Wittgenstein, Kant and the critique of totality

Abstract

In this paper, I explore Wittgenstein's inheritance of one specific strand of Kant's criticism, in the Critique of Pure Reason, of reason's inherent pretensions to totality. This exploration reveals new critical possibilities in Wittgenstein's own philosophical method, challenging existing interpretations of Wittgenstein's political thought as `conservative' and exhibiting the closeness of its connection to another inheritor of Kant's critique of totality, the Frankfurt School's criticism of `identity thinking' and the reification of reason to which it leads. Additionally, it shows how Wittgenstein's linguistic philosophy offers to challenge and undermine, in a historically novel way, the metaphysical assumptions underlying some of our most characteristic and ubiquitous social practices.

Wittgenstein, value pluralism and politics

“…Contrary to Livingston's claim that the conservative reading of Wittgenstein is ubiquitous, 54 a number of interpreters read Wittgenstein as supporting some form of liberalism or democracy. These perspectives seem to emerge from two ideas: (1) that a plurality of values and interests appears to be inevitable, given Wittgenstein's epistemology; (2) that this plurality gives rise to a normative obligation to toleration.…”

“…When, in particular, large sectors of social practice and prevailing institutions become governed by deeply held assumptions of regularity and uniformity, such a critical reflection on the sources of these assumptions becomes particularly important. 51 Pohlhaus and Wright's argument rests on the idea that if the skeptic or the critic is also part of the 'we' that defines what 'we' say, then refusing to listen or pretending that their claims are nonsense is not only unjust to them, but also undermines our own identities and our understanding of our own ideas. (As, for example, a scientist who refuses to examine empirical data that undermines his favorite theory is himself undermining it by taking it out of the realm of science (the empirically verifiable) and moving it to the realm of dogma.)…”

“…A third and final kind of criticism of the conventionalist reading will help us segue to the question of the political significance of Wittgenstein's work. A number of authors, among them Gaile Pohlhaus and John R. Wright, 45 as well as Paul Livingston, 46 have argued that conventionalist readings are inevitably conservative. Livingston ties the conventionalist reading to political conservatism, on the grounds that the emphasis on traditions and habits as the basis of meaning leads to a reification of the existing social and intellectual order.…”