Ludwig Wittgenstein
Twice he thought he had put an end to philosophy: not a doctrine but an activity, which does not solve problems but dissolves them, by showing that they are born of the traps of our language.
Austrian, later British · 1889 – 1951
A central figure of , he overturned it twice. An engineer turned logician under at Cambridge, he wrote at the front and in captivity during the Great War the (1921), believed he had solved every philosophical problem, and left the discipline: he gave away his fortune and taught in Austrian villages. Returning to Cambridge in 1929, he turned his early thought inside out in the (posthumous, 1953), abandoning the picture theory of language for "language-games" and meaning as use. Out of these two Wittgensteins came logical positivism, ordinary-language philosophy, and part of contemporary philosophy of mind.
Philosophy is not a doctrine but an activity: it discovers no truths and builds no theories: it clarifies, and dissolves the false problems born of the traps of language rather than solving them.
The meaning of a word is neither the object it names nor a mental image, but its use in practice: one learns it by seeing how words function in .
The sense of the world lies outside the world: value, ethics, the mystical cannot be said, only shown; on them, one must remain silent.
Some propositions are neither known nor doubted: they are the on which all inquiry turns, held fast not by proofs but by our practice.
There is no common essence to everything a general word covers: "games" share only a network of overlapping resemblances, a , not a single feature.
Justification
Against the idea that philosophy would discover truths or build theories, Wittgenstein holds it, early and late, to be an activity: not a doctrine but an activity of clarification. Philosophical problems are not solved but dissolved, as one is cured of a bad spell of language, by showing the fly the way out of the bottle. It leaves everything as it is: it changes nothing in the world or in ordinary usage, only our understanding.
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 109
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.111-4.112, 6.53-6.54 · Philosophical Investigations, §§109, 116, 124-133, 255, 309
Justification
The young Wittgenstein took the meaning of a name to be the object it stands for; the later Wittgenstein overturns this "Augustinian picture" of language: a word gets its meaning from the role it plays in a rule-governed practice, a . Yet Wittgenstein keeps his caution: he does not make it a general theory of meaning, "for a large class of cases, though not for all", faithful to his refusal of theses.
The meaning of a word is its use in the language.Philosophical Investigations, §43
Philosophical Investigations, §43; §7, §23 (language-games); §§65-67
Justification
Wittgenstein is not against science, but against scientism: the idolatry of method, of "progress" and of generality, projected onto philosophy. The philosopher who "craves generality" and despises the particular case apes science; but philosophy, ethics and religion are distinct language-games, not deficient sciences. He even doubts that "the age of science and technology" is where the human finds its meaning.
The Blue Book (opening, the "craving for generality"); Tractatus, 6.371-6.372 · Culture and Value
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Justification
Some propositions ("here is a hand", "the earth existed long before my birth") are neither objects of knowledge nor of doubt: they are the on which the door of inquiry turns, the riverbed in which the rest of our thoughts flow. Doubt presupposes them (the game of doubting itself presupposes certainty), so that radical skepticism destroys itself. Yet they are not a dogmatic knowledge grounded on reasons, and can shift over time: neither dogmatism, nor skepticism, nor fallibilism, but a framework-certainty that this axis can only approximate.
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.On Certainty, §341 (posthumous notes)
On Certainty, §§341-343, §§94-99, §115 (posthumous notes)
Justification
Against the idea that a general word covers a common essence, Wittgenstein invites us to look rather than to suppose: "games" share no single feature, only a network of criss-crossing similarities, like the features of a family, a . The old problem of universals is dissolved, not solved: the error was to presuppose that there had to be something common. Neither a realism of Forms nor a classical nominalism, but a deflation through use.
Philosophical Investigations, §§65-67 (§66, "don't think, but look!")
Justification
All the facts of the world are on one level, contingent: value is therefore not to be found in it. The sense of the world must lie outside the world; ethics is transcendental, it cannot be put into words. What matters most, ethics and the mystical, can only be shown, not said. This silence is reverent, not nihilistic: Wittgenstein held the essential part of the Tractatus to be what he did not write in it. This is the position of the Tractatus; the later Wittgenstein will abandon the saying/showing machinery.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 7 (the last proposition)
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.41, 6.421, 6.522, 6.44, 7 · A Lecture on Ethics (1929)
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Justification
Religious belief is not a hypothesis rivalling science: believer and unbeliever are "on an entirely different plane". It is a picture that regulates a whole life, an unconditional commitment, not a conclusion drawn from proofs. Hence a position at once fideist (faith as commitment, not demonstration) and of separate domains (a plane other than the factual). "Wittgensteinian fideism" is, moreover, a label coined by his critics, not by him.
Lectures on Religious Belief (1938); Culture and Value
Justification
The bedrock where justification ends is the : agreement in language is not an agreement in opinions but an "agreement in form of life", rooted in shared human reactions, "the common behaviour of mankind". His thought thus leans toward a naturalism of shared reactions, without denying the cultural variety of language-games.
Philosophical Investigations, §19, §23, §206, §241
Wittgenstein rejects the very framing of the question. Against the Cartesian "inner theatre" as against behaviourism, the private-language argument shows that a word referring to a purely private sensation would have no criterion of correctness, hence no meaning: "an inner process stands in need of outward criteria". The : what each person alone would see in their box "has no place in the language-game at all, the box might even be empty". The metaphysical problem of consciousness rests on a grammatical illusion (Investigations, §§243-293, §580).
The holds the world to be the totality of facts, not of things (logical atomism), without deciding between matter and mind. The late Wittgenstein holds the metaphysical question itself, materialism, idealism or dualism, to be a grammatical confusion to be dissolved, not an alternative to be settled.
Wittgenstein does not assert the existence of God as a fact, but neither does he hold belief to be a false hypothesis: to treat the dispute as a disagreement of factual opinions would be a category mistake. The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is; "God does not reveal himself in the world". The question changes its sense depending on the language-game in which it is raised (Tractatus, 6.432, 6.44).