Lovers of Sophia

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by Jason Reza Jorjani


  is that which renounces the thinking subject’s il usion of being

  able to change the world according to one’s personal wishes. There

  is a strikingly obvious fal acy here. How can one “renounce” any

  influence on the happenings of the world if one does not have any

  influence over those happenings to begin with? The so-called change

  of “horizon” – that qualitatively transforms the world of the man

  who does God’s will into a “happy” world – cannot be anything that

  one could possibly bring about by any means. Surely, if the world is

  at all different, even qualitatively, this affects one’s thoughts about one’s experience, and these thoughts are themselves facts of the

  world that are supposedly independent of any personal wil .

  In the Tractatus Wittgenstein clearly states that what cannot be said in logical y clear language cannot be thought either. However, 24 Ibid., 6.7.16.

  25 Ibid., 8.7.16.

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  lovers of sophia

  in the passages above Wittgenstein conveniently claims that the

  thinking subject is an il usion. But then what is it that re-cognizes

  that one bears one attitude towards the world, such as renunciation,

  rather than another attitude, such as striving? What is it (if not some kind of thought) that is cognoscente of the qualitative difference of one’s experience of the world in the two cases? If we “are indeed dependent” on the will of God that wil s the facts of the world

  as if from beyond the world, then we are always so dependent.

  Wittgenstein makes that a conclusion which follows inevitably from

  his definition of “God” and of the “facts of the world” as two sides

  of the same coin, as it were. There is nothing ‘in between’ them.

  Therefore it is not possible for me to change my attitude towards the

  world, or to resolve to have an ethical will as if I have ever had an

  unethical one. To the extent that I have a will at al , I will everything that does indeed happen – mine is the solitary ‘spirit’ behind all

  ‘material’ facts:

  A stone, the body of a beast, the body of a man, my body, all

  stand on the same level. That is why what happens, whether it

  comes from a stone or from my body is neither good nor bad.

  ...It is true: Man is the microcosm: I am my world.26

  Only remember that the spirit of the snake, of the lion, is your

  spirit. For it is only from yourself that you are acquainted with

  spirit at al ... The same with the elephant, with the fly, with the

  wasp... Is this the solution of the puzzle why men have always

  believed that there was one spirit common to the whole world?

  And in that case it would, of course, also be common to lifeless

  things too. This is the way I have traveled: Idealism singles men

  out from the world as unique, solipsism singles me alone out,

  and at last I see that I too belong with the rest of the world, and

  so on the one side nothing is left over, and on the other side, as unique, the world. In this way idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out. [see TLP 5.64] And in this sense I can also

  26 Wittgenstein,

  Tractatus, 5.63; Notebooks, 12.10.16.

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  speak of a will that is common to the whole world. But this is in

  a higher sense my will.27

  Everything from cats torturing mice to Nazis experimenting on

  starved children, is all my will because I have no conscious self

  other than a ‘God’ who wil s the facts of the world (including my

  thoughts) just as they stand. I am deluded if I think, wish or appear

  to will otherwise, but this ‘delusion’ must itself be the will of God.

  Such is the so-called “ethics” of the tractarian Wittgenstein; it voids any coherent meaning of the word.

  2. The Missionaries and the Natives

  In the preface to Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein writes that he has been “forced to recognize grave mistakes” in what he

  wrote in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. For the purposes of this paper, the question is whether his running critique of these mistakes

  is equal y destructive of any notion of Justice that would transcend

  mere cultural conditioning or coercive force. So as to set the stage

  for answering this question, a brief and general discussion of

  Wittgenstein’s critique of some of the central claims of the Tractatus would be in order.

  According to the Tractatus, there is one essential function of language, namely, the description of reality by means of reference.

  As we have seen, this notion that only “stating the facts” of the

  world is sensibly meaningful has grave implications for ethics. In

  the Investigations, Wittgenstein notes that there are many other functions of language, such as joking, acting, questioning, thanking,

  swearing, commanding, speculating, evaluating, and story telling.28

  Language is instrumental.29 Its words are tools whose meaning is not

  27 Wittgenstein,

  Notebooks, 15.10.16.

  28 Wittgenstein,

  Philosophical Investigations, 23.

  29 Ibid., 569.

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  lovers of sophia

  an object to which they refer, but the manner in which the word is

  used.30 There is no essence of all language.31

  To think that words always function as the names of things or

  that they always refer to objects (which is in fact only one type of language use) leads to the abstract reification of nouns like “time”,

  “being”, “nothing”, and “number” as if we could meaningful y

  inquire into what these ‘things’ are – as if we, as knowing subjects

  could determine to what objects they actual y refer. This causes

  these unusual ‘objects’ to assume the pretensions of an occult

  significance. According to Wittgenstein, Philosophy – including his

  own earlier efforts in the Tractatus – consists of over-generalization, over stretching of analogies and the abstraction of words from the

  context of their normal usage in our ordinary practical lives.32 We

  are bewitched by words on account of paying attention only to their

  surface grammar or apparent place in the structure of a sentence,

  rather than to their depth grammar or usage in everyday life.33

  Philosophy’s ‘problems’ arise only because Philosophy is divorced

  from the practical tasks of everyday life.34 These specious perplexities of the annoyingly confused pedant are not to be ‘solved’, but rather

  dissolved by remembering the everyday practical employment of

  language that appears philosophical y problematic.35

  Generality is a matter of degree, and ‘logical’ words are not any

  more ‘sublime’ or significant than other words.36 The Investigations call the reductionist foundationalism of the Tractatus into question.

  Wittgenstein admits that he was mistaken to believe that there are

  basic terms from which all others are defined, or that there are any

  absolutely simple entities of which all others are composed. While

  it may be said that logic characterizes the basic structure of what is 30 Ibid., 108, 421.

  31 Ibid., 16-27, 65, 92, 110.

  32 Ibid., 38, 60.

  33 Ibid., 664.

  34 Ibid., 132.

  35 Ibid., 116.

  36 Ibid., 114.

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  possible within a language (e
ven what it is possible to think), this is a vacuous observation, since there are different ways of stipulating

  the meaning of terms such as “basic”, “structure”, and “possible”.37

  On this view, what is taken to be “basic” and how one construes a

  “structure” is never a matter of objective fact, it depends on the aims and motivations of those doing the defining.

  All that is universal y basic to language, and can never be

  eliminated, is its indeterminacy. Such indeterminacy or vagueness of linguistic terms, and the open texture of language in which

  they function, does not in practice detract from their utility.38 The

  meaning of the same word will differ based on the variety of ways

  in which it is used.39 The various ways in which we use words can

  be thought of on the analogy of language games.40 While the rules of any given language game are arbitrary, these “rules” are what render

  the game meaningful and they should not be violated so long as one

  is playing that game and not some other. The practical nature of the

  rules and the function that they confer on words (and expressions)

  means that language games should not be judged based upon how

  successful y they mirror reality. This would be like evaluating soccer on the basis of how successful y it refers to the world. It also does

  not make sense to judge one game by the standards of another, as if

  one could sensibly say that poker is inferior to sprinting because it is slower. Each language game has its own aims and standards.41

  Wittgenstein does, however, observe that there are family

  resemblances between the various applications of certain words.

  The analogy is to the fact that certain members of a family share

  their build and gait with others, but not their eye color and facial

  features, while others share their build and features but not their

  hair color, and so forth.42 These irregular overlapping similarities

  37 Ibid., 89-106.

  38 Ibid., 69, 71.

  39 Ibid., 43.

  40 Ibid., 108.

  41 Ibid., 23.

  42 Wittgenstein,

  Philosophical Investigations, 67.

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  lovers of sophia

  and dissimilarities are also found among games.43 Soccer and

  tennis both involve coordinated control of a ball and are similar in

  this respect, but soccer is also similar to racing because it involves running, and tennis is similar to volleyball in so far as it involves

  sending a ball over a net whereas in soccer one tries to get a ball into a net. To the extent that it involves a net at al , however, soccer shares a similarity with tennis and basketball that it does not share with

  American football (which involves running and controlling a bal ,

  but no net). Games of the aforementioned type are all more similar

  to each other than they are to board games, and some card games

  bear a greater resemblance to certain board games than they do to

  other card games like solitaire (where there are no fellow players or

  opponents).

  By means of this analogy to games and family resemblances,

  Wittgenstein also critiques the mistaken ‘ostensive definition’

  picture of language forwarded in the Tractatus.44 The reader will recall that this notion that words somehow ‘mirror’ objects in the

  world, so that the former can be distinct enough from the latter in

  order to refer to them, ultimately involved Wittgenstein in a bizarre parallelism between an impersonal immaterial consciousness and

  an unconscious world of facts. This metaphysical parallelism was

  shown to be detrimental to the individual’s capacity to exercise

  choice, which capacity must be the basis of any and all coherent

  notions of ethical responsibility. The heretofore explicated remarks

  in Philosophical Investigations amount to a rejection of this tacit metaphysical dualism of the Tractatus.

  Now Wittgenstein insists that like all other games, language

  games only develop their significance within the context of the

  collective cultural activities of a particular society.45 We are not immaterial minds trapped within physical bodies, waiting only

  to learn the right words to express our innermost thoughts.46 We

  43 Ibid., 66.

  44 Wittgenstein,

  Tractatus, 3.6.

  45 Wittgenstein,

  Philosophical Investigations, 23.

  46 Ibid., 32.

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  cannot even think, let alone talk to ourselves before we have been

  taught the practical uses of words. For a child to learn language is not at all the same type of phenomenon as for an already linguistical y

  adept British adult to travel in a foreign country and try to learn

  its language by means of guessing at whether certain words that the

  non-English speaking locals try to teach him to refer to the same

  object-concepts as certain words in his native language do.47 It is

  Wittgenstein’s contention that a child first acquires the capacity for any conceptual thought at all only as she is taught language in the

  context of the shared cultural practices of her society.

  The problem, from an ethical perspective, is that while the

  standards of certain cultures may overlap, people brought up in

  very different cultures may be unable to find any rational y objective standard of ethical conduct to arbitrate in their relations with one

  another. Indeed, in On Certainty Wittgenstein claims that where there are real y two (or more) fundamental y different worldviews

  there will be a “combat” that can only end with the destruction of all but one party, or with an irrational persuasion (Überredung, literal y to ‘out talk’ / ‘over speak’ or verbal y dazzle) that converts ( bekehren, literal y ‘turns’) one of the combatants:

  Where two principles real y do meet which cannot be reconciled

  with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and

  a heretic. I said I would ‘combat’ the other man, – but wouldn’t

  I give him reasons? Certainly; but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes persuasion. [Überredung]. (Think what

  happens when missionaries convert [ bekehren] natives.)48

  Could it be that Wittgenstein’s thoroughgoing critique of the

  inhuman worldview of the Tractatus has no greater ethical

  implication than a return to Thrasymachus’s doctrine of ‘might

  makes right’? Wittgensteinians who wants to avert this conclusion

  might claim that it overlooks the fact that Wittgenstein does not

  47 Wittgenstein,

  Philosophical Investigations, 32.

  48 Wittgenstein,

  On Certainty, 611-12.

  329

  lovers of sophia

  see all empirical propositions as holding the same status.49 “Not all

  corrections of our views are on the same level.”50 The sense of certain propositions hinges on certain others already being presumed. These

  ‘hinge propositions’ are more fundamental than others:

  That is to say, the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as

  it were like hinges on which those turn.51

  Wittgenstein also uses a river’s water flow, the sand on its banks

  and bed, and the more solid bedrock of the river as an analogy for

  different types of empirical propositions.52 The analogy is intended to suggest that these different types of empirical propositions admit of

  si
gnificantly different degrees of susceptibility to change over time, even if no sharp distinction can be drawn between them (even if the

  bedrock can be eroded by the water currents). None of them have

  the timeless certainty of a priori logical truths. The beliefs according to which we act are not based upon logical tautologies. Rather, our

  actions are grounded on empirical propositions, some of which are

  analogous to the river bed and act as tacit background assumptions

  that lend more derivative propositions the context that allows them

  to be meaningful – as the hidden river bed shapes the visible flow of

  the water.53

  “Earth is older than 50 years” is such a proposition, whereas

  “Earth is 4.5 (rather than 4.8) billion years old” is not. The latter of these two is always open to reevaluation based on new scientific

  evidence, while the former is assumed by the very activity of

  collecting and assessing such evidence. The former is not a logical y

  certain truth, but if it were false it would mean something like our

  world is a computer simulation that was just started up and all of

  49 Ibid., 213, 167, 308, 401.

  50 Ibid., 300.

  51 Ibid., 341.

  52 Ibid., 96-99.

  53 Ibid., 151, 309.

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  our ‘memories’ are programmed and so forth, in which case no

  empirical ‘evidence’ that we amass would tell us anything about what

  the world (outside the simulation) is real y like. Our whole “system of evidence” would have to be called into question. That the Earth

  is older than 50 years is tacitly assumed by the fact that either I am over 50 years old or my parents (or their parents) are. To question

  such operating assumptions as “Earth is older than 50 years” is to be

  involved in viciously “going around in a circle.”54

  There is some evidence to suggest that Wittgenstein identified

  the fundamental hinge proposition as the fact of our being human, and that this is even more fundamental than “Earth is older than

  50 years”, the latter deriving its certainty from the fact that a

  human being has forbearers.55 There are a handful of passages in

  Philosophical Investigations where Wittgenstein makes reference to a singular human “form of life” or “common behavior of mankind”

  that acts as our most fundamental “system of reference”. It does not

 

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