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In the beginning was the deed. Faust
In order to gain a better understanding of the origins of much of modern thinking which regards language and truth as conventional it will be necessary to spend some time examining Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein is an often misunderstood and misapplied philosopher who while postulating the conventional nature of language, still held to an objectivist view of truth. The philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein may seem at first to have little to do with the hermeneutical thinkers of the existentialist school, in as much as he is often mistakenly labeled as part of the Logical Positivist movement. Although his earlier work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was hailed by the Vienna Circle, Wittgenstein never felt they understood him and was hesitant to ally himself with this movement. A hesitancy which eventually culminated in a complete reworking of his earlier thought. In his later work, Philosophical Investigations, he further distanced himself from this group. It is difficult to place Wittgenstein within a school as he has been variously associated with a number of different schools. Therefore to categorize Wittgenstein solely with the Anglo-American, Continental, or Logical Positivists would seem to be misguided.
Recent commentators on Literary Theory and Hermeneutics invariably quote from Philosophical Investigations and compare his thought favorably with that of Saussure, Heidegger, and Gadamer. And there has been a sustained effort recently to graft Wittgenstein's thought into the tree from which the modern hermeneutical discussion blossoms.Footnote86
To begin this discussion it is necessary to briefly sketch some elements of Wittgenstein's language theory. He approaches both philosophy and language from a descriptive standpoint and to this end I believe his language theory can be divided into two primary parts. First, language is for Wittgenstein functional or pragmatic in that he posits a "use theory" of language. For Wittgenstein language is what it does (recall Fish). There is no essence to language. It is system of conventional signs. Second, language has a social foundation. What he calls "forms of life" are what undergird his language theory. It follows from this that public criterion is essential to a language and conversely, that there can be no purely private language games. I will elaborate on these ideas in what follows.
Wittgenstein demonstrates his pragmatic approach to language throughout the Investigations. In one of the more celebrated quotes he says, "For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday."Footnote87 By "goes on holiday" I take him to mean that when language is "idle." When it is not functioning is when we have the most difficulty with language because without a functional dimension language is nonsensical.Footnote88 For Wittgenstein language is always practical. It is intended to do something. The very idea of intending presupposes a purpose. He says, "without language we cannot influence other people in such-and-such ways; cannot build roads and machines, etc. . ."Footnote89 For Wittgenstein language is a tool. And a tool may be used in any number of ways some of which are legitimate and some are not. He likens a sentence to an instrument and its meaning, the employment we give it.Footnote90 As such our language is a large toolbox with many instruments at our disposal and these instruments have various uses.
From this general approach Wittgenstein's "Usage Theory" of language arises. Again his approach is seen to be descriptive. He maintains that in most cases, "the meaning of a word is its use in the language."Footnote91 In other words, we do not ascribe definitions to words in a hierarchical fashion, instead their meaning is determined by their usage, by the conventions of the language users. Thus context is essential in determining meaning. "Let the use of words teach you their meaning."Footnote92 And because language is conventional, because the meaning of a word is determined by its use in the language, it is a constantly changing phenomenon. Wittgenstein compares language to a city with old streets and new, with decrepit sections and developing suburbs.Footnote93 "And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten."Footnote94 Because there is not a fixed, determined essence of language that has been given once for all, there is potentially an infinite number of language games.
The idea of "language game" (Sprachspiel) is possibly the best known aspect of Wittgenstein's thought. By language game Wittgenstein means an independent set of linguistic symbols with their corresponding actions used by a group of people possibly as large as a nation or as small as two. A builder and his assistant may have their own peculiar language game which, though it is independent, overlaps other language games.Footnote95 The language of science and the language of religion, while they may share some words and actions, are different language games with differing purposes as well as differing "kinds" of certainty. This does not mean that the scientist and the religious adherent cannot communicate and interact, they can. But the purpose of each one's language game differs even though they overlap. Words bear "family resemblances" as they are interrelated phenomena. We could just as well say that language games also bear these resemblances. The importance of this will be seen as we turn again to the thought of Stanley Fish. Each word bears a relationship to other words in this language game as well as to other language games depending on the conventions employed.Footnote96
Because words are used by convention there is then a certain arbitrariness to the symbols (written and verbal) that are associated with concepts in our world. Here the linguistic ontology of Western philosophy since the time of Plato comes under attack and modern philosophy has not been the same since. Wittgenstein's theory of language is anti-essentialist. He says, "We are under the illusion that what is peculiar, profound, essential in our investigation, resides in its trying to grasp the incomparable essence of language. . . . Whereas, of course, if the words 'language', 'experience', 'world', have a use, it must be as humble a one as that of the words 'table', 'lamp', 'door'."Footnote97 There is no metaphysical nature of language. There is no single fibre running through the entire thread.Footnote98
Why do we call something a 'number': Well, perhaps because it has a--direct--relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of the fibres.Footnote99
When Wittgenstein says that there is no metaphysical nature of language, however, he does not mean, as the logical positivists supposed and the post-moderns affirm, that there is no such thing as a metaphysical realm. Even in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein would say that it may be there, it is just the kind of thing of which we cannot speak.Footnote100
The second aspect of Wittgenstein's language theory, which is inexorably connected with the first, is that language has a social foundation. Language games for him are not a disconnected web of symbols but have their grounding in what he refers to as "forms of life." Nicholas F. Gier says that it is clearly a mistake to identify "Lebensformen and language games" as has often been done.Footnote101 Because the importance of this point cannot be minimized I will therefore demonstrate it by a number of references to his later works. Continuing section 23 cited earlier from Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein elaborates, "Here the term 'language-game' is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life." He says that a language game is a part of, though not equal to, a form of life. The words we exchange and the use we put them to is dependant on the life context in which we operate. As we will see Fish makes use of this idea. They are for this reason a priori they are the givens of any situation.
In his typically enigmatic fashion, Wittgenstein says, "Thought is surrounded by a halo.--Its essence, logic, presents an order, in fact the a priori order of the world: that is, the order of possibilities, which must be common to both world and thought."Footnote102 Wittgenstein is maintaining that there is a correspondence between the given world and the thought or language we employ to act upon it, otherwise thought, communication, and action in the world would be impossible.Footnote103 The Investigations does not maintain, in arguing against the Tractatus, that there is no correspondence between language and the world as Derrida might argue, only that the correspondence is different than that of the picture theory. But this given's of language games is not a logocentric, metalinguistic idea. Wittgenstein would contend that the center of language is the constantly shifting and dynamic "forms of life."
"What has to be accepted, the given, is--so one could say--forms of life."Footnote104 We live in a common world and that commonality allows us to communicate about the world. Again, he maintains in On Certainty:
"An empirical proposition can be tested" (we say). But how? and through what?
What counts as its test?--"But is this an adequate test? And, if so, must it not be recognizable as such in logic?"--As if giving grounds did not come to an end sometime. But the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting.Footnote105
Grounds do come to an end, as doubting does. The end it comes to is our way of acting or our "forms of life." The forms of life are the a priori, the given. And these forms of life differ depending on time and place and consequently the language games reflect this changing nature. Fish takes this principle regarding language and, I believe, misapplies it to interpretive communities resulting in a constantly shifting and groundless community.
Under the general classification that language has its foundation in a social context or form of life, are two closely related ideas, that of public criterion and the argument against private languages. Wittgenstein argues against the idea that there can be a language of one. Because languages are based on forms of life, they must relate to the external world.
The problem with the hypothetical "private language" is that it cannot conform to "forms of life." It cannot conform itself to the external world for the very reason that it is private. And anything that is to be called a language must be demonstrable in the external world. In other words, something must be observable for us to be able to verify that we are all speaking of the same phenomenon. "An 'inner process' stands in need of outward criteria."Footnote106 The difficulty with the private language idea is that there exists no external phenomenon by which we can measure the inner sensation.
We might apply this idea to the concept of authorial intent. We simply cannot get inside another's mind to demonstrate or show what is that person's intent. And here Wittgenstein has shown philosophers the way out of the fly bottle. It is not a matter of seeing into someone, but rather seeing what is public. "An 'inner process' stands in need of outward criteria."Footnote107 The inner process, "meaning" is in need of the public criteria of text. But Wittgenstein goes further than just asserting the necessity for an explicit expression of intent. "Thus the most explicit expression of intention is by itself insufficient evidence of intention."Footnote108 We can recall Fish's statement which is similar. The difference I think is that Wittgenstein would claim that the utterance or text and the act which went with it, its context, is sufficient outward criteria to demonstrate intention. Intention moves out of the jurisdiction of the private language critique when associated with outward criteria, that is with actions and utterances and texts. But Fish's problem with authorial intent lies at a more fundamental level and it has to do with interpretive communities. We will turn to this idea next.
See also Nicholas F. Gier, Wittgenstein and Phenomenology.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, sec..38.
Diogenes Allen interprets this phrase to mean that "words are taken from their place in a form of life." In other words, language can only function properly in the context in which it is part of the form of life. A language game can be transplanted from one form of life to another, but this is to misuse language and it is this misuse which results in so much confusion. Thus it is inappropriate for the language game of religion to use the proofs from the language game of science, and so on. Philosophy for Understanding Theology, p. 268.
Ibid., sec. 491.
Ibid., sec. 421.
Ibid., sec. 43.
Ibid., p. 220e
Ibid., sec. 18.
Ibid., sec. 23.
Ibid., sec. 2.
Ibid., sec. 355.
Ibid., sec. 97.
Gadamer, I believe mistakenly, remarks of Wittgenstein in a later edition of Truth and Method that, "Wittgenstein has thematized [language games] in order to criticize metaphysics," p. 577. Wittgenstein thematized language games in order to criticize the view that language is transcendent. But I believe it is false to reason that because language is conventional and not transcendant that therefore what language refers to cannot be transcendant but always conventional.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, sec. 67.
It is important to differentiate Wittgenstein from the logical positivist's verification principle which concludes that what cannot be verified does not exist. Wittgenstein would have held in the Tractatus that unless a statement pictures a "state of affairs" in the world it is without sense not that it fails to correspond to anything at all. On this point Wittgenstein is agnostic. Because words and language pictures "sie119A>Footnote the real world, it simply has no access to a metaphysical. Therefore "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence"(p. 74). Wittgenstein does make an exception on this point to the rules of logic (Cf. 6.1222, 6.13, and 6.54). This important exception may have eventually led him to change his language theory for that of the Investigations.
Gier, p. 21. Gier also suggest that Wittgenstein borrowed the idea of Lebensformen from Spengler whom he admired greatly.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, sec 97, p.44e.
Fish would, I believe, maintain that this position is naive.
OpCit., p. 226e.
Wittgenstein, On Certainty, sec. 109, 110. Wittgenstein states this in direct contradiction of Descartes.
OpCit., sec. 580.
Ibid., sec. 580.
Ibid., sec. 641.
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