Talking Points for a Lecture
1. Wittgenstein's early masterpiece, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus , culminated in silence. The relentless steps of the search for clarity and meaning leads to the famous pronouncement of silence in the final sentence, “ Wovon mann nicht sprechen kann, dar ü ber mus mann schweigen .” Because Wittgenstein returned to philosophy for more than two decades until the end of his life, the question arises whether this return defied his earlier conclusion or had the effect of canceling it. His later philosophy was dominated by what he called grammar, so a useful specific form of the issue is whether making grammatical remarks, as Wittgenstein did in his later work of clarification, is a continuation or a rejection of the silence that he had earlier led himself into.
The plan of my paper is simple. I will first consider what is included and what is not included in the key terms ‘silence' and ‘grammar' as Wittgenstein used them, and then argue that restricting philosophy to grammar was a way of continuing the silence with which Wittgenstein so dramatically concluded the Tractatus .
Silence **************************************
2. Wittgenstein's silence is not an absence of noise, nor even an absence of verbalization. The silence applies only to “what we cannot speak about,” and Wittgenstein held that there are indeed things that we can speak about, namely matter of fact, which he equated with the domain of science. The distinction between philosophy and science is drawn sharply in the Tractatus , and the silence applies to philosophy. This interpretation is uncontroversial, amply supported by the remarks immediately preceding the proclamation of silence:
The correct method in philosophy would be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e., propositions of natural science – i.e., something that has nothing to do with philosophy – and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person – he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy – this method would be the only strictly correct one.
My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them – as steps – to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)
He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. (TLP 6.53-6.54)
3. Wittgenstein does not make such a clear distinction between philosophical doctrine and philosophical clarification as he does between philosophy and science. Is there such a distinction? The passage just cited (TLP 6.53-6.54) suggests it. In response to a metaphysical claim, I am urged to demonstrate to the speaker that he has failed to assign meanings to some of his terms. Doing this seems to be both pointing out a kind of fact (though perhaps not a kind of fact that Wittgenstein recognizes in the Tractatus ) and a part of the work of clarification. The clarification is an activity; only doctrine is nonsense.
4. The sanction for violating the silence – for attempting to speak about what we cannot speak about – is to utter nonsense, which amounts to not really saying anything. Not saying anything is itself the same as remaining silent. Looked at in this way, The conclusion of the Tractatus is less a moral injunction than a logical necessity. The ‘must' in the final sentence is a logical rather than a moral 'must', in spite of the mystical tone and undeniable ambiguity of these words. 1
5. It is useful to think of TLP 7 as a logical truth. The first implication of this remark is that the work of a philosopher will have no more relevance to matters of life and death than do modus ponens, modus tollens , or the principles of syllogistic inference. It is by recognizing and accepting these limits that philosophy becomes possible at all. This aspect of the Tractatus fleshes out Wittgenstein's pre-war remark that “Philosophy consists of logic and metaphysics: logic is its basis.” (NB 106)
6. Nonetheless the mysticism of the Tractatus is palpable and inescapable. Although clear enough in his remark about seeing the world aright (TLP 6.54), it is explicit in TLP 6.522: “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest . They are what is mystical.”
7. There is tension but no contradiction between the logical analysis and mysticism in the Tractatus . Wittgenstein thought the quest of philosophy was for clarification rather than for knowledge. His yoking together logical tautologies and moral principles, in that they both lack sense, suggests that he thought of the clarification provided by logic as closely identified with the clarification required by moral integrity, and hence that logical confusion was not only a sin but the most significant sort of sin. This is not a common perspective on either logic or morals, so it no wonder that it disconcerted Russell. Being a philosopher meant adopting an unusual stance towards the world, assigning facts to scientists and morals to moralists, while as a philosopher remaining silent about both what is the case and what to do. Wittgenstein has a moral, quasi-religious, commitment to these limits ans to eschewing nonsense.
8. So the silence of the Tractatus is both a logical truth and a moral commitment.
Grammar ********************
9. Near the beginning of his second career, Wittgenstein wrote that his goal was clarity as an end in itself – Klarheit als Selbtszweck – and he proceeded to lay out over the years a conception of clarity radically different from the conception of analytic clarity developed in the Tractatus .
10. Being interested in clarity as an end in itself entails being disinterested (as a philosopher) in scientific and moral truth. While Wittgenstein made an exception for certain truths that he came to regard as part of grammar – such as that his name is Ludwig Wittgenstein and that he has spent his whole life on or near the surface of the earth –, he held to the principle emphatically with respect to scientific and moral truth. The distinction between seeking clarification and seeking knowledge, prominent in the Tractatus ; is retained with emphasis in his later work. 2
11. An important aspect of the conception of clarity that Wittgenstein developed in his later work is that it is contextual rather than analytic. Clarity is rarely to be achieved by analyzing a complex into its constitutive elements and their distinctive arrangement. Reliance on context rather than analysis is shown most emphatically by Wittgenstein's repeated focus on the use of words and sentences.
12. There are different sorts of use. Wittgenstein uses five German words that are translated as “use” in English versions: Gebrauch, Nutzen, Benutzung, Verwendung, Anwendung . 3 In some instances the reference is to quite general usage (“ Gebrauch in der Sprache ”) and in others to the employment ( Anwendung ) of a word or sentence in specific circumstances. In every case, however, there is at least implicit reference to some context or other, rather than to analysis, for the work of clarifying meaning.
13. The early sections of Philosophical Investigations culminate in §23:
How many kinds of sentences are there? Perhaps assertions, questions, and commands? – There are countless kinds: countless different kinds of use [ Verwendung ] of all that we call “signs”, “words”, “sentences.” And this multiplicity is not something fixed, something given once and for all; rather new types of speech, new language-games, as we may say, come in being and others wither away and are forgotten. (We can get a rough picture of this from the changes in mathematics.)
The word “language-game” is meant to bring into prominence that speaking a language is part of an activity, or of a form of life. . . . .
It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools of language and the ways of their being used, the multiplicity of kinds of words and sentences, with what logicians have said about the construction of language. (Including the author of the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus .)
14. Here we see a focus on what we might call complete expressions, ones that stand alone as everyday utterances. They are different kinds of sentences, different uses of language, and their differences from one another are basic in the sense that they are not to be understood through analysis of their components. They are not ultimate wholes, about which nothing further can be said, but taking these wholes rather than their parts as basic constitutes a radical break with the Tractatus .
15. The focus on language-games, that is, on uses of language, is evident from the manner in which begins the Investigations and is confirmed in later texts. At PI §656 he writes, “Look on the language-game as the primary thing.” In Part II (p. 226) he makes the intriguing observation, “What has to be accepted, the given, is – so one could say – forms of life .” This observation contrasts with usual conceptions of the given, which understand the given to be particulars or universals rather than anything so broad and undefined as forms of any kind. 4
16. It is difficult to see the distinctions among these uses of language, these language-games, as constituting a part of grammar. It is not grammar in the most common sense, since that consists of morphology and syntax.
17. It is characteristic of morphology and syntax that they have to do with langue rather than parole , in the terminology of Saussure. That is to say, they concern the structure of language isolated from its use. There is, however, one branch of phonology, phonemics, that focuses on parole rather than langue . 5 Wittgenstein's insistence on distinctions among language-games as fundamental to his work of clarification also involves primarily parole rather than langue .
18. Identification of elements of parole requires different methods from the primarily analytic methods of morphology and syntax. Two methods used in phonemics to replace analytic definitions are the identification of contrasts and of distinctive features . Both these methods are prominent in Wittgenstein's later work.
19. Wittgenstein emphasized the importance of contrast by once saying that he could use the line “I'll teach you differences!” (from King Lear ) as a motto for his work. 6 It is obvious contrasts that he refers to in PI §23 and again in PI §78.
20 Sometimes Wittgenstein refers to distinctive features in order to make a contrast obvious. In distinguishing expressions of emotion from expressions of sensation, for example, he notes that although one might say “That could not have been grief - it lasted only five minutes,” one could not say that same thing about pain.
21. Wittgenstein's grammar thus differs from traditional grammar by extending the study of language from langue into parole , contrasting kinds of utterances and inscriptions by distinguishing the different circumstances of their use and their different possibilities for discourse continuation. 7
22, Grammar cannot be foundational in any sense. It is necessarily secondary rather than primary, since it depends on the prior existence of the language it describes. Nor can it lay the groundwork for wisdom about either the physical world or our human world, since its subject-matter is language rather than the world or our behavior in it. In these respects Wittgenstein's later work of clarification is a refinement of the silence of the Tractatus .
The Power and Perils of Silence ********************************
23. The silence with which the Tractatus concludes is not broken in Philosophical Investigations , nor in other later work. The silence consists in focusing on the work of clarification and refusing all temptations to contribute to quests for knowledge or for causal or moral judgments or explanations.
24. Clarity as an end in itself is something like the Holy Grail, radically removed from the problems of daily life and providing an almost impossible ideal. It is absolute, not in any way conditional, in conformity with what Wittgenstein took to be the nature of philosophy (and logic). In continuing to pursue this ideal, Wittgenstein seems to have continued to see obscurity as a sin. His commitment to his work of clarification has an unmistakable religious dimension, a continuation of the mystical/prophetic dimension McGuinness identified in the Tractatus . 8 When Wittgenstein remarked that he could help approaching every problem from a religious point of view, 9 he may well have been referring to this persistent dimension of his work.
25. As much as I admire Wittgenstein, as clearly as I see his later work as both continuing and revising the earlier work in its search for absolute unconditioned clarity, as certain I am that sound philosophy seeks clarification rather than knowledge, and in spite of the power and consistency of his continued Tractarian silence, I do not feel easy about joining Wittgenstein in either the absolutism of his commitment or the abstinence from moral and political comment.
26. Wittgenstein writes, “There is only logical necessity.” I take that to be a logical or grammatical remark, grounded in the insight that genuine necessity is unconditioned in a way that only logic is unconditioned. If I echo this remark of Wittgenstein's in the face of necessities asserted every day by politicians and moralists, is my utterance still a logical remark? or has it become preaching? or political commentary? That query is, in his terms, a grammatical question, on which he offers little guidance — except perhaps through the example of his persistent refusal to engage moralists and politicians, an example which I find breath-taking, but which I do not find edifying.
Newton Garver
August 14, 2007
R e f e r e n c e s
Garver, Newton. 1994. This Complicated Form of Life: Essays on Wittgenstein . Chicago: Open Court.
------------------------ 2006. Wittgenstein & Approaches to Clarity . Amherst NY: Humanity Books.
Harris, Roy. 1988. Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein: How to Play Games With Words . London: Routledge.
Malcolm, Norman. 1994. Wittgenstein, A Religious Point of View? Edited with a response by Peter Winch. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
McGuinness, Brian. 1988. Wittgenstein: A Life--Young Ludwig, 1889-1921 . London: Duckworth. Republished as Young Ludwig: Wittgenstein's Life, 1889-1921 , London/New York: Oxford University Press 2005.
Pike, Kenneth. L. 1947. Phonemics: A Technique for Reducing Language to Writing . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Rhees, Rush (ed.). 1984. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Personal Recollections . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1959. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Wade Baskin. New York: Philosophical Library.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1961. Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. Translated by David Pears and Brian McGuinness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (= TLP)
--------------------------- 1968. Philosophical Investigations, Third edition. Edited and Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. New York: Macmillan. (= PI)
--------------------------- 1979. Notebooks 1914-1916. Second edition. Edited by G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. (= NB)
Wolgast, Elizabeth. 2004. “A Religious Point of View.” Philosophical Investigations 27:2 (April).
1 1. So Wittgenstein's apparent injunction to silence is a logical rather than a moral point, and therefore not an injunction at all. This comment depends on distinguishing logic from morals, and logical necessity from moral necessity, seemingly obvious distinctions that Wittgenstein may not have accepted at the time. The final pages of the Tractatus (from about 6.37 on) are full of cryptic and apparently edifying remarks that seem intended to give a perspective on life, what we naturally consider a Weltanschauung . This powerful rhetoric is integral to the power and mystique of the Tractatus and depends in part on not distinguishing logic from morals.
2 2. It should be noted that in his later work he adopts a radically different conception of clarification (based on grammar and uses of language) and a different conception of knowledge (excluding certainty but including hypotheses and explanations).
3 3. There is an echo here of the distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung that Wittgenstein took from Frege and modified in the Tractatus . In the Tractatus only sentences have (or lack) Sinn , only names have (or lack) Bedeutung , and a name has a Bedeutung only in the context of a sentence. Although the remark “the meaning of a word is its use in the language” is often quoted, Wittgenstein's grammatical remarks apply primarily to whole expressions, not to their parts (words). The uses ( Verwendungen ) that Wittgenstein refers to in PI §23 (cited below) are therefore to be distinguished from the meanings of words (their use in the language) in much the same way that Sinn was distinguished from Bedeutung .
4 4. It is not clear what Wittgenstein means by “forms of life” (I believe the term is intentionally vague and incapable of definition – see Garver 2006, chapters 10-12) and it is nearly certain that he did not always mean language-games. See my discussion in chapter 15 of Garver 1994. With regard to the present text, there is an alternative wording in Wittgenstein's notebooks (RPP I.§630), with “forms of life” [ Lebensformen ] replaced by “facts of living” [ Tatsachen des Lebens ], which makes it more likely that he meant to refer at least in part to language-games in this text. He certainly did think of language-games as facts of natural history of human beings (see PI §25, §415, 654-656, page 174c).
5 5. The work of Ferdinand de Saussure (see Saussure 1959) made it possible to describe phonemes and to distinguish phonemics from phonetics, the latter but not the former being amenable to methods of physics. For a more practical and more readable account of phonemics, see Pike 1947, and for a good discussion of parallels between Saussure and Wittgenstein, see Harris 1988. I know of no reason to think that Wittgenstein had any familiarity with the work of Saussure or other modern linguists. Parallels between his work and that of linguists are fascinating as well as instructive, but they should not be carried too far. Linguistics is a science, a quest for knowledge, and Wittgenstein held himself aloof from every science, every quest for knowledge.
6 6. Reported by Drury. See Rhees 1984, page 157.
7 7. For a more extended discussion of philosophy as grammar, see chapter 13 of Garver 2006.
8 8. See McGuinness 1988, chapter 9.
9 9. He is quoted as having made this remark by Maurice Drury (Rhees 1984, p. 94), and Malcolm discusses it in his last work (Malcolm 1994), which includes comments by Peter Winch. See also the comments by Elizabeth Wolgast (Wolgast 2004) and my comments in chapter 14 of Garver 2006.
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