the status of ethical judgments in the philosophical investigations

Philosophical Investigations 18:2 April 1995 ISSN 0 1 9 0 5 3 6

The Status of Ethical Judgments in the Philosophical Investigations

Michael Hodges, Vunderbilt University

There is in or at least in and around Wittgenstein’s later philosophy a sense of what the good life might be or at least what philosophy has to contribute to its being lived. However, that topic is never explicitly discussed. There are hints in Culture and Value, and there are ways of reading the Investigations in light of the ethical aspects of the Tractatus which are highly suggestive.* My own view is that in order fully to understand Wittgenstein’s views here we must com- bine an understanding of what he has to say about philosophy with biographical information, particularly the advice that he gave to his students. In the final analysis, however, the attempt to construct a positive view w d always involve speculation and will not result in a definitive interpretation. It certainly does not follow that such speculation is not fiuitfkl if only because it sets the Investigations in a variety of new lights2 However, here, I will pursue a different course by examining the status of ethical judgments in light of Wittgenstein’s more general reflections on meaning and language found in the later philosophy. I believe that while Wittgenstein puts to rest certain traditional problems that have seemed to plague our ethical thinking, he does not follow out some of the more radical implications of his own thinking.

At the very centre of Wittgenstein’s later work is a rejection of the possibllity of what I have called tran~cendence.~ We cannot achieve what was the ultimate goal of the Tractatus - a view of the world and with it ourselves and our practices as a limited whole - as the totahty of facts. Of course, the later Wittgenstein does not merely deny this possibility since such a simple denial would seem to invoke what it denies. Rather his writing displaces transcendence

1. The pioneer in this area is James Edwards in his book Ethics Without Philosophy (University of South Florida Press, 1981). 2. One suggestion along this line will be considered below. 3. See my Tramcmdence and Wittgenrtein’s Tractatus, Temple University Press, 1990. Q Bvil Bhckwdl Ltd. 1995,106 Cowlo, Road. Oxford OX14 1JF. UK and 238 Mun Sue%. C d n d g e , MA 02142, USA.

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in a variety of ways throughout the Philosophical Investigations. Quite often he does this merely by calling attention to the radical gap between the philosopher’s question formulated in the light of the possibility of transcendence and the character of our actual practices. Nothing like the phdosopher’s concerns are at stake in coming to terms with our practices. The philosopher’s ‘trick‘ is to misdirect our attention and so make it appear that hidher concern is somehow continuous with our everyday goings But as Wittgenstein points out in the very first section of the Investigations with regard to the philosopher’s notion of meaning, ‘No such thing was in question here’. (P.I. 1)

I cannot and will not here rehearse the variety of ways in which Wittgenstein displaces the hold of the picture of transcendence in the Philosophical Investigations. Instead I will investigate what the implications of that displacement are for how we think‘about the ethical.

There are two key passages that deserve special attention. One is fiom the Philosophical Investigations and the other is fiom Culture and Value. At P.I. 241 and 242 Wittgenstein says,

‘So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is filse?’ - It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinion but in form of life.

If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments. This seems to abolish logic, but does not do so. - It is one thing to describe results of measurement, and another to obtain and state results of measurement. But what we call ‘measuring’ is partly determined by a certain constancy in results of measurement.

Here Wittgenstein appears to be rejecting a crude form of relativism because it fails to take account of two very different forms of agreement - agreement in opinions and agreement in form of life. But what is the difference he has in mind?

4. There is the fascinating question - which I cannot pursue in this paper - whether there is a form of thinking that might lay proper daim to the title ‘philosophy’ that happened, happens, or might happen in the ‘moment’ preceding the ‘philosopher’s trick‘. The need to deal with this question in a 111 assessment of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy has been pressed home to me by Andrew Shenker. As will become clear at the end I believe that there is a form of thinking that can occur when the philosopher’s tricks are unmasked and set aside.

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The second paragraph gives us the answer. There we are given a contrast between agreement in definitions and in judgments, and the second - agreement in judgments - seems, by its placement, to cor- respond to agreement in form of life. But aren’t judgments opinions? And aren’t we then brought back to the claim that human agreement decides what is true and false? This misconceives the thrust of Wittgenstein’s discussion. Wittgenstein is not calling attention to judgments as opinions - true or false - but to thefad that by following certain procedures we do infuct achieve ‘a certain constancy in results’. What is important at this point is not a question of truth but simply the fact of agreement. If it were not in 6ct true that we are the sorts of creatures that do get the same results following such procedures (for example, placing a particular rod against an object and reading off a number) those procedures would not be measuring - that is, they would not play the role which measuring plays in our current activities. We might very well continue to go through the motions, but we would not be measuring. The sort of agreement that we have here is not agreement that is the outcome or product of inquiry, discussion or thought. Nor is it the sort of conventional agreement we achieve by stipulation. That is, it is not an agreement in opinion or in definition. It is defucto sidarity or alikeness5 There is nothing arbitrary or conventional about this agreement, and there is nothing subjective about it. Of course, in a certain sense, it is contingent; we might not have been alike in that particular way. But had we not been, nothing or something very dfferent would count as measuring for us. And, it is worth noting we could not describe that state of a i r s as I have just now since key elements of that ‘description’, e.g. ‘measurement’, would not be available to us. In Part I1 of the Invertigations, Wittgenstein says,

Does it make sense to say that people generally agree in their judgments of colour? What would it be like for them not to? - One man would say a flower was red which another called blue, and so on. - But what right should we have to call these people’s words ‘red’ and ‘blue’ OUT ‘colour-words’? (P.I. I1 p. 226)

5. Wittgenstein points to such likenesses throughout the Invettigations and calls attention to their relations to various of our linguistic practices. See, for example, 142,244,249,474,480, part I1 section xi p. 226. There are many other examples in the Investigations as well as in On Certainty and Remarks on the Foundations 4 Mathematics.

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The problem with the question here is that it invites us to think of two independent elements -judgments of colour and agreement in the use of colour terms. But the second is constitutive of the first. For the mark ‘blue’ to be a colour word, it must be the case that there is general agreement in its use. Were there no such agreement, the mark in question and the others which, as things stand, are m the same family would not play the role they do for us - they would not be colour words. We cannot separate the meanings of our words fiom the bcts which surround their use.6 To think that we can is to fail to grasp the difference between agreement in opinion and agreement in form of life.

Now it is Wittgenstein’s contention in the original passage that being alike in certain ways - agreeing in form of life - is necessary if language is to be a means of communication. And further, this contention, while it may seem to undercut - abolish - logic, does not do so. As we have seen, unless it were true that when we follow the procedure of, for example, holding a rod up to a given object we all, generally or for the most part, got the same result, doing that sort of thing could not play the role in our lives that measuring does. None of this, however, blurs the distinction between ‘describ- ing methods of measurement’ (logic) and ‘obtaining and stating results of measurement’ (empirical enquiry). Thus the normative character of logic is not compromised even though it finds its ‘ground’ in certain de fact0 similarities and in particular that it depends on the fact that we agree in making certain judgments.

What does this imply about ethical judgments? Surely what Wittgenstein says applies to that case as well. So if someone suggests that it is human agreement that decides which ethical judgments are true and which are false, we must remind him or her that it is what human beings say that is true or false but they agree in the ethical language they use, and that is not agreement in opinion but in form of life.’ If ethical language is to be a means of communication, there must be agreement not only in ethical definitions but also (queer as this sounds) in ethical judgments. It may appear that the need for such agreement in ethical judgments in order to make a common 6. A fuller discussion of these points is found in Chapter 8 of Transcendence and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. 7. 1 am not suggesting here that agreement rn form of life just is agreement in language used. Rather Wittgenstein seems to mean that agreement in form of life underlies and makes. possible agreement in language used. More will be said about this shortly.

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moral language possible abolishes the idea of a ‘logic of moral language’ but it does not.

The argument seems to be the following: ethical language is essentially normative (as is logic), but it must lose that normativity if it merely depends on the defucto sameness of particular judgments. But Wittgenstein has already rejected the dichotomy on which such an argument depends. By rejecting the transcendence of the Tractatus he has rejected the hermetically sealed distinction between meaning and fact. Just as particular procedures cannot count as measuring unless we actually get the same results following them, similarly we cannot engage in common moral discussion unless we begin with some defucto similar judgments. If human beings did not agree in finding certain actions, events and states of character abhor- rent or satisfjrlng there would not be a moral perspective. We could not offer reasons to each other. We could not engage in rational evaluation. Had we not been alike in these ways, as we might not have been,* nothing or something very different would count as ethical discourse for us.

But, be it noted again, ifwe were not alike in the relevant sorts of ways, we could not describe such a state of afliirs as I have just done since key elements of that ‘description’ (for example, ‘reason’, ‘evaluation’, ‘moral perspective’) would not be avadable to us. It is just this possibility of pseudo-transcendence that Wittgenstein’s inter- locutor seems to presuppose when he asks, ‘So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false’. But we cannot stand outside of the very practices in terms of which our descriptions make sense.

Ths we have already seen in our dlscussion of colour words but Wittgenstein makes the point in a number of places. One particularly striking case deals with the so-called ‘problem of induction’.

But how can previous experience be a ground for assuming that such-and-such will occur later on? - the answer is: What general concept have we of grounds for this kind of assumption? This sort of statement about the past is simply what we call a ground for assuming that this will happen in the fiture. - And if you are surprised at our playing such a game I refer you to the eflects of past experience (to the fact that a burnt child fears the fire). (P.I. 480)

8. The philosopher George Santayana notes that human beings might be ‘so far apart in nature and ideals that, like man and mosquitoes, they can stand in physical relations only, and if they meet only to poison or to crush one another’. Reaton in Science p. 158.

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The sceptical question with whch this passage begins presupposes that we have some notion of ‘ground’ that is independent of our actual practices of inductive reasoning since fiom within that practice ‘this sort of statement about the past is simply what we call a ground’. The question thus presupposes the possibility of standing outside the very practices in which our terms have meaning, But if the term ‘ground’ is not a part of such a practice, what right would we have to suppose that it bears any relation to our activities? So either the sceptic’s supposed ‘doubt‘ is misplaced for there is no room for it within the language-game or it is irrelevant because it does not relate to our practices. A practice in which what Wittgenstein here calls ‘a general concept of “ground”’ has a place would simply be a different practice and play a different role in the lives of those who participate in it. But ‘if you are surprised at our playing such a game [the one we do with terms like “ground”] 1 refer you to the gects of past experience (to the fict that a burnt chdd fears the fire)’.

Here, we have a particularly clear example of Wittgenstein’s thinking. The traditional philosophical problem is seen to presuppose a form of transcendence which is rejected. We are reminded of how we actually play the game in question. Within that game there is simply no room for the question that the philosopher wants to raise and in that sense the question is ‘nonsensical’. But our practices are not lefi hanging. We can come to a fdler understanding by seeing them in context - by seeing them in the light of certain ficts about ourselves.

I shall get burnt if I put my hand in the fire: that is certainty. That is to say: here we see the meaning of certainty. (What it amounts to, not just the meaning of the word ‘certainty’.) (P.I. 474)

For creatures like ourselves for whom ‘the belief that fire will burn me is of the same kind as the fear that it will burn me’ it is no mere matter of speculation whether previous experience is a ground for assuming such-and-such will occur later on.

It is in this sense that we should understand Wittgenstein’s contention that ‘to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life’. (P.I. 19) Imagining a language is not simply a matter of imagining a syntactical structure - marks that flow together in some fashion gov- erned by a recursive definition. To imagine a language is to imagine those marks within a play of human activities. That is why ‘it is easy 0 Bad BlackwcU Ltd 1995

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to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in bat- tle’. (P.I. 19) After all, ‘speaking a language is part of an activity, or of a form of life’. (P.I. 23)

In the context we are considering, that of inductive reasoning, we need to be reminded of who we are and what place such reasoning actually has in our lives. In t h s way we become reacquainted with certain ‘extremely general facts of nature’ (P.I. p. 36) in terms of which we can explain the siguficance of particular concepts. Wittgenstein says,

It often happens that we only become aware of the important fa t s , if we suppress the question ‘why?’; and then in the course of our investigations these facts lead us to an answer. (P.I. 471)

When in various contexts Wittgenstein directs our attention to such ‘important ficts’ he is calling attention to our ‘form of life’ and the place of particular stretches of language within it. So that in the final analysis, ‘What has to be accepted, the given, is - so one could say - forms of life’. (P.I. I1 p. 226)

This reference to ‘the given’ is designed to remind us of the traditional foundationalist epistemological project and to reject it as it applies to ethics as well as other forms of human practices since it involves the same transcendence already rejected. To remind us that what has to be accepted are forms of life is to expose another instance of the philosopher’s ‘trick‘ of making it appear that our practices require a particular sort of foundation in belie6 open to sceptical questions that cannot be resolved. They do not! ‘No such thing was in question here’. (P.I. 1) ‘Philosophical doubt’, if it is appropriate to call it doubt, is shown throughout Wittgenstein’s later work to be utterly discontinuous with our actual practices, and so the attempt to undermine our confidence in our practices is com- pletely out of place.’ ‘What has to be accepted, the given, is . . . forms of life.’ (P.I. 11, p. 226)

It is in this interplay between the rejection of transcendence and the acceptance of ‘forms of Me’ that some might locate the ethcal sigdicance of the Philosophical Investigations.” Recently James

9. Of particular relevance to this point is On Certainty. However, this style of thinking can be found even in the opening section of the Philosophical Investigations. 10. Such an argument has recently been put forward by James Peterman in a cur- rently unpublished paper presented at the 85th annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology as part of a symposium on Ethics in Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy of which the present paper was a part.

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Peterman has argued for such a view by way of a comparison with the Tractatus. Accordmg to Peterman, the Tractatus is an ethical text. The ethical comments at the end of the work cannot be ignored or excised. They are in fact its culmination and are not only in com- plete harmony with the logical doctrines of the earlier sections but grow directly out of them.” In the Tractatus the ‘problem of life’ and the ‘problem of language’ are identical in an important respect. Each involves the idea of the world and of language as a whole - as a given, completed totality. The logical task of the Tractatus is to ‘articulate’ the structure of that whole but that only prepares the way for the ehcal appropriation of it. If one wills the world as a totality, one accepts it as it is and in that acceptance the problem of life disappears. So the culmination of the Tractatus is the disappear- ance of the ‘problem of life’ by way of the philosophical vision set out in it.

As interesting as this claim is in itself, Peterman goes on to con- tend that there is ‘no reason to think that this view of the relation between logic and ethics changed in Wittgenstein’s later thought’. Just as the Tractatus was an ethical document so too is the Philosophical Investigations.’* It is not merely that the Investigations contains important implications for ethics, theoretical or applied, as I have argued. The work itself is an ethical document, and one in which there is an essential link between its apparently non-ethical views of language and a primarily unstated ethical vision. Much remains the same between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations!

Of course much changes as well. One of the most important changes in this context is that Wittgenstein gives up ‘the notion that we can survey the world &om the vantage point of eternity’. The ‘totality’ of the Tructatus is replaced by an open-ended multiplicity in the Philosophical Investigations. Neither language nor the world has a single form. But ‘what has to be accepted . . . is - so one could say - forms of life’. (P.I. p. 226) So, according to Peterman, ‘the problem of life’ again disappears by way of an act of acceptance.

While I am in general agreement with much of what is claimed

11. I certainly agree with this claim and have argued for it in great detail in Transcendence and Witfgenstkn’r Trartatw, Temple University Press, 1990. 12. Wittgenstein said of the Tractatus, ‘The book‘s point is an ethical one’. From a letter to von Ficker as printed in G.H. von Wright’s Witfgmtein (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), p. 83.

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here, the rejection of the possibihty of philosophical transcendence or ‘the notion that we can survey the world &om the vantage point of eternity’ runs deeper than Peterman’s account allows. If language, or rather the multiplicity of language-games, becomes situated within our forms of life, the same thing will happen to the self and to the very idea of ‘the problem of life’. The self for which there could be such a thing as ‘the problem of life’ just is the transcendental self of the Tractatus. That self is simply a reflection of the conception of philosophy in which there is such a thing as ‘the problem of language’.

In an important sense there can be no such thing as ‘the problem of life’ for the later Wittgenstein. Rather there is a whole range of real problems that occur for real subjects who have fieed themselves of the illusions of philosophy - as the activity that ‘problematises’ our practices. If we accept Wittgenstein’s method in the later work, the ‘transcendental subject’ disappears and with it the problem of language and of life. We are reintroduced to the world of real moral problems and disagreements. The analogue to the philosophical subject of the Tractatus is the community of language users constituted by its common practices and real disagreements, but this community occurs within the world, not at its limit and that means that its members are confronted with the full range of moral problems with which we, in fict, find ourselves confionted.

Philosophy in the traditional sense has nothing to contribute to the solution to these problems, and Wittgenstein’s therapy only frees us of the illusory demand for justification of the forms of life in which the problems are fi-amed. Still there is something to be said for the idea that the aim of phllosophy is ethical in its very conception. Philosophy, for the later Wittgenstein, does aim at an acceptance of the world or of our forms of life and, that is, in a certain sense, the solution to ‘the problem of life’ - the illusion that life as such constitutes a problem - but that is not the end of the matter as it might have been in the Tractatus. It is just the beginning of the problems of life.

The difference between my reading and Peterman’s at this point may be only a matter of emphasis. I want to stress the point that for the later Wittgenstein the ‘problem of life’ like other so-called philosophical problems are dissolved. It is not that Wittgenstein finds the solution to a real problem of life. Rather, his method allows us to turn our attention away fiom t h s illusory problem and

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so to focus on the problems of Me. This certainly frees us of the old ‘phdosophical problem of life’ but only because Wittgenstein has rejected the very terms necessary to the formulation of that problem.

The traditional philosophical picture misconceives the nature of ethical reasons and judgments by attempting to grasp them as a given totality from the outside. From this perspective they must and can only be justified by some self-evident set of ethical principles or by some ‘non-ethical’ ground. If this were not the case, every ethical judgment would seem to depend on some other problematic ethical judgment, and the whole domain would lack the necessary philosophical c10sure.’~ Thus ethics must itself be constituted as a normatively neutral discourse or at least be justified on some absolute ground.

But in terms of actual ethical practices such a perspective is irrelevant. This appears quite clearly in light of some remarks of Wittgenstein’s recorded by G.E. Moore:

What Aesthetics tries to do, he rJlrittgenstein] said, is to give reasons . . . Reasons, he said in Aesthetics, are ‘of the nature of further descriptions’, e.g., one can make a person see what Brahms was driving at by showing him lots of pieces by Brahms, or by comparing him to a contemporary author; and all that Aesthetics does is ‘to draw your attention to a thing’, ‘to place things side by side’. He said that if, by giving ‘reasons’ of this sort, you make the other person ‘see what you see’ but it ‘still doesn’t appeal to him’ that is ‘an end’ of the discussion . . . And he said that the same sort of ‘reasons’ were given . . . in Ethics. (As quoted in Ethics Without Philosophy, p. 128)

We ‘give reasons’ in ethics by redescribing what is questionable so as to bring it into contact with what is not questionable or vice versa. ‘Abortion is wrong because it is, afier all, a matter of killing a child.’ ‘One should not eat meat because animals have feelings.’ Such reason giving always presupposes substantive value judgrnents and can only succeed in so far as at least some of those are shared by the par- ticipants. This is constitutive of what we mean by ‘ethical discussion’. 13. This demand for philosophical closure is definitive of the project of the Tractatus at least on a straighdorward representational reading. Thus, for example, Wittgen- stein argues that the world must have a substance - objects - because ‘if the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition were true. In that case we could not sketch out any picture of the world (true or false)’. (T. 2.0211-2) The very attempt to gather up the ‘totality of propositions’ would always leave some out of the picture.

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This view is confirmed by a particularly clear passage in Culture and Value. Wittgenstein says,

Nothing we do can be defended absolutely and finally. But only by reference to something else that is not questioned. 1.e. no reason can be given why you should act (or should have acted) like this, except that by doing so you bring about such and such a sit- uation, which again has to be an aim you accept. (C.V. 16)

Thus, as Paul Johnston points out in a recent study, for Wittgenstein there is a logical gap between reasons and actions. He says, ‘Asked why we act as we do, we can give our reasons for acting, but where these are rejected nothing remains to be said’.14 Reasons don’t com- pel actions; our value claims begin in reactions of satisfiction or approval, and reasons elucidate the nature of the satisfjlng or approved object or action. Thus there being reasons in the ethical sphere presupposes felt satisfactions or reactions of approval and not vice versa. If there are to be reasons, there must be defacto common reactions.

The implications of all this is that anyone who claims, for example, that ethics is a matter of personal preferences or is ‘subjective’ is either conceptually confused or is taking a substantive position but is not expressing an opinion concerning the ‘grammar of ethical discourse’. Since ethical discourse is constituted by there being common reactions, not individual or personal ones, it is simply a conceptual confusion to raise the question of subjectivity in this sense for ethical discourse. Again Paul Johnston says, ‘The final point that needs to be emphasized is that in ethics the objective question presents us with a substantive choice and not one which can be resolved by philosophical or conceptual analy~is’.’~

If, for Wittgenstein, ethical practice is not a logically compelling neutral ground but a substantive value position ‘grounded’ in common reactions ought we not investigate those reactions? He considers this possibility in Part I1 of the Phifosophicaf Investigations but rejects it.

If the formation of concepts can be explained by facts of nature, should we not be interested, not in grammar, but rather in that in nature which is the basis of grammar? - Our interest certainly includes the correspondence between concepts and very general

14. Johnston, Paul, Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, New York, Routledge, 1989, p. 81. 15. Johnston, p. 167.

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facts of nature . . . But our interest does not fill back upon these possible causes of the formation of concepts; we are not doing natural science. (P.I. I1 p. 230)

Wittgenstein rejects the conclusion that he is putting forward an hypothesis about the formulation of particular concepts. Rather he wants to break the hold of a certain picture of the relation between concepts and fkts.

If anyone believes that certain concepts are absolutely the correct ones, and that having Merent ones would mean not realizing something that we realize - then let him imagine certain very general facts of nature to be different from what we are used to, and the formation of concepts different fkom the usual ones will become intelligible to him. (P.I. I1 p. 230)

Wittgenstein’s concern seem to end with the displacement of the idea that it makes sense to suppose that certain concepts are ‘absolutely the correct ones’. But he goes on to suggest a provocative comparison.

Compare a concept with a style of painting. For is even our style of painting arbitrary? Can we choose one at pleasure? (The Egyptian, for instance.) Is it a mere question of pleasing and ugly? (ibid.)

The possibility that Wittgenstein is clearly rejecting here is that we might somehow step out of our own historical moment to ‘choose’ another style. Our appreciation of the ‘Egyptian style’ depends com- pletely on its being recognized as just that, a style. But how i%r are we to take this comparison? We know, for example, that while we may not be able to choose a style at pleasure, nonetheless, there is a history of style and individuals - Giotto or Monet, for example - have contributed to the transformation of style. We know while it makes no sense to suppose that such contributors produced something ‘absolutely correct’, nonetheless, they overcame tensions and problems in previous styles.

The comparison between concepts and painting style suggests a very provocative line of thought. While Wittgenstein’s other discus- sions appeal to ‘general facts of nature’, ‘natural history’ etc., the comparison with painting style seems to bring in human history.’6

16. A host ofissues are brought into focus here. Why does Wittgenstein, ifhe does, believe that concepts can be a function of our natural history but not our social history? In what ways that are relevant to the issues that Wittgenstein discusses can the wo be separated in any case? If as Wittgenstein contends ‘Commanding, question- ing, recounting, chatting, are as much a part of our natural history as walking,

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Wittgenstein lets us see our ethical practice, as he does our practice involving colour words, as presupposing a commonality of shared preferences, the particulars of which might have been Merent. The comparison with painting locates our practices w i h n a particular and changmg history. Granting for the moment that Wittgenstein is right here, what is the point of such an insight? By situating ‘morality’ as a particular evaluative stance among others which then can be ‘called into question’, morality moves from being the context in which evaluation takes place to being an ‘object’ of evaluation. Would Wittgenstein see the insight that morality is a specific evaluative stance presupposing common reactions etc. that might have been otherwise as opening a space in which to subject our ethical practices to assessment? Wittgenstein would, I believe, reject the question and with it the whole project of assessment as products of what he calls the ‘main current of European and American civiliza- tion’ for which progress is its very form.” He says, ‘even clarity is sought only as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves’. (Culture and Value p. 6-7) It seems that for him the task of philosophy has come to an end once we ‘command a clear view of the use of our words’. (P.I. 122) After all,

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it a foundation either. It leaves everything as it is. It also leaves mathematics as it is . . . @‘.I. 124)

If philosophy leaves mathematics as it is, surely it also leaves ethcs in the same position.” But what does this mean? Certainly Wittgenstein

eating, drinking, playing’ (P.I. 25) where does social history end and natural history begin or vice versa? Once the topic of history is broached it is tempting to develop a comparison with Nietzsche but that will have to wait for another paper. 17. This is not an altogether implausible claim for surely many in the American philosophical tradition would take hold of the insight in t h i s evaluative way. For Dewey and others in that tradition an awareness of possibility is the precondition of intelligent action and transformation. Thus in so far as we come to see our current practice as one among various possibilities and not as ‘filling the space of possibility’, it takes on an optionality and availability for transformation. 18. There is other evidence that Wittgenstein would take this attitude. Consider, for example, his treatment of religious belief in Culture and Value and in Remarks on Frager’s Golden Bough. His attempts to disentangle religious practice &om metaphysi- cal/historical claims on the one hand and pseudo-science on the other, aim at ‘leaving religion alone’. If anydung one seems to detect an admiration for the wis- dom of longstanding human practice which needs only to be protected &om the irrelevant demands of philosophy.

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is rejecting the idea that our practices require the sort of foundations that traditional philosophy has sought to supply in the mistaken belief that without them our practices were problematic on their own terms. Now if we read ‘philosophy’ to mean just the various methods employed in the Investigations to help us overcome the above sort of mistake, then it is quite clear that philosophy in that sense must leave everydung as it is since its task is completed just when we are returned to those practices fiee of the persistent demands of philosophy in the traditional sense.19 This seems correct, but does it imply that there is no sort of reflective criticism that can be brought against our practices? There will, of course, be no neutral perspective &om which to launch such a critique, but the supposition that only such a critique would do is itselfa prejudice of traditional philosophy in just that sense which Wittgenstein’s methods are meant to displace. Any such assessment would itself be rooted in values. What we cannot do is to find a transcendental perch fiom which to examine our practices in their totality, but we can begin to see how they impinge on each other and how they enrich or diminish the quality of our lives. Perhaps Wittgenstein would not engage in this sort of criticism, but at least he leads us to the door behind which the possibility lies.

Vanderbilt University

19. One need not assume that such a task can be completed in a once and for all fashion. All that I am pointing out is that the only task for philosophy is the task of gaining a ‘clear view of our use or words’.

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