23 JANUARY 1971, Page 17

Roger Scruton on Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein's influence on modern thought has been very great, so great that it would be odd If his place in the tradition of Western philosophy were still undetermined. Yet there have been remarkably few studies of the totality of his thought. Any attempt to synthesise the systematic early work with the piecemeal methods of the later philosophy runs the obvious risk of over-valuing one period at the expense of the other. But Mr Pears has surmounted the difficulties; he presents an overall picture of Wittgenstein which is both plausible and philosophically interesting. This is one of the best studies of Wittgenstein that has yet appeared. Although it is one of the Fontana series of 'Modern Masters' it is not an easy book for the general reader but a subtle and intricate work, wide in scope and rigorously argued. Nevertheless, Mr Pears writes in an unasser- tive, agreeable style, entirely free from unnecessary technicalities.

He argues that the connection between the early and the later Wittgenstein is, profound and important, supporting this view with a theory about Wittgenstein's place in philosophical history. Essentially Mr Pears sees him as a 'critical' philosopher. Critical philosophy can be said to have occurred in two waves, first with Kant, and then again in the present century with Moore. Wittgens- tein and their 'linguistic' successors. The aim of 'critical' philosophy has always been to determine the limits of human thought, curbing both speculative metaphysic and philosophical scepticism. The limits of thought, according to Wittgenstein, are the limits of language in the sense that only what can be said is thinkable.

The value of this idea lies in the setting which Wittgenstein gives to it, for this set-

ting—in both earlier and later philosophies—is subtle and profound. Wittgenstein's early work, the Traciatus Logico-Philosophicus, sets out to explain how propositions can have meaning, and provides an answer in terms of a complex logical theory. One consequence of this theory is that, besides tautologies, only pro- positions about matters of fact are mean- ingful. And how they come to have meaning is revealed by the nature of logic. Logic is the framework on which factual propositions hang. It is the scheme of possibilities within which actualities must fall and the form of all language, revealing the structure of the world—not how the world is, but how it must be.

But this philosophy has a vulnerable side. How did Wittgenstein know that language must have the structure he assigned to it? And what does it mean to say that it must have this structure? Clearly this is not a fac- tual assertion, nor is it a tautology. Yet ought we to rule that it is meaningless, as Wittgenstein's own theory requires? We can- not say. It lies at the limits of language, and trying to see its meaning clearly islike trying to observe the boundaries of one's own visual field.

Set beside the austere logic of the Trac- tatus, the Philosophical In t'estigations, with its discursive, dialectical style, certainly seems to herald something new. In place of the stark propositions of logical theory the reader finds imaginative examples, questions which immediately engage his attention, ex- plorations of a multitude of 'language- games' among which logic is only one. In Mr Pears's view the method has become an- thropocentric; the philosopher examines the use of language like an anthropologist study- ing the customs of a tribe, but with one important difference—the meaning of his own assertions can only be measured against the linguistic habits he is set to study. There is no point outside language from which language can be judged. • Wittgenstein no longer assumes that for words to have mean- ing they must conform to some absolute and necessary logical pattern. On the contrary, he has come to believe that, if our language presents us with necessities, it is because ourselves create them—at any point we can modify our language without inconsistency, because it is we who have set the standards of consistency.

According to the later philosophy words acquire meaning because human beings use them, and the kind of meaning which they have depends on the 'language-game' in which they occur. Language still has its limits, but these are not to be encompassed by any theory, for no such theory could be put into words. The limits of language trust be pointed to, and the only pointer is com- mon usage. The Tractatus, in failing to at- tend to the full complexity of human speech, made the mistake of supposing that all uses of words must be explained in terms of one simple model. But to idealise language in this way is already to transcend the bounds of intelligibility and to use words in defiance of the human activities that give them sense.

Mr Pears does not try to explain Wittgens- tein's thought in all its ramifications. Instead he gives a sort of internal history of its development, introducing each idea in terms of a lasting preoccupation of Wittgenstein's intellectual life. He accords considerable im-

portance to Wittgenstein's mysticism, and to his contempt for the vulgar subversion of thought by scientific myth. At the same time he acknowledges that the merit of Wittgens- tein's work is to be found as much in the quality of his detailed arguments as in the overall vision which it offers. The result is an extremely coherent and interesting account of Wittgenstein's philosophy.

Mr Pears points to the Kantian strand which runs through Wittgenstein's-thought. Both philosophers believed that concepts contain within themselves the limits of their application. Equally they each brought about a 'Copernican revolution' in philosophy, placing man once again at the centre of his world. But there is a further side to the com- parison which he does not mention. In his later writings Wittgenstein argues against one of the basic tenets of empiricism, in a way which has no precedent in philosophy except in the work of Kant. He argues in effect that experience cannot be the foun- dation of knowledge, in the traditional sense. that on the contrary, all awareness of ex- perience presupposes knowledge of an ob- jective world. Both Kant and Wittgenstein attempted to prove this proposition, and in each case the proof is evidence of philosophical genius. Here Mr Pears seems to disagree with Wittgenstein. The chapter on sensations suggests that he feels scent;-0 about the most important step in Witt- genstein's deduction—the refutation of the view that sensations are essentially private. This part of the book is not easy to follow. Mr Pears accepts that the language which refers to sensations cannot be essentially private, and at the same time seems drawn to a theory which prima facie implies the op- posite.

Many philosophers might wish to play down the analogy with Kant. Those whose interest lies in the earlier Wittgenstein will perhaps see strong analogies between the Tractatus and the work of Kant's predecessor, Leibnitz. For Leibnitz too arg- ued that all language shares a common logi- cal form, and that this form reveals the essential structure of the world. But which ever comparison proves the most fruitful, it is certain that Wittgenstein will be accorded a central place in the tradition of Western thought, and it is this above all which Mr Pears's book impresses on the reader.

Roger Scruton is a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.