p. 24. 14. H. Feigl, 'Logical empiricism',in D. Runes(ed.), Twentiethcentury philosophy(New York, 1974), p. 408. 15. Kamitz, Positivismus,p. 123. 16. Schlick, 'The turning point in philosophy'. 17. F. Waismann, Wittgensteinand the Vienna Circle, ed. B.F. McGuinness (Dordrecht, 1979); trans. J. Schulte and B.F. McGuinness(Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1979). 18. Ibid. 19. 20 March 1930. 20. Schlick, GesammelteAufsätze,p. 95. 21. Waismann, Wittgensteinand the Vienna Circle, 22 March 1930. 22. L. Wittgenstein,PhilosophischeGrammatik,Schriften4, p. 40. 23. Ibid., p. 88. 24. Ibid., p. 87. 25. Ibid., p. 115. 26. Ibid. 27. Cf. Fann, Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy, p. 43; D. Pears, Ludwig Wittgenstein(Fontana,London, 1971). 28. TLP 3.33. 29. PI §132, cf. §138. 30. Z §322. 31. L. Wittgenstein,Schriften2 (Suhrkamp,Frankfurt, 1964), p. 52. 32. Wittgenstein,Schriften2, §54. 33. R. Carnap, 'Theoretische Fragen und praktische Entscheidungen', Natur und Geist, 2 (1934), p. 259; repro in H. Schleichert(ed.), LogischerEmpirismus- Der Wiener Kreis (Wilhelm Fink, München,1975), p. 175.

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2 Was Wittgenstein a Neopositivist?

First of all, I think, it will be useful to clarify why I think this questionan interestingone and why an answerto it will help us to get a better picture of the developmentof the Vienna Circle than the usualone.It is quite obvious that to find an answerto this seeminglyqueerquestionwe have to know what it meansto be a neopositivist. I deliberately have chosenthe term which is used not only by the enemiesof logical empiricism, but sometimes also by themselves,e.g. as the subtitle of the well-known book by Victor Kraft on the origin and history of the Vienna Circle.I So we will have to find a connotationfor this name. I shall not give a long list of necessaryconditions which define a 'neopositivist',not to speakof sufficient ones.N evertheless,it may be helpful to keep in mind that the aims that are set out in the first official statementcomprise, firstly, the investigation of the foundations of empirical and non-empirical sciences(the term taken in its everydaysense);secondly,the clarification ofphilosophical questions; and, thirdly, the elimination all meaningless propositions from science as weIl as from philosophy. The methodapplied to achievethis goal was the logical analysisof the linguistic and conceptualapparatusof scienceand philosophy. I shall not analysetheseaims further here. But a similar question could arise concerningWittgenstein.Thosewho think there are two completely different philosophers,Wittgenstein land Wittgenstein11, might want to hear which 'Wittgenstein' should be the object of that question.What we are interestedin should not depend on any special interpretation of the kind of relation betweenthe early and the later philosophy of Wittgenstein,and as this is not the place to criticise and correct the view of the two Wittgensteinswhich I think is untenable,2I shall not go into this.

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Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? All of us are acquaintedwith the history of contemporary philosophy, which tells us that Wittgenstein gave birth to two philosophicalschoolsor movements:betweenthe two world wars to the Vienna Circle and after the secondwar to linguistic or Oxford philosophy. Indeed, it has quite often been said that the philosophy of the Circle 'is little more than a seriesof extended commentson fundamentalwork of Wittgenstein', namely, the 3 Tractatus logico-philosoPhicus. To evaluatethis judgementwe first of all have to give an outline of the rise of Logical Positivism in Vienna and then try to find out (or, to work out) ifWittgenstein's contributionto it madehim somethinglike a leaderor conversely a hidden memberof this group of philosophers.Since he never attendeda sessionof the Circle, his influence could only be a mediate one, either through his written work or via verbal communicationswith someof the members.And we know that it was mainly Waismannwho within the Circle was regardedas the appointed advocate of Wittgenstein's ideas, appointed by the editors of the book-seriesSchriftenzur wissenschaftlichenWeltauffassung, Philipp Frank and Moritz Schlick. Already in 1928, when Carnap's Outline of mathematicallogic (Abrifi der Logistik) and Richard von Mises' book on Probability were published,the book by Waismann which should have given a systematicview and commentary on Wittgenstein's philosophy was announcedas Kritik der Philosophie durch die Logik.4 As Gordon P. Baker has pointed out: the papersby Waismannare the primary sourcefor studying certain aspects of the history of the Vienna Circle, namely the relation of their work to Wittgenstein's.5 I do not want to deny the importanceofWaismann'spapersas a main sourceof how Wittgensteinintendedto influencethe work of the Circle. But Waismann'swork can surely not serve as the main sourceof understandingthe relation betweenthe Circle and Wittgenstein.The projectWaismanninitially was to work out was to give a coherentand systematicaccountof the philosophyof the Tractatus. And, as we know from the publishedresult, the much revisedversion of the German Urtext of this project, The principles of linguistic philosophy,6there are only a few chapterswhich are related to the Tractatusphilosophyand theseare critical examinations of those ideaswhich Wittgensteinhimself criticised in his later period. So, only if we take Waismann'selucidationsduring the actual sessionsof the Circle, his remarkableattemptto grasp the essenceof Wittgenstein'snew approaches,will we find an important indicator of the way Wittgenstein's changing ideas

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Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? enteredinto the discussionsof the group. Just to give an exampleof the way the membersof the Circle discussedWittgenstein's ideas, I shall quote part of a debate aboutthe 'Theses'in which Waismanngavea condensedcompilation of a Tractarianthesisfrom the 1929 perspectiveof Wittgenstein.7 In the minutes of the sessionof 3 J une 1931, we find a discussionof the questionof experiencinginternal and external relations. Waismannwas not presentfor this discussion.But, as you will notice, it was Schlick who more or less defendeda position which otherwisecould have beendefendedby Wittgenstein, namely,that we cannotexperienceinternal relationsbut only externalones.

Schlick: We only can experienceexternalrelationsnot internalones. Hahn: Is the experience of 'lighter/-coloured/' [heller] betweentwo colours an externaloran internal relation? Schlick: With external relations you could have an experience; between colours however subsist [bestehen] internal relations. Neider: Then there does not exist an experience'lighterI coloured/'[heller]? Schlick: 'Lighterl-coloured/' is an internal relation and, therefore,it cannotbe experiencedlike the relation 'next to the right'. Hahn: To the experience'red' is coordinateda processin the retina and if I talk of 'lighter', there could be an appropriate chemical processin the brain coordinatedto this; in this casethere would not exist a difTerencebetween'lighter' and 'red' and lighter would be an external relation. Camap: If I say, somethingis lighter than somethingelse, I have a certain chemical processin the centre of perceiving in the brain. But this is trivial, since otherwisethere could not occur a movementof the stoma [mouth]. This, therefore, is not enough,becausethen there would not exist any internal relations. Hahn: Internal relationsare the numbers. Camap: If I say 'smaller', concerningnumbers,then I do have in my speech-centre also a certain process. Hahn: The colour 'red' is coordinatedto a processon the retina, but theredoesnot in the samesenseexist a coordination to a brain processin regardto the number'2'.

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Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? Schlick: It is importantthat that, what happens,doeshavea structural Gestalt [Strukturgestalt]. If there is an internal relation then it occurs as the Gestalt of the whole process [Gesamtprozefi].If one does see a lighter or darker colour, thenwe haveherea whole process[Gesamtprozefi],and 'lighter' is just a part and not given in the sameway as the individual colours. Carnap: The internal relation is not a particular process, but a certaindetermination,a propertyof the whoIe process [ Gesamtprozefi]· Kaufmann: If I seetwo blue(s), one of this is lighter than the other, then this is an internal relation. If we speakof it, does 'lighter' not meansomeisolating abstraction?It certainly is a relation, which doesobtain also in regardto other classes of colour and what I can show here I can show therealso; it is an invariant of the whole complex. And somewhatlater in the discussionSchlick remarks: If I speakof experiencesof relations, I do mean that I had this experienceasidefrom that otherone. - Experiencesof relationsdo not matterin regardto internal relations,since the latter ones are already given with them. They do not enter the proposition, but are shown in its form and unspeakable[unaussprechbar].

And he concludesthis part of the discussionwith the statement: It is wrong to ask, if one has an experience'lighter' extra and apart from the otherexperiences. First of all: we have here an original protocol of an actuaI sessionof the Circle. Sometimesthese notes are quotations of what has been said by one member, most times they give a summaryof the content of the discussions.The protocol had to be approvedby the membersand they could add to it. It would be of the utmost importanceto publish them as soon as possible, at least in order to enforce the understandingof the varieties of views within the Circle. Second: I think this is a typical examplenot only of how the membersof the Circle went through every line of Waismann's thesis,but also of the way in which they acceptedthe Wittgensteinian approachand of how they criticised it. Even if the topics of 30

Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist?

the discussionswere changed,the main points of perspectivesto view them remained.And it is quite obviousthat Waismannand very often Schlick were the advocatesof Wittgenstein'spoint of view, while Neurathremainedin strongopposition. We may detecta similar line in Hahn'sarguments.He did not want to accept that there are immediate given elements (like yellow, blue, the tone a etc.) - but defendedthe thesis that all those elements are already constructions out of the whole complex of instantaneousexperience.Very often during their argumentshe varies this point. So, for instance,in the sessionof 12 February 1931, when he underlines the statement that it would be wrong to assumethat certain colour-signsforce us to use a languageof a certain determinedstructure. 'By facts we rule out only some languageof a certain structure'. And when Schlick and Kaufmann reply that what is given forces upon us also a certain kind of sign-structure,or when they in sist that languagemust have the samestructure,or when they in sist that language must have the same multiplicity as that which it denotes,then Hahn deniesagain that what is given in such a way should have a determinedstructure. 'Dies wäre Ontologie' ('This would be ontology'). Carnapat this period mediated,so to speak, between the two sides. True, there was astrangetendency to overcome the differences and to reach a common and tenable view on the mattersdiscussed,but if we look closerat the history of the Circle, we detect that the unity of tenets held by the memberswas soon again in danger of breaking off and it did break off in fact before the Circle was destroyed by external forces. Popper'sbold conjecturethat it was he who was responsibie for the death of logical positivism can, however, not be taken seriously. The fact that there were strong philosophicaltensions within the Circle was not completely unknown by the world at large. It becameapparentparticularly in the debateon protocolsentences,that there were at least two groups of neo-empiricists to be distinguished:thosewho conceivedof foundationsof knowing and those who did not acceptany such ultimate grounding on which the theories should be based. But, nevertheless,the tendency prevailed that the members of the Circle described themselvesas a movement,which was bound to the tenets which were announcedin the 1929 pamphlet: WissenschaftlicheWeltauffassung:Der Wiener Kreis. Only recentlycould I confirm the origin and actual authorship of this pamphlet. The first version was written by Neurath,but rejectedby Carnapwho thentook overthe 31

Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? task of giving it a balancedform. Feigl was also asked for cooperationat this stage.Thus when Carnapwrote to Schlick on 30 September1929, presentinghim with his copy of the Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung,he could say that it was compiled through a combinedeffort by Feigl, Neurathand himself. Den Inhalt betrachtebitte nicht zu kritisch, sondern mit Deinem gewohntenWohlwollen und Nachsicht.Es ist von Feigl, Neurath und mir mit vereinten Kräften und mehr gutemWillen als Qualität geschaffenworden ... Die bibliographischenAngaben in der Broschüre hat jeder selbst gemacht;jedoch für Dich und Einstein Feigl, für Wittgenstein Waismann,für Russeliich. Pleasedo not consider the content too critically but with your usual kindnessand indulgence.It has beencomposed by Feigl, Neurathand myselfthroughajoint effort and with more good will than quality ... Each of us did our own bibliographicalannotations;but thosefor you and Einstein were made by Feigl, the ones for Wittgenstein by Waismann, and the onesfor Russeliby myself. I think that this passage,which is also confirmed by otherletters, now solvesonce for all the difficult questionof the authorshipof the pamphlet. I now turn back to the protocol of the discussionsince I have chosenthis piece for the purposeof explainingnot only how they proceededbut also what was discussedat this stage.I think that the questionof internal and external relations, also discussedin somearticles by Aldo Gargani,Bis an importantone for an understandingof Wittgensteinas well as for the Circle's interpretation of his work. Wittgenstein himself had a special interest in the notion of internal relations. He had already statedin the Tractatus: 'The structuresof propositionsstandto one anotherin internal relations'(TLP 5.2). For instance,the internal relation which ordersa seriesis equivalentto the operationby which one termis derived from another.Thuswith the help of the notion of internal relation Wittgensteinwanted to elucidatethe relation of proposition to fact and with this the relation betweenlanguageand reality. And he often propoundshis idea in opposition to Russeli (and in th is casealso to Ogdenand Richards).9In the early th irties, in the lecture notestaken by Lee and King, he explainedthe

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Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? conceptof internal relation as one 'given in the termsinvolved, in the nature of proposition and fact'. The character of these relationsis - we are told - such that what they are relationsof 'cannotbe otherwise'.10 In order to attemptto clarify the notion of internal relationsit will be useful to explain the internal-externaldistinction. To do this let us start from the intentional part of our language.If we intend somethingwe are directedto what is intendedin the same way as thought is to facto How should this be understood?WeU, the direction towards the object Wittgenstein caUs the 'picture theory of meaning'. In the picture theory which Wittgenstein probably never gave up completely,even in his later period, only external relations can be expressed;internal relations however can only be shown. According to Russeli (The analysis of mind) intentional statesof the mind are like expectations.Against this Wittgensteinargues: for me, there are only two things involved in the fact that a thought is true, i.e. the thought and the fact; whereas for Russeli there are three; thought, fact and a third event which, if it occurs, is just recognition. This third event, a sort of satisfactionof hunger,could for examplebe a feeling of pleasure.11 Sincethe intention howeveris determinedby what is intendedthat is by its internal relation, no further event, no external or causalrelation is neededto describeit. If Russeliwere right, then if you have given an order to someoneand you are satisfiedwith what he then does, this would amount to the fact that he has carried out the order. I think that what can be said aboutthis relation, which cannot be otherwise,is somehowsimilar to what can be said about the logical spacewithin which somethingtakes place: that what we expectand the expectation- both must be in the samespace,or as we could also say, using some more familiar notion: they necessarilybelong to the samemovesin a languagegame. What you are describing then, in describing such a move, are internal relations,but not external ones. I have added these remarks in order to explain what the discussionwas about. But it is time to return to the main topic: BecauseI am not asking the question 'how did Wittgenstein's influence on the Vienna Circle work?' I want ratherto find out if 33

Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? he himself may be labelled as a neopositivist- provided we do not provokea debateabout names.On the questionof names,it is quite clear that membersof the Circle did not like to be called positivists and that no one acceptedthe term 'neopositivist'as a proper namefor the movement.Feigl, for instance,proposedthe label 'logical positivism' and Neurath quite often talked of a 'rational empiricism', a name he found in Itelson and not very different from the one usedby Abel Rey: 'empirical rationalism'. N eurath liked the new, rediscovered termini technici: 'logical syntax', 'semantics', 'foundationalresearch'(Grundlagenforschung) and the like, but he strongly disliked the term positivism no less than the term 'philosophy'. Writing to Carnapin April 1934 he stated:

DaB Du das ekelhafte Wort exakte Philosophie, wissenschaftliche Philosophie und so ähnlich überhauptin den Mund und in die Federnimmst, graustmir. That you take the horrible words 'exact philosophy','scientific philosophy'and similar onesinto your mouth and that you write it also makesme sick. Quite often Neurath mentionsComte'smetaphysicsas a real obstacleto using the term 'positivism' for the movementof the 'scientific world-conception'.For instance,he writes in a letter of 9 May 1934, commentingon the last version of Carnap'spageproofs of Die Aufgabender Wissenschaftslogik: 12 Bitte nicht 'Positivismus'sagen.leh las wieder mal Comtes Werk. Und obgleich ich es gegen zu viel Beschimpfung schützenmuB, es graust einem oft ... leh werde ihn bei 'Einheitswissenschaft'schon nennen- aber 'Positivismus' ... oweh. Please, don't say 'Positivism'. 1 once again have read the work of Comte. And in spite of the fact that 1 have to defendit againsttoo much denunciation,it often doesmake one sick ... 1 shall surely mention him [namely Comte, R.H.] in regard to 'Unified Science- but 'positivism' ... oh woei Weil, 1 do not want to add anything further. It is quite clear: no one of this group wantedto be a neopositivistor to be called one. 34

Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? Those who were at all interestedin the prehistol)' of their own approachdid not deny the heritage from classical empiricism, but no one underlined a dominant relation to Comte or any other philosopherof that school. At the beginning of this chapterI said it would be useful to know what the often-usedterm 'neopositivism'designates.If we look to those cri tics who have baptiseda certain view of theo1)'constructionas the receivedview and who havevel)' often identified this view with the allegedtheoriesof the Vienna Circle, we find a cliché which gets its force from simplifications. According to this picture, the neopositivistshad firstly developedand defendeda theol)' of knowledgederived from the faulty assumptionthat all statementsor all meaningfulstatementsare, in principle, derived from immediateexperience(which should mean either that they can be translatedinto statementsabout immediateexperiences, or that they are constitutedout of elemental)'experiences);secondly it was held that the logical empiricistsdismissedthe diachrony of theories from their studies (that is, dismissed the historical perspectiveof science),and were solely interestedin analytic and systematicproblemsof scientific theories; thirdly that the logical empiricistsconceivedthe idea of cumulativeprogressin science.I think that all three of these suppositionsare wrong and quite often in the last ten or fifteen years I have askedfor a revision of our picture of the Vienna Circle. The supposeddogmasof the Circle were not tenetsof the Circle and certainly not held during its heyday, and moreover they were already being criticised within the Circle. lndeedsomemembersof the Circle neverheld them. Thus we find a short report to this effect in Carnap'sdial)' for 22 Februal)'1930: 'From 8 to 11 with Tarski in a Coffeehouse ... he thinks that thereis only a gradualand subjectivedifference between tautological and empirical propositions.' And when Carnapconvertedto physicalismfrom his project of constructing a system based on structural propertiesand on the conviction that every scientific statementcan be transformedinto a statement which only containsstructuralpropertiesand a descriptionof the frame of objects, he was not quite clear how the languagewhich statesthe immediateexperienceswas to be analysed.There was more confusion than unanimity about the conceptof immediate he accusesNeurathof experiences.As a result, in correspondence creatingconfusionby startinga discussionon the natureof protocol-sentences,when it was still not clear what the right analysis shouldbeo13

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Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? But what was even strangerwas that as soon as Wittgenstein receivedCamap'sarticle 'Die physikalischeSpracheals Universalspracheder Wissenschaften'('The physicalistic languageas universallanguage of science')(Die physikalischeSpracheals Universalspracheder Wissenschaften ), 14 he accusedCamapof plagiarism, especiallyconcemingthe idea of physicalism.He said to Camapin a letter of 30 August 1932 that, since Camaphad not mentioned his name, he had misled the readersabout the main source( 'die Hauptquelle')of his ideas.And in a letter to Schlick of 8 August of the sameyear (written also in Hochreit) he says: 'DaB ich mich nicht mit der Fragedes "Physikalismus"befaBt hätte, ist unwahr (nur nicht unter diesem- scheuBlichen- Namen und in der Kürze, in der die ganze"Abhandlung"geschriebenist.'15 And he goeson to teIl Schlick that Camaphasalso taken his view of hypothesesand he even thinks that the distinction of formal and material modeof speakingis no stepbeyondhis own point of view. Here we see Wittgenstein claiming the provenanceof those ideaswhich in the usual historiesof the developmentof the neopositivistic movementare alreadyseenas importantstepsbeyond the original sensationalisticbasis. He claims that this interpretation can be found in the Tractatus, which was finished in 1918. However we may take sides in these accusations,I think they encouragea reconsiderationof the real history of the Circle. N eurath,whom Camap also claimed shouldbe consideredas the main source of physicalism, suggestedthat it would be Iess misleadingto talk of a 'Vienna Circle of Physicalism'than of the scientific 'world outlook', sincethe term 'world outlook' ( Weltauf16 fassung)is often mistakenfor Weltanschauung. Perhapsit is time now to put our discussionon Wittgenstein's position within the Circle into a wider frame. Therefore,I suggest looking at the Vienna Circle in the following way: first of all, there were two Vienna Circles. The first came into existence around 1907 and lasted until about 1912. lts principal members were Hans Hahn, Philipp Frank, and Gtto Neurath. The main topics of their Thursday discussionswere the problems of the philosophy of science, methodology, but, as we know from Frank, also political, historical, and even religious problemswere discussed.The group was very much under the influence of Mach. And it was mainly the difficulties which derived from a comparisonof someof the resultsof Poincaré,Duhem, and Abel Rey which they could not easily solve. We have to take into accountthat the works of the French conventionalistshad been 36

Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? translatedinto German almost immediately after their publico~jet et sa ation in France.The translationof La tMorie physique:sonwith structurecame out only two years after the French edition with a prefaceby E. Mach. And in the sameyear the VienneseRudolf Eisier edited a Germantranslationof Abel Rey's Theory ofphysics. If you considerthat the first translation of Duhem into English was publishedalmost fifty yearslater - namely 1954- it is easy to imagine why the conventionalisticand especiallythe holistic view of laws and scientific ,tendenciesentered the positivistic discussion so early. The idea that however a hypothesis may enter into a theory it may be sustainedin the face of a recalitrant experienceand the thesis that every datum may be describedin many different ways by a theoreticalsymbolism17 lead to the view that all empirical propositions,even the Protokollsätze,which we use in confirmation procedures,are chosenon the basis of decisions and can, in principle, be changed and revised. By 1913 Neurath had, for instance,developeda dynamic and diachronic view of changing theories on this basis, asking for a theoretical understandingof theory-change.Perhapsone of the most interesting results of the cooperationwithin the first Vienna Circle at the end of the first decadeof this century was the formulation of what I have dubbed the 'Neurath-principle'.This principle is certainly derived from Duhem and says: if we accept a holistic view of theories, then we are always in the happy position of having two options concerninga propositionwhich is not coherent with the whole system: either changethe proposition which you would like to coherewith the system or changethe system. According to Occam'srazor you have to accomplishthis change in the most economicalway in order to simplify the systemand the understandingof the facts in question. Much later, in 1935, Neurath- who had not changedhis conceptionof theoriesat all - wrote that we cannotdeny that the actual encyclopedias(that is the notion he then preferredto that of 'system'or 'theory') can be comparedwith model encyclopedias,which are freed from the faults of contradictions.But even in regard to them, we could never seriously state and judge an isolated statement.Validity can only be affirmed in connectionwith the massof existing and so far acceptedstatements.And. with respectto this, every proposition is open to revision.18 Similar ideas have been proposedby Frank and also held by Hahn. WeIl, I do not have time here to exposethe ideas of the first Vienna Circle even in general,not to speakof the details. But if

37

Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? we want to understandthe history of the better-knownmovement of the twentiesand early thirties, we have to take into accountthe existenceof the first Cirele. It was becauseof this that Philipp Frank could truly say in Hahn's obituary in 1934, that the real founderof the Vienna Circle was Hahn. Actually it was he who could convince the faculty to put Schlick on the list and it was he who convincedthe membersof the mathematical seminar - Radakovic, Waismann, Gödel, Menger, and Bergmann- to attend Schlick's Thursday meetings as Schlick was, after all, the only full professorof Philosophy in the Circle. And it was againHahn who, after the study of Frege and Russell, asked for an interpretation of the Logiseh-philosophiseheAbhandlung. At this point we return to Wittgenstein: and since here 1 can rely on a large body of knowledge of historical facts in the remainderof this paper I can try to explain why our question, whetherWittgensteinwas a neopositivist,cannothavea yes or no answer. And the reasonsfor this uncertainty are - as 1 said in the beginning- to be found in the vaguenessof the connotationsof the two names: neopositivist and Wittgenstein. 1 do not know which is the more difficult to resolve. Becauseif we agree that there was a first Vienna Circle formed by a proper part of that well-known group of logical empiricists, called by Neurath Der Wiener Kreis, we have to acknowledgethat there have been very different views on almost all important questionsthrough all the periods of its existence:not only different views, but also views which eontradietedone another. Contrary to the standardinterpretations we have to considerthe influence of Wittgenstein not as starting a school-movement, not as dominatingfrom the beginning, but rather like the passageof a cornet againsta backdropof stars. For a short period some membersof the group of philosophers, mathematiciansand sociologists around Schlick were fascinatedby the light of this cornet. But as we know - not all of them. It is not appropriateat this point to map the influence and to point out why the membersof the first Vienna Circle, Hahn, Frank, and Neurath,neverfelt temptedto changetheir own view of philosophy of sciencefor the one held by Wittgenstein.Their view was a naturalistic conception of science and philosophy which acceptedthe pragmatic and conventionalistof Poincaré and Duhem on the one hand, and Mach, Einstein, and Russeli

38

Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? on the other. 1 must concedethat in a superficialinterpretationof some of the writings of Frank and Hahn it may look as if they followed the usual phenomenalisticreading of Mach. But this interpretation itself derives from an untenableinterpretationof Mach's complicatedtheory of elementsbecauseMach held that we have to conceiveof elementsas the objects of either a phenomenological (psychological) or a physicalist interpretation of events. Therefore, when Philipp Frank summarisedthe main achievementsof Mach's philosophy in an article published in 1917, he first pointedto the idea of the unity of scienceconceivedby Mach in orderto provide a consistentlink betweenphysicson the one hand, and physiology and psychologyon the other. SecondIy, however, he praised Mach for being the philosopher who preservedthe heritage of the Enlightenmentfor our time. And the meansto achieve this was the principle of economy which made it possible to critici se seemingly meaningful utterances postulatingentitieswhich do not exist. An utteranceor a proposition, accordingto Mach, is senselessif it containssignswhich are pseudo-descriptive;which means,signs for which we cannotfind an empirical interpretationfor their meaning. It was not difficult for membersof the first Vienna Circle to read the relevantpassagesof the Tractatusas a clarifying in terpretation of thesetwo Machian.principles. Whereverin the discussions of Waismann's thesis they suspected a different understandingof the two principles we find them in oppositionto Wittgenstein.This applies to Frank, Hahn, and Neurath. From the early days- as we know - Neurathwas the strongestopponent of Wittgenstein'sconceptionof the unspeakableas the most importantpart of his philosophy. So, when I say that the ViennesephilosophersacceptedWittgenstein'sconception of philosophy stated in the dictum 'All philosophyis critique oflanguage'(TLP 4.003)('Alle Philosophie ist Sprachkritik'), I do not mean that Neurath approvedof the Wittgensteinianapproachas such. But he certainly acceptedthe idea that only sciencecan producetrue pictures, models of reality, and he was in completeaccordancewith Wittgensteinwhen he stated that only what can clearly be asked at all will also be clearly answered;it makesno sense to talk of unsolvableriddles.19 But Neurath never gave an exact analysis of the conditions of clarity. When he used the notion of clarity he did not consider internal relations at all. He was only interestedin the consensus of scientistsas to the acceptanceof propositionsof any given kind.

39

Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? The schemehe proposedto test the senseof a proposition is the sameas the schemefor deciding the truth-valueof the proposition: namely,the confrontationwith the whole systemof propositions acceptedwithin a certain community so far. This was the route he had learnedto foIlow from Poincaréto Duhem, and as we know, he never gave up foIlowing it. Only one of his consequenceswas that there could not be a test of any singular hypothesis. Or as Carnapput it in 1934 - mentioning the namesof Poincaréand Duhemin parentheses:'The test applies... not to a single hypothesisbut to the whole systemof physicsas a system of hypotheses.'20 We know how Schlick replied to this idea, which was completely alien to him: 'If anyoneshould teIl me that I believe in the truth of scienceultimately becauseit has beenadoptedby "the scientistsof my cultural Circle" I should ... smile at him',21 and he points to the fact that in someway or otherevexybodyhas to test the truthworthinessofthe beliefs held by the (other) scientists. It is quite clear that the proposal of the testing-scheme cannot be used to clarify the meaningsof the propositionsto be tested. They are said to be hypotheseswhich get their meaning via verification and their truth either by their coherencewith other propositionsor not at all. It seems to me that behind the heavy misunderstandings concerningthe problem of senseas weIl as the problem of verification and testing lies a confusion of psychologicaland semantic questions, or perhaps more clearly of epistemic and nonepistemicusesof the key notionsin the descriptionof scienceas a systemand as an activity. It is a confusionsimilar to that between linguistic rules and rules of behaviour, provided we understand the former in the sense of a grammaras Wittgensteindid. I think that Wittgenstein himself tried to avoid the confusion when he startedto criticise his own conceptionof the elementaxypropositions as weIl as the Tractatus theoxy of names. But I am not convincedthat he succeeded. Like Schlick, Carnap, Neurath, and most of the membersof the Vienna School, he believed that metaphysicalquestionsare ruled out by a meaning-criterion:by statingthe conditionswhich make a statementtrue. And he also believed- like the othersthat the verification of a statementis the procedurewhich doesin fact fulfil this task. When he proceeds in his research on the 'grammar of language',he vexy often remarks that his questionsare psycho-

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Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? logical and he confrontsthem using externalcriteria. In a manuscript of 1931, not yet published,he asks'What haswhat I think, to do with what is the case?'22And again he doubts: The questionnamelyis this: is all, that I am doing here not mythology? Do I not add poetically to what is already apparent,when I speakof the processwhich is going on in understanding(meaningfully uttering or hearing) the sentence? That is, couldn't I consider languageas a social institution, subordinatedto certain rules, becauseotherwise it would not be effective. But then: That latter is something I cannotsay: evenso I cannotgive a justification of the rule. I could describe it only as a game which human beings undertake.23 He developedthe idea of Sprachspieleand he notes, exaggerating as he often does,that there are uncountablymany of them. And in the Remarkson the philosophy of psychologywe find in double bracketsa hint as to what alternativeshe had in mind when he proposedhis new ideas: '( (There are more languagegamesthan Carnapand othershavedaredto dream.))'24 1 am coming to the end of my paperwhich should have given an answer to the question: was Wittgenstein a neopositivist?I have tried to provide some argumentsfor the assumptionthat almost no member of the two Circles acceptedbeing called a positivist and I have provided some reasonsfor the correction of the receivedview of logical positivism.25 When Wittgenstein read the 1929 pamphlet: Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung,he remindedWaismannthat the importanttask is not the propagandaor Gro.fisprechereibut the philosophicalactivity, that is, what is doneby the Vienna Circle. I think in th is he was completelyright: it is not the thesisthat counts in philosophy. What the VienneseSchool is able to do, Wittgenstein thought, has to be shown not to be said: 'Das Werk mu.fi den Meister loben.' ('The work should praisethe master.') And I think that the philosophicalwork done by the neopositivistswho did not want to be calledso doesindeedpraiseits masters: it remainsthe standardwe useto evaluatethe philosophicalwork of our time.

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Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? Notes 1. V. Kraft: Der Wiener Kreis. Der Ursprung des Neopositivismus.Ein 2nd enlargededn (Springer,Wien, Kapitel derjüngstenPhilosophiegeschichte, 1968). Cf. A.J. Ayer (ed.), Logical positivism (Free Press, Glencoe, III., 1959). 2. R. Haller, 'Ludwig Wittgensteinund die OsterreichischePhilosophie', Wissenschaftund Weltbild, 21 (1968), reprinted in R. Haller, Studien zur ÖsterreichischenPhilosophie(Rodopi, Amsterdam,1979), p. 120. 3. Vide J.R. Weinberg, An examinationof logical positivism(RoutIedge & Kegan Paul, London 1936), p. 26. 4. Vide R. von Mises, WahrscheinlichkeitStatistik und Wahrheit(SchrifSpringer,Wien, 1928). ten zur wissenschaftIichenWeltauffassung,3) 5. G.P. Baker, 'Verehrung und Verkehrung: Waismannand Wittgenstein', in C.G. Luckhardt (ed.), Wittgenstein, sources and perspectives (Harvester,Hassocks,1979), p. 280. 6. F. Waismann, The principles of linguistic philosophy, ed. R. Harré (Macmillan, London, 1965). Cf. F. Waismann,Logik, Spracheund Philosophie, Preface by Moritz Schlick, ed. G.P. Baker & B.F. McGuinness togetherwith J. Schulte(Reclam,Stuttgart,1976). 7. The 'Theses'are published in the Schriften by Ludwig Wittgenstein and their actual discussionwithin the Circle took placein 1931. 8. A. Gargani, 'Schlick and Wittgenstein: languageand experience' in R. Haller (ed.), Schlick undNeurath - Ein Symposion(Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1982), pp. 347-63, reprinted in S.G. Shanker(ed.), Ludwig Wittgenstein: critica I assessments (Croom Helm, London, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 275-86. 9. B. RusselI, The analysisof mind(Allen and U nwin, London, 1921), p.75f. 10. Desmond Lee (ed.), WiUgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1930-32 (Roman& LittIefield, Tatowa, N.J., 1980), pp. 9f. 11. L. Wittgenstein,Philosophicalremarks,I1I, §21. 12. R. Carnap, Die Aufgaben der Wissenschaftslogik(Einheitswissenschaft, Schriften, vol. 3, ed. O. Neurath togetherwith R. Carnapand H. Hahn (Vienna, 1934). 13. Unpublished letter from Carnap to Neurath; cf. J. Vuillemin, 'Physicalismand relativity', in R. Haller (ed.), Schlick undNeurath - Ein Symposion(Rodopi, Amsterdam,1982), pp. 314ff. 14. R. Carnap, 'Die physikalischeSpracheals Universalspracheder Wissenschaft',Erkenntnis,2 (1931). 15. 'It is untrue that I had not concernedmyself with the questionof "physicalism" (only not under this hideoustitle, and only in that brevity in which the whole [ Tractatus1is written).' 16. O. Neurath, 'Soziologie im Physikalismus',Erkenntnis, 2 (1931), reprinted in Ouo Neurath, Gesammeltephilosophischeund methodologische Schriften, ed. R. Haller and H. Rutte (2 vols, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 533-62. English translationby M. Magnusand R. Raico as 'Sociology and physicalism' in Ayer (ed.), Logical positivism, pp. 282-371.Cf. Ayer (ed.), Logicalpositivism,p. 282. 17. Cf. J. Vuillemin, 'On Duhem'sand Quine'stheses',Grazer PhilosophischeStudien,9 (1979), pp. 69-96. Vide also R. Haller, 'Der ersteWiener

a.

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Was Wittgensteina Neopositivist? Kreis' in W.K. Essler (ed.) Epistemology, methodology, and philosophy of science. Essaysin honour of Carl G. Hempelon the occasionof his BOth birthday (January 8th, 7985) (Reidel, Dordrecht-Boston, 1985: Erkenntnis, 22 (1985», pp. 341-59. 18. R. Haller, 'Über Otto Neurath', in his Studien zur Österreichischen Philosophie (Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1979), vol. 1, ch. VII, pp. 95-105; Haller, 'Der erste Wiener Kreis'; R. Haller, 'Das Neurath-PrinzipGrundlagenund Folgerungen',in F. StadIer (ed.) Arbeiterbildung in der ;::'wischenkriegszeit.Quo Neurath - Gerd Amtz (Löcker, Vienna, 1982). O. Neurath, 'Physicalism and the investigation of knowiedge' in Otto Neurath, Philosophicalpapers 7973-7946,ed. R.S. Cohen and M. Neurath (Reidel, Dordrecht, 1983), p. 161. Vide H. Rutte, 'Der Philosoph Otto Neurath'in Stadier(ed.), Arbeiterbildungin der ;::'wischenkriegszeit,pp. 70-8. 19. O. Neurath, 'Wege der wissenschaftlichenWeltaulTassung'in Neurath, Gesammeltephilosophischeund methodologischeSchriften, ed. R. Haller and H. Rutte. 20. R. Carnap, The logical syntaxof language(London, 1937), p. 318. 21. M. Schlick, 'Factsand propositions',Analysis,2 (1935), p. 69; repro in M. Schlick, Collectedpapers,vol. II (1925-36), ed. H. Mulder & B.B.F. van der Velde-Schlick (Reidel, Dordrecht-Boston-London, 1979), pp. 400-4. Comparethe excellentpaperby A. ColTa, 'CarnapsSprachauffassungcirca 1932', PSA, 1976, p. 219. 22. L. Wittgenstein,Manuscript,p. 135: 'Was hat das, was ich denke, mit dem zu tun, was der Fall ist?' 23. L. Wittgenstein,Manuscript, p. 195: 'Die Frageist abernämlich: ist alles, was ich hier treibe, nicht Mythologie? Dichte ich nicht zu dem olTenbarendazu /hinzu/; wenn ich nämlich von dem Vorgang rede, der beim Verstehen(verständnisvollenAussprechenoder Hören) des Satzes vor sich geht. D.h. könnte ich nicht die Spracheals sozialeEinrichtung betrachten, die gewissenRegeIn unterliegt, weil sie sonstnicht wirksam wäre /wirksam würde/. Aber hier liegt es: dies letztere /letzte/ kann ich nicht sagen:eine Rechtfertigungder Regel kann ich, auch so, nicht geben.Ich könnte sie nur als ein SpieI, das die Menschenbetreiben,beschreiben.' 24. L. Wittgenstein, Remarkson the philosophy of psychology, I, §920: '( (Es gibt ebenviel mehr Sprachspiele,als Carnapund Anderesich träumen lassen.»'. 25. Cf. R. Haller, 'New Light on the Vienna Circle', Monist, 65 (1982), pp.25-37.

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3 Was Wittgenstein a Neo-Kantian?

One of the demandsof the orderly mind is that novel objects or occurrencesin history be orderedunderan interpretativeschema already familiar to us. However complex and many-faceteda work of literature might be, our pursuit of understandingis often an attemptto frame it within one interpretationin order to make comprehensible,in terms of the framework, the relationship betweenthe facetsand layers of the work, and the unified whoie. Common interpretativeschemataare also frequently characteristic of philosophicalschoolswhich adopt the basic principles of some doctrine, whetherthat doctrine is a traditional one or of recent origin. These basic principles can just as weil be of a methodologicalas of a substantivenature. In the first instance, they concernthe mannerof knowing and the meansof acquiring knowiedge,and they result in the exclusion of other procedures, for which rationalism and empiricism provide examples;in the second case, they govern the description of existent beings, betweenthe extremesof idealism and realism Gust to mention two of our more crudeclassificatoryschemata). As I have already pointed out, philosophical schools of thought frequently originate with the disciples of an influential teacheror scholar,whosemerit inheresin having reflected upon such perspectivesin novel ways, having put innovative questions and traced new routes to the solution of old ones. Occasionally however, philosophical schools originate when a traditional doctrine is revivedbecauseof an interestin hitherto undiscovered or undiscussedaspects,and the essentialprinciplesof the original doctrine are brought to bear upon historically altered situations and a changedstateof the art. I believe that the existenceof historicising accountshas parti-

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Was Wittgensteina Neo-Kantian? cular significancefor the philosophicalattempt to createunified systems,in that it appearsto underminethe generalclaim that every genuinely philosophical thought more or less implies, namelythat of having expresseda truth which - as Wittgenstein said - is 'incontestableand definitive'. We must, therefore,distinguish betweenthe fact of historical contingencygiven by the socioculturaldimensionof a historically determinedsituation, and historical relativity, which implies the contingencyof validity claims by placing all phenomenawithin the framework of a historical narrative.A historically conditioned discovery, like Copernicus'discovery of the movementsof the planets,can be true,just as the assertionof historical determinacy and relativity can be false and may turn out to be a mere emanation of a certain socioculturalsituation. If the questionis raisedas to whetherWittgensteinwas a neoKantian, then regardlessof how the question is answered,the answershould be motivated neither by reductive intentions nor by a sceptical intent to relativise the significance of his work. Clearly it is not obviouswhy one should integratethe founder of one school of thought - and Wittgensteinwas regardedas such amongsmall circles in the 30s - to someother schoolof thought. Let us ask, then, what argumentscan be brought in support of representingWittgensteinas a neo-Kantian,and secondly,what reasonsthere are for regarding such an epithet as a false one. Before consideringthesequestionsin detail, the conditionsunder which we would be disposedto answerthe original question in the affirmative or in the negative should be specified. Furthermore I shall proceedin sucha way as to show why the questionis one that needsto be consideredat all, and I shall then turn to the historical questions. A number of Wittgenstein's'exegetes'were early persuaded that Wittgenstein'sphilosophyoughtnot to be regardedmerely against the backdrop of Frege's and Russell's influence in England,but ratherought to be viewed from the vantage point of the wider currentsin continentalphilosophy. Interestingly, they begannot with an interpretationof the Tractatus, but, in the first instance,with an interpretationof the Philosophicalinvestigations. As early as 1962, Stanley Cavell1 drew a parallel between the conceptof a 'grammatical'investigationin Wittgenstein'ssense, and that of a transcendentalinvestigation.But preciselywhat was the claim being made here, and what were the arguments broughtin its support? 45

Was Wittgensteina Neo-Kantian? According to Cavell, Wittgenstein himselfhad indicated that the mannerin which he conductedhis investigationsmight be called transcendental.This would have been a striking remark indeed, and a signal to the reader that could not be neglected without detrimentto the interpretation.However,a closerlook at the evidenceshows us that the text does not support this judgement. In its favour the ninetieth of the 693 numberedparagraphs in the first part of the Philosophicalinvestigationssprings to mind. Here the locution, so typical of transcendentalwriting, seemsto standout on the page: ' ... our investigation,however,is directed not towards phenomena,but, as one might say, towards the "possibilities" of phenomena'.Of course,it not only appearsthat Kant is speakinghere; he actually is, for the expression'possibility' is introduced by Wittgenstein in quotation marks. Any ofwhich philosopheris familiar with the position in consequence Kant called all cognition transcendental'which is occupiednot so much with objectsas with the mode of our knowledgeof objects in so far as this modeof knowledgeis to be possiblea priori'. (Critigue oj pure reason, 'Introduction' VII (A 12)). And in the Appendix to the Prolegomenato any juture metaphysics,a footnote states that the transcendentaldoes not signify something 'passing beyond all experiencebut somethingthat in deed precedesit a priori, but that is intendedsimply to make knowledgeof experiencepossible'.2 Still, Wittgensteindoes elucidatethe expression'possibility of phenomena'by equatingits sensewith the 'kind oj statementthat we make about phenomena'.But the examplethat he introduces al ready servesto wam us that it would be absurd to attempt to discoverparallelsbetweenKant and Wittgensteinin this passage. Af ter indicating that it is the kind of statementthat is to be of interest, Wittgenstein'sensuing remark in this passage,which beginswith Augustine'squestion'Quid est ergo tempus?',states; 'Thus Augustinerecalls to mind the different statementsthat are made about the duration, past, present, or future, of events.' Wittgenstein subsequentlyterms such an investigation 'grammatical'. It might appearthat this is only one step - at least for StanleyCavell and also, perhaps,for PeterHacker- from substituting the conceptof the transcendentalfor that of grammar.The kinds of things that can be said seemmost likely to correspondto the categories,which in Kantian usageare the pure conceptsof the understanding.There are, for Kant, just as many pure concepts of the understandingconcemedwith the objects of 46

Was Wittgensteina Neo-Kantian? perception as there are logical functions in judgementsand, indeed,in all possibie judgements.Building upon theseassumptions, Kant can derive the conceptof synthesisfrom the table of judgements,viz. the possibilities, or even capacity, of thought. We find nothing of the kind in Wittgenstein.We find nothing of this kind in Wittgenstein,againstwhom Kant could have made the samereproachas he made againstAristotle, namely, having selectedtheseconceptsjust by chance(' aufs blo.fie Urgefähr'). For in Wittgenstein'sentire opus, thereis not one attemptto set out a table of categories.One could counter that it is part of the very uniquenessof Wittgenstein's Philosophical investigations, that in place of a determinatea priori order of things, the manifold of actual kinds of statementsis taken as the basis of analysis. If this were done, the rather restrictive Kantian table of judgements would be considerably widened, though the procedure itself would not be so very distinguishablefrom the Kantian procedure. But even an author like Peter Hacker, who allegesthat he and the Königshas discovered similaritiesbetween Wittgenstein berg scholar at every possible(and impossible)point, concedes: 'The spirit of Kant's transcendentaldialectic and doctrine of method was totally foreign to Wittgenstein.'4Hacker obviously means,here, to refer to limitations in the systematicdevelopment of the programmeof the Critique, rather than to a fundamental differencebetweenKant and Wittgenstein.However,as I hopeto show, this judgementtoo is erroneous. It is necessaryfirst of all to attain someclarity aboutwhat is to be understoodby the expression'grammaticalinvestigation'.A grammaticalinvestigation is, in Wittgenstein'slinguistic phenomenology,an investigationof the natureof an object. ('Grammar tells what kind of object anythingis' PI I §373.) Indeed,'Essenceis expressedby grammar' (PI I §371). If one knows what 'grammar' means, then one also knows what is to be understood by 'essence'.It is certainly not a hypokeimenon,an ousia in Aristotle's sense,somethingthat would enter a definition. But what something - e.g. an object - is cannotbe derived from what it is not. Already in the Philosophicalgrammarfrom the early 30S,5 Wittgenstein writes: 'It doesnot belongto grammar, that this observation sentenceis true and that one false. To it belongall conditions(the methods)of the comparisonof the sentencewith reality. That is, all conditions of the understanding(of sense).'6These remarks about the conditions that belong to grammar make it apparent that Wittgenstein understoodthe grammatical investigation in

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Was Wittgensteina Neo-Kantian? much more comprehensiveterms than could be coveredby logical syntax. If, in fact, grammar already contains all forms of representation,then grammarcould also determine,a priori, what essencebelongsnecessarilyto an object. It appearsthat no empirical investigation could reveal the essenceof such things as a mental image, an inner experience,a wish, or the like, while the conditionsof understanding,like those of meaning,hold fast. Thus philosophy, the 'custodianof grammar', gives no explanations,but only descriptions.If philosophy were to take it upon itself to analyse events in world history, empirical phenomenain the common senseof the term, then every case would have to be shown to be an instanceof a law conforming to the category of causality. But the connection betweenthe useof an expressionand the conditionsor rules of its employment,or of the comparisonof a sentencewith reality, is never shown in experience,although it is by the grace of nature that we do possessknowiedge.That is to say, our forming a new judgement naturally presupposesthat the expressionswhich describe a fact correspondto the rules of grammar. That we recogniseits truth, know that it is so, presupposesthat nature behavesas we say it does. But if it is true that grammarincludes the rules that we haveextractedfrom it, this is still no proof that a given rule is itself necessary,and universally valid. Necessityand universal validity are, however- accordingto Kant - the criteria of the a priori. Now therè can be no doubt that Wittgenstein was intent on showing that the criteria of grammaticalityare not universal validity and necessity.Therefore, while we need not give up the image of languageas a calculus, that image must be recast. In fact, one could say that grammar is a calculus. But grammardoesn't say that it itself is also the employmentof the calculus.This soundscryptic, and it is. But one would not want to maintain that Wittgenstein was successfulin developing this principal theme of his philosophy to the point that he had intended, namely to the point of clarity and perspicuity. However, it would also be rash to maintain that the interpreters had somehowrecoveredwhat Wittgensteinoverlooked.7 Neither is now the time to recoverwhat might have beenoverlooked. For our purposes,it must suffice to point out thosefactors which show themselvesto be of relative importanceand consequence.Accordingly, a grammaticalinvestigationcan be understood, first, as an investigation into the use of the words in a language.'Grammardescribesthe useof words in a language.So 48

Was Wittgensteina Neo-Kantian? it has somewhatthe samerelation to languageas the description of a game, the rules of a game, have to the game' (PC I 23). Secondly, it follows that a grammaticalinvestigation includes a description of the rules of a language game. Those sentences which reproduceor describe rules do not describe behaviour, states of affairs, or events. Such sentences describe conceptual connectionsand have, for this reason, no empirical character. What lends to these sentences a status that misleads one into thinking of them as synthetic a priori is not a capacity to extend our knowiedge,nor is it that they are universally valid, but rather a peculiar combinationof empirical contentand necessityinherent in them. The reasonfor this is to be found in the fact that the rules are concemedwith use, and thus have a semanticcomponent which is empirical, while as rules they cannot be true or false. Their necessary,although logically arbitrary, connection with use, which determinestheir meaning, lends autonomy to them and to language. 'The rules of grammar may be called 'arbitrary', ifthat is to meanthat the aim ofthe grammaris nothing but that of the language'(PI I §497).8 Vet already very early, in his conversationswith Waismann, Wittgensteinstates: In grammar you cannot discover anything. There are no surprises.When formulating a rule we always have the feeling: That is somethingyou have known all along. We can do only one thing - clearly articulate the rule we have been applying unawares.If, then, I understandwhat the specificationof a length means,I also know ow that, if a man is 1.6m tall, he is not 2m tall. I know that a measurement determinesonly onevalue on a scaleand not severalvalues. If you ask me, How do I ~nowow that? I shall simply answer, Because I understandthe sense of the statement. It is impossible to understandthe sense of such a statement without knowing the rule ... Thus if I understandthe sense of a propositionat all, I must also understandthe syntaxof an expressionoccurringin it. You cannotdiscoveranything in grammar,you can only elucidate.9 It becomesclear that the sentencesthat belong to the grammar of a language cannot be synthetic sentences,which also showsthat they are to be distinguishedfrom alllaw-like propositions. In this passage- as in numerousothers - we leam that 49

Was Wittgensteina Neo-Kantian? there is a close connectionbetweenunderstandingan expression and what might be called the grammaticalityof an expression.It is exceedinglydifficult to name the presuppositionsand preconditions of grammaticality.But it is relatively simple to statewhat Wittgensteincountsamongthe conditionsof grammaticality,the contentof the grammarbook: namely, agreementamongjudgementsand ultimately, agreementin action.1O That is to say, ifwe were not to agree in the naming of colours, and in our use of colour words, then the questionof whetheran object is or is not of a certain colour could not meaningfully be asked- or if asked, could not be meaningfully answered.If one cannot presurne agreementamong the systemsand scales of measurement,then there are no values to determine.I have argued elsewherethat these agreementsare not mere conventionsattachingto certain purposes,but rather the expressionof a praxeological foundationalism,for which it holds that communicativeaction is itself a condition of the agreementamong actions as among judgements.11 My purposehereis to show that the grammaticalinvestigation is not, in Wittgenstein'sjudgement,a transcendentalone. Before turning again to this task, however, I would like to considera third senseof the term 'grammaticalinvestigation'. This third senseconcernswhat Wittgensteinrefers to in severalpassagesas the 'grammatical sentence' . Grammatical sentencesare distinguishedfrom empirical sentencesfirstly in that they function as presuppositionsfor empirical sentences,and secondly, in that they have the characterof definitions or explicationsof concepts, but, in contrastto empirical sentences,do not representa move in a languagegame,and standin no causalrelation to the world. Sentences like 'Every rod has a length', 'White is lighter than black' (RFM I, §104), 'The classoflions is not a lion', 'This body has extension'(PI I §252), 'Greenand blue can't be in the same place simultaneously'(BB p. 56) state that we could not have named something a 'rod' if it had no length, that something could not be white, without being brighterthan somethingblack, and that somethingis not a body which is not extended.If we nonethelessuse thesenegativeformulations, then we are changing their meanings;giving them new ones.To say: 'The measuring rod has a length' is, in asense,just as absurdas saying 'The measuringrod has no length', althoughwe would tend to regard empirical satisfaction as confirmation of the meaningfulnessof the sentence.However, it is a mistake (a 'confusion'),according 50

Was Wittgensteina Neo-Kantian? to Wittgenstein,to considergrammaticalsentences as capabIe of verification or falsification. Only empirical sentencescan be verified or falsified. When we hear both the sentence 'This rod has a length' and its negation'This rod hasno length', we are partial and incline towardsthe first sentence;insteadof declaringboth 12 to be nonsense. Although this third way of speaking of grammatical investigations,which hasled us to the grammaticalsentence,appearsto be analogousto the analytic investigation,which results in anaIytic sentences- sentenceswhich are true in virtue of the meanings of the expressionsin them - nowheredoesWittgensteinuse this characterisation,which is originally a Kantian one. Thus, the concept of an a priori truth - necessaryfor the determinationof synthetic a priori judgements- also leads to absurdconsequences. But how is a transcendentalquestionto be possible,if it is not concernedwith synthetic apriori judgements? From what we have seen, Wittgenstein apparentlydidn't even regard putative analytic sentencesas meaningful, that is, true or false, sentences,but ratherattributed to them someother status. The reasonfor this is that Wittgenstein was convinced that if a sentence is meaningful, then its negationmust also be meaningful, and vice versa. Thus we seethat the grammaticalinvestigation,in which some have attemptedto find paralleIs with the transcendental,in fact providesa convincing parallel in noneof the three principal readings offered here, becausethe basis upon which the question arisesis not sufficiently homogeneous,and the aim of the Philosophical investigationsdiffers fundamentallyfrom that of a transcendental investigation. One could respondby askingwhetherthe kinship or similarity claimed to exist betweenWittgensteinand Kant doesn'texist in some other, and perhapsmore substantial, respect.13 Is it not perhapscorrect,one could ask, that there is alreadyin the Tractatus a 'Kantian tone' which justifies the characterisationof the work as a 'piece of critical philosophy',14 and, moreover,is it not correct that this tone - relieved of its rationalist and ahistorical tendencies- is preservedin the later writings up to the notes On certainty? Isn't it possiblethat Wittgensteinwas of the persuasion that mind forms nature?Theseare many questionsin one, and I would rather not take it upon myself to pursue them all, or

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Was Wittgensteina Neo-Kantian? attempt solid answers.For Hacker, it appearsthat there is no need to doubt that there will be positive answersto all of these questions,since in his book, he just presupposesthem. That is what I would call modelling nature(that is, here,Wittgenstein's writings) accordingto mind (here, the interpreter). I believe that there is a superficial but wide-spreaderror in expecting results from a comparison of the Wittgensteinian conception of philosophyas critique of language,which he never abandoned,with the Kantian notion of a critique of reasonand the Kantian aim of deriving an autonomousresponsibility from rationality. 'Critique of language'is, however, the term used by Wittgenstein to denote the essentialcharacterof philosophy in the Tractatus. Indeed in a general sense: 'All philosophy is critique of language.'That Kant did not intend his critical philosophy primarily as an investigationinto languagewas, alreadyfor Hamann and Herder, the point of strongestcriticism. Hamann and Herder are also the authors that Mauthner, among several others, placesin the family tree of those to whom the critique of languageis, as Hamannput it, the Alpha and Omegaof philosophy.1S One cannotsimply call every non-dogmatic,non-sceptical attempt at grounding experiencea 'critical' one in the Kantian sense,becausethis would renderthe specifically Kantian point of departure quite empty. Wittgenstein's understandingof what counts as 'critique of language'is not derived from an understandingof the critique of reason,nor doesit shareits aim, even though, naturally, all critiques of metaphysicsagree in their object of study. The Critique of pure reason is not only a critique of metaphysics,but rathera treatiseon methodand a justification of the conditionsof mathematicsand physicsas the basicdisciplines of natural science,in so far as this is to be done in conformity with natural law. The aim of Kantian philosopy is not the suspensionof reasonin the area of 'problemsof life', but rather the suspensionof immature thinking (the immaturity of which one oneself is to blame).16 Taken in such a broad sense, the 'Regulae' and 'Discours' of Descartes'treatise on method also offer a critique of (traditional) metaphysics.Kant's critique of reasonprovidesa basisfor just the sort of maturity which appears to be of the very essenceof the Enlightenment,and, in so far as it is, the aim of the Enlightenmentand that of Kantian critique are one and the same: the autonomousagent. In Wittgenstein we searchin vain for an attemptto establishthe self-activity of reason and to justify maxims of action. The critique of languageis not

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Was Wittgem/eina Neo-Kantian? the critique of reason.17 But let us leave theseaspectsof exegesisand turn again to the main question: what grounds, what internal reasonsare there which teil againsta Kantian interpretation?I havein mind, in the first instance,one consideration:namely, the striking contraston the one hand betweenKant's idea that the conditions of experience, like their possibility, are given a priori, and, on the other hand, Wittgenstein's adamant empiricist conviction that no componentof experienceis a priori. All that we experiencecould also have beenotherwise! In other words, and expressedin terms of Kant's criterion of the a priori: thereis only logica~ ral and there is no emPirical, necessity.Wittgenstein seemsto follow Mauthner, who replied to the neo-Kantian motto 'back to Kant' with his own: 'back to Hume'. A similar conclusioncan quite clearly be drawn from the notes on the conceptof a cause,which were publishedby Rush Rhees in 1976.18 From these it can be shown - and this is already known from the Philosophical remarks - that Wittgenstein is an intellectual successorof Oswald Spengler,and thus of Goethe, rather than of Kant. Supposingone wanted to know what the conditionsare which lie at the basis of our understandingof the connection between causeand effect, then the question is not 'What is necessarily contained in any experience of such a connection?'and even less 'What is the condition of the possibility that A is the causeof B?', but the answeris rathera matterof turning to a simple case. The game 'finding the cause' exists, first of all, in a certain practice.First there must be a solid, hard stonewith which to build, and the blocks wil! be placed, unhewn,one upon the other. Thenit is of courseimportant,that it can be hewn, that it isn't so hard after all. The primitive form of the languagegame is certainty, not uncertainty. For land this argument seemssignificant to me] uncertainty could not lead to action. I want to say: it is characteristicof our language,that it grows on a basisof solid forms of life and regularactivities. lts function is primarily determinedthrough the action, whoseaccompanistit is. We evenhavean idea ofwhich forms oflife are primitive, and which can only arise out of these.We believe that the simpier plough camebeforethe more complicatedone.

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Was Wittgensteina Neo-Kantian? For this reasonit is also true that: 'The simplestform (the prototype) of the cause-effectgame is that of the determinationof the cause,not that of doubt.'19 If we take up the challenge,with regard to this searchfor a simplest form and to this introduction of a praxeologicaldimension, to consider the language game as the primary thing, it becomesclear that the mysterious notion of a 'form or way of thinking' is just as praxeological;that is, it restsupon actualactivity, and finally, upon the 'commonway ofhumanacting'. Languagegames are only possible if one has confidence in something.But Wittgensteinclearly emphasises that this is not to mean 'if one can have confidencein something'.20What is being spoken of here is not a condition of possibility, but a purely factual condition -a fact. The idea that recurring practicesand habits, the praxeological basis of our cognitions, are constructedout of facts reappearsin severalpassages:'I mean: this is simply what we do. This is use and custom among us, or a fact of natural history' (RF I §63). This is not, for Wittgenstein, a transitory argument,leading us back to conditions of possibility, but a praxeological foundationalism,which takesthe fact of activity not as norm, but as the basisof cognition. No one could be motivatedto insinuatehere that therewas an indirect, much lessdirect, influenceof the philosopherfrom Königsbergon Wittgenstein.And yet the entirety of philosophyrests upon the samebasisin both cases:the primacy of practicalaction over theoretical,or as Kant said, the primacy of practical reason. The recurring referenceto the form of thinking, to the possibility of changing points of reference,to ways of thinking and the like servesafter all not (as one might have us believe) to defend the position that the objects of experienceare a projection of human reason, whose structure determines the structure of nature. It is rather the other way around: the facts of natural history - the developmentof human systemsof activity - are the basisof our rational understandingin genera!. The possibility of a changeof perspective,to which Wittgenstein repeatedly refers, is therefore neither a dogmatic nor a sceptical device but a methodologicalone - allowing one to imagine the courseof history as other than it is. But we only find out how it is, when our cognition graspswhere it finds hold: on the raw ground of the languagein which we describestatesof affairs.

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Was Wittgensteina Neo-Kantian? Now there is indeed a possibie perspective,which has been almost completely neglectedin the foregoing investigation,and which would have offered a meansto a more preciseanalysisof our question:the historical perspective.Such an approachmight take as its point of departurethe fact that towardsthe end of the nineteenth century and throughout the first quarter of this century there was astrong philosophical movement which attemptedto provide transcendentalfoundationsfor a theory of science:neo-Kantianism.Of its two variants,the logical-scientific and the value-theoreticmodesof criticism, the first showedsome similarities to the positivist theory of sciencethat stemmedfrom empiricism, since it was one of the principal intentions of the Marburg neo-Kantians to found a systematic science. They sharedwith Kant and positivism a rejection of metaphysics,but then, such coarseparallelscan be drawn betweenjust aboutany given two perspectives.This similarity, then, will not be a useful one. If one looks more closely at the central lines of thought of logical-scientificneo-Kantianism,one finds a more deeply-rooted metaphysicsof history and historical constructionthan one might be led to expectfrom its starting question- how knowiedge,or even awareness,of objects is at all possible.In the answerto this question, Kantian and yet venturing beyond Kant, the world of objects is representedas the correlate to a 'consciousnessin general'whose task is to acquire knowledge as a value in itself. However, it is in making reasonethical that the greatestdistance is createdbetweenWittgenstein'spraxeologicalfoundationalism and the neo-Kantian position. The way in which the logicalmathematical form of representationof the thing-in-itself is expoundedin neo-Kantianismis entirely different from how it is done by Wittgenstein. The objects of the Tractatus are not the points of connectionof a synthesis,and the use of signs and of linguistic expressionsis not the creation or constitution of a worldview. That which lies at the basis of a languagegame is neither a task nor a norm as it is for the neo-Kantiansof both kinds, but rathersomethingfactual, like ahabit. It would be worthwhile to look into this in greater depth, althoughpresentspacedoesnot permit this here. I mention only that such a treatmentwould also show that the allegedsimilarity between Wittgenstein and Ernst Cassirer, the most eminent memberof the CohenSchool,is also conceivedupon a misunderstandingof Wittgenstein'sconceptof language.

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Was Wittgensteina Neo-Kantian?

Notes 1. S. Cavell, 'The availability of Wittgenstein's later philosophy', PhilosophicalReview(1962), pp. 67-93. 2. I. Kant, Prolegomena to any future metaPhysics, ed. L.W. Beck, (Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1950), Appendix I, p. 123, note 2. 3. Cf. the following to J. Bouveresse,'La notion de 'grammaire'chez Ie secondWittgenstein',in Wittgensteinet le problèmed'unephilosophiede la science(Edition du Centre National de la RechercheScientifique, Paris, 1970), pp. 173-89. 4. P.M.S. Hacker, Insight and illusion (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1972). 5. PG. 6. Ibid. 7. See Hacker, Insight and illusion, p. 00; S. Morris Engel, Wittgenstein's doctrine of the tyranny of language (M. Nijhoff, The Hague, 1971), pp.45-73. 8. Cf. this difficult passagefrom the PhilosophicalinvestigationsI, 372: 'The only correlate.. .' 9. L. Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgensteinand the Vienna Circle, conversations recordedby Friedrich Waismann,trans.J. Schulteand B. McGuinness, (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1979), pp. 77-8. 10. Cf. R. Haller, 'The common behaviourof mankind'; Chapter8 below. 11. Cf. ibid. 12. PG p. 00. 13. Hacker, Insight and illusion, p. 00. 14. Ibid., p. 00. 15. J.G. Hamann, Sämtliche Werke, ed. J. Nadler, (Herder, Vienna, 1949-57);F. Mauthner, Beiträgezu einer Kritik der Sprache(Cotta-Mundus, Stuttgart/Berlin, 1901-2); cf. G. Janoska,Die sprachlichen Grundlagen der Philosophie(AkademischeDruck und Verlagsanstalt,Graz, 1951). 16. Cf. I. Kant, 'What is the Enlightenment?'in Foundations of the metaphysicsof morals, trans. L.W. Beck, (Liberal Arts Press, New York, 1959). 17. Cf. Chapter4 below. 18. L. Wittgenstein, 'Ursache und Wirkung: intuitives Erfassen', ('Cause and effect: intuitive awareness'),ed. R. Rhees, Philosophia, VI (1976), pp. 409-24; cf. Chapter8 below. 19. Wittgenstein, 'Ursache und Wirkung: intuitives Erfassen', ('Causeand effect: intuitive awareness'),pp. 420-1. 20. OC §509.

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4 Philosophy and the Critique of Language: Wittgenstein and Mauthner

In Ludwig Wittgenstein's logical-philosophical treatise, better known as the Tractatus logico-philosophicus,proposition number 4.0031 states:'All philosophyis a "critique oflanguage"(though not in Mauthner's sense).' Over the years, and particularly recently, this passage,like othersin the Tractatus, has frequently beensubjectto discussion.Although a singularpassage,in which an explanatorycommentsuchas 'All philosophyis a "critique of language'" appears,carries litde logical weight within the main architectureof the Tractatus, constructedby its seven principal propositions, it is an interpretandumof some weight. A terminus technicus, as it were, is introduced here, a trademark for that which philosophy is or ought to be, and, in order to preclude misinterpretations,Mauthnèr's manner of doing philosophy is chosen to representwhat it is not. As aresult, Wittgenstein's interpretershave beencompelledat leastto acknowledgeMauthner's existence,and have thereby broken once again the undeservedsilenceover this ingeniousdilettante.Wittgensteinplaced the expression 'critique of language' in quotation marks, as though this expressionwas assumedto be well-known. What is then to be understoodby 'critique of language'and what role does it play in philosophyand as philosophy? An inquiry into the idea's origin shows that the Wittgensteinian position, like that of Mauthner,can be placedin a wider context that allows us to view the history of a philosophicalera from a better vantagepoint - an era that many believe culminated in a philosophicalrevolution. Whoeverpursuesthis line of inquiry will, presumably,be able to avoid multiplying the errors committed in the numerousinterpretationsof the descriptivism in the Philosophical investigations which attribute a calculated

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Philosophyand the Critique of Language moderationto the critical import of the investigations.1 In such interpretations,it is as if Wittgenstein'sprogrammaticannouncement 'All philosophyis a "critique oflaoguage'" had lost itself in the vapoursof the ordinary languageof humancommunication. Before coming to terms with this interpretativeerror I would like to return for a momentto the questionof origins. To answer it appropriately,we must proceedfrom Mauthner'spoint of view, which we can assumewas familiar to Wittgenstein.Fritz Mauthner, who said that he could have sparedhimself much trouble had he had informed counselat his side at the right time,2 stumbIed, not quite accidentally, upon a long 'family history' of the critique of language;a family history which takesus back on one side throughJohn Locke and ThomasHobbesto the late-scholastic nominalists, and on the other, through Otto Friedrich Gruppe and FriedrichJacobi to J.G. Herder,J.G. Hamannand G. Vico. There is an almost unbrokentradition of the critique of language,only hidden from time to time by changingpublic and academicinterests,a tradition which Mauthner revived and for whoserediscoveryin this century, at least in Gruppe'scase,he is largely responsible.3 The tradition of using the critique of languageas an instrument of philosophicalanalysishas an opponentin commonwith nominalistic criticism and with the later logical empiricism: metaphysicalspeculation.The tendencyof speculativephilosophy to become systematic philosophy led many cri tics of languageto also criticise philosophicalsystems,or, as in Mauthner'scase,to advocatescepticism,the exemplaryform ofwhich is found in the work of Hume. The caB 'back to Kant' was rejoined by Mauthner's'backto Hume'; Mauthnersaw through the traditional empiricist stereotype; a stereotype, incidentaBy, which seemsto have survivedto this day: The Germanschool of pnilosophy [so he says] has become used to regardingEnglish commonsense, which has made English philosophy so fruitful, as inferior; but where that commonsenseis pairedwith the utmostdauntlessness, as it is in Hume, it seemsto me that its restriction to the psychological, its abstentionfrom German metaphysics,is to the advantage of the English mind.4 I have maintainedfor sometime the view that Austrian philostradition ophy - if one may so christen a one-hundred-year-old

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Philosophyand the Critique of Language - chosefor its teachersnot Kant and Hegel, but Mill and Hume, and that the principal figures in Austrian philosophy have remained'mainly empiricist, and oriented towards scienceand the critique oflanguage'.5For this reasonit does not seemto me to be unwarrantedto count Mauthner,who reachedmaturity in Bohemia,as a memberof this tradition, in spite of the geographical directions in which his later life was to take him. William Johnston has also done sa, in his recent, and very rich and comprehensivebook on the Austrian mind.6 However, this really serves only as a promissory note towards a full history of the critique of language,in which, for example,it would be just as importantto include a chapteron Adolf Stöhras a chapteron the variousstagesof the BrentanoSchool. Among the figures discussedin the first volume of Mauthner's Towards a critique of language(1901-2), we find Locke and Vico, Hamann and Jacobi. From Jacobi, Mauthner cites Hamann's catchphrase,that we lack no more than 'a critique of language, which could be a meta-critiqueof reason'. A revealing analogy is offered by this J acobianthesis,which takesus a step towardsthe answer to our question about the critique of language. The critique of languageshould be, in a broad sense,a critique of knowledge and knowledge acquisition; not a critique of 'pure reason', but rather of language-dependent, and thus 'impure', reason,to use a phraseof GustavGerber's,whose Die Spracheund das Erkennen(1884) showshim to be amongthe most importantof Mauthner's predecessors.'Kant', Gerber reiterates a hundred yearsafter Hamann,'didn't submit languageto a critique',7 even though languageis 'the sole, the first and last organonand criterion ofreason',as it is strikingly put by the Magusofthe North. Nonetheless,if it is desirabieto inquire into the possibility and capacityof the mind or of knowiedge,then necessarilywe must inquire into this sole organon as well. Mauthner never tired of pointing out that this instrumentmust be subjectedto critique, 8 becausea human being has no reasonapart from his language and becauselanguageis 'unfit for knowledgeof the world'.9 Here we find a substantive,perhapsthe substantive,result of Mauthner's 'epistemologicalnominalism'. Mauthner'sargumentsfor this thesis are diverse and if one retracesthe pattern of infere.nce,can be seento be derived from severalsetsof premisses.One of thesesetsis contained,for example, in the argument, motivated by empiricist-positivist lines of thought, that there can be nothing in the understandingwhich

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Philosophyand the Critique of Language did not first appearto the senses;that is, that knowledge rests upon sensoryelements.Ernst Mach, whom Mauthner proudly invokes, is the direct predecessorof this sort of sensedata theory, and BertrandRusseliadopteda similar, if less phenomenological point of view, which he also ascribedto the early Wittgenstein through his interpretationof the Tractatus.lO Nonetheless,Mauthner draws the decisive premissesfrom the critique of language itself: First, 'language' is 'along with all of its most general formulations in logic and grammar, its expressionsand hypotheses, ... a contingent phenomenon' .11 'The words of the languageare ... unsuited to penetratingthe nature of reality, becausewords are mere memory-tagsfor the sensationsgiven by our senses,and becauseour sensesare contingent, and in fact never experiencemore than the spider does of the palace in whosetUITet windows shehasspunher web.'12Onejudgesfalsely when one assumesthat languageis the instrument of thought, because'Thoughtis Speech',or 'Thoughtis speechreducedto its retail value.' As aresult, truth is likewise not to be found in a relationship of agreementbetween a statementand a state of affairs or reality, but is merely 'to be sought in language'YNot that Mauthner always remained consistent on this point. However, evenwhen he doesdefine truth as agreementwith reality (as is usually done), he adds that reality is, in itself, nothing more than language.The deeperreasonfor this is to be seenin the fact that the variety of languagesand usesof languageexpress only the interestsof the peoplewho createand use them: 'Man has orderedthe world in his language',14 and becauselanguage submitsto changewith much more difficulty than doesman, this order is often not nearly so useful as it could beo The categoriesof grammar,developedthrough the endless yearsof the history of language,and which the child learns in the form of a mothertonguewithin a few years,are really just an index of a world-cataloguewhich languagestrivesto achieve; in asense,the alphabetupon which the ultimate catalogueof the world will be ordered. It would be very unphilosophical to believe in the objectivity of this alphabet.15 In Mauthner'seyes any attempt to invent a 'world-cataloguing language' is, then, a utopian one; the pursuits of Raimundus Lullus, J. Wilkins or G.W. Leibniz were doomedto failure from

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Philosophyand the Critique of Language the beginning.16 Indeed, this would implicate the programmeof the Tractatusas well, in so far as it proposesthe use of asymbolie language to eliminate the 'elementaryconfusions' that arise so easily from ordinary usage.Anticipating Wittgenstein,Mauthner characterises logic as empty of content,as a systemof tautologies. Though while Wittgenstein was of the persuasion that the sentencesof ordinary language'just as they stand, arein perfect logical order>17 (admittedly for reasonsthat cannot be discussed here), Mauthner'scritical inquiries into languagehad sceptical results: for him, the instrument- the languageof our culture is not only 'chewedaway down to the bone',18but also remains, itself, a contingentartefact.A knowledgeof the external world, of one's own and of another's mind is impossible, becauseonly fleeting and ephemeralsensoryexperiencesserve as the basis of our judgements,and we supportourselvesand our 'verbal superstitions' upon mere chimeras and self-deceptionswhen we project our human and all-too-humanconceptsand categories upon nature. As a consequence,not only theological but also metaphysicaland ontological expressions(in the narrow sense) are subject to critical dissection.'We must return to Hume, in order to enterfrom there into fertile scepticism.'19When Mauthner speaksof the threeworlds of language,the adjectivistworld of common language,the substantivistworld of metaphysicsand the verbal world of science,it is primarily the substantivistand verbal worlds which fall victim to critical demystification. I recountone of many examples: . .. there is nothing real that would correspond to the concept of the understanding.There is nothing real that would correspondto the conceptof reason.And still less is there something real that would divide into two enti ties, understandingand reason.Just as little as there is a Beastness and two subtypes falling under it - Dogness and 20 Catness. Mauthner persistently directs the anti-Platonic, de-reifying critique of metaphysics,which may appearto be only a consequenceof a language-criticalscepticism,againstlanguageitself. For, firstly, 'the language'which is the object of inquiry does not exist, not even as folk language.There is nothing over and above mere idiolects and, more precisely, usages of language. 'Language is however not an object to be employed [e.g. as a tooI, 61

Philosophyand the Critique of Language R.H.], it is not an object at all, it is nothing but its use. Language is the usage of language.'21And, secondly, it is - also as it presentlyexists- not a meansto knowiedge,and for this reason not a meansfor bridging the epistemologicaldistancebetween thoughtand reality. But sincea personpossesses no reasonother than his language,a critique of reason- which is to determine the conditions and boundaries ofknowing - is only possibleas critique of language.It cannotpossiblychangethe world. Philosophy itself can desire nothing more 'than critical attention to language.Philosophycan do no more, with regardto the organism of languageor of the human mind, than a doctor can for the physiologicalorganism;it can observeattentivelyand give names to events.'22 For Mauthner, philosophy cannot be a set of doctrines; it can only be the ill-fated attempt,doomedto failure, to say the unsayable.We must, then, accordingto his conception of philosophy, distinguish betweentwo tasks: (a) the critique of all spurious concepts and (b) the suspensionor 'suicide of language'! The one liberates us from 'horror at the absurd monster of language', the other leads to a resolute and fin al eschewalof the word, to a mystical experienee:to silence. Wittgenstein drew a similar conclusion in formulating the seventh proposition of the Tractatus: 'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.' And he called mystical that which cannot be expressed,that merely shows itself. As in Mauthner, the mystical is not a problem, or a riddle - for in the strict sense there are no unanswerablequestions- rather, this is an experience,a feeling: 'Feeling the world as a limited whole.>23 Wittgenstein's intention in the Traclatus was to draw a boundary for thought, and, given the language-criticalintention, this could only mean that sueh a boundary could only be drawn in the languageand that what lies beyond the boundaryhas no sense, but is, rather, nonsense.The thinking subject is, then, neither part of nor constitutive of the world, but is a borderline. 'The world is my world; this is manifestin the fact that the limits of language(of that languagewhich alone1 understand)meanthe limits of my world.'24 It is not self-evident to me that a substantially different conceptof showing is emerging here, from that which distinguishesthe sayableand expressiblefrom what can only be shown. I shall come back to this presently. Thirty yearshave passedsinceWittgenstein'sdeath.Although until his deathnothing more had been publishedthan the Traclalus logico-philosophicus,a dictionary for elementaryschools,and a

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Philosophyand the Critique of Language 1929 paper of lesser importance, there were always 'private publications'of notes,lecture manuscriptsand oral deliveries,at least since the conversationswith Friedrich Waismann and Moritz Schlick in the later twenties and somewhat more frequently after the 'return' to Cambridge. This explains the early and growing influence upon Anglo-Saxon philosophy, but also, naturally, that upon Sclilick. GeorgHenrik von Wright indicates,in one of the only trustworthy and informative biographies yet written, that the developmentof the 'CambridgeSchool',like that of Vienna Circle logical positivism, was influenced in just this way. It was called the Cambridge School even then, and contemporary opinion of the school is witnessed directly in several writings from the thirties: Ernest Nagel's 'Impressions and appraisals of analytic philosophy in Europe', and Max Black's 'Relationsbetweenlogical positivism and the Cambridge Schoolof Analysis', for example.25 Today we survey the developmentof analytic philosophy at greater remove and have become accustomedto seeing broad differencesbetweenOxford linguistic analysisand neopositivism. We wonder now at finding the early papers on the so-called 'later' Wittgensteintreatedas 'therapeuticpositivism', as a minor branchof neopositivismor of the Vienna Circle. The pastthirty yearshave seenthe publication not only of the principal work ofWittgenstein'slater development- the Philosophical investigations- as weil as a numberof writings from the socalled transition period, but also preliminary studies to the Tractatus, setsof Zettelor notes,someof them bound togetherby themeand someof them thematicallyscattered;in short, according to the reports of the executors of the N achlass, the most important of Wittgenstein'swritings have been published here. During the sameperiod the secondaryliterature on Wittgenstein has grown considerablyand has perhapsalreadybecometoo vast to survey, as happenswhen a bibliography reachesmore than sixty or seventy pages.26 Since the publication of the Schriften (complete works) by Suhrkamp, German philosophy has discoveredan interest in Wittgenstein and extendedthe secondary literature by making its own contributions(I am thinking of E.K. Specht, W. Stegmüller, A. Müller, W. Schulz, E. von Savigny, and K. Wuchterl?7as weil as by translatingsomeof the English literatureon Wittgenstein.2H During the past thirty years some basic patternsin the interpretation of Wittgenstein'sprincipal works, the Traclatusand the 63

Philosophyand the Critique of Language Philosophicalinvestigations,haveemerged.Connectionsto the work of Frege, RusselI,and Hertz on the one hand and to that of Kant and Schopenhauer on the other have playeda substantialrole for the interpretersof the Tractatus, just as connectionsto the positions of Socrates/Plato,Augustine, Descartes,RusselI, Moore and the author of the Tractatusitself have been drawn on in the interpretation of the Philosophical investigations. The temporal proximity to the last has probably contributed to the tendency not to pursueotherconnections,and to view the peculiarityof the Tractatus, and that of the Philosophical investigations,as mutually exclusive.Wittgenstein'sphilosophywas divided into two entirely different 'philosophemes';resultingin the differentiation between Wittgensteinland Wittgen!\tein 11. Someauthors,among them StegmüIler,29who concurswith Steniusand Pitcher, don't even addressthe question of whether there might exist a continuity between the logically perfect languageand the analysis of the 'rough ground' of ordinary language.As Kant's awakeningfrom the dogmatic slumber through the idea of critique revealedthe differencebetweenthe pre-critical and the critical, a similar strict distinction is supposedto be madeplain by the critique in the Investigationsof certain positionsin the Tractatus. However,the similarity to the Kantian turn is, to be frank, pretty remote, and historians of philosophy do not readily divide philosophersinto irreconcilablehalves, and especiallynot when both halves are in someagreement. It ought not to be astonishingthen that there is a rising tendency to question the strict division betweenWittgenstein land Wittgenstein11.30 In my opinion the bridge which allows access to a unifying interpretation, aside from whatever reasonsthere are internal to the interpretive method for supporting the unity thesis,is to be found in the 1975 edition of the Philosophicalremarks. I havecometo believe that the thesisof strict incompatibility and discontinuity between the early and the later Wittgenstein is incorrect. There remainsonly the question of what has been or could be brought in support of the thesis, and how its negation can be defended. A difficulty facesevery interpreterhere: the new and unfamiliar approachesto philosophicalquestions,the usesof examplesas weIl as the generalpoints of departurefrom which Wittgenstein discoversproblems,havecausedthe greatestdifficulties in understandingand interpreting him. I am referring here not to basic schemataof interpretationinternal to systems,such as the claim 64

Philosophyand the Critique of Language that Wittgensteinwas a nominalist,or its complement,that Wittgensteinwas a realist. Such schematicinterpretationsare on the samelevel as the schemataof the realist or idealist interpretations of Kantian transcendentalism. They concernthe ontological and metaphysical interpretation of a theory (using 'theory' in its broadestsense);that is, they addressthe questionof what interpretation should be given to the statusof individual signs within the system.By contrast,the basic difficulty is concernedwith the perspectiveon the theory as a whoie, and one could also say, with the pointsof accessto it. It appearsthat somecan find accessonly to the later Investigations,with its profusion of examples,and others only to the Tractatus. Russell and H. Scholz belong to the latter group, and Malcolm to the former. If we considerwhat support can be found for the discontinuity thesis, we find thereare alreadya numberofwell-supportedargumentsto be drawn from the standardinterpretation: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

The concept of a linguistic sign, as it is introduced in the Tractatus, is expandedin the later phase:signsare not bound to particular symbols.Speechis an activity, part of a 'form of life'. The conceptof the meaningof a linguistic sign is not the twoplace semanticalone of the Tractatus but is functionally or operationallydeterminedby the rules of usage.'The meaning of a word is its use in the language'(PI I §43). The definitions in the Tractatusare criticised. The meaningof a nameis not the object. What an 'object' is, and its unity or simplicity, are not determinedby the definition of the name. Correspondingto the changesreferred to in (1) and (2), the analysisof a sentenceas a mirror of structureis expanded:there are different types of sentences,and not all have the same function, or even the sameform. Type and form vary. Language is not a unified system, not a sign language obedient to a special logicaI grammar. 'The philosophy of logic speaksof sentencesand words in exactly the sense in which we speakof them in ordinarylife.'31 Even more clearly: 'all the propositionsof our everydaylanguage,just as they stand, are in perfect logicalorder'. The views of certain or even alliogicians are too one-sidedlyattachedto one unrealised ideal in ordinary language. As a result of (4), the conceptof analysisis also expandedin the later phase; the narrow version of the Tractatus is criti65

Philosophyand the Critique of Language cised.The idea of one and only one (complete)analysisofthe proposition must be given up, since the elementarypropositions cannot be the direct concatenationof names.'We see that what we call "sentence"and "language" has not the formal unity that I imagined, but is the family of structures more or Iess relatedto one another'(PI I §108). Finally: 'The task of philosophy is not to createan ideal language,but to clarify the use ofthe existing language'(PI I §108). If I perceive the matter correctly these are the gravestof the 'grave errors' attributed to the author of the Tractatus by the author of the Philosophicalinvestigations.Hence I believe that it is an exaggerationto claim that there is in Wittgenstein some deadly ruthlessness,with which he is to have 'destroyedhis entire earlier philosophy'and, thereby,to haveattainedan unparalleled uniquenessin the history of philosophy- and that such a claim is false. Certainly, Wittgenstein was ruthlessly honest,also with himself. Where others might have attemptedto gloss over the inconsistenciesin their systems,he tried to bring them to light, to expressand to describe them. But Wittgenstein himself spoke only of grave errors, and nowhere indicated that he held his entire early philosophyto be mistaken.This hardly, if at all, lends supportto the hypothesisthat the later positionseo ipso destroyed the entirety of the earlier ones. What evidenceis there to supportmy view? Let us now return to those philosophers who regarded the development of Cambridge philosophyin light of logical empiricism,and who, as aresult, interpreted Wittgenstein's 'new line of thought' as a continuation and modification of the Vienna Circle position. What reasonsdid they have, or better, might they have had, for maintaining such a reading?Wittgenstein himself clearly stated in the lnvestigationsthat he had beenworking on theseissuesfor sixteenyears- since 1929Y Pursuingthis suggestion,it becomes evident that the clearest signs of a new beginning, those that appear in the Philosophical remarks, contain many of the basic thoughtsand argumentsof the later period, and someof theseare Iess carefully formulated than those that we find in the lnvestigations. In the Philosophical investigations, Wittgenstein remarks: 'Grammardoes not teIl us how languagemust be constructedin order to fulfil its purpose, in order to have such-and-suchan effect on humanbeings. It only describesand in no way explains the use of signs.>33 And in several places in the same work, he

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Philosophyand the Critique of Language characterisesthe mannerof a philosophicalinvestigationas nonhypothetical, non-empirical; in short, as grammatica!. This thoughtis found in the Tractatus,where the necessityof introducing a sign languageis treated,but in place of 'grammar', we read 'logical syntax',34 as this is understood,for example, in Frege's Begrijfsschrift.The interpretationof this syntaxassignsto the sentencethe function of picturing reality in such a way that the logical structure of the sentence isomorphically represents the structureof a stateof affairs. The sentenceshowsits sense;that is, it showswhat is the casewhen it is true. What it is to understand the senseof a sentenceis statedin an oft-quotedpassagefrom the Tractatus: 'To understanda proposition meansto know what is the caseif it is true' (TLP 4.024). 1t has been supposedthat this passageprovides the earliest formulation of a verification criterion for the meaningsof indicative sentences.However, if it is also correct to say that Wittgenstein setsup a relationshipbetweenthe meaningof an indicative sentenceand that which is the casewhen the sentence is true, it would still be wrong to assumethat Wittgenstein would have identified meaningwith the possibility of verification. Judging from some remarks in a letter to RusselI dated 19 August 1919,35 Wittgenstein places the greatestvalue upon the clarification of the categorialdifferencebetweenwhat can be said in the sentencesof a languageand what can only be shown.The sentencedoes not, however, asser!a sense, but rather showsit, in that ij one understandsthe sentence,one also knows what its truth conditions are or must be. On this basis, Wittgenstein arrived at his influential explication of logical propositions as meaninglesspropositions; meaninglessbecausethey have no relation of representationto reality, but rather leave open the entire infinite logical space- all possible statesof affairs. The possibility that truth conditions might be exhibited, or that one could let them show themselves,also brings with it, for Wittgenstein, the possibility of letting the limits of languageand the limits of the world fall together.Meaninglessness, and, if it differs in any respect,nonsense,commenceat the limits. Some of the philosophicalremarksfrom the year 1930 sound like commentaries,when they state,for example: But the essenceof languageis a picture of the essenceof the world; and philosophyas custodianof grammarcan in fact graspthe essenceof the world, only not in the propositions 67

Philosophyand the Critique of Language of language,but in rules for this languagewhich exclude nonsensicalcombinationsof signs.36 What concatenationsof signs must be excluded,accordingto this critical device?Again, Wittgenstein'sansweris in accordwith the postulate of verificationism: those strings of signs must be excludedwhosetruth or falsity are undecidable.But the thoughtexperimentof consideringpossible statesof affairs is limited: it does not suffice to merely describe an experiment in order to produce aresult; 'rather, the experiment must really be performed'.37Naturally, it is also possibleto find somethingby aimlesspursuit, or by chance.'Then ... he wasn't looking for it, and the procedure,from the logical point of view, was synthetic; while seekingis an analytic process.'38That is, only wherethereis a problem, can a claim be justified. 'Whateverone can tackle is a problem'(TLP 6.51). One is remindedof the passagein the Tractatus, where it is stated that a question can only (properly) be asked where there is an answer, and the sort of answer that belongsto the classof 'what can be said' (PR p. 63). But how doesone ever know what is necessaryfor verification? One expectsan event, and the expectationrepresentsitself as a model of the event. The occurrenceof the eventcorroboratesthe expectation. 'If you exclude the element of intention from language,its whole function then collapses.'39The testing,confirmation or invalidation of a hypothesistakesplace within a system, in which the argumentsbrought for or against the hypothesis originate. What, however, corroboratesan hypothesis? In On certainty, written in the last year of his life, Wittgenstein writes: 'What countsas an adequatetest of a statementbelongsto logic. It belongsto the descriptionof the languagegame.'40The assertion that a statementmust be true or false does not yet imply anything about how a statementis to be verified, it implies only that 'it must be possibleto decide for or againstit (the proposition)'.41 How we can, in fact, test what we say dependsupon the function of the languagegame; that is, it dependsprimarily upon whetherthe correspondingsentencedescribes,explains,predicts or questions- in short, how it is used. That it can be tested in various ways showsthat it has various meanings.The Philosophical investigationsdemonstratesthat there is a variety of testing procedures for linguistic expressions.Only in use does meaningshow itself, just as a result is only provided by a real experiment.

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Philosophyand the Critique of Language Wittgenstein'sphilosophy,therefore,beganas and remaineda critique of language.The important conclusionsthat philosophy as critique of languagehas to offer us remain unchangedin the courseof his work. That philosophy is not a set of doctrinesbut an activity; that philosophical results are not found in 'philosophical propositions'but in making propositionsclear; that philosophy is not a natural science and does not proceed hypothetico-empirically;these credos, already conceived in the Tractatus, not only remainexemptfrom self-criticism, but are also repeatedin the later phase,in different variations.The changein perspectiveconcernsthe evaluationof the possibility and fruitfulnessof constructingan ideal sign languagewhich would preclude the errors of ordinary language.Here Wittgensteinmanifestsnot only a growing scepticism with regardto the idea of the exactness of such languages,but also finds, in the poly-functionality of linguistic expressions,a deeperreasonto deny that all descriptive expressionsare uniform. The changeof perspectiveleads to an investigationinto the actual usesof the words of a language: When philosophersuse a word - 'knowiedge', 'being', 'object', '1', 'proposition','name'- and try to graspthe essenceof a thing, one always asks oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the languagegamewhich is its original home? What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysicalto their everydayuse. (PI I §116) What is destroyedin bringing words back to their everyday use is not a deepermeaning,which one ought to be looking for behind the surfacesof linguistic utterances:'All that we destroy are castlesin the air' (PI I §118). For the sense of an expression dependsupon the languagegame within which it appears.For this reason,it doesnot seemquite right to me to find an outright rejection of the 'languageof the intellectuals' in this eliminative project, as Kuno Lorenz suggestsin his otherwise intriguing portrayalofWittgenstein'scritique oflanguage.42 The point is not to eliminateor imposea taboo upon specialisedlanguages,but to understandthe constitutionof the meaningof a text by way of de facto comprehensibleusage.The conceptionof a languagegame has as its core concept that of meaning, which (contrary to a traditional interpretationof the notion of meaning)is determined by the function of an expressionin a languagegame. Wittgenstein's polemic is thus directed against a misleading theory of 69

Philosophyand the Critique of Language meaning: the meaningof an expressionis not a 'something',to which the expression standsin relation. Mauthnerwrites: 'Most people suffer from the intellectual weaknessof believing that becausea word is there, it must be for something;becausethe word is there, it must correspondto somethingreal.'43 Wittgenstein focusesthis thought in the directive to inquire after use, not meaning.The sense of a propositionis 'not anything spiritual ... it's what is given as an answerto a requestfor an explanationof the sense.'44 If the senseof a propositionis 'nothing spiritual' then it must be soughtelsewhere. For this we would need insight into the variety of human language games, language games that serve many different purposes.Philosophers- and theoreticallinguistsand historians of literature should not be excluded- nourish themselveson a lopsided diet and fail to notice that they are only making thl mselves ill. The representationaland descriptive function of languageis taken as basic and the diversity of languagegamesis forgotten: commands, questions, recounting, idle talking, contriving stories, play-acting, telling riddles, requesting,thanking, swearing,greeting, praying, telling jokes, posing hypotheses and putting somethingto the test: theseare all examplesof practices that cannotbe reducedto one basicpractice.The act of naming is only one of these and is in no way primary. Wittgenstein rigorously focusesour attention upon the dangersof hasty and irresponsiblegeneralising,a familiar phenomenonin the history of philosophy and thus in philosophy of language.There is no common form or essenceunderlying all languagegames;what there are, are at most similarities, different relations of resemblancebetweendifferent activities. In bringing to Ouf attentionthe multiplicity of linguistic performances,Wittgensteinrecovers,for study in the philosophyoflanguageand linguistic theory, ways of using languagethat have beenbanned,sinceAristotle, for all but rhetoriciansand poets. The language-criticalintention is primarily directed towards revealing, through description of usage,a misleading or misled philosoPhical usage, and thereby rendering it harmiess. When Wittgenstein speaks of metaphysical usage, he refers to the philosophical, as opposed to the ordinary, usage. It would, however, be trivialising his intention to see in this an attempt to protect the latter from revision. To be sure, he says himself that 'philosophyleaveseverythingas it is'. But this only meansthat, as crilique of language, philosophy is not a reformative undertaking 70

Philosophyand the Critique of Language but a descriptiveone, which should show us when languageis merely idling, and it meansthat the rules which contributeto the formation of the boundariesof languageare sometimesviolated. It would nonethelessbe a crude error of interpretationto frame the activity of language-criticalproblem-solvingas a systematic construction of an empirical theory. The verificationism summonedby Wittgensteinis indeedempiricist, in that it takes recourseto describablephenomenaand not 'revelations'45as verifying instances.However, these instanceslie within the competence of the speakersthat have learneda languageand are not to be explicated without incorporating them into the pragmatic dimension.The direction that a reconstructionof Wittgenstein's philosophy of languagewould have to take is indicated here. That is to say, we must bring in not only the linguistic context but also the non-linguistic context of the situation: the action, in the analysis of language and the understandingof language. Without the frame of referenceof commonhuman practicesand behaviour,there is no possibility of interpretingany languageat all. It appearsto me that this composesthe anthropologicalfoundation of the critique of language: that in the beginning was not the word, but the deed. Notes 1. Cf. Hans Albert, Treatise on critical reason, originally publishedas Traktat über kritische Vemunft.U.C.B. Mohr, Tubingen,1968), p. 145 (German edn). 2. Fritz Mauthner, 'Selbstdarstellung',in Die Philosophieder Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen,ed. R. Schmidt (F. Meiner, Leipzig, 1922), p.133. 3. Fritz Mauthner, 'OUo Friedrieh Gruppe', Die Zukunft, 5 (1913); cf. also H. Cloeren(ed.), Philosophieals Sprachkritikim 19. Jahrhundert(Fromann-Holzboog,Stuttgart-BadCannstatt,1971). 4. Fritz Mauthner, W{jrterbuch der Philosophie(2 vols, Munieh 191011; 3 vols, Leipzig 1923-4),vol. I1, p. 360. 5. Cf. ibid. eh. VI, p. 79; eh. VIII, p. 109. 6. William M. Johnston, The Austrian mind. An intellectual and social history 1848-1938(University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1972), p. 196fT. 7. GustavGerber, Die Spracheund das Erkennen(R. Gaertner,Berlin, 1884), p. 52; cf. also Cloeren (ed.), PhilosoPhie als Sprachkritik im 19. Jahrhundert. 8. Fritz Mauthner, Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache(3 vols, COUaMundus, Stuttgart, 1901-2, vol. I1, p. 495; cf. also the following: Gershon

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Philosophyand the Critique of Language Weiler, 'On Fritz Mauthner's"Critique of language"',Mind, 67 (1958), pp. 80ff; Elisabeth Leinfellner, 'Zur nominalistischenBegründungvon Linguistik und Sprachphilosophie:Fritz Mauthner und Ludwig Wittgenstein',StudiumGenerale,22 (1969), pp. 209-51. 9. Fritz Mauthner,vol. I, p. 216. 10. Cf. Bertrand RusselI, 'Introduction' to the Tractatus logico-philosophicus, eds D.F. Pears& B.F. McGuinness(HumanitiesPress,Atlantic Highlands, 1974); JamesGriffin, Wittgenstein's logical atomism (Oxford University Press,London, 1964). 11. Mauthner, Beiträge, vol. III, p. 589. 12. Ibid., p. 19, p. 176. 13. Ibid., vol. I, p. 638. 14. Ibid., p. 73. 15. Ibid. 16. Cf. Rudolf Haller, 'Das "Zeichen" und die "Zeichenlehre"in der Philosophieder Neuzeit', Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte,4 (1959), pp. 113-57. 17. TLP 5.5563. 18. Mauthner, Beiträge, vol. I, p. 215; cf. also the following: Mauthner, 'Selbstdarstellung',p. 135ff; and the short but very clear treatment by Gershon Weiler, 'On Fritz Mauthner's "Critique of Language"', Mind, 67 (1955). 19. Mauthner,'Selbstdarstellung',p. 137. 20. Mauthner, Beiträge, vol. I, p. 588. 21. Ibid., p. 23. 22. Ibid., p. 648. 23. TLP 6.45. 24. Ibid., 5.62. 25. Ernest Nagel, 'Impressionsand appraisalsof analytic philosophy in Europe', Joumal of Philosophy, 33 (1936), pp. 5-53, reprinted in E. Nagel, Logic without metaphysicsand other essaysin the philosophy of science (Glencoe, lil. 1956). Max Black, 'Relations between logical positivism and the Cambridge School of Analysis', Joumalof Unified Science/Erkenntnis, 8 (1939/40),pp. 24-35. 26. lIona Borgis, Index zu Wittgensteins'Traelatus logico-philosophicus' und Wittgenstein-Bibliographie, (Alber, Freiburg-Munich, 1958). K.T. Fann, Wittgenstein's conceptionofphilosophy(Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1969), Bibliography, pp. 113-78. 27. Ernst Konrad Specht, 'Die sprachphilosophischen und ontologischen Grundlagenim Spätwerk Ludwig Wittgensteins',Kant-Studien, 84 (1963); Wolfgang Stegmüller, Hauptstró"mungender Gegenwartsphilosophie, 4th edn (Stuttgart, 1969); Anselm Müller, Ontologie in Wittgensteins Tractatus,(Bouvier, Bonn, 1967); Walter Schulz, Wittgenstein.Die Negation der Philosophie(Neske,Pfullingen, 1967); Eike von Savigny, Die Philosophie der normalen Sprache, (Alber, Frieburg-Munich, 1969); Kurl Wuchterl, Struktur und Sprachspielbei Wittgenstein,(Suhrkamp,Frankfurt, 1969). 28. JustusHartnack, Wittgensteinand modemphilosophy, (Doubleday, New Vork, 1969); GeorgePitcher, The Philosophyof Wittgenstein(Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964), trans. 1967; Erik Stenius, Wittgenstein's Traelatus, (Blackwell, Oxford, 1960), trans. 1969; David Pears,Ludwig Wittgenstein,(Fontana,London, 1971), trans. 1971.

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Philosophyand the Critique of Language 29. Stegmüller, Hauptströmungender GegenwartsphilosoPhie;cf. Wolfgang Stegmüller,'Ludwig Wittgensteinals Ontologe,Isomorphietheoretiker, Transzendentalphilosophund Konstruktivist', Philosophisehe Rundsehau,13 (1965), pp. 116-52. 30. Rüdiger Bubner, 'Die Einheit in Wittgensteins Wandlungen', PhilosophiseheRundsehau,15 (1968). Cf. also Kuno Lorenz, Eiementeder Sproehkritik(Suhrkamp,Frankfurt, 1970). 36. Wittgenstein,Philosophiealgrammar, ed. R. Rhees,trans. A. Kenny (Oxford University Press,Oxford, 1969), VI, p. 115. 32. PI, preface. 33. PI, I §496. 34. TLP 3.325. 35. As cited in G.E.M. Anscombe, An introduction to Wittgenstein's Troetatus(Hutchinson,London, 1959), p. 16l. 36. PR p. 85. 37. Ibid., p. 152. Cf. Max Black, 'Verifications and Wittgenstein's reflections on mathematics',in C.G. Granger (ed.), Wittgenstein et ie problèmed'unephiiosophiede la science(Paris, 1970), pp. 1381T. 38. PR p. 16. 39. Ibid., p. 177. 40. OC §82; cf. also R. Haller, 'Concerningthe so-called Münchhausen-Trilemma',Ratio, 16 (1974), pp. 125-40. 41. OC §200. 42. Lorenz, Eiementeder Sprachkritik, pp. 113, 123; cf. also Pears,Ludwig Wittgenstein,pp. 1201T. 43. Mauthner,vol. 1, pp. 1581T. 44. PG p. BI. 45. OC §172.

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5 Was Wittgenstein Influenced by Spengler?l

Initially the questionof whetherWittgensteinwas influenced by Spenglerseemsfar lessappropriatethan that of whetherWittgenstein was a neo-Kantian.2 Af ter all, Wittgenstein'spreoccupation with Schopenhauer - whosework visibly displaysthe principal themesof Kant's philosophy- is apparentfrom his earliestnotes onwards. Moreover, Kant's name comes up repeatedlyin Wittgenstein'swritings, and there are several striking remarks that might encouragesuch an interpretation.However, this is hardly true in Spengler'scase. It would, therefore, be appropriateto begin by giving a brief sketchof a paper'that I first publishedsomeyearsago on Spengler's influence upon Wittgenstein.The paper is concernedwith Wittgenstein'sposition, completely neglectedin the secondary literature, on the philosophyand methodologyof Oswald SpengIer, and more precisely,with the questionof the actual influence exerted upon Wittgenstein'sphilosophical developmentby the work of this philosophicaldilettante. To begin with, it shouldbe pointedout that until the discovery of the notesthat are now collectedin the VermischteBemerkungen, * no one would have associatedWittgensteinwith Spenglerin any way, much less imagined an intellectual bond between the author of the Dec/ine of the West and the author of the Traclatus logico-philosophicus.Indeed, no one has ever made such a suggestion. This not only demonstratesa lack of imagination among philosophersand interpreters, but also indicates how remote, misplaced or even abstruse such an association would have

* VermischteBemerkungen,literally translatedas 'miscellaneousremarks',is publishedin English underthe title Culture and value [Tr.].

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Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedby Spengler? seemed.Even in a work that counts among its tasks the reconstruction of the currentsof the Zeitgeistthat influenced Wittgenstein and makes references to his admiration for Oswald Spengler'sThe Decline of the West,4 mention of the associationis confined to a half-sentence.It simply didn't occur to Janik and Toulmin5 to infer the existence of an influence, much less an important influence, from Wittgenstein'sacknowledgedadmiration for Spengler.Most would considerit unwarrantedto even speculateupon sucha possibility. It was the editor of the VermischteBemerkungenwho, more than anyone else, noticed the striking character of Wittgenstein's unexpectedadmiration for Spengler.But von Wright found the influence to be located, more than anywhere else, in a general ideological pessimism.And this with evident good reason, for both philosophersappearto haveagreedon someessentialpoints in their judgementsof the intellectual situation of the time. Thus von Wright is sincerein askingwhetherwe may say that Spengler directly influenced Wittgenstein'sperspectiveon life or whether we ought rather to say that he corroboratedit, and von Wright refers here to Wittgenstein's'contemptfor the civilization of his time', and to his prophetic assertionsthat the culture of the foregoing era, viz. the culture of the first decadesof this century, would end in ashesand ruins. In such an age of 'unculture', humanity loses many of the qualities that characterisea culture, as men pursue 'purely private ends' (CV p. 6). If one is at all aware that Wittgensteinwas influenced by the author of the Decline, then it is reasonableto assumethat his rejection of belief in progress may have been fortified by Spengler. Wittgenstein imagined,then, that the apocalypticvision of the courseof world history was a very real possibility, and that the courseof world eventsmay not repeatitself. It isn't absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of scienceand technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progressis a delusion,along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirabieabout scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by na meansobviousthat this is not how things are. (CV p. 56) The remark that 'It is by no meansobvious that this is not how things are' betrays Wittgenstein'sactual position. For Wittgen75

Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedhy Spengler? stein, sciencebrings enrichmentas weil as impoverishment(CV p. 60) and he makes clear his conviction that 'any speculation about a coming collapseof scienceis, for the presentand for a long time to come, nothing but a dream'. Beneaththe 'for the present'lies the opinion that the dream will becomereality; not now, but certainly later. The spirit of this civilization makes itself manifest in the industry, architectureand music of our time, in its fascism and socialism,and it is alien and uncongenialto the author. (CV p. 6) In the sketchof a prefaceto the PhilosophicalremarksWittgenstein clearly counts himself among the many Ku/turkritiker close to Spengler, who, building upon the opposition between culture and civilisation, fall upon the civilisation of westernEuropewith Nietzscheanridicule. Wittgenstein'scontempt for this form of life, and his preference for the traditional one, becomeclearly visible against the backgroundof this opposition,althoughhe hadn'twantedto pass any value judgementsat all. There is, however, no questionthat the two thinkers met in their evaluationsof the intellectual and spiritual situation of the time! And there is a certain dubious quality aboutthis agreement.Why? Primarily becauseSpengler's judgementson the developmentof Europeanculture within the courseof the world's culture are, to a large extent, simply false, and not only false, but also fantastic, misled byemotion and provincialism, as may be inferred from the early satiresof Spengler's work, written and publishedby Otto Neurath and Leonard Nelson,amongothers.6 1 should note, parenthetically,that Schlick, who, with Waismann was closest to Wittgenstein of all in the Vienna Circle, raised sharp objectionsto Spengler'sviews: 'Spengler'sphilosophy will not last; it will be brought to ruin by its intellectual superficiality, which without critical self-awareness,arrogantly spins off an ephemeralaperçu as though it were a meaningful truth'.7 In other contextshe speaksof the limitations of Spenglerian philosophising, and of its lack of dispassionateand clear judgement.In connectionwith Spengler'sdispute with Darwin and the theory of evolution, Schlick remarks: 'The true philosopher need not disturb sciencein order to acquire a place for his own thoughts;for him thereare no disturbing truths - scienceis 76

Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedhy Spengler? for him a self-evident assumption'.MWhile these criticisms by Schlick were published only after his death, Neurath'sopinion had alreadybeenpublishedby the time the Vienna Circle began to meet. In his ruthlesscritici sm of Spengler,Neurathalso shows himself to be one of the Vienna Circle's sharpestcritics of Wittgenstein.9 As Wittgensteinwas reading Spenglerand beginning to take him seriously,therewere correspondinglyearnestattemptsmade by rationalist philosophersto exposethis 'spook', and in particular, to challengenot only the inadequatebasisof the Spenglerian hypothesis, but also its systematically unjustified predictive power. It was not the concernof thesephilosophersto refute the claim that EUfope had becomeold, and ripe for the declineof the epoch. Neurathand Nelson were concerned,aboveall, to explicate (and thereby indict) the Spenglerianmethadof representing facts, his method of interpreting them, and his recklessproduction of forecasts, which they openly ridiculed. Their examples were, of course, drawn from the work being criticised. Anyone who has peeredinto the Aladdin's cave of the Decline will recall that the analysisbeginswith a portrayalof mathematicsintended to supportthe claim that every scienceis constituted,shapedand formed to a large extent by the fundamentalcurrentsof a given culture or form of culture. Thus there is no (linear) history of mathematics;there are only common forms of mathematical thought: Egyptian, Greek and Faustianmathematics.The structuresthat outwardly appearto remainthe sameare also placedin new contextsby the shifting of Gestalts;their roles in the system are therebysubsumedundernew rules. This idea, along with countless others, was attacked. The necessity of a given system, technique or form of proof for conceptualrelations cannot be derived from historicalorigins, nor can an elevationof 'Faustian',that is, westernmathematicsin preferenceto other forms, but theseare questionsthat I cannot addresshere. Wittgenstein,as I have already mentioned,read Spengler.He didn't cite him. And yet he included his nameon a list -a list that is, in my opinion, complete - of all those people whose influence upon him was worthy of consideration.Most of the nameson th is list - Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer,Frege, RusselI,Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler,Sraffa - also appear in his writings in forewords as weIl as in remarks elsewhere. Spengler,the author of a widely-acclaimedtext, remainsamong

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Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedby SPengler? thosewho are neithermentionednor considered.Why might this be? Certainly not merely in order to establish agreementwith existing opinion. For we must remind ourselvesthat Wittgenstein was quite tormented, in 1931, by the parasitic nature of his thought. ('I don't believe I have ever inventeda line of thinking, I have alwaystaken one over from someoneelse' (CV p. 19).) It is within this context that Spengler and Sraffa are to be countedamongthosewho were (chronologically)the last to influencehim. Sraffa'sinfluence is known from the prefaceto the Philosophical investigations, and from the various memoirs written about Wittgenstein.No one knew of his connectionswith SpengIer. This connection, if we take seriously the distressedremark above,would haveto lead back to an original and independentline of thinking, engenderedby Spenglerand reproducedby Wittgensein. Of course, Wittgenstein not only reproduced, but also brought to the surfaceof clarity, the aspectsof that line of thinking which most fascinatedhim. What was this 'line of thinking'? It is clear that theremust be more to what Wittgensteincalls here a 'line of thinking' than a provocativeor stimulating suggestion, or the adoptionof a concept.Today we know that Frege'sentire conceptionof logic was adoptedby Wittgensteinduring the writing of the Tractatus, and that Wittgenstein himself observeda close relationship between his own writing style and that of Frege. We also know, not least due to Janik, that Wittgenstein largely owes his conceptionof the relationshipbetweenlogic and ethics to Otto Weininger, and that the latter's best seller Sex and character, exerciseda strongerinfluence upon Wittgenstein than many ofthe greatthin kers in the history of philosophy.10 We may thus surmise that more than simply a concept, such as that of family resemblances,was taken from Spenglertoo. What then, was this line of thinking? This is our principal question,and my answerto it must be this: not the contentof Spengler'sanalyses, though Wittgenstein may have happenedto agreewith many of them, but their methad- led by the idea of a 'Gestalt lore' or 'Gestaltanalysis'of history. The methodof descriptivemorphologyis broughtinto opposition with the inappropriateapplicationof the methodsof natural scienceto philosophicalproblems.In the introduction to the Decfine, Spengler writes of Goethe's comparison of the world as mechanismwith the world as organism, of a dead and a living nature, of form (Gestalt) and law as the eternal determinative 78

Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedhy Spengler? principles, which are to be grasped only at great depths and which are completely hidden from the prejudicedviewer. 'Sympathy, contemplation, analogy, direct inner certainty, precise visual fantasy - these were his [Goethe's, R.H.] means of approachto the secretof the fleeting appearance.And theseare the meansfor the study of history in general.Thereare no others.'1 These 1 are, moreover,Spengler'sdevices.Everything is revealedthrough comparison. This is why Spengler can say: 'The means for acquiring knowledgeof the dead form is the mathematicallaw. The meansfor understandingthe living form is the analogy.'12 The procedure for comparative research is to determine the archetypalforms taken by the passageof history, and to derive from them - per analogiam- statementsthat render the future predictabie.Of course, thesewould not be the kinds of predictions that forecastthe appearanceof certain individual figures or the occurrenceof particular events,but rather foretell the direction to be taken by the developmentof history: these are the contentof morphologicalprognosis. Spengler's meta-theory interprets all historical events, in contrastto causalormechanicalevents,as organic. Culturesare organisms.World history is her completebiography ... Should one want to acquaint oneself with the inner forms repeated everywhere, the comparative morphologyof plantsand animalshasalreadypreparedthe method.The fate of the individual cultures,following upon one another, growing up next to each other, coming into contactwith eachother, overshadowingand overwhelming each other, exhauststhe contentof all human history. And if one lets thesefigures, which until now have remainedall too deeply hidden under the surface of a 'History of Mankind' making its trivial way, paradebefore the mind, one ought also to be able to discoverthe original form of all culture, which lies at the basisof all individual cultures,free of cloudinessand insignificances.(Decline, pp. 140ff (German edn)) While the structural, morphological similarities between organsare understoodin the homologicalrespect,the analogical treatment is concernedwith similarities between organic functions. But naturally, Spenglergives us no precisecriteria [or how homologies and analogies are to be ascertainedin detail, as 79

Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedby Spengler? Neurathand, at evengreaterlength, Nelson haveindicated.13 'But then how is a view like Spengler'srelatedto mine?' Wittgenstein asks in 1937, after devoting more than a negligible amount of thought to this author for several years. And his answerdoes not adopt the critical, deprecatingtone that characterises Neurath's and Schlick's remarks on Spengler. Wittgenstein linds in Spenglernot only an intellectual kinsman, who declareshis alienation from the surroundingcivilisation, with its symptoms of a declining epoch, but also the initiator of an approachor 'line of thinking' which seemsto him most appropriate as the methodologicaltooI for the investigationof language games. In this connection,Wittgenstein makesthe following suggestion: 'Don't take comparability, but rather incomparability,as a matterof course.'14That is, in order to comparetwo phenomena with eachother at all, there is need for someprinciple that justilies the comparison.In fact, Wittgensteincountsamonghis most importantmethodsthe imagining of 'a historical developmentfor our ideasdifferent from what actually occurred'.15In order to do this, he believes,one must departfrom the usual presuppositions about causalitywhich lead one to say 'so it must be', and break through to that domain of possibilitieswhere a variety of potenti al realisationshold equal sway. In order to bring the incomparableor unique in an event or phenomenoninto comparative relation with another event or phenomenon,there is needfor a frame of reference,expressedin a principle or method, which will regulateits application.Thus, for example, Christian von Ehrenfels suggestedprinciples of comparability for gauging the Gestalt-Ievel and the Gestaltpurity, though he only sketchily developedthe method of their application. Where the principle of Gestalt-Ieveldeterminesthat the level of a given Gestaltis dependentupon the productof its constituent parts, its unity and the variety of its parts, the suggestedmeans for comparing the Gestalt-levels would be stated thus: 'One imagines to oneself that the objects in question (a rose, and a heapof sand)are dismantledstepby stepin an accidental,irregular fashion. Whicheverof the two objectssurvivesthe longerseries of changes,this is a Gestaltof higher level.'16 What is interesting here is that where what is expectedis a methodthat setsdown a canonical rule of variation, what is actually suggestedis, rather, an arbitrary selectionas a meansto the achievementof objectivity

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Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedby Spengler? -a procedurewhich, of course,opposesthat of causalexplanation. Wittgenstein's quasi-publicationof 1933/34 - namely, the copies of the so-called Blue book (the first 'publication' to be releasedafter 1929) - was primarily concernedwith discovering what might hinder, or pose difficulties for, his preferredmethod for the investigationof simple languagegames.Simple language games are modeIs of primitive linguistic forms or primitive languages,which all ow for investigationfree of the backgroundof complex processesthat appearin normal linguistic usage. He indicatesthat 'our striving for generality'is the main hindranceto the applicationof such a methodof investigation.He expressively identifies 'the prejudicefor the methodof the natural sciences'as the principal causeof that striving. This prejudice, which leads the philosopherto generaliseand to claim universal validity for philosophical propositions,also lends credibility to the assumption that any particular case can be subsumedunder general laws. Just this 'contemptuousattitude towards the particular case'is to be eliminatedthrough the critique of language. Philosophersconstantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questionsin the way sciencedoes.This tendencyis the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into completedarkness.17 This themerecursin Wittgenstein'swriting; the polarisationof philosophyand the natural sciencesis, after the Tractatus, the key to the understandingof his method, which is clearly opposedto any naturalisticattemptsat a unified science,seamlesslyconnecting physics with philosophy.18The philosopher'sfixation upon one methodcould be likened, on the one hand, to the preference for a measuringrod that functions as a rule of measurepar excellence, and on the other with a fixation upon one style that prevents us from giving our full attentionto any other, when it is important to view the diversity of appearances as a diversity of individual phenomena.The subsumptionof partic ui ar phenomenaundera generalone robs them of their context, a context that also determines the comparability and incomparability or uniquenessof types. 'Meaning is a physiognomy', Wittgenstein notes in one 19 And physiognomiesare accessiblefrom many different passage. standpoints. Perspectives,rules of measure,and styles are over81

Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedhy Spengler? archingforms that are usedin order to seethe particularthing for what it is. Thus the precaution:'don't think, but 100k!'20According to Wittgenstein, it is just th is tendencyto prefer the causalscientific way of thinking that is responsiblefor the fact that those philosopherswho are attractedto this positi on look for explanationswhere they should be looking for descriptions. 'Our mistake is to look for an explanationwhere we ought to look at what happensas a "proto-phenomenon".That is, where we ought to have said: this languagegameis played.'21 Such 'ultimate' or basic facts are used in a similar way in epistemicjustifications as they are used in accordancewith the morphological point of view, which focuses the attention upon the structural similarities between like and unlike types. The particular case shouldalways be regardedas a proprium. Spengler found that the existence of the particular first becomesmeaningful through comparison, and that one must differentiate between the causal, natural-scientific aspectof an event and the destiny-aspect.The destiny-aspectcomprehends the genius, the 'utterly common formative force', of the particular. 'Every culture', we read in the Decline, possesses a wholly uniqueway of seeingthe world as nature or of becomingacquaintedwith it, or (what comes to the same thing) it has its own, peculiar 'Nature', which no other sort of man can possessin exactly the sameform ... But in a far greaterdegreestill, every Culture - including the individuals comprising it ... possessesaspecific and peculiar sort of history, and it is in the picture of this and the style of this that the generaland the personal,the inner and the outer, the world-historical and the biographical becoming,are immediately perceived,felt and lived. (Decline, p. 131) In just this imprecise sense,Spenglerattributesto culture as 'proto-phenomenon'a causaland a destiny-aspect,where this is to mean that 'necessarily,every culture' must possess'its own idea of its Destiny', which doesnot admit of further description. But destiny is the word for an inner certainty that is not describable.We bring out that which is in the causal by meansof a physical or an epistemologicalsystem,through numbers,by reasonedclassification;but the idea of destiny

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Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedhy Spengler? can be imparted only by the artist working through media like portraiture,tragedyand music. The one requiresus to distinguish and in distinguishing to dissect and destroy, whereasthe other is creative through and through. (Decline p. 118) And in Wittgenstein,we find it stated that: 'Fate is the antithesis of natural law. A natural law is something you try to fathom and make use of, but not fate.'22 Here, the Cartesian notion of a foundation for all knowledgeof which humanunderstandingis capableis brought into direct relation with the utility and applicability of knowledge, while submissionto existence here and now (Dasein) is taken to be implied by the notion of Fate. This notion of fated existence leads into Wittgenstein's concept of form of tife, which representsthe hard ground, the activity, out of which languagegrows. From the perspectiveof one way of acting and thinking, a person, facing an unpleasant event, is led to ask 'Who's to blame?'and therebyto seekto establish a connectionto some causa efficiens; in anotherway of life, the passingof eventsis regardedas somehowdestined,and the events are seen as something to which one must submit or accommodateoneself. It would, however, be an error to assume that such surrenderis necessarilyquietistic surrender. A man reactslike this: he says'No, I won't toleratethat!' and then resists it. Perhapsthis brings about an equally intolerable situation and perhapsby then strengthfor any further revolt is exhausted.Peoplesay: 'If he hadn't done that, the evil would have been avoided.' But what justifies this? Who knows the laws accordingto which societydevelops? I am quite sure they are a closed book even to the cleverest of men. If you fight, you fight. If you hope, you hope. You can fight, hope and even believe without believing scientifically. (CV p. 60) A passagein the Decline reads: ' ... the scholarof the abstract, the researcherof nature, the thinker of systems,whose entire intellectual existenceis groundedupon the principle of causality, is a recentappearanceof the unconscioushate for the powers of fate and the inconceivable'.Finally, in the same passage,fa te is referred to as 'the actual mode of existence[Dasein] of the proto83

Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedby Spengler? phenomenon',in which the dynamic idea of Becoming directly unfolds itself. By contrast,from the causaltheorist'sperspective, all that is felt by the artist to be determinativeis given no more statusthan that of mere 'goalsin life'. Teleology is a caricatureof the Destiny-idea ... It is the deepestand most characteristictendencyboth of Darwinism - the megapolitan-intellectualproduct of the most abstractof all civilizations - and of the materialistconception of history which springsfrom the sameroot as Darwinism and, like it, kills all that is organic and fateful. Thus the morphologicalelementof Destiny is an /dea, an idea that is incapableofbeing 'cognized',describedor defined,and can only be feit and inwardly lived. This idea is somethingof which one is either entirely ignorant or ... entirely certain. (Decline, pp. 120-1) What, one may ask, do the later developmentsin Wittgenstein's views have in common with such confused notions? However agreeableor disagreeablethis may be for the reader, there is considerablymore in commonthan is generallythought. Wittgensteinadoptsthe main principle of comparativemorphology - but he uses it in such a way that no one would have thought of tracing it back to Spengler.He is also clearly awareof this himself. He reproachesSpenglerfor repeatedlymaking the mistakeof extendingthe scopeof statementstrue of the archetype of contemplationto the objectsof contemplation. Every languagegame(this is, in a certain respect,the contextual concept for Wittgenstein) can also be used as a model of comparison. But when one describesa language game as an archetype,then one is not permittedto contaminatethe description with the object of description. Wittgenstein believed that Spenglerwould have made himself better understoodif he had elucidatedthe comparisonof different cultural periodsin termsof the conceptof family resemblances.Here, Wittgenstein wanted to say that the dominantconceptof substancehad to be 'weakened' for the purposeof elucidation. Resemblances are always relative resemblances,or kinship in a particular respect.This must be indicated, that is, the object of comparisonmust stand fast, so that the resemblancescan be studied.The sameholds for showing amistake: 'If I rectify a philosophical mistake and say, one always imagined it this way, but it is not so ... so I must always

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Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedhy Spengler? show an analogy that has always been thought, but never acknowledgedas an analogy.' The concept of an archetype,like that of the proto-phenomenon, is taken, as Spengleralways emphasised,from Goethe's morphology. All ways of conceiving the world are kinds of morphology: but thereare two principal kinds: The Morphology of the mechanicaland the extended,a sciencewhich discoversand ordersnaturallawsand causal relations, is called Systematic. The Morphology of the organic, of history and life and all that bears the sign of direction and destiny, is called Physiognomic. (Dec/ine, p. 100) But behind the systematiclies the physiognomyof a personin a culture. For Spengler,therefore,the scienceof physiognomyhas to do with a sort of self-knowledge.The foreign cannot be fully grasped,for it is foreign to us, and here the notion of incommensurability comesto mind. For Wittgenstein, this concept possessesa similar, though systematicallyregarded,completely different, meaning. He had also said that one must imagine the courseof eventsquite differently than it actually is, if one is to know them in their particularity; and he also held that it is the primitive picture, rather than the complicatedone, which is the prototype. For example,while it holds for the Marxian methodthat the anatomyof the human being providesa key to the anatomyof the ape,and thereforethat the complicatedform may be projectedonto the simpier form, Wittgensteinsuggeststhe reverse.Not that this should be taken as expressinga preferencefor a genetic perspective,since that would entail falling back upon the form of explanationused in the natural sciences.Rather, this form of investigation is to be understood,as in linguistic phenomenology,as a kind of conceptual investigation. And this tells us that the simple form comes beforethe complexone; that the simplestplough camebeforethe complicated plough; that the simple language game comes before the complex languagegame.When we delineatea phenomenon as an archetype,therefore, it will serve as a basic idea from which to proceed,as a methodicdevice that determinesan entire way of viewing the world, as a paradigmthat can be laid alongsideother objects as a measure.But this meansthat what can be predicatedof the archetypeitself, which determinesour 85

Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedhy Spengler? way of viewing things, cannot also be predicatedof its objects. Moreover, it is precisely this relativisation of the conceptof an archetypethat frees Wittgensteinfrom accusationsof relativism. He did not want to espousea dogmatismof a destined idea, as Spenglerdid. Rather, he defendeda foundationalismwithin a perspectivism.The archetypeis not understoodas a judgement, nor as an idea that is beyondintellectual grasp,but as a principle of the conceptualisationof objects, whose utility decidesits suitability. Hence this foundationalismreveals itself as a pragmatic one, to be gauged in the actions of human beings. For this reason,I have referred to it elsewhere(in Chapter3) as 'praxeological foundationalism'. And so I return to my introductory thoughts: when we pose the question of how we are to justify our epistemic attitudes of belief, held with respect to 'truth' and 'knowiedge', a series of justifications may be given which, in the case of knowiedge, include truth and certainty. I have knowledgeof a certain stateof affairs if and only if the judgementthat expressesit is true, and I have sufficient justification for it. However, since in judging I stand upon the foundation of my language, every foreign languageposesa barrier to my understanding.But if I turn my attention to actions, I am shown the ultimate foundation - the foundationalso of knowledge- in the sharedpracticesof human beings. Wittgenstein'sambivalencetowards the scientific worldview, a result of his acceptanceof a dualism betweensaying and showing, and a dualism between science and philosophy, also has consequences for the morphologically-interpretedhistory of the world. In the VermischtenBermerkungen( Culture and value), a 1948 entry states:'I may find scientific questionsinteresting,but they never really grip me. Only conceptualand aestheticquestionsdo that. At bottom I am indifferent to the solution of scientific problems;but not the other sort' (CV p. 7ge). Among these'other' questionswe find not only the spellscastupon our understandingby linguistic confusions,but also, in equal measure,those problemsof life of which Wittgenstein remarked in the Tractatus that they would remain untouched even were every possible scientific question answered.For one of his mind, enlightenmentin the form of a unified scienceis neither possiblenor desirabie. Both Spengler and Wittgenstein see a hiatus between the questionsof scienceand the"questionsof philosophyor of history. If the former are determinedby the ideal of the purely mechani-

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Was Wittgensteinlnfluencedby Spengler? cal, and demandcausalexplanationsas answers,then the latter are determinedon the model of the painting of a picture, or the giving of a description.While the questionof formal structureis no longer a pressingone in the construction of causal explanations,sincea basicargumentform hasalreadybeenprovided(in the Second Analytic) for causal explanations,the study of the perspectivesfrom which objects are seen,pictured, or described remainsimportant. 'What is important about depicting anomalies precisely?If you cannot do it, that shows that you do not know your way aroundthe concepts.'23 In the Philosophical investigations,Wittgenstein even raises the questionof whetherthe emphasisupon the conceptof a perspicuous representation- 'our form of representing'- isn't actually a worldview.24 Naturally, it is a worldview opposedto the scientific one: Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deducesanything. - Since everything lies opento view thereis nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example,is of no interestto us. One might also give the name 'philosophy' to what is possible before all new discoveriesand inventions.25 To arrive at clarity in aestheticand ethical matters,one must describeforms of life, just as one must do to arrive at clarity on philosophicalquestions.However, the subsumptionof an event under a causallawrequiresno such reachingdown to a form of life. What Wittgenstein said of mythical history also holds for history: 'One can only describehere, and say: "so it is in human life". '26 However, in order to be abIe to give the correct form of representationto a description,perspicuityis requiredas the ordering principle. In so far as this principle is primarily suited to that which possessesform (Gestalt), those who see a relationship betweenWittgensteinand Gestaltpsychologyare at least aiming in the right direction, as has beencontendedby both myself and others elsewhereYHowever, it was not Bühler who prompted Wittgenstein'sline of thought, his turn towardsa morphological (Goethean)way of thinking, but Spengler.

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Was WittgensteinInfluencedby Spengler?

Notes 1. This is a revised version of a paper delivered in Budapeston 4 October1980. An expandedversion was read in Lisbon on 15 December of the sameyear. A Hungariantranslationappearedin Vilagossag5 (1981) under the ti tie 'WittgensteinesSpengler'.lam indebtedto B. McGuinness,M. Lourenco,Ch. Nyiri and A. Janik for their helpful remarksand clarifying suggestions.The presentversion was deliveredat the 'Wittgenstein House' on Kundmanngasse in Vienna - now the Bulgarian Institute of Culture - on 29 August 1982. 2. Cf. Chapter3. 3. Cf. Chapter8. 4. 0. Spengler, The dec/ine of the West, sketch of a morphology of the history of the wor/d, trans. C.F. Atkinson, (Knopf, New Vork, 1926). Originally publishedas Der Untergangdes Abendlandes,Gestalt und Wirklichkeit, copyright 1918 by C.H. Beck, Munich. In the following, abbreviatedas Dec/ine. 5. A. Janik and S. Toulmin, Wittgenstein's Vienna(Simon and Schuster, New Vork, 1973). 6. Cf. O. Neurath,Anti-Spengler(1921),reprintedin R. Haller and H. Rutte (eds), Gesammeltephilosophischeund methodologischeSchriften, vol. 1, (Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky,Vienna, 1981), pp. 139-96; L. Nelson, Spuk. Einweihungin das Geheimnisder WahrsagekunstOswaldSpenglersund sonnenklarer Beweis der Unwiderleglichkeit seiner Weissagungen,nebst Beitragen sur Physiognomikdes Zeitgeistes. Eine Pfingstgabefür alle Adeptendes metaphysischenSchauens(1921), reprintedin LeonardNelson, GesammelteSchriften, vol. 3 (Meiner, Hamburg,1974), pp. 349-552. 7. M. Schlick, Aphorismen, ed. B. Hardy Schlick, (Vienna, 1962), p.39. 8. Ibid., p. 37; seealso p. 17. 9. Cf. R. Haller, 'New light on the Vienna Circle', Monist, 65 (1982), pp.25-37. 10. It is not surprisingthat Neurath,when speakingofthe 'vast exaggerations'of certain influential authors,mentionsWeiningerand SpengIer in the samebreath.Cf. Neurath,Anti-Spengler,p. 147. 11. Spengler,The dec/ineof the West. 12. Ibid. 13. Cf. Nelson, Spuk,pp. 391ff. 14. CV p. 74e. 15. Ibid., p. 37e. 16. Christian von Ehrenfels, Kosmogonie(Eugen Diederichs, Jena, 1916), p. 94. 17. BB p. 18. 18. See also R. Haller 'PhilosophischeIrrtümer und die Sprache'in E. Leinfellner, W. Leinfellner, H. Berghelt,andA. Hübner(eds) Wittgenstein and his impact on contemporary thought (Hölder-Pichler-Temsky, Vienna, 1978), pp. 298f; reprinted in R. Haller, Studien .tur OesterreichischenPhilosophie(Rodopi, Amsterdam,1979), ch. X. 19. PI I §568. 20. Ibid., I §66.

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Was WittgensteinInfluencedby Spengler? 21. Ibid., I §654; cf. L. Wittgenstein, Remarks on colour, ed. E. Anscombe (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1977), III 230; L. Wittgenstein, 'Causeand effect: intuitive awareness',ed. R. Rhees,Philosophia,6 (1976), p. 421. 22. CV p. 61e. 23. Ibid., p. 72e. At severalpoints in his work, Wittgensteinusesthe comparisonof painting with describing,for purposesof c1arification. He mentionssketchesof the 'landscapeof conceptualrelations'(p. 78e), the 'details of an immenselandscape'(p. 56e) that he showsto his students, and remarks that 'everything that comes my way becomesa picture' (p. 31e). Finally, he confesses:'And after all a painteris basicallywhat I am, often a very bad paintertoo' (p. 82e). 24. Cf. L. Wittgenstein, 'Remarkson Frazer's Golden Bough', ed. R. Rhees,trans. A.C. Miles, revsd R. Rhees(Brynmill Press,Retbid, 1979), p. ge, wherean earlierversionof the passageoccurringin the PhilosoPhical investigations,I §122, can be found, containingSpengler'sname! 25. PI I §126; cf. LA. 26. Wittgenstein,'Remarkson Frazer'sGolden Bough', p. 3e. 27. Cf. William Bardey lIl, 'Sprach- und Wissenschafttheorieals Werkzeugeeiner Schulreform: Wittgenstein und Popper als oesterreichische Schullehrer, Conceptus,3 (1969), pp. 6-22; and William Bardey lIl, Wittgenstein(J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia-NewVork, 1973); as weil as my review of Bartley, Wittgensteinin Conceptus,11 (1977), pp. 422-4.

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6 What do Wittgenstein and Weininger have in Common?

Only in recentyearshave peoplebegunto ask why Wittgenstein found the work of Weininger worth mentioning (and indeed, worth recommending).It could not be said that the riddle of this strange connection hasbeenclarified, much lesssolvedin the few treatmentsthat it has received in the philosophical literature.! What is the riddle, exactly? The most interesting puzzle is that concerning the possibility that Weininger influenced Wittgenstein philosophically.Thus, in the remarksthat follow, I will not be concernedwith similarities of generalworldview or with attitudeson feminity or Jewishness,but rathersolely with the question: what deeperphilosophicalcommon ground exists between the young and talentedauthor of a provocativeand widely-read book and the authorof the Tractatusnine yearshis junior? I will take as the starting point for my discussionthe list of the authors whom Wittgenstein spoke of as having influenced him and as having provoked the beginningsof 'trains of thought'. As in the caseof Wittgensteinand Spengler,I will ask what it could have been that motivated Wittgenstein to mention the name of Weininger, along with thoseof BoItzmannand Hertz on the one hand,and Fregeand Russelion the other, as weIl as thoseof Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos and Oswald Spengler,as influential figures in his life. Briefly, what did Wittgenstein have in common with Weininger? Previous answers to this question are based upon isolated similarities betweenthe two thinkers. For example,Janik points out that Wittgenstein'smoral conceptionof life approachesthe 'ethical rigorism' of Weininger.Janik seesin Weininger'sethical theory 'a strict interpretation of Kant's categorical imperative. The moral man is the man who acts for the sakeof duty alone.'2

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What do Wittgensteinand Weiningerhavein Common? Only in this connection(and in only half a paragraph)doesj anik touch on what essentially connectsthe two thinkers: the close relation, a relation closeto equation,that they find betweenlogic and ethics.3 Neither Lucka, nor janik, who willingly follows Lucka, nor any other recentinterpreterof Wittgensteingives this aspectof his characterthe attentionit deserves.On the contrary, Wittgenstein'sway of thinking is, in janik's view for example, that of an existentialistthinker, who, like Karl jaspers,is fundamentally concernedto interpret the border regions of human existence,and their ciphers, as a rationally unanalysableworld that 'points' to the ethical. If Wittgenstein is a Weiningerian as 1 claim, ... he, like jaspersand also Lukacs, Heideggerand Berdyaevto name but a few, is developingcertain Kantian themesconcerning the relation betweensubjectand object, the primacy of the moralover the epistemologicaland the notion of totality which are characteristicof the SouthwestGermanSchool.4 It is not my purposeto addressthe problem of Wittgenstein's conception of ethics in this essay. 1 believe that janik, like McGuinness,Winch, and others before them, correctly note a certain pre-eminenceof moral concernsin Wittgenstein'swork. Clear evidencefor this view is to be found not only in the famous passagefrom the correspondencewith Ludwig von Ficker, but also in the entire structure of the Tractatus. The boundary betweenthat region of which one can speak,and that region of which it is proper to keep silent is surely also the boundary betweenpracticaland theoreticalreason.And the solutionsto the problemsof 'theoreticalreason'are not solutionsto moral questions - and thus, surely, no solutionsto the problemsoflife. Nothing shows more clearly the dualism of facts and values that marks Wittgenstein'sethics than the sentence:'All of the facts belong only to the problem, not to its solution.'5 It is the possibility of being described or portrayed that distinguishes, ontologically and epistemologically,between that about which somethingcan be saidand that aboutwhich nothingcan be said. The ethical, however, belongsentirely to that realm about which it is only proper to keep silence: 'It is clear that ethics cannotbe put into words' (TLP 6.421). Wittgenstein derives this claim on the one hand from his judgementof facts: [acts are not carriers of values; even their totality has no meaning.On the other hand91

What do Wittgensteinand Weiningerhave in Common?

and this is the other premiss- facts are always merely relative and accidental,while valuesare absoluteand necessary.Because the senseof propositionscan only be expressedthrough facts, inasmuchas every sentence sign that is used as an expressionis itself a fact, that which goes beyond facts cannot be expressed. Necessarily,it cannotbe said. There is litde to be said for the view that this conceptionof ethics has somethingin common with Kant's ethic of duty (as Janik'sinterpretationsuggests).Even ifthe categoricalimperative is regardedas a formal rule with a claim to universality, its application presupposesthe rational device of distinguishing means from ends, and ends from ends-in-themselves,while Wittgenstein'sargumentis basedon the belief that valuesexist. It is said of thesevalues, moreover,that they lie 'outsidethe world'; and, second,that they cannotbe expressedor depictedin meaningful language.Thus, the formulation of the categorical imperative must be senseless,takenas a fundamentalmoral principle, since, accordingto Wittgenstein,therecan be 'no propositionsof ethics' (TLP 6.62). If someoneneverthelessformulatesand assertssucha proposition, then that which is spoken has no meaning. Such a view should not be mentionedin the samebreathas Kant's view, sinceit is in fact its polar opposite.While in the Critique ofpractical reason, Kant is concernednot with the knowledgeof objects but with the capacityto makesomethingreal (by meansof the will, a causality of a higher order), Wittgenstein, in contrast, clearly deniesthe existenceofjust this capacity.'It is impossibleto speak about the will in so far as it is the subjectof ethical attributes.'6 The will does not producemoral events,if it produceseventsat all. For the 'good will' and the 'evil will' do not changethe facts; they leave everythingas it is. When Wittgensteininsists that the world, independentof will, and thus also, of my will (TLP 6.373) is, as it is, - this is a clearconsequence ofhis fundamentalthesis, that only logical modalities and for that reason only logical necessityexists. For this reason,there is for Wittgensteinneither causalnecessitynor a causanoumenon- a causalityof freedom.7 In thosepassages whereWeiningerpresentshis ethical theory, he appearsto hold a Kantian position. However, the main souree of his metaphysicsof the position of the ego and of sexualpolarity is to be found in Schopenhauer.Like Kant, Weininger takes man'sintellectual being as his true being, to which the empirical ego is and remainsobligated.But Weiningeridentifies not only a categorical imperative, in which the moral law manifestsitself,

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What do Wittgensteinand Weiningerhavein Common? but also a logical imperative, in accordancewith which logical rules are shown to be norms. And both imperativesrequire, in the last in stance,that virtue and holiness,insight and wisdom are obligations to oneself. Although the metaphysical argument contributesnothing that is completelynoveI, they contain essential elementsthat go beyondSchopenhauer. Weininger'soriginality is to be seenin the way that he follows ideas through to their ultimate consequences:the idea of the bisexuality of living beings, of the characterof the feminine, as weil as the idea of solipsism. However, this young intellectual from Vienna surely did not dependon either Schopenhauer or Kant in his metaphysicsof logic, if one understandsby this the fundamentalthesisof the unity of logie and ethies. In fact, this idea ofunity is at the heartofWeininger'smetaphysics;it providesthe missing link between the philosophy of the Tmetatus and Weininger'stheory of sexuality.8 I claimed earlier that Wittgensteinsubordinatesscientific and epistemologicalquestions to moral behaviour. Like Kant, he countenancesthe primacy of practical reason. But the justification for this primacy is unavailable,since Wittgensteindid not (and could not) develop his ethics. Already in the prefaceto the Traetatus. Wittgenstein had claimed that litde would be accomplished even by the solution of philosophical and scientific problems,and that the problemsof life would remain untouched. Ethics, as Wittgensteinunderstandsit, is not one of the sciences; 'in no sense do ethical judgementsadd anything to our knowledge'.9 And, as we know from the Tractatus, the sameis true of aestheticjudgements:'Ethics and aestheticsare one' - both are, in Wittgenstein'susage, 'transcendental' . The decisive point in Wittgenstein'steachingis thus to characteriseethics and aesthetics in just the sameway as logic, since from proposition 6.13 in the Tractatus, it is also true that 'Logic is transcendental.'l0It is clear, then, that what logical and ethical propositions have in commonis that neithercan be confirmedor refutedby any possibie experience(TLP 6.1112). They are beyond judgementsof facto However, logicaI and ethical propositionshave a connection to the world that goesbeyond the obtaining or non-obtainingof statesof affairs: logical sentencespresentthe skeletalstructureof the world; ethical sentences express absolute values. Since, accordingto the linguistic rules of the Tmctatus,only judgements of fact are expressible and meaningful propositions, logical propositionsare, like ethical propositions,meaninglesspointing93

What do Wittgensteinand Weiningerhavein Common? propositions.They point at something,but it is impossibleto say in what the relationshipof pointing consists,or even that such a relationshipexists - when speakingof the relationshipbetween languageand world or that betweenwilling and the good. Every attemptto articulatethis in languageis like vainly /lying into the bars of a cage. Admittedly, the cage image comes from a later period in Wittgenstein's thought, while the foundation of his ethics took shapevery early and did not changein any fundamental way in his later development. It was clear from the beginningthat Wittgenstein'sdoctrineof happinesshas nothing to do with ordinary eudaimonism.He is certain only that the world of the happy person is a different world from the world of the unhappyperson.11 One day after the 27-year-oldWittgenstein noted this discovery, he asked himself - in the entry dated 30 July 1916 in his joumal - how the imperative 'Be happy!' could be justified. His answeris fundamentalistic; he says, 'it appearsthat the happy life itself establishesthat it is the only properlife'. That meanseither that there is no justification or that the justification is to be found in the meaning of being happy. There is every reason to believe that Wittgensteinmeantthe latter. The happinessthat is in question hereis not the happinessof pleasure,of luxury, but rathera striving happiness,the 'life of knowledge(the examinedlife)' Y And it is just this life of knowledge that bestowsthe good conscience required by Christianity, in particular. Bernard Bolzano had said: 'To be happy and to make happy, that is the fate of man.' Wittgenstein acceptsonly the first half of the maxim, since, for Wittgenstein, ethics does not depend on the existence of any being other than the moral subject, that is, of any being other than oneself. At this point, anotherthemeofWeininger'sbecomesrelevant: the themeof solipsism: The humanbeing is alonein the cosmos,in eternal,terrible loneliness. He has no purpose outside himself, nothing outside of himself for which he lives - he has /lown far from wanting to be a slave, being able to be a slave, having to be a slave: all human society recedesunder him. Social ethics recedes;he is alone, alone.13 This lonelinessis not presentedas an existential state but as an ontological given. In human beings, and in significant or note94

What do Wittgensteinand Weiningerhavein Common? worthy human beings in particular, the cosmos is not just reflected - 'the whole world' is in such a human being. In the great artist, the real genius, the world and the I becomeone: 'The great philosopherlike the great artist possesses the whole world in himself; they are the conscious microcosms', reads one of Weininger'slast writings.14 The claim that the ego and the world are one - the soul of the human being is the microcosm is usedto make plausible the idea that, since the whole world is living in the soul of the humanbeing, men can 'becomewomen'. Since, accordingto Weininger, only men can becomegeniuses, can have soul, individuality, or an intelligible I, only men can become one with the world, or form true judgementsof the world: 'The faculty of judgement- presupposingwhat lies in the most general way at its base, the presuppositionthat the humanbeing is capableof judging everything- is only the dry, logical expressionof the theory that the soul of the humanbeing is a microcosm.'15The Tractatusechoesthis thought: 'I am my world. (The Microcosm.)' (TLP 5.63). The following proposition precedesthis famouspassagein the Traclatus: For what the solipsist meansis quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifestin the fact that the limits of language(of that languagewhich alone I understand)mean the limits of my world. (TLP 5.62) One could easily dispute whether the passagesdiscussedin the last couple of paragraphswere not inspired by Schopenhauer rather than by Weininger. Hacker does not even consider the possibility that the thesis 'that the human being is the microcosm, that I am the world' could originate with anyone other than Schopenhauer.It is simply a given, for Hacker, that 'Wittgenstein'ssolipsismwas inspired by Schopenhauer's doctrine of transcendentalidealism',and he calls this form ofsolipsism'transcendental'.One cannot deny that Hacker alludes to a text of which Wittgensteinwas aware. However, Hacker does not fully investigatethe origin of this thought. Otherwise, it would have occurredto him that the sourcefor the connectionbetweenlogic and ethics is not obviously the sameas the sourcefor the form of the solipsistic thoughtin The world as wilt and idea.16 There is, in fact, litde to be said for the claim that the idea of the I as microcosm and as solipsistic isolation - with all its 95

What do Wittgrosteinand Weiningerhavein Common? 17 attendantunclarities- is derived from readingSchopenhauer. And surely no one could have found the close connection betweenlogic and ethics assertedthere. This thought is a typical product of the Weiningerian metaphysics;the author of Sex and characterwas weIl awareof the independenceof this metaphysics when he said that he had to 'producefor himself18 not only the psychological-philosophicalfoundation of his doctrine, but also its logical-ethical foundation. But, as we have already seen, hardly any of Wittgenstein'sinterpretershave even referred to Weininger, and almost no one has recognisedthe respectsin which Wittgensteinand Weininger agree.For surely they do not agree on the essentialquestions; for example, the question of what philosophy is, although even here there are affinities and points of contactbetweentheir views. Sucha claim is only acceptable if one seesin Wittgensteinnot the founderof the new Viennese positivism but of a philosophical dualism between that which can be graspedby knowledge(the sayable)and that which cannot be graspedby knowledge (the mysticai): a dualism in which only the one domain,the 'worldly domain',ifI may say so, seeksa logical, language-criticaltransparency,while the other is hidden by a commandmentof silence: 'Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly'19 ' ... and what we cannot talk aboutwe must passover in silence.'2oThe definition of all philosophising is derived from the professedintention to set a limit upon thinking and language:logical clarification of thought briefly, critique of language. In contrast, for Weininger, those who set this task for philosophywere primarily 'tlatheads'.21Dtto Neurath always opposed just this dualism in Wittgenstein's thought, as a 'duallanguageidealism' (doppelsprachige/dealistik) and as metaphysics.And one must admit that the characterisation is accurate.Thereare two ways in which we are affectedby signs: the one way directs itself to our understanding,with the Cartesianrequirementof cleamessand distinctness.The other directs itself to our intelligible I, as Weininger said, and as Wittgensteincould no longer say. For the consequence that he wants us to acknowledgeis one of a most extreme rigour: keeping silenceis the only command;but our 'keepingsilent', as Wittgenstein expressesthe commandand as Neurath mocks it, is always keepingsilent aboutsomething. As Wittgensteincameto seethe connectionbetweenlogic and ethics, he also arrived at the perspectivefrom which logic, ethics,

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What do Wittgensteinand Weiningerhavein Camman? and aesthetics see and comprehend the world. This is the perspectiveof which he writes in thejournals- it seesobjectsnot from their centrebut 'from outside': 'So that they have the whole world as background.122From this point, he takesup Weininger's reflection on whetherthe spirit that is my spirit is the samespirit as the spirit of the world. Just this obscureidea -a clear consequenceof the notion of a microcosm - connectsWittgenstein with his solipsistic metaphysics: This is the way that I havetravelled:Idealismsinglesmenout from theworld asunique,solipsismsinglesme aloneout, and at last I seethat I too belongwith the restof the world, and so on the one side nothingis left over, and on the other side, as unique, the world. In their way idealismleadsto realismif it is strictly thoughtout. What follows in the Tractatusis the well-known passagewhich is supposedto show that one can legitimately speakin philosophy of an I in a non-psychologicalsense,that is, as metaphysical subject,the limit of the world: 'What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that "the world is my world" , (TLP 5.641). However, the outside perspectiveis also the starting point for the connectionbetweenlogic and ethics.J ust as ethical propositions do not expresswhat it is to be happy, so logical propositions do not expresswhat is mirrored in them. We have one and the samesign for the identity of one and the sameobject, and that it is the same is expressedby its form. But we experiencethat it doesmeanthe sameeither through use or through the rules that guide it. At this point we encounterthe deepestbasis for the common ground between Weininger and Wittgenstein: both believe that neither logical nor ethical rules can be established, but yet that both logical and ethical rul es have an essential connectionto the world and are thus one and the same.For Wittgenstein, all the great questionsof metaphysicslead into this connection- questionsto which the only appropriateansweris silence,since the questionscannotbe answeredwithin the world - that is, clearly and precisely.

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What do Wittgensteinand Weiningerhavein Common? Notes 1. Cf. AllanJanik, 'Wittgensteinand Weininger', in: Aktendes 2. Int. WittgensteinSymposiums29.8-4.9, 7977, (Hölder-PichlerTempsky,Vienna, 1978), reprinted in A. Janik, Essayson Wittgensteinand Weininger(Studien zur ÖstereichischenPhilosophie IX), (Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1985), pp. 64-72; K. Mulligan, 'Philosophy,animality andjustice:Kleist, Kafka, Weininger, and Wittgenstein', in B. Smith (ed.), Structure and Gestalt: philosophyand literature in Austria-Hungaryand her successorstates(Linguistic and Literary Studiesin EastemEurope),(John BenjaminsB.V., Amsterdam, 1981); B. Smith, 'Weininger and Wittgenstein', in B.F. McGuinnessand A. Gargani,(eds), Wittgensteinand contemporaryphilosophy Teoria, V (1985), pp. 227-57;JacquesLeRider, Der Fal! Dtto Weininger. Wur.;:;eln des Antifeminismusund Anti-semitismus(Löcker, Vienna, 1985). Seealso R. Haller, Pragen zu Wittgensteinund Aufsätzezur OstereichischenPhilosophie (Studien zur ÖsterreichischenPhilosophie X), (Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1986), p. 176. 2. Janik, Essayson Wittgensteinand Weininger, p. 71. 3. Ibid., pp. 71,85. 4. Allan Janik, 'Philosophicalsoureeson Wittgenstein'sethics', in Janik, Essayson Wittgensteinand Weininger, p. 94. 5. TLP 6.4321. 6. TLP 6.423. Cf. NB 'I want to call the "wilI" primarily the bearer of good and evil.' (Entry for 21 July 1916.) 7. Cf. I. Kant, Critique of practical reason (German: Akademie Ausgabe),vol. V, pp. 55,94, 105, 114. 8. Cf. O. Weininger, Über die letzten Dinge ('On Things') (ViennaLeipzig, 1918).Seealso LeRider, Der Fal! Duo Weininger. WurzelndesAntifeminismusund Anti-semitismus;and J. LeRider and N. Leser (eds), Duo Weininger. Werk und Wirkung(Quellenund Studienzur Oesterreichischen Geistesgeschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,vol. 5) (Oesterr.Bundesverlag, Vienna, 1984). 9. L. Wittgenstein,Lectureon ethics. 10. That the term 'transcendental'is not meantin the Kantian sense here is apparent,though apparentlynot to all interpreters.See Chapter 3; also S. Thiele, Die Verwicklungenim Denken Wittgenstein(Alber, Freiburg, 1983), p. 63. In fact, the first statementconcemingthe transcendental characterof ethicsappliesthe term 'transcendent'and not the term 'transcendental'.Cf. NB entry for 30 July 1916. Not very convincing on this passageis F. WalIner, Die Grenzender Spracheund der Erkenntnis(Philosophica1), (Braumüller,Vienna, 1983), pp. 160f. Naturally, the 'horizon' (Grenze),as he says,is not a rule of measurefor correctjudgements,just as the statementsof logic are not 'abstractionsfrom meaningful statements',and statementsofethics are not 'abstractionsfrom actions'. 11. TLP 6.43: 'The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.' Cf. NB entry for 29 July 1916. See also R. Haller, 'Philosophieren- Arbeit an einemselbst?'in P. Kruntorad (ed.), A.E./.D. U. (Österr. Bundesverlag,Vienna, 1985), pp. 70ff. Two years before thesenoteswere written, Wittgenstein'boughtand read' vol. 8 of Nietzche'sworks (containing The twilight of the gods, Antichrist and Ecce

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What do Wittgensteinand Weiningerhavein Common? homo), writing in the so-called'Secretnotebook',8 December1914; 'Am howevermoved by his animosity towardsChristianity. For there is some truth in his writings. Surely, that Christianity is the only sure way to happiness.But what if one scornsthis happiness?Could it not be better to be unhappy, to come to ruin in hopelessconflict with the external world? But such a life is senseless.But why not lead a senselesslife? Is it unworthy? How is it to be reconciled with the solipsistic standpoint? What must I do then, that I do not lose my life? I must have before me always an awarenessof the Spirit.' In L. Wittgenstein,'GeheimeTagebucher: Der verschlüsselteTeil der "GmundenerNotizbücher",'ed. W. Baum, Saber,vol. 6 (1985), pp. 475f. 12. NB entry for 13 August 1916. 13. Otto Weininger, Gesehleehtund Charakter ('Sex and Character'), p. 203, cf. p. 234. 14. Weininger, Über die letztenDinge, p. 169. 15. Ibid., p. 246. 16. Cf. P.M.S. Hacker, Insight and illusion (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1972), p. 2. 17. Cf. NB entry for 2 August 1916: 'One could say (with Schopenhauer): The world of ideas is neither good nor evil, but is rather the subjectthat wills.' 18. Weininger, Über die letztenDinge, p. viii. 19. TLP4.116. 20. Ibid., Foreword. 21. O. Weininger, 'From Baconto Fritz Mauthner,alliowbrows have beencrities of language', Über die letztenDinge, p. 171. 22. NB entry for 7 October1916. 23. L.W. Wittgenstein, Notebooks 7974-7976, G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombeeds (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1961), p. 85e, G.E.M. Anscombe,trans.

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7 Was Wittgenstein a Sceptic? or On the Differences BetweenTwo 'Battle Cries'

This is a curious question, and it mayalso seem to be a misguidedone, to anyonewho 'knows' that Wittgensteinwas not a sceptic.Ir one asksa misplacedand inappropriatequestion,one ought notbe surprisedat receiving a misplacedand inappropriate answer,if one receivesan answerat all. Shouldone fail to find an answer,then it would be suitableto ask oneselfwhy this question had beenposedat all, if it was to be left unanswered. A philosophical education, or even general intellectual acumen,would counsel us that whoever makes the claim that there are physicalobjectsadvancesa philosophicalthesisand not a physical one. Presumably,such an assertionas 'Thereare physical objects'is directedagainstthe negationof the assertionof the existenceof physical objects. And whoever says 'There are no physical objects' likewise makessomethingthat we must regard as a philosophicalclaim. Ir the person who assertsthe existence of physical objects (whateverit may be that he is thereby asserting)can be called a realist, where being a realist entails, for instance,alleging that one is able to demonstratethe existenceof a res extensathat is independent of a res cogitansor an ego, then we may weil call any philosopher who rejectsthis argumentand the realist'sthesisan idealist - provided that he claims physical objectsare dependentupon an ego, upon thought, or the like. It could be said of the latter's position that it is scepticalwith regard to his opponent's(the realist's) position, and this accords with the customaryusageof the term 'scepticai'.Hence,whoever deniesour everydaybelief in the existenceof physical objects,is scepticalwith regardto this one particularpostulation,and WittgensteincaUsthis view the 'idealist's scepticism'. I 100

Was Wittgensteina Sceptic? Thus one who doubtsthat there exist physical objects,or that the object which I take to be my hand is in fact my hand, is since he doubts this -a a sceptic, but he is a sceptic only with respect to the positive assertion (that the object is in fact my hand). He may hold the belief that there are no physical objects and that what we take to be physical objects are actually something quite different, say, sensationsor representations. That is to say, the negativeassertionsand the positive ones are on the same level. Just as Carnap,in Pseudoproblemsin philosophy,first raisesthe question of 'whetherthe thesesmentionedhere have any scientific sense at all? Wittgensteinbeginslikewise by saying that the proposition'Thereare physicalobjects'is 'nonsense',by denying eventhe possibility of formulating this proposition.3 This is, of course, no superficial scepticism about a positive assertion,but a more thoroughgoingone, which calls into question the legitimacy of both kinds of assertion.And calling 'Iegitimacy' into question here signifies nothing more than the assertionthat no truth-value can be attributed to a nonsensical proposition. Were one to wonderwhy the propositionshould be nonsensical, the following suggestsitself as a reply: If the proposition 'Thereare physicalobjects'doeshavesense,then it would, presumably, have to be an empirical proposition,a propositionabout experience.But what kind of experiencecould it be about; by what kind of experiencecould it or its negation be confirmed? The answeris that there is no experiencethat would satisfy such a proposition; it is a pseudo-propositionwhich doesnot actually touch upon experience,but rathergoesbeyondit. However - as Wittgensteinrejoins to his own line of reasoning - does being informed that this kind of proposition is nonsensicalsuffice to convince either the idealist or the realist that it is nonsenseto assertsomethinglike this? Evidently not. Of course,neitherdoesit suffice to supportthe dogmaticdefenceof commonsense. When we claim to know something,then it is necessaryfor the truth of this claim not only that we are convincedof it and have sufficient reasons for believing it, but also that it is true. H, however,we cannotconvinceourselvesof its truth other than by giving justifications for the reasonswhich we have to supportthe claim to its truth, then how can we sustain the claim to knowledge?Is there not more at issueherethanjust onechain of justifications for one assertion?And aren't the very foundationsof our 101

Was Wittgensteina Sceptic? empirical judgementsat stake here?That someonebelievesthat he knows somethingdoesjust as little to justify his assertionas his assurancesand reaffirmations do, that he does indeed know such-and-suchto be the case(cf. oe §137). Wittgenstein seemsquite dearly to believe that it is not one assertionthat is questionedor defendedin the caseof an epistemic doubt. When we are learning the role of empirical judgements,we do not simply learn TUleS, but a 'totality of judgements is madeplausibleto us' (Oe §140): When we first begin to believeanything, what we believe is not a simple proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (Oe §141) It is not single axioms that strike me as obvious, it IS a system in which consequencesand premises give one anothermutual support.(Oe §142)

Wittgenstein advancesthe view, in several passagesthroughout his writings that a whole systemof propositionsis involved with our beliefs. And I regard this view as fundamentalfor what may be called a paradigmin ThomasKuhn's sense, since- although I shall not enterinto this here - it is fundamentalto the general sort of justification given for 'worldviews'. For example,consider our belief that the world is round, a belief that has continuedto receive confirmation, beginning with the exploratory voyagesof the fifteen century, from Amerigo Vespuccito the age of artificial satellites: We know that the earth is round. We have definitively ascertainedthat it is round. We shall stick to this opinion ... (Oe §291) Furtherexperimentscannotgive the lie to Olir earlier ones,at most they may changeour whole way of looking at things. (Oe § 292) The truth alluded to here, then, seemsjust as definitive as the truth of the propositionsin the Tractatus: 'We shall stick to this opinion.' ean doubts be raised here, such as those that were raised, for example, by Popper about a criterion of meaningwith an ironical nod to the author of the Tractatus?4 Already 102

Was Wittgensteina Sceptic? before Popper'ssarcasm,Wittgenstein had tried to show in his 'Big typescript' that suspicionsof meaninglessness must not he raised dogmatically. That is to say, if we, for example, doubt whetherthe body that we are seeingis a sphere,we can very weIl hypothesisethat it is not a sphere.It is one thing to be convinced that somethinghas a spherical form, but it is somethingquite different to claim that somethinghas such a form. For it is possibie that the latter claim meansthat something appears to have such a form, and to cast this appearancein doubt, Wittgenstein argues,would suspendthe function of the hypothesis: The mechanismof the hypothesiswouldn't function if the appearancewere also questionable;if, that is, there were not a facet of the hypothesisthat could be given indubitable verification.5 Fifteen years later, Wittgenstein writes: whenever we test anything, we are already presupposingsomething that is not tested' (Oe §163). Wittgenstein clearly distinguishes between what is not verified but taken as an assumptionor, occasionally, learned,and individual hypotheses.He caUs the former the 'selfevident foundation' of research,such as that of, say, Lavoisier's research-a 'Weltbild' (cf. oe§167). It seemsto be Wittgenstein'sconviction that only on the basis of such a worldview can true or false judgementsbe made and put to the test; that the question of the truth or falsity of statements which expressthe foundation of the worldview does not arise.One graduaUybecomesaccustomedto a worldview; worldviews are adopted,believed in. But when the question'Does my belief correspondto reality?' is raised,one finds out that no provisions have been made for such questions(cf. oe §318, §341). However, does this mean that what is not tested and also not doubtedcannotbe doubted?Not at all. Given only that we accept the principle of bivalenceand that we can talk of doubting only where thereis also the possibility of not doubting(Oe §3), it does not follow that it is logically impossibleto doubtany given proposition that is assumedto be true. Admittedly, we cannotdoubt ev· erything, since the indefinite expression'everything' includesalso the meaningsor usesof the expressionsin the language.6 The point of the word 'all' is that it admits no exception.True, that is the point of its use in our language;but the 103

Was Wittgensteina Saptic? kinds of usewe feel to be the 'point' are connectedwith the role that such-and-sucha use has in our whole life. 7 Even if someonewere to be, or become, convinced by the sceptical maxim that 'one cannot know anything', it would depend upon the particular activities that are closely bound to the languagewhetherwhat he claimed can be said, in that indefinite senseof 'can' which may be called the 'logical can'. It is, nevertheless,by no means obvious what Wittgenstein actually meanswhen he says that what counts as 'an adequatetest' of a hypothesisbelongsto logic. This claim is illuminated to an extent in his remark that 'it belongsto the description of the language game'(OC §82). Apparently, the following assertionalso belongs to the descriptionof the languagegame: In certain circumstances,a man cannot make a mistake. ('Can' is here used logically, and the proposition does not meanthat a man cannotsay anythingfalse in thosecircumstances.)If Moore were to pronouncethe oppositeof those propositionswhich he declarescertain, we should not just sharehis opinion: we should regardhim as demented.(OC §155) In order to make a mistake, a man must alreadyjudge in conformity with mankind. (OC §156) As is often the case,Wittgenstein'sreflections begin with an attempt to find a context for the use of the expressionsthat are under investigation, and he gives a number of examples the contexts for which do not permit the judgement that one is mistaken,e.g. '12 X 12 = 144', 'I have just had lunch', 'I have never beenon the moon.' Theseexamplesshow that if there are mistakes,there have to be different kinds of mistakes,and Wittgenstein does not exclude only mathematicaljudgements,i.e. judgementsa priori, from the set of things aboutwhich onecan be mistaken. However, towards the conclusion of his notes on certainty,Wittgensteinconcedesthat he is not abIe to give a 'general characterisation'of the casesin which someonemay justifiably claim to be immune from error. It is thereforeevident that no distinction can be drawn betweencaseswhere one is nearly immune from error and those in which one cannot be mistaken (OC §673, §674). 104

Was Wittgensteina Sceptic? What, then, does the claim to immunity from error really mean?I think that we ought to keep two considerationsseparate in respondingto this question:first, the questionof the meaning of an assertion;and secondly,the questionof the role of immun8 ity from error in our actions'or in our useof the language. It is not easy to determinewhich of the two questionsis the more difficult one. To know what immunity from error means, we must know what an error is. And here it may occur to us that in the casesnearestat hand, we talk about an error when someone, although aware of what the correct choice would be, does somethingthat is not right or sayssomethingthat is not right or true. If we disregard most of the variety of ways in which we humanscan err, and focus on the narrower range of epistemic concepts, then we can take 'error' to mean that the subject assumes,believesor claims to believe the existenceof a state of affairs, and that the assertionof its existencedoesnot hold true. This is what Wittgenstein means when he writes: 'And error belongsonly with opinion.'9The proponentof an assertionwhich tUffiS out to be false, although he is convinced of its truth, is mistaken. But in fact, we would not characteriseall of the cases which fall underthis descriptionas errors! We do not in all cases grant someonethe possibility that he can be mistaken.In so far as this is true. Wittgensteinis right in sayingthat 'the possibility of a mistakecan be eliminatedin certain(numerous)cases'(Oe §650). But he is also right in assumingthat we judge certaincasesdifferendy which, on groundsof definition or meaningwould be characterisedas errors, but for which 'no place is preparedin the game'(Oe §647). Theseare, namely,thosecasesin which we do not accusesomeoneof a mistake who does or says something radically incorrect, something that neither he nor any fellow memberof his community could seriouslysay, let alone hold for warranted, but rather regard the agent or speakeras mentally defective.If a man approachedus and with completeeamestness statedrepeatedlythat he had-literally, not metaphoricallylost his head,our responsewould perhapsbe to attemptto calm him, telling him 'you're mistaken, you still have your head'; if not, then we would not be of the opinion that he was mistaken, but ratherthat he is insane. Moore'smistakelies in this - counteringthe assertionthat one cannotknow that, by saying 'I do know it'. (Oe §521)\O

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Was Wittgensteina Sceptic? This is amistake,solely for the reasonthat the claim to know is not sufficient to establishthe truth of the claim to know: 'It is always by favour of Nature that one knows something' (OC §SOS).For Whether I know somethingdependson whether the evidence backsme up or contradictsme. (OC §S04) Whether the evidence actually backs up my claim does not, however,dependon myselj, but on what is the case.And concerning the evidenceitself, Wittgensteinvery clearly advocatesa form of the justificational model of knowiedge, according to which everyjustification for an assertionor claim to know must, first, be finite, and, second, actually come to an end. The account presented by Wittgenstein differs from those accounts that attempt to locate the justification for a 'stopping-place'in selfpresentationssuch as, for example, Meinong's and Chisholm's. The latter accountsmust identify some sort of evidence of all evidence,whereasWittgensteinneedsonly to point out that any given substantiationor justification actually has an end. In the BTown book, we read: And the mistakewhich we here and in a thousandsimilar casesare inclined to make is labelled by the word 'to make' as we have used it in the sentence'It is no act of insight which makesus use the rules as we do', becausethere is an idea that 'somethingmust make us' do as we do. And this again joins the confusion between causeand reason. We have no Teasonto Jollow the TUleS as we do. The chain of reasons hasan end.11 In this statement,a reply is provided to the second question, which has, so far, been neglected:i.e. the question of the part played by immunity from error in our actions and in our languagegames.For the present,we have to establishthat the method of doubt is the method for ascertainingimmunity from error, and it is almost beyond questionthat Wittgensteintakesa non-Cartesian stance here, as Anthony Kenny has already pointed out: 12 It belongs to the logic of our scientific investigationsthat

certain things are in deednot doubted.(OC §342) 106

Was Wittgensteina Sceptic? . .. that absenceof doubt belongs to the essenceof the languagegame... (Oe §370) If you tried to doubt everythingyou would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposescertainty. (OC §115)

Even if the methodof doubt may be called Cartesian,its application neverthelessshowsthat it is not the Cartesianmethodthat is involved here. First of all, as we have seen,doubt is restricted: one who doubtseverythingwould also have to doubt the meanings of the expressionsin his language.But then he could not possibly know what it was he was doing when doubting everything. Secondly,in the caseof doubt we presupposethat it may be shownwhat speaksfor or againstan assumption(cf. OC §117). That is to say, thereis needhereas weil for acceptedcriteria, and I cannot call into question the validity of all of thesecriteria at once, since I need at least some of them to apply as criteria. (When I doubt whetherthe kilogram of bread that I am buying actually weighs a kilogram I cannot, when testing my supposition, simultaneouslydoubt that the weight usedto correspondto a standardkilogram anddoubt the test that would decidethe first question.)Thirdly, when forming judgementson something,we do not judge againstthe backgroundof a tabula rasa, but against the backgroundof a world-picture that incorporatesnot only a set of true sentences which we believe or take as assumptions,that is, not only that of which we are convinced,- but also a great deal that we accept unquestioningly,and on the basis of which we test and verify hypotheses,distribute truth-values,and even attempt to convince others to give up their conceptual framework. If we accept the broad use that Wittgenstein made of the notion of a languagegame, what we have said thus far wil! also apply to languagegames.Justas 'the truth of so certain empirical propositionsbelongsto our frame of reference'(OC §83) so certain assumptionsand epistemic attitudes (believing, holding true, knowing) belonglikewise to the basisof thinking and acting. Von Wright has aptly called this basisa 'pre-knowledge'.Such knowledge is in its very essencenot propositional,but practical knowledge, a 'know-how', which, however, unlike most 'know-how', cannotbe tracedback to or reducedto a 'knowledge-that'. Although Wittgensteinthus rejectsa reductionistprogramme, 107

Was Wittgensteina Saptic? the justification of knowledge does not thereby lose its foundation. On the contrary: it gains a new one, whoseexplication is, admittedly, not given, though this does not mean that it could not be given.13 If Wittgenstein'sanalysis - in so far as it is an analysis shows clear signs of deviating from programmes of the Cartesian nature, it neverthelessremains within that programme to a certain extent. I mean by this that although there may be a number of indications that Wittgenstein abandonedthe search for foundations, his own non-reductionist foundation for the justificational theory of knowledgeshowsthat this is not so. This is not to deny that he frequently pointed out the proximity of the conceptof knowledge to that of deeision, or that he applied the idea of a eonstrue/ionto replace the 'chain of reasons',but as it seemsto me at least, he leavesno doubt in the crucial passagesthat, firstly, our claims to knowledgearejustified by reasons;secondly, the chain of reasonsor justification for what we know has a finite end; and, thirdly, that the totality of what we know has foundations. Since these foundationsmust be on a different level from the judgementsthey sustain,we might suspectthat Wittgenstein was attracted to the non-foundationalistconception of knowledge, as if Wittgensteinwere a precursorof Sir Kar! Popperor Paul Feyerabend!To an extent, then, he does remain within the framework of the Cartesianprogramme,and as everyoneknows, this programmeis primarily characterisedby the possibility of doubt about all instancesof possibleknowiedge.As Schlick has pointedout: All important attemptsat establishinga theory of knowledge grow out of the problem concerningthe eer/ainty of human knowiedge.And this problem in turn originatesin the wish for absolutecertainty.14 However, the methods that Wittgenstein proposesand applies, though intendedfor mere description,do not seemto admit the possibility of absoluteeer/ainty. But Wittgensteinalso hasa method for establishing, and perhaps, for producing, unshakeable certainty- and this, I suppose,meansabsolutecertainty: To accepta propositionas unshakeablycertain-I want to say - meansto use it as a grammaticalrule: this removes uncertaintyfrom it.l.\ 108

Was Wittgensteina Sceptic? To put it a bit differently, by using a sentenceas a grammatical rule, we acknowledge its unassailablecertainty. At times, it appearsas thoughsuchsentencesare supposedto provide foundations that lie within the language game; a basis, as it were, beneathwhich onecannotventure.At othertimes, it appearsas if what is excludedfrom the uncertainis made certain in virtue of being used as a norm for what is certain. And this theme recurs frequently in Wittgenstein: that a well-confirmed empirical propositionmayalsobe usedas a norm (or criterion).16But even were one to prefer the latter interpretation,the former is not yet invalidated, since both is in agreementto the extent that they concern actions which give meaning to linguistic expressions through their use. The justification for such a ground is neither possiblenor meaningful unlessone resortsto the commonplace that one'slife just is as it is, and that we can go no further, in any investigation,than our life itself. A claim such as the claim that thejustification for this ultimate foundationis neithermeaningful nor possiblemayalsobe understoodas a claim about the limits of reason,which denies in principle the possibility of revealing the conditionsof the foundation. Wittgenstein's'solution' of the problem of the foundation of knowledge - there is, indeed, not only this problem of foundations - thus containsa quasi-scepticaland a quasi-pragmatic componentand the first is connectedwith the latter. In On Certainty he writes: But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myselfof its correctness;nor do I haveit becauseI am satisfied of its correctness.No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false. (Oe §94)

From this it clearly follows that the worldview is not a network of convictionswhosecorrectnessare in needof testing. Rather,our worldview constitutesthe backgroundfor our convictions,whose truth or falsity is in questionand which must be put to the test. The correctness(truth or falsity) of the worldview itself, however, lies outside the scope of any such test.17 In other words: if the 'background'has no propositionalcontent,i.e. cannotbe judged as to its truth or falsity, it becomesclear why it is that whoeveris 'mistaken'with respectso it cannotbe mistakenonly in an ordinary sense,but must be regardedas completelyforeign or evenas 109

Was Wittgensteina Sceptic? demented.From this, th ere emergesa quasi-pragmaticcastto the problem of knowiedge:proceedingfrom the suppositionthat it is not a state of affairs in itself which determineswhat we will and will not acceptas an observationsentence,becausethosestatesof affairs are themselvesconditioned by circumstancesidentified and interpretedby ourselves,then the mannerof our thinking dependsupon our own determinations.H, however, our determinations rest upon a non-propositionalbasis, then the distinction betweentruth and falsity cannotbe applied to them; rather, the totality of agreementswith that which we can refer to as our 'worldview' must serveas our criterion. As is weIl known, not only by thosewho researchthe psychology of perceptionand observationbut by many others,there are casesin which somethingmight be seen as, or observedas, so-andso. This kind of case was of central concern in Wittgenstein's philosophy of psychology. The same kind of case, however, appearsin the study of the interpretationof texts as weIl, since what is meant by certain phrasesmight be 'seen' in different ways, dependingupon how one looks at the text in question. At least since StanleyCavell pointed out the parallelsbetween a 'grammatical'investigationin Wittgenstein'ssenseand a transcendentalonein Kant's sense,IR there have beenattemptsto apply Kantian philosophy as an interpretativeframework for Wittgensein's Philosophical investigations. Since then, there have been a great many interpreterswho have credited themselveswith the discoveryof a new Wittgensteinin the transcendentalinterpretation, and a new Kant in Wittgenstein'sguise. Some believe that Wittgenstein advocated,especially in the Tractatus, a position that would correspondto that of the Critique of pure reason, in determining the limits of possible experience. Others, again, believe that Wittgenstein'stransition to his socalled 'later philosophy' also betrays a turn from a realist to a constructivist position. Some interpreters take the similarity betweenthe two philosophersto consistin their entire approach; others,again,take it to consistin the ontologicalfoundations,etc. Some of these interpretationshave without any doubt yielded outstandingresults, particularly thoseconcerningthe interpretation of Wittgenstein'sphilosophyof mathematics.Although these interpretationsmerit consideration,this is not the appropriate occasionfor an investigationof the various resu/tsof this Gesta/tswitch in the understandingof Wittgenstein.It must be admitted that an interpretationemploying the refined conceptualframe110

Was Wittgensteina Saptic? work of Kantian philosophy could elucidate some points that would probably not be brought to light were one to take other schemataas the basisof analysis.As importantand interestingas this questionmay be, particularly in a period of neo-Kantianism, we must forego a discussionof it here. Neverthelesswe do have to occupy ourselveswith no more than one small point from Kant, in the remainderof our argumentation. Returning to our initial question, the question of whetherWittgensteinwas a sceptic - and at least his denial of the possibility of knowledgeof oneselfmight give rise to such a suspicion - the Kantian characterisationof the sceptic and of scepticism seemsto be helpful in providing a basisfor judging the answer. Kant drawsa strict distinction betweenthe scepticalmethodand scepticism.The former servesto provokea controversy,'not for the purposeof finally decidingin favour of either side, but to discover whether the object of the struggle is not a mere illusion'. 'This 'sceptical method' is oriented towards certainty in so far as it endeavours' ... to detectthe point of misunderstanding' .19 In the sensein which grammatical investigationsmay be called transcendental,the method of 'discovering the point of misunderstanding'may be called sceptical.Indeed,we would have to refer to it in this way if we were to follow Kant, who regards this method as 'essentially peculiar to transcendentalphilosophy only'.20 In the 'Transcendentaldoctrine of method', in the section entitled 'The impossibility of a sceptical satisfaction of pure reasonin its internal conflicts', an attempt is made to settle the question of whether a method that is designedto ascertainthe limits of knowledge,is, or may be, called a dogmatic,a criticalor a scepticalmethod. Here, the sceptic is describedas the philosopher who, as a preliminary exercise,tests all of the assertionsof uncritical dogmatism, rejects their unconditional validity and perhaps- like Hume - traces them back to habits. In a like manner, Wittgenstein occasionally 'reduces'the use of expressionsto habit or to custom. Whoeverholds such a view may be called a sceptic in Kant's terms, regardlessof whetherhe is ingeniousor not. He does not get any further than 'subjectingthe facta of reasonto examination and eventually to disapproval'. In short, this is to appoint a censorof reason,and, thereby, to entertain'doubt regardingall transcendentaluse of principles'. However, he will abstain from

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Was Wittgensteina Sceptic? the last step,that of subjecting'to examination... reasonitself, in the whole extentof its powers,and as regardsits aptitudefor pure Cl Priori modesof knowledge',and thus to determineits 'definite limits', and will, at most, constructa 'restingplace' for the orientation of reason,and not a 'dwelling-placefor permanentdomicile' .21 What the realist and the idealist say, whetherit be a realismor idealism of the transcendentalor of the empirical type, differs in toto not only from what they do, but also from the ground on which they play out their languagegame. Accordingly, if either one tries to teach a child the use of the expression'chair', the differences will not be differences between the facts that are taught, nor will they be differencesof languagesused; they will rather, as Wittgenstein says, be differences between 'battle cries'.22 What moral may be drawn from this? There is, I believe, at least one important one, and I shall confine myself to it, for the present: before following Wittgenstein's suggestion that it is possibleto 'see'any given philosopherin the light of many different philosophical interpretations,and before seeking resemblancesbetweenWittgenstein and other philosophers,we should not forget to seewhat thereis to see,and to try to pay attentionto what Wittgensteinhimself clearly recommended:to heednot the battle cries, but that which underlies them in the context of humanaction. Notes 1. OC §37. 2. R. Camap, The logical structure of the world - pseudoproblemsin philosophy, trans. R.A. George(University of Califomia Press,Berkeley, 1969), p. 61 (Germanedn, tr).

3. OC §35, §36. 4. K.R. Popper, The logic of scientific discovery, 2nd edn (Hutchinson,

London, 1959), p. 22. 5. PG, pt I, p. 222. 6. Cf. oR. Haller, 'Das cartesischeDilemma', Zeitschrift für philosophischeForschung,18 (1964), pp. 369-85. 7. RFM I, 16; cf. I §§101f. 8. Cf. R. Haller, 'PhilosophischeIrrtümer und die Sprache',in Wittgensteinandhis impact upon contemporarythought- proceedingsof the 2ndinternational Wittgenstein symposium August 29-September 4 1977 Kirchberg/Wechse4eds E. Leinfellner et al., (Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky,

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Was Wittgensteina Seeptie? Vienna, 1978), pp. 298-302. 9. L. Wittgenstein,'Remarkson Frazer's The Golden Bough', ed. R. Rhees,trans. A.C. MilIer, revsd R. Rees(Brynmill Press,Retford, 1979). 10. Cf. G.E. Moore 'A defenceof common sense'in J.H. Muirhead (ed.), ContemporaryBritish philosophy,2nd series(London: 1924), pp. 193223, repro in G.E. Moore, PhilosophicalPapers(Routledgeand KeganPaul, London, 1959). Cf. also my review in PhilosophischerLiteraturanz;eiger, 23 (1970), pp. 55-7. 11. BB, p. 143. 12. A Kenny, Wittgenstein, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1973), pp. 205ff. 13. Cf. R. Haller, 'Concemingthe so-calledMünchhausentrilemma', Ratio, 16 (1974), pp. 125-40. 14. M. Schlick, 'Über das Fundamentder Erkenntnis',Erkenntnis,4 (1934). English translationby D. Rynin, 'The foundationof knowiedge', in AJ. Ayer (ed.), Logical positivism (The Free Press,New Vork, 1959), p.209. 15. RFM II 39. 16. Recall the distinction betweensymptomsand criteria in, e.g. Philosophicalinvestigations,I §34. 17. Cf. G.E.M. Anscombe, 'The question of linguistic idealism' (Essayson Wittgensteinin honor of G.H. von Wright), Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 28 (1976), pp. 209ff. 18. S. Cavell, 'The availability of Wittgenstein'slater philosophy', PhilosophicalReview,71 (1962), pp. 67-93. 19. I. Kant, Critique of purt reason, ed., trans N. Kemp Smith (St Martin's Press,New Vork, 1933) B 451f. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., B788-96. 22. Z §414.

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8 The Common Behaviour of Mankind 1

The problems concerning the presupposltlOnsof utterances which are capableof being true or false, and the problemsof their groundingandjustification, are doselyconnectedto one another. This connection is often overlooked. Whether a sentence of a languageis true or false dependsupon whether certain conditions are fulfilled which would all ow the predicationof a truthvalue to it. Whetheror not a sentencecan be groundeddepends upon whether or not it can be derived from other sentences, sentenceswhich expressgrounds.And whetheror not a personis justified in his epistemicattitudesdependson whetheror not the chain of premissessupportingit is finite or infinite. But not only logical relations belong to the grounding of a statement,and not only finite sets of premissesbelong to epistemic justification. Moreover, it certainly is not the casethat any descriptive statementhas only one presuppositionof some sort, which must be fulfilled if the statementis to be either true or false. In a broadersense,presuppositions,grounds,and justifications are themselvesconditioned by the facts of nature and of history. That such conditions play a significant role in Wittgenstein's philosophy has often been overlooked,becausethey don't lie on the surface. The conditions in question will elude discovery as long as one dings to the simple view that a bipartiteWittgenstein, a WittgensteinI and a Wittgenstein11, is the key to interpreting his work.2 I think it is the dominanceof this interpretationthat hinderedrecognitionofthe fact, that at leastthe aim ofhis philosophy sufferedno greatchangesfrom the Tractatusto his last writings. It was always Wittgenstein's position, throughout the transformationsundergoneby his early point of view that philos-

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The CommonBehaviourof Mankind ophy, as it is understoodfrom the analytic point of view, has neither normative directives nor causal explanationsamong its results, but rather presumesthat the results of philosophical laboursinhere in the 'clarification of propositions'.3'For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeedcompleteclarity. But this simply meansthat the philosophical problems should comPletelydi sappear.'4 Since Wittgenstein never subordinatedthis aim to any other, the demandfor clarity preservedits explosivepower, inaugurating the philosophicalturn that later came to be known as the linguistic turn.s Although over a quarterof a centuryhaspassedsinceWittgenstein's death, our understandingof his basic positions has acquired many perspectives,but few outlines which would be generally acknowledged. This becomes particularly obvious when we considerour understandingof the basic conceptsand leitmotivsofWittgenstein'sphilosophy. The topic of the presentdiscussionappearsnot to advert to such a basic topic, counterto what one would expect in a treatment ofWittgenstein'sphilosophy.And yet not only the descripti on and the philosophy of languagerests upon the ground with which this topic is concerned;but the fundamental leitmotiv of Wittgenstein's philosophy, the relation between language and reality, emergeson this ground, returning to it everagain. What role, then, does the 'common behaviour of mankind' play in Wittgenstein'sepistemologyand philosophyof language? How can the fact that human beings act in similar ways under certain conditionsand in particular situationsbe attributedwith the significancethat was accordedto the sentmceform in the Tractatus Iogico-philosoPhicus?How would the 'common behaviourof mankind' serveas a frame of reference'by meansof which we interpret an unknown language?'6Does not the meaningof linguistic impressionslie in the way the expressionsare used? Is there a need for yet another system of reference- in addition to the rules for the useofwords - in order to understanda language? In the Tractatus,Wittgensteinwas definitely of the opinion that it is possibleto provide a generalform of description:'the general sentence-form'.Nothing less was meant by 'general sentenceform' than the 'essenceof a proposition' (TLP 5.471). This finds its strongestexpressionin the statementof proposition 5.4711: 'To give the essenceof a propositionmeansto give the essenceof all description,and thus the essenceof the world.' Not that Wittgensteinwas about to give up his idéefixe that the essenceof the 115

The CommonBehaviourof Mankind world is madeaccessibleby the discoveryof the true natureof its description. Also in his later investigations,he held to the idea that grammaris what makesessenceaccessible.However, it was no longer the theory of the proposition that was to be burdened with the achievementof this task. In the placeof the theory of the proposition, a set of interconnectedconceptswas introduced, amongwhose key memberswere: the useof expressions,the language game, in which words or signs find their usage, TUleS of usage;and commonjudgementsand commonways of acting. But this set of conceptsought not, and cannot,be treatedfrom within the frameworkof a systemwhich the explanationof linguistic expressionswere meantto serve. Wittgenstein'sclear dismissalofthe needto explain the phenomena of languagehas misled many phil030phersinto believing that his position on the characterof the treatmentof philosophical problemsis uninsightful and they have rejectedit as aresuIt, while regardingthe key conceptsas utterly comprehensibleand acceptable.When one knows one'sway aroundon the Wittgenstein conceptualmap of the art of describing languagegames, one also knows one's way around in what Wittgenstein says about the nature of philosophicalquestions.Here I can merely touch on this issue.Just so much is brought to mind, when he statesin the PhiiosoPhicalinvestigations: Grammar does not tel! us how language must be constructedin order to fulfil its purpose,in order to have such-and-suchan effect on humanbeings.It only describes and in no way explainsthe useof signs.(PI §496) And so he only repeatshere what he emphasisesat many points elsewhere,namely that descriptionsof the actual use of expressions provide neither a foundation nor a (causal)explanationof linguistic behaviour. Similarly it does not provide a normative evaluationof the use of language,or an ideal that would serveas a norm. The task of grammaris much more to investigatethe question (among others) of whether the meaning of linguistic expressionscould or could not be given a causal explanation. Accordingly, the description is a phenomenologicalone to the extentthat it concernsthe form of representationitself: The concept of a perspicuousrepresentationis of fundamental significancefor us. It earmarksthe form of account we give, the way we look at things. (PI§122) 116

The CommonBehaviourof Mankind Grammer is lacking in perspicuity, and 'perspicuity' basically means nothing other than an understandingwhich consists in 7 seeingconnections. It has beenthought that a Kantian idea is at work here, from the Traclatus to Wittgenstein's later work, namely,that consciousness or understandinggivesformto nature.8 The attemptto interpretWittgensteinas a transcendentalphilosopher of Kantian derivation appearsto me to be unconvincing from the outset. It is beginning to seem more and more appropriate to seethis allegedKantian connectionas an echoof Spengler's influence. Wittgenstein had to master the difficulties of a realistic semantics; the conception of a contextual theory of languagecould only have contributedto this endeavour,as long as it did not bring with it the burdenof an idealistic dependence upon the subject. The similarities between comparableforms and objectsare of coursespeculative,but they havetheir basisin universal properties.For this reasonI hold it worthwhile to set out this position, becausethrough it we can graspthe role played by the common behaviourof mankind in the constructionof a linguistic phenomenology,and in the groundingof pragmatics.9 It is known that Wittgensteintried to offset the obvious weaknessesof arealistic semanticsby applying a pragmatic-operationalist conception.The accomplishmentsof languageare not realisedin virtue of a unified schema,which could be represented by the conceptof the aliquid-pro-quo-stat.What is accomplishedin languageis not to be drawn from or attributed to one scheme alone. In particular, the key conceptin semantics,that of meaning, ought not to he determinedon the model of the name and the object named,but in accordwith its multifarious function, by its use in the language.The notion of a languagegame is introduced as a basic concept, a mirage-like concept that contains many meaningswithin itself. As has long been known, at least four different meanings of the term 'languagegame' must be distinguished:first, primitive languagesand modelsof language; second, speech acts like naming, asking, describing and commanding;third, activities like play-acting,singing a roundelay, and gossiping;and fourth, the whole of language:'language and the actions into which it is woven'.10As litde as a historical perspectiveis usually associatedwith Wittgenstein'smethod the conceptof a language gameis essentiallylinked with the idea of change:'new typesof language,new languagegames,as we may say, come into existence,and others becomeobsolete and get forgotten'.11 Languagegamesmust then be regardedas variabie, 117

The CommonBehaviourof Mankind mutable, and transitory. More precisely, one ought to say that human societies and communities invent, maintain and even forget languagegames. This has much to do with usage. For naturally, an individual can institute such a thing only in exceptional cases,and then only underthe condition that it is accepted by the community; that is, acceptedas social practice.If one now describesan actual (or conceivable)languagegame, it is most importantthat one 'really' describes'something'.12But, what is to count as real? Certainly not an abstractreality, nor a theory to be stretchedout in front of the oncomingtrain of facts: 'The essence of the language gameis a practical method(a way of acting), not speculation,not empty talk.'13 If we should want to clarify the sense of the conceptof a cause,then it makesno sense to doubt the possibility of everdiscoveringor identifying a cause.We must have courageand begin with a deed, that is, with a speechact, which gives us a raw form. The game of 'looking for the cause',consistsabove all in a certain practice a certain method ... First there must be lirm hard stonefor building, and the blocks are laid roughhewn one on another. Afterwards it's certainly important that the stonescan be trimmed, that it's not too hard. The primitive form ofthe languagegameis certainty,not uncertainty. For uncertaintycould neverlead to action ... I want to say: it is characteristicof our languagethat the foundation on which it grows consistsin steadyways of living, regularways of acting. lts function is determined above all by action, which it accompanies. We have an idea of which ways of living are primitive, and which could only .have developed out of these. We believe that the simplest plough existed before the complicated one. The simple form (that is the prototype) of the cause-effectgameis determiningthe cause,not doubting.14

In this text, the following comesacrossas most striking: that the forms of life -a notion that is mentionedonly live times in the Investigations- can be understoodby looking at two features,one given by the concept of a pure action, and the other by the conceptof its regularity. More importantstill, it appearsto me, is the gradation of the concept of the form of life, which presupposesan order of an ever more complex, and thereby, involved, 118

The CommonBehaviourof Mankind pyramid of forms of life, whosebasisis provided by the primitive form. The primitive or simplestform is the prototype. This conceptof the prototypeis, 1 believe, one of the substantive ideasthat Wittgensteintook from Spengler'swork. With this move he is, however, quite clearly reachingback to Goethe,and not to Kant. Spengler used both Goethe's expression 'protophenomenon'( Urphänomen)as well as the term Ursymbol(original symbol), in order to designatethe entity in which the physiognomy of the historical form of life finds its ideal and potential origin. 'A proto-phenomenon',Spenglerwrites, 'is that in which the idea of becoming appearspurely, right before our eyes.'15 Spenglerrefers here to Goethe'sstudies in morphology, to the developmentof the os inter maxillare in vertebrates,to the 'leaf as the prototype of all plant organs',and to the 'metamorphosisof plants as the prototypeof all organic Becoming'.16 But culture is the proto-phenomenon in general: 'Every culture already possessesa completely individual way of seeingor knowing the world as nature, or, what is the same, each culture has its own peculiar nature, which no other kind of person can possessin quite the sameshape.'17It does not seemto me to be at all true that, as von Wright proposedin commentingon Culture and value (VermischteBemerkungen),Wittgensteintook 'only' the conceptof 'family resemblance'from Spengler'smorphological remarks. It is advisableto proceed from the assumptionthat Wittgenstein discoveredone of the methodsrelatedto his own investigationsin The Decline of the West,and not only a graphic portrait of comparative morphology. And naturally, not only a method, but also a theory, along with all of the examplesthat sueh a theory brings with it. As he had done with other authors,Wittgenstein refers again and again to the work that he'd oncegrappledwith, always making it say somethingnew. (I do not speakhere of Spengler's generaloutlook and the echoesthat this might haveoccasionedin Wittgenstein.18) The conceptsof the prototype and of the proto-phenomenon play, through diverse means, a role in Wittgenstein'sinvestigations that cannot be overlooked,and whose content as well as methodologicalsignificaneecan be shown. Their most striking and well-known role is that of suspendingexplanatoryin vestigationsby merely pointing to the fact that a certainlanguagegame is being played. Let us take.as an example the report of a past intention. What is the casewhen one reports what he wantedto say or do? One possibleway of clarifying (and exemplifying)what

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The CommonBehaviourof Manlcind obtainsin such a caselies in imagining to oneselfa concretesituation - in a sense,a 'naturalfact'. Supposewe expressedthe fact that a man had an intention by saying 'He as it were said to himself "I wil!'" - That is the picture. And now I want to know: how doesone employ the expression'as it were to say somethingto oneself?For it doesnot mean: to say somethingto oneself.(PI §658) That we wantedto say somethingat an earlier point in time, and didn't say it, is illuminated by looking at the simple form that is given expressionin the example 'as it were to say somethingto oneself.Consideringthe grammarof the useof this expression,it becomesclearthat what we are concernedwith hereis an expression that is relatedto other expressions.However, in order to see this kinship, one must first look at the actuallanguagegame: 'Look at the languagegameas the primary thing.' If one wants to query or analyse the claim that psychologicalor inner experiencesand reflection upon them are essentialor inalienableto the process of determining the meaning of expressions,then it is appropriatefirst of all to considerthe question:in which surroundings is somethingin fact said, and in which surroundingscould it be said?19 Ask not: 'What goes on in us when we are certain that.. .' - but: How is the 'certainty that this is the case' manifestedin humanaction?(PI II xi, p. 225) Our mistakeis to look for an explanationwherewe ought to look at what happensas a 'proto-phenomenon'.That is, wherewe ought to have said: this languagegameis played. (PI §654) Since Wittgenstein invited us to regard the actual language gameas primary and rejectsas absurdthe idea that it is possible to 'get beneath'the languagegame, it could look as though he wanted- like Spengler- to provide a comparativemorphology of linguistic actions.The appearanceis not deceptive,in so far as we understandthis to be a questionof approach. The languagegameas an object of comparisonshould not be confusedwith objects of observationor facts of nature.To make this mistakeleads to what Wittgensteinrefers to as 'dogmatism', 120

The CommonBehaviourof Mankind and he reproachesSpenglerfor furthering such a dogmaticinterpretation.To take the language game as an objectof comparison, that is, as a proto-form or measure,is not to take it as a standard 'to which everything has to conform' but as 'the principle determining the form of one'sreflections'.20The conceptof a 'form of reflection' (Betrachtungsform)is an enticing but misleadingone. It leadsone to the discovery of a 'fruitful new aspect'accordingto which a reflection is takenas a principle that is given to us a priori, like the Kantian forms of the intuition. But this interpretation overlooksthat what we are concemedwith hereis a methodological device, not a theoreticalordogmatic one. In 1940 Wittgenstein wrote: 'One of the most important methodsI use is to imagine a historical developmentfor our ideasdifferent from what actually occurred.If we do this we seethe problemfrom a completelynew angle.'21 Were the various languagegamesthat Wittgenstein investigatesnothing other than thought experiments- like languages composedonly of commands,reports, or questions- then the forms oflife which, one imagines,are communicatedby language gameswould be nothing more than productsof the imagination, for whose application there could be no other criterion than the current form of reflection. It is the understandingof interconnections that can be formed and altered by the form of representation. Thus Wittgenstein compares,in the second part of the lnvestigationsas well as at severalother points in his work, the way in which we form concepts with a style of painting. Such a comparisonalso makesit apparentthat talk of' "right" concepts' can only come up when one brings them into relation with certain 'natural facts'. For if one imaginesother facts of nature,it immediately becomesclear that there is no necessityabout the usageof linguistic expressions.This appearsto move counterto the rule-bound characterof languagegames, with all of their intemal relations. However, appearancesdeceive here, as so often. The arbitrariness that we seem to approach here in suggestingthat the rules of the languageare not valid in themselves, but are valid only for those who play or recognise a languagegame,is an arbitrarinessthat is limited 'from inside' by the fact of following rules, and 'from outside' by the form of life. When we think or say that 'everythingcould be other than it is', when we discover or invent anomalies,then the generalform of representation,with the help of which we reflect upon things, and the usesof words, beginsto appearto vacillate. And in the place

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The CommonBehaviourof Mankind of the one systemthere may enteranother,just as the form (that is, the meaninginternal to a system)may change whenthe rules are changed.What, then, could lend some hold to our form of representation?Before looking into the answer(which inspired this paper) to this question,one sort of possibleresponseshould be put by the wayside- namely, the sort of self-affirmation that is really nothing other than a circular argument.H, that is, the languagegame does not foreseethe possibility that things could be other than they are, then one cannotargue for the 'rightness' of the languagegame by pointing to the exclusion of such a possibility. Naturally, we know that there are other language games: 'an educationcompletely different from our own could also be the basis of completelydifferent concepts'(Z §387). 'For life would go on in a different way here' (Z §388). Some have thought it warranted to interpret Wittgenstein's position on languagegamesand forms of life as the categorial framework of a relativistic perspectivism,a framework that, to an extent, anticipatesan epistemologicalperspectivism,if it doesn't already begin to provide one.22 This has, among other consequences,the baleful consequence that, with the suspensionof the questionof truth, every linguistic form for which the statusof a form of life is requestedor proposedis therebyjustified. Such an attemptat lending sanctionto any and, as I shall argue,every sort of speculationand prattle nonethelessruns agroundon Wittgenstein'sfoundationalism. We have alreadydeterminedthat the languagegamedoesnot take place in a vacuum. The network of all our actions is also a network of social relationships. And the social reality of this network shows itself in the fact that a change in conceptual schemebrings with it a changein the form of life. Nonetheless one should regard sucha change- accordingto Wittgensteinnot as causallydetermined,for the simple reasonthat conceptual relations cannot be describedwithin the conceptualschemeof causeand effect. To be sure, it is in the field of historical experience that the rootednessof forms of life in traditions presents itself most strikingly. When we reflect upon the emergenceand passingof events- that is, when we regardeventsdiachronically - then we also graspthe changesundergoneby forms of life, and their deepattachmentsto the language.Indeedliterally, the institutional aspectof languagebecomesobviousas we realisethat we are membersof a tradition that permeatesall that we do and say. The acquisitionof languageitself follows the path of customand

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The CommonBehaviourof Mankind habit, of rules and regularities: 'The regularity of our language permeatesour lives.'23And so the thoughtarisesthat whoevercan get 'behind' the rules - whoever can, so to speak, glimpse the reverseside of the mirror - could also graspthe form of life in its essence.But Wittgensteineschewsthe searchfor a transcendental route: 'No one can push beyond the rules, becausethere is no Beyond.'24 Is this just another way of saying that the rules themselves provide a final justification for our languagegames?Are they the foundation we seek? Not at all: Wittgenstein's praxeological foundationalismvacillates in stating what lies at the basis of the languagegame; what, therefore, it is supposedto ground. For one, it surely includes the regularity of custom: of the activities and rules of action given by the traditions of society. Thus he oncewrote, in the Lecluresand conversationson aesthetics: To a languagegamebelongsan entire culture. If one wants to describemusical taste, one must include in the description whether children give concerts, whether women or only men do this, etc. In aristocraticViennesecircles people had taste, then came the bourgeois circles, where the women went into choirs, and so on. This is an exampleof tradition in music.25 Now such a culture can also be regarded- and this is a Splenglerian thought - from a historic-typologicalpoint of view; it can be representedin its historical evolution. However, 'historical evolution, or the explanationas a hypothesisabout evolution, is only one kind of compilation of the data - their synopsis'. It directsour attentionto the effectivenessoftradition, to the totality of rules and practiceswhich pervadeour lives. From it, we gain not only our picture of the world, but also the conviction that it is not necessaryto questionbeyond the forms of life embeddedin it. If this is so, then the form of life representsa foundationonly in so far as the network of convictions inside of which we carry on must rest upon it. About one such picture of the world, Wittgenstein writes: But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myselfof its correctness;nor do I haveit becauseI am satisfied of its correctness.No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false. (Oe §94)

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The CommonBehavioUTof Mankind In so far as this inherited backgroundchanges,our judgements and forms of life changealso. Nonetheless,to inquire after the ground andjustification of a form of life within that form of life is to direct aquestionat a void; it is to posea senselessquestion. You must bearin mind that the languagegameis so to say something unpredictable. 1 mean: it is not based on grounds.It is not reasonable(or unreasonable). It is there- like our life. (Oe §559) Of course,Wittgenstein'spraxeologicalfoundationalismprovides another, 'deeper' way in which to pose the questionof ultimate foundations. Wittgenstein distinguishesbetween the historical, genetic explanationthat has been the subject of discussionthus far, and a synchronic representationthat allows us 'to see the datain their relationsto eachotherand to bring them togetherin a generalpicture, without making it in the form of a hypothesis aboutevolution through time'.26 This synchronic, non-historical version of Wittgenstein's praxeological foundationalism breaks through where Wittgenstein attempts to give an epistemic justification for linguistic action in general.For the frame of referenceby meansof which every language is to be interpreted cannot be yet another language.Also, it cannotbe the casethat the commonbehaviour of mankind is being introducedto make the distinction between one picture of the world and another, for obviously, diachronichistorical knowledge has al ready shown that there have been different pictures of the world and thus that there can be such. And to the extent that picturesof the world and forms of life are bound up with - Wittgensteinwould say 'coupledwith' - each other, the frame of referencecan inhere in, or be identical with, neither the picture of the world nor the form of life. Rather, we must look upon 'the commonbehaviourof mankind' as a ground that transeendsthe picture of the world, a ground upon which we - from the perspectiveof different forms of representation- distinguish picturesof the world and forms of life. 1 do not want to claim that Wittgensteinresolvedall of these deep difficulties. Far too much remainsunclear. Nevertheless,it is possible to determine his main thesis. For naturally, the ground that transcendsthe picture of the world is, to Wittgenstein's understanding,not a transcendentalcondition but is rather, quite straightforwardly,a fact of experience:'It is a fact of 124

The CommonBehaviourof Mankind experiencethat human beings alter their concepts, exchange them for others when they learn new facts.>27 It is facts which sometimes,thoughnot always,lead to new concepts.But it is not just any fact, but such facts as bring us into agreementin our judgementsand in our actions; such facts as serveas the basisof our understanding.If there were no agreementin action, there would also be no commonconcepts,and thereforeno conceptsat all. For the individualistic-sensualisticsolution, that of a private conceptual scheme, remains out of the question for logical reasons,just as the constructionof a society or a custom for a single individual would not be possible.In somepassages,Wittgensteinquite clearly takesthe offensive againstthe tendencyto read a transcendentalcondition out of indications of an actual, factual conformity amonghumanbeings.Actually, he wantsonly to say 'that a languagegame is only possibleif one trusts something'. At the sametime, however, he emphasisesthat he is not saying 'if one can trust something'.28 80 also, by way of the exampleof colour concepts: 'If humanswere not in generalagreedabout the colours of things, if undeterminedcaseswere not exceptional, then our conceptof colour could not exist.' No - our concept wou/dnot exist.29

And also in the caseof knowiedge: In order to make a mistake, a man must alreadyjudge in conformity with mankind.30 The fact that one takes over forms and conceptsis not itself conditionedby forms and concepts,but by modesof acting. One could call these ways of acting 'ultimate conditions'. Does this meanthat it is not possibleto inquire after further justifications? In a certain sense,yes. But this senseis not a logical one; it is rathera praxeologicalone. The natureof the agreementis not such that it itself determines that we express ourselves within the languageand communicatewith eachother through it. It is much more the casethat communicativeaclion itself is the condition of agreement.To the extentthat it concernsjudgementsof truth or falsity, agreementin convictionsand beliefs presupposes a commonfield of actionswhich cannotitself be calledtrue or false (expressedin

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The CommonBehaviourof Mankind a different way: in which the conceptsof truth and falsity are not applicable). If the true is what is grounded,then the ground is not true, nor yet false. (Oe §205) It is also true that it is impossibleto find a further ground or justification for the comrr.Jnbehaviourof mankind,althoughit is the ultimate presuppositionof all groundsandjustifications. But the end [of grounds-giving] is not an ungrounded presupposition:it is an ungroundedway of acting.31 I mean: this is simply what we do. This is use and custom amongus, or a fact of our natural history.32 More precisely,it is thereforethe caseby this accountthatfactsof our natural history ultimately constitutethe foundation of human speechas weil as of human knowiedge,a foundation that is not itself to be grounded.In order to maintain the anti-essentialism on the level of language,the essentialistsolution is shifted onto the level of the fact of completedactions.'The commonbehaviour of mankind' can be thus understoodas a somewhatobscureterm designatinga commonessenceof humanbeings,of their nature, to which we refer when we want to makecomprehensibletbe fact that we are at all capableof coming to an understanding.This nature, about whoseessentialfeaturesWittgensteinwas so reluctant to speak,revealsthe humanbeing as social being, as zoonpolitikon - through the ages,anothernam~nam~for 'the commonbehaviourof mankind'.

Notes 1. Reviseddraft of my opening address at the WittgensteinSymposium in Rome, 25-26January1979 (Topic: Languageand Knowledgeas SodalFacts). 2. See also R. Haller, 'Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)', in Neue OesterreichischeBiograPhie, vol. XX (Vienna 1979), pp. 95-105. Cf. G. Janoska,'Die Praxis in der SpätphilosophieWittgensteins',Manuskripte 54 (1976), p. 85. 3. TLP 4.112. 4. PI I §133. 5. M. Schlick, 'The turning point in philosophy',in: A.J. Ayer (ed.), Logical positivism(New Vork, The Free Press,1959), pp. 53-9; cf. Wittgen-

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The CommonBehaviourof Mankind stein, 'For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuablein themselves' (1930), CV, p. 7e. Cf. also R. Rorty (ed.),The linguistic turn, (U niversity of ChicagoPress,Chicago, 1967). 6. L. Wittgenstein,ibid., 206. 7. Cf. ibid., 122. 8. Cf. P.M.S. Hacker, Insight and illusion (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1972), pp. 25-32. 9. Cf. j.C. Nyiri, 'Wittgenstein'snew traditionalism', in Essayson Wittgenstein.In honour of G.H. von Wright. Acta PhilosophicaFennica, 28 (1976), pp. 503-12; G.H. von Wright, 'Wittgenstein in relation to his times', in E. Leinfellner, et al (eds), Wittgensteinand his impact upon contemporary thought. Proceedingsof the 2nd International Wittgenstein Symposium (Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky,Vienna, 1978), pp. 73-8. 10. Cf. PI I, §7 and §23-25. 11. Ibid., §23. 12. L. Wittgenstein, 'Causeand effect: intuitive awareness',ed. R. Rhees, Philosophia,VI (1976), p. 405. 13. Ibid., p. 405. 14. Ibid. pp. 20-1. 15. O. Spengler, The decline of the west. Sketch of a morphology of the history of the world, (Knopf, New Vork, 1926), p. 141 (Germanedn: tr.); cf. also L. Nelson, 'Spuk. Einweihung in die Wahrsagekunst0. Spenglers (1921)', in GesammelteSchriften, vol. 3 (Meiner, Hamburg, 1974), pp. 349552. Also in O. Neurath'sAnti-Spengler(Munich 1921), one can recognise again his role as opponentof metaphysicalideal constructions.It is no wonder then that Wittgensteinwas attractedto that in Spenglerwhich Neurathrejected. 16. Spengler,ibid. 17. Ibid., p. 171. 18. Cf. Nyiri, 'Wittgenstein'snew traditionalism', and von Wright, 'Wittgensteinin relation to his times'. 19. Cf. Wittgenstein's'Remarkson Frazer'sGolden Bough'. 20. CV p. 26e, 27e. 21. Ibid., p. 37e. 22. Cf. Chapter7. 23. L. Wittgenstein,Remarkson colour, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe,(Blackweil, Oxford, 1977), p. 303. 24. PG IV, 24. 25. L. Wittgenstein,Lecturesandconversationson aesthetics,psychologyand religious belief, ed. Cyril Barrett, (University of California Press,Berkeley and Los Angeles,1967), p. 29. 26. Wittgenstein,'Remarkson Frazer'sGolden Bough', p. 45 (German edn). 27. Z §352; cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: conversations recorded by Friedrich Waismann, trans. j. Schulte and B.F. McGuinness (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1967), p. 162f. (Germanedn) 'Wir können nur eines in der Welt postulieren, das ist unsere Ausdrucksweise.Das Verhalten der Tatsachenkönnen wir nicht postulieren.'('We can only postulateone thing in the world, that is, our meansof expression.We cannotpostulatethe behaviourof facts.')

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The CommonBehaviourof Mankind 28. oe§509. 29. Z §351. 30. oe§156. 31. Ibid., §11O. 32. RFM I, 63.

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9 Form of Life or Forms of Life? A Note on N. Garver's 'The Form of Life in Wittgenstein's

PhilosophicalI nvestigations'

In my openingaddressto the WittgensteinSymposiumin Rome I attemptedto show why Wittgensteincould have regardedthe 'commonway behaviourof mankind' as the praxeologicalfoundation of all language games, as the worldview-transcending ground on the basis of which we distinguish forms of life and worldviews.! It becameclear that it is not the different forms of life, forms of action or typesof action that are to be understoodas subsumedunder 'common behaviour of mankind', but rather somethingthat might be called the nature of human existence, somethingthat could best be illuminated by the classicalnotion of the zoonpolitikon - the humanbeing as a social being. Against the backgroundof the commonbehaviourof mankind, we interpret foreign and unknown languages,and draw the boundary between languageand the non-human 'language'of bees and lions. Newton Garver'sreinterpretationof Wittgenstein'sconceptof the form of life, I believe, follows the samepath. But his concern is to show that Wittgenstein'suse of the term 'form of life' in the Philosophical investigationsadmits only of the singular and that there is no justification for its use in the plural. 'The Wittgensteinianforms oflife are thoseof natural history: the cow-like, the fish-like, the dog-like, and the human.' And there is only one human form of life. Thus Garver comes to the conclusion that 'the human form of life may be identified with the commonway of humanacting'.2 As much as his commentson the common way of human acting as the basic form of human life may further our understanding of Wittgenstein's investigations, it seems to me that Garver'sclaim that Wittgensteinmeantto speakofnothing more, 129

Farm of Llfe or Farms of Life? in his scantlive usesof the term 'form of life', than what he caIls the commonway of humanacting, cannotbe defended. Max Black - among several pthers - studied these live occurrencesof the term and gave an interpretation to each occurrencethat diminishes the importancethat has been attributed, by many philosophers,to the conceptof a form of life. In particular, he chaIlengesMalcolm's high estimationof the significanceof this conceptin Wittgenstein'swork: 'The notion of" Lebensfarm" is not reaIly very important for Wittgenstein.'3Black ligures that we must admit to only threefeaturesofthe expression 'form of life' that might weIl be delinitive of Wittgenstein'susage, and thus of its meaning: lirstly, that the masteryof a given sublanguageencompasses the possessionof a particular form of life; secondly,that the term 'form of life' is applicableto activities that include the productionof meaningfuland comprehensibleutterances;and thirdly, that forms of life contain languagegamesas self-sufficientparts. It seemsto me that Black's article has succeededin contributing a sketch of the bounds of the concept's meaning, and, togetherwith this, has counteracteda tendencyto overestimate the importanceof the concept in Wittgenstein'sthought. Were the interpretation that Garver proposes for the expression a correct one, then it would be wrong in every caseto speakof a variety of forms of life. However, it could just as easily be held that there are twa distinct meaningsof Lebensfarmto be differentiated, just as we recogniseseveral meaningsfor the term 'languagegame'.One meaningof Lebensfarm- which would admit of use only in the singular - would accordingly be the sameas the meaning of Wittgenstein'sexpression'the common way of human acting'; anotherwould aIlow for several interpretations, all of them basedon the hypothesisthat there can be and are different forms of life, which, of necessity,also manifest themselvesin actionsand linguistic actions. Garver evidently constructshis position on the basis of this differentiation. For naturally, one cannotdeny that Wittgenstein himself usedthe expression'form of life' in other contextsand in other writings, not only in the plural form, but also in an anthropological-sociocultural sense;such as when he saysin the lectures on aesthetics:'In order to achieve clarity on aesthetic expressions,one must describeforms of life.'4 Or when he writes in the remarkson causeand effect that we have 'an idea ofwhich of the forms of life are primitive, and which derive from these.We 130

Form of Life or Forms of Life? believe that the simpier plough came before the more complicatedone." Perhaps the clearest counterexampleto Garver's position appearsin On certainty. Wittgensteindistinguisheshere between two epistemic attitudes of certainty: a 'struggling' one, and a 'calm' one. The first has much to do with our presuppositions and our being persuadedof something:we are persuadedthat we know something,but we lack a basis for the justification of that which we think we know. Justas thereare both assumptionsthat can be questionedand indubitableassumptions,so it is possible to distinguishthesetwo typesof certainty.One can, undercertain conditions, expresscalm certainty simply by assertingthat one knows that such-and-suchis the case. This provides the background for Wittgenstein's remark that certainty is something 'animal-like', that is, beyond our intellectual need to give a rational justification for it: 'Now 1 would like to regard this certainty, [that is, the calm certainty expressedin the assertion'I know .. .' R.H.) not as somethingakin to hastinessor superficiality, but as a form of life. (That is very badly expressedand probably badly thought as well.)'6 This is, characteristically,the same context as that which provides the background for the problem raised in the decisive passageof the secondpart of the Philosophical investigations, namely the question conceming the epistemicattitudeof certainty.Oneway of askingthe questionis: 'How is "the certainty that this is the case"manifestedin human action?'7This is the questionto which Wittgensteinalwaysseems to give different answers,becausenone seemsto him to be a full or satisfactoryone. But why not? As far as 1 can see,it is because he makesreference,in his inquiry into the justificational basisof epistemic activity, to a backgroundgiven, a referencewhich is analogousto his appeal,in his explanationof our understanding of words, to what is given by the language.Peopleagree in that they perform actionsby using language.This is at the sametime an agreementabout form - the 'form of life'. Wittgensteinbrought togetherhis conceptionof what can meaningfullybe said with the idea of a logical spaceallowing shifts of perspectivewithin it, a game-spacethat includes and limits all that might possibly be said at all. What is new in the later reflectionsand investigations is that foundationsare soughtand found in the practicesof everyday life, and the interconnectionsbetweenhabits, customsand institutions on the one hand, and people'sactivities and views on the other, becomeessentialfor the comprehensionof linguistic

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Form of Life or Forms of Life? action. The understandingoflinguistic action, like that oflinguistic meaning,is only possibleagainstthe backgroundof everyday practice,of humanactivity. The well-known passagefrom the Philosophicalinvestigations'What has to be accepted,the given, is - so one could say forms of lifè 8 - which Garver completely misunderstands, becomesclearerin this light. ·Confirmation for this can be found in Typescript No. 229 from the year 1946/7, which appearsas Part I of the Remarkson the philosophyofpsychology.It is found here in a context that brings the meaningof 'form of life', as it occurs in the passagefrom the Investigationsmentionedabove,into close connectionwith forms of activity that are also, in other passages, designatedas languagegames.The 'back to the rough ground of language'is read hereas a 'back to the facts' and not as the 'common behaviourof mankind' or - as Garverwantedto say - as ,theform of life'. It is just not the casethat as long as we are speakingof natural laws, we must imagine'alwaysthe sameform of life', as Garverhas claimed. 'One of the most importantmethodsI use is to imagine a historical developmentfor our ideasdifferent from what actually occurred.If we do this we seethe problem from a completelY new angle.'9In such circumstances,Wittgensteinbelieves,different aspectsof a problem becomevisible. The 'historical development of our ideas' is itself, naturally, bound up with activity or what are called languagegames. It is for this reason that the context of the earlier passagesounds like the enumerationof language games in Part I of the Investigations and becomes expandedin the later passage,in connectionwith the questionof mathematicalcertainty. Originally - that is, after 1948 - the question was often raised as to whether and to what extent colours are something 'specific', which 'cannotbe explainedin virtue of anything else'. The principal question here is, then: 'What is achieved by descriptionand report, at all?'10 And the answerto the worry that colours,like sounds,are indefinable,reads: Insteadof the elementary,the specific, the undefinable:the fact that we act in such-and-sucha way, e.g. punishcertain actions, determinethe facts of a case, give commands,make reports, describecolors, take an interest in the feelings of others.The accepted,the given, are - one could say - the facts of life. 11

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Form of Life or Forms of Life? Even in this passage,Wittgensteingives the term 'form of life' as an alternativefor the last expression.The expression'facts of life' in this context, however, designatesthat which actually occurs, and thesefacts standin oppositionto what we want to say and to that towards which we are enticed, by the languageand by our intellectual habits. It is Wittgenstein'sown phenomenological approachwhich shifts his focus from explanation(of a causalway of thinking) to a merely descriptiveone. If we are temptedto say that colours are something inde/inable and speci/ic, then his answeris: but we don't seered as somethingspeci/ic. 'Rather[we see1 the phenomenathat are demarcatedby the languagegame with the word "red" .'12 1 believe that enoughhas been said to be able to declarethat the majority of occurrencesof the term 'form of life' correspond to the majority of the occurrencesof the term 'fact', and that there is no good reasonto insist that Wittgensteinreally wanted to use the singularexpressionwherethe plural stands. It remains to say a few words concerningthe origin of this expression. U nfortunately, Janik and Toulmin13 have named EduardSprangeras one of the principal sources- perhapseven the principal source - of the use of the term by Wittgenstein. This is obviously false. Already in 1911, W. Fred had publisheda collection of articles under the title Lebensformen,which was reviewed by Hugo von Hofmannsthalin the sameyear. In this discussionwe read: No one wants to give much weight to forms, and yet everything we do adheresto and dependsupon forms. Through forms, the multifarious hangs together fairly weil, and presentsitself as a whoie. Forms are here forms of life (Lebensformen) , old and yet new; they proceedin stops and starts, yet expressthe essentialabout the relations, and say without words what no one would agree to if said with words and concepts.14 It would not be so far-fetchedto recall here the 'agreement'that Wittgensteinspeaksof in §241 of the Philisophicalinvestigations.In his collection of articles, which concernsalternative values and whose range of topics includes society and sociability, fashion, love and society, sportsand games,the art of cuisine, and the art of travelling, Fred (Alfred Wechsler's pseudonym) has given precedenceto a chapterentitled 'Form of life and forms of life'. 133

Form of Life or Forms of Life? Therehe posesthe questionof the extentto which the individual, who seeksto find and constructhis own form of life, is able to free himself from the forms that comprise society and culture. He believesthat the individual is indeedat liberty to choosehis own form of life, and ought to do so, but that the totality of forms of life - 'all forms are languages'- or that which is also called the culture of a society, cannot be shapedand createdby individuals.tS When one saysthat to imaginea languageis to imaginea form oflife (PI §19), it is includedin and implied by this statementthat there are a numberof forms of life and not just one. And just as surely this doesnot mean the cow-like, fish-like, dog-like and so on, but rather otherhuman behaviour, other societies, realor imagined. In theseWittgenstein seeksthe praxeologicalfoundation for the understandingof linguistic actions. For this reason he could say that his examplesfor simple languagegames arenot theoreticalconcepts,or, so to speak,idealisedversionsof common notions,but 'poles'which indicatethe endpointsof possiblegradations.This understandingof his own position shows,on the level of philosophical reflection, that one of the objections that are closeat hand, namely, that the simple languagegamescould not mirror the complexity of the actual, is an empty one. From the 'physiognomic'perspective,the discovery of which Wittgenstein shareswith Spenglerand Goethe,the whole Gestaltmust always be considered in the interpretation of a particular. For this reason,it appearssimply unreasonableto claim that the altemative forms of life that Wittgenstein spoke of don't also express differencesbetweenactual forms of life, or expressthem at least in many cases.It does not strike me as very persuasivewhen Garver does not admit one of the five passagesas one of the 'principal sources'only becauseof the fact that it contradictshis own interpretation.When Wittgensteinconsidersthe questionof what a societyofthe 'feeble-minded',a society,that is, 'that never played many of our customarylanguagegames'would look like, he designatesthis questionas an importantone. And in his answer there appearsan expressivedevice he often uses and which I mentioned earlier, namely, that of placing a phenomenonin anothercontext,anotherorder. One imagines the feeble-mindedunder the aspectof the degenerate,the essentiallyincomplete,as it were in tatters. And so under that of disorder insteadof a more primitive

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Farm of Life or Farms of Life? order (which would be a far more fruitful way of looking at them). We just don't seea societyof such people.16 Thus Wittgenstein frequently uses examplesinvolving groups, tribes, and societiesthat behavedifferently from the way we do here and now, and maintain customs,practicesand distinctions that are not familiar to us. That there are societieswhich use scalesand conceptsof colour different from ours - an example Wittgensteinusesoften - is an empirically well-establishedfact. Enough said; I wantedonly to drawattentionto an empirical indination in the outlook of this great philosopher,an indination that is often overlooked.AIso, 1 had wantedto indicatea number of misunderstandings concemingthe plural form of a key term in Wittgenstein'sthought. If I may aUow myself a dosing remark, I would like to point out that three years after the appearanceof W. Fred's book on Farms of life, there appeareda coUection of essaysby a Viennese poet, one of the early contributorsto Die Facke4 and a friend of Paul Ernst, Otto Stoessl: Lebensformund Dichtungsform('Form of life and poetic form'). In the essayby the same title, the three prototypical forms of poetry - lyric, dramatic, and epic - are projectedback onto the forms of life that ariseamonghumans: In poetry, the poetic grows and ripensout ofthe form oflife, and eachcontainsafter its.own manner,in its languageand with its meansof representation,the whole of the world, as this is containedin the individual person,in the family, and in the stateas a whole.17 And for Stoesslthe individual in his individuation correspondsto the 'destinedmen', the lyrical form - 'The languageis the only measureof things.' To the dramaticform, there correspondsthe family 'as first bonding of opposingas weU as related elements', and finaUy, correspondingto the epic form is 'the community, the tribe, the nation, the state,or howeverone wants to circumscribethe higher groupingsof men into configurationdetermined by destiny'.IH Wittgenstein would not have adopted such ideas. But he shows, in measuredclarity, that the concept of a form of life should be seenas a whole that correspondsto and underliesthe literary art. And so the concept was used. To use it otherwise 135

Form of Life or Forms of Life? would have required specialjustification. But Wittgensteinoffers no such thing. Why shouldwe then impute one to him?

Notes 1. SeeChapter8. 2. N. Garver, 'Die Lebensform in Wittgenstein's Philosophisehen Untersuehungen',Grazer PhilosophiseheStudien,21 (1984), pp. 33-54. 3. M. Black, 'Lebensform and Sprachspielin Wittgenstein'slater work', in E. Leinfellner, et al (eds), Wittgensteinandhis impacton eontemporary philosophy. Proeeedingsof the 2nd international Wittgenstein symposium. (Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky,Vienna, 1978), pp. 325-31. 4. L. Wittgenstein,Lecturesandeonversationson aestheties,psyehologyand religious belief, ed. C. Barrett (University of Califomia Press,Berkeleyand Los Angeles,1967). 5. L. Wittgenstein, 'Causeand efTect: intuitive awareness',ed. R. Rhees,Philosophia,6 (1976), p. 420. 6. OC §358; Cf. §§356,357, 359. 7. PI 11 XI, p. 225e. 8. Ibid., p. 226e. 9. CV p. 37e. 10. L. Wittgenstein, Remarks on the philosophy of psyehology, I, ed. G.E.M. AnscombeandG.H. von Wright (Blackwell, Oxford, 1980),§§61928. 11. Ibid., I §630. 12. Ibid., I §619. 13. A. Janik and S. Toulmin, Wittgenstein's Vienna, (Simon and Schuster,New Vork, 1973), pp. 230fT. 14. H. von Hofmannsthal,'''Lebensformen''von W. Fred', in his GesammelteWerke, Redenund AufsätzeI (1897-7973),(Suhrkamp,Frankfurt, 1979), p. 400. 15. W. Fred, Lebensformen,3rd edn, (Munich-Leipzig, n.d.), p. 18fT. (The sameauthor, by the way, is responsiblefor the first extensivestudy of the commodity characterof literature: W. Fred, Literature als Ware, (Oesterheld,Berlin, 1911). In his book Arehitektur als Symb04('Architecture as symbol') (Schroll, Vienna, 1931),JosefFrank usesthe expression 'Lebensform'to contrastlife in Metropolis, Philemonand Baucis, and to thereby clarify the basic principles of modem architecture. Moritz Schlick notes somethingsimilar. 'There are difTerent forms of life. The narrowmindedand uneducatedtend to display contemptfor thoseforms to which they do not belong.' In M. Schlick, Aphorismen,ed. B. Hardy Schlick (Vienna, 1962), p. 39. 16. Z §372; cf. §§371, 373-381. Seealso: Wittgenstein, Remarkson the philosophyofpsyehologyI, §§645,646. 17. O. Stoessl,Lebensformund Dichtungsform.Essays.(Munich-Leipzig, 1914), p. 8, cf. p. 23. 18. Ibid., p. 7.

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145

Index of N ames

Carnap,Rudolf 11-13,22,24,26, 28-32,34-6,40-3,101, 112 Cassirer,Ernst 55 Cavell, Stanley45, 46, 56, 110, 113 Chisholm, Roderick M. 4, 25, 106 Cloeren,H. 71 ColTa, Alberto 43 Cohen,Robert S. 43 Comte, Auguste9, 34 Copernicus45

Adjukiewicz, Kasimir 7 Adler, Friedrich 13 Albert, Hans71 Anseombe,C.E.M. ix,73, 88, 113, 127, 136 Aristotle 3,6,47 Arntz, Cert 43 Atkinson, C.F. 88 Augustine46, 64 Ayer, AlfredJules42, 113, 127

Bacon, Francis99 Baker, CordonP. 28, 42 Barrett, Cyril ix, 127, 136 Bartley III, William W. 89 Baum, Wilhelm 99 Beek, L.W. 56 Benussi,Vittorio 7 Berdyaev91 BergheI, Hal 88 Bergmann,Hugo 25, 38 Black, Max 63, 72, 73, 130, 136 Boltzmann, Ludwig vii, 10, 11, 24,77,90 Bolzano, Bernard5, 8, 25, 93 Borgis, Ilona 72 Bouveresse,Jacques56 Braaten,Janeviii Brentano,Clemens3 Brentano,Franz 3, 4, 6-10, 24, 25 Brentano,Lujo 3 Bubner, Rüdiger73 Bühler, Karl 87

Darwin, Charles76, 84 Deseartes,Rene52, 64 Dilthey, Wilhelm 3 Duhem,Pierre 13, 24, 37, 39, 40, 42 Ehrenfels,Christian von 7, 80, 88 Einstein,Albert 32, 39 Eisier, Rudolf 37 Engel, S. Morris 56 Ernst, Paul 135 Essler,Wil helm K 43 Exner, Adolf 10 Fann, KT. 25, 26, 72 Faust,KT. 77 Feigl, Herbert 11, 12, 14,26,32, 34 Feyerabend,Paul K 108 Fieker, Ludwig von 91 Findlay, John N. 25 146

Index Frank, Philipp 11, 13,22,28,36, 38,39,136 Fred, VVo 133, 135, 136 Frege,GottIob 5, 12, 38, 45, 64, 67, 77, 78, 90 Freud, Sigmund7, 25 Gargani,Aldo 32, 42, 98 Garver, Newton 129-32, 134, 136 George,R.A. 112 Gerber,Gustav59, 71 Gödel, Kurt 11, 38 Goethe,JohannVVolfgang von 53,78,79,85,87,119,134 Granger,C.G. 73 Griffin, James72 Grossmann,Reinhardt25 Gruppe,Otto Friedrich 58, 71 Guterman,N. 25

Jacobi,Friedrich 58, 59 Janik, Allan 25, 75, 78, 87, 88, 90-2, 98, 133, 136 Janoska,Georg 56, 126 Jaspers,Karl 91 Joergensen, Joergen25 Johnston,VVilliam M. 59, 71 Jones,Ernest25 Kafka, Franz98 Kamitz, Reinhard15,25,26 Kant, Immanuel3-6, 11, 15, 45-8,51-6,58,59,64,65,74, 90-3,98, 110, 111, 113, 117, 119, 121 KastiI, Alfred 6, 7, 25 Kaufmann,Felix 11, 30, 31 Kemp Smith, Norman 113 Kenny, Anthony ix, 26, 73, 106, 113 King 33 Kleist, Henrich von 98 Kolakowski, Leszek7,9,25 Kotarbinski, Tadeusz7 Kraft, Victor 11, 27, 42 Kraus, Karl vii, 77, 90 Kraus, askar6, 25 Kruntorad, P. 98 Kürnberger23 Kuhn, ThomasS. 1,23,102

Hacker, Peter46,47, 52, 56, 95, 99, 127 Hahn, Hans 11, 22, 29, 31, 36, 38,39,42 Haller, Rudolf 25, 26, 42, 43, 56, 7~ 7~ 7~ 7~88,98,112,113,126 Hamann,JohannGeorg52,56, 58, 59 Harre, Rome 42 Hartnack72 Hegel, GeorgFriedrich VVilhelm 59 Heidegger,Martin 8, 91 Hempel,Carl Gustav43 Herbart,JohannFriedrich 5 Herder,JohannGottfried 52, 58 Hertz, Heinrich 64, 77, 90 Hillebrand, Franz4, 7 Hobbes,Thomas58 Höller, Alois 7, 10, 24 Hofmannsthal,Hugo von 133, 136 Hübner,Adolf 88 Hueber,Hilla viii Hume, David 7-9, 11, 12, 15,24, 53,58,59,61,111 Husserl,Edmund5, 8

Lackey, D. 25 Lakatos,Imre 4 Lavoisier, Antoine 103 Lee, Desmond33, 42 Leibniz, Gottfried VVilhelm 5, 61 Leinfellner, Elisabeth72, 88, 113, 127, 136 Leinfellner, VVerner 88 Lenoci, MicheIe 25 LeRider,Jacques98 Leser, Norbert 98 Locke,John7,58,59 Loos, Adolf 77, 90 Lorenz, Kuno 69, 73 Lourenco,Manuel87 Lucka, Emil 91 Luckhardt,C.G. 42 Lukacs,Georg91 Lukasiewicz,Jan 7

Ingarden,Roman8

147

Index Lullus, Raimundus61

Quine, Willard van Orman 13, 42

Mach, Ernst 3,9-11, 13,24,36, 37,39,60 Magnus,M. 42 Malcolm, Norman 65, 130 Mally, Ernst 7,24 Marty, Anton 6, 7 Marx, Karl 85 Masaryk,ThomasG. 6 Mauthner,Fritz 11, 25, 52, 53, 56-62, 70-3, 99 McGuinness,Brian F. ix, 26, 42, 56, 87, 91, 98, 127 Meinong, Alexius 7, 8, 10, 24, 25, 106 Menger, Karl11, 38 Michelitsch, Helga viii MiII, J ohn Stuart6-8, 59 Mises, Richard von 28, 42 Moore, GeorgeEdward 64, 104, 105, 113 Morscher,Edgar25 Muirhead,J.H. 113 Mulder, Henk 43 Müller, A. 63, 72 Mulligan, Kevin 98

Radakovic,Theodor11, 38 Raico, R. 42 Rey, Abel 34, 37 Rhees,Rush 9,53,56,73,88,89, 113,127,136 Richards,LA. 32 Rorty, Richard 127 Runes,David 26 RusselI,Bertrandvii, 7, 12,23-5, 32,33,38,39,42,45,60,64, 65, 67, 72, 77, 90 Rutte, Heiner 42, 43, 88 Ryle, Gilbert 17 Rynin, D. 113 Salamun,Kurt 25 Savigny, Eike von 63, 72 Schilpp, Paul A. 26 Schleichert,Hubert 26 Schlick, Hardy 88, 136 Schlick, Moritz 11-13, 16, 17,20, 25,26,28-32,36,38,40,42, 43, 63, 76, 80, 88, 108, 113, 127, 136 Schmidt, Raymund71 Scholz, Heinrich 65 Schopenhauer, Arthur 64, 74, 77, 92, 93, 95, 96, 99 Schulte,Joachim26, 42, 56,127 Schulz, Walter 63,72 Shanker,Stuartvii, 42 Smith, Barry viii, 98 Socrates64 Specht,Ernst Konrad 63, 72 Spengler,Oswald 53, 74-80, 82, 84-90, 119-21, 123, 127, 134 Spranger,Eduard133 Sraffa, Piero 7, 77, 78 StadIer,Friedrich 43 Stegmüller,Wolfgang 63,64,72, 73 Stenius,Erik 64, 72 Stoessl,Otto 135, 136 Stöhr, Adolf 10, 11, 59 Stumpf, Carl 6

Nadler,Josef56 Nagel, Ernest10,26,63,72 Neider, Heinrich 29 Nelson, Leonard76, 77, 79, 88, 127 Neurath,Marie 43 Neurath,Otto 11-14,22,24,31, 32,34-40,42,43,76,77,79, 80, 88, 96, 127 Nietzsche,Friedrich 76, 99 Nyiri,Janos,Cristoffviii, 87,127 Occam20, 37 Ogden,C.K. 32 Pears,David ix, 26, 72, 73 Pitcher, Georg 25, 64, 72 Plato 61,64 Poincaré,Henri 24, 37, 39, 40 Pollak, W.26 Popper,Karl Raimund 10, 17, 31,89, 103, 108, 112

Tarski, Alfred 35

148

Index Wechsler,Alfred 133 Weiler, Gershon72 Weinberg,JuliusRudolph 42 Weininger,Otto 77, 78, 88, 90-9 Wilkins, J. 61 Winch, Peterix, 91 Wright, Georg Henrik von 9, 63, 75,107,113,119,127,136 Wucherer-Huldenfeld,A. 25 Wuchterl, Kurt 63, 72 Wurm, Franz 98

Toulmin, Stephen25, 75, 88, 133,136 Twardowski, Kasimir 6 Veber, France7 Velde-Schlick,B.B.F. van der 43 Vespucci,Amerigo 23, 102 Vico, Giovanni Battista 58, 59 Vuillemin, J ules 42 Waismann,Friedrich 11, 12,26, 28-32,38,39,41,42,49,56, 63, 76, 127 Waliner, Friedrich 98

Zee, Fred van der viii Zilsel, Edgar 11 Zimmermann,Robert 5

149