In each of these kinds of activities language is involved, but also other kinds of gestures and reactions that have meaning are used. They have meaning in the context of their use. Perhaps a good example of a language game is how people interact in a classroom setting. Depending on the kind of class—lecture, discussion, lab—certain people have a role of authority, certain gestures are used to indicate request or permission to speak, certain expectations exist as to the topics addressed and the length of time one may speak. All of these rules, roles, and expectations are part of the language game of the classroom. Describing the rules, roles and expectations, spells out the “grammar” of that language game. Such rules, roles, and expectations can differ from one language game to another, and they can change over time within a given language game. Certainly, the language games of the classroom have changed in my 33 years of college teaching.
Wittgenstein prefaced his list by asking “how many kinds of sentences are there?” and replied, “there are countless kinds.” Three years after the Investigations was published, an Oxford philosopher, J.L. Austin, gave a talk on BBC radio, in which he made fun of this reply:
Certainly there are a great many uses of language…. I think we should not despair too easily and talk, as people are apt to do, about the infinite uses of language. Philosophers will do this when they have listed as many, let us say, as seventeen [Wittgenstein lists eighteen]; but even if there were something like ten thousand uses of language, surely we could list them all in time. This, after all, is no larger than the number of species of beetle that entomologists have taken the pains to list. (PU, p. 234)
Austin approached language much as an entomologist classifies insects.
Wittgenstein did not any longer offer a theory of language, but a sort of overview or survey or reminder of the varieties of language (PI §122). He pretended to take himself to task for this:
For someone might object to me: ‘You make things easy for yourself! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what is essential to a language-game, and so to language: what is common to all these activities, and makes them into languages or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you the most headache, the part about the general form of the proposition and of language’.” (PI §65)
Wittgenstein’s former teacher, Bertrand Russell, became disenchanted with Wittgenstein’s philosophy after the Tractatus, picking up on this very objection: “The later Wittgenstein … seems to have grown tired of serious thinking and to have invented a doctrine which would make such an activity unnecessary” (MPD, p. 161).
Russell and Austin both assumed that a philosopher has to formulate a theory about something—that philosophy should be like science. In fact, Wittgenstein had more sympathy with that approach when he was working on the Tractatus. But a crucial change in his thinking came about on this very point. He came to think that there was a good deal of variety to the phenomena of life, and that attempting to reduce it to a theory—to look at it in one way only—did more harm than good. It threatened to lead us to ignore the variety by oversimplifying it so that it would fit the theory one has concocted. One should survey what there is, spelling out the various grammars, rather than try to fit it into a preordained pattern. “The problems are solved, not by coming up with new discoveries, but by assembling what we have long been familiar with” (PI §109).
Definition and Essence
A good example of solving a problem by assembling what we are familiar with comes from Wittgenstein’s account of definition. It was Socrates, arguably the first real philosopher in the Western tradition, who made definitions a focus of philosophical discussion.
When people wondered about controversial issues, like “Can virtue be taught?” (i.e., nature vs. nurture) or “Does it pay to be just?” (i.e., is virtue its own reward?), Socrates realized that the issue could not be resolved unless we knew what we meant by “virtue” or “just.” Oftentimes, people would spout off on these topics, but Socrates suspected that they didn’t know what they were talking about. So he would switch the discussion initially from “Can virtue be taught?” to “What is virtue?” If we can’t define “virtue,” then we literally do not know what we are talking about. Some people might belittle this concern as “mere semantics” or “playing with words.”
When former US President Bill Clinton first addressed allegations of an extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky, he said: “there’s nothing going on between us.” When evidence surfaced that he had, in fact, had a relationship, he defended his statement by asserting that “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” His point was that he was no longer having an affair at the time of his statement, so his statement was false only if “is” means “is and was.” He, on the other hand, apparently meant “is currently.” So it did indeed depend on the meaning of the word “is.” This defense struck some people as a case of hair-splitting.
But there is a lot at stake with words such as “virtue” and “justice.” Once we are able to define “virtue,” then we can use that definition to help answer the bigger question.
Socrates’ question “What is x?” (he asked about virtue, piety, courage, friendship, justice, and others) was usually met with someone’s list of instances of x. Most famously, Euthyphro’s reply to “What is piety?” was “What I’m doing now.” Socrates explained: “I did not bid you [to] tell me one or two pious actions but that form itself that makes all pious actions pious” (EU, 6d). The “form” Socrates was looking for is what philosophers would now call an “essence” or “necessary and sufficient conditions” for the term being defined. For example, a triangle is a “closed plane figure with three straight sides.” All triangles will fit that description (it is necessary), and anything that fits that description is a triangle (it is sufficient).
It is something of a challenge to come up with a satisfactory definition, or essence, for some common terms. In the Socratic dialogues, they were rarely successful. (Though, in The Republic Socrates came up with a definition of “justice.”) However, when a dialogue ends on an unsuccessful note, it is generally because the person Socrates was conversing with had other pressing business to attend to and had to stop the search. Socrates gave the impression that if they only could stick with the dialogue longer, they would eventually succeed. He was convinced that there must be a definition.
Similarly, shouldn’t we be able to define “language”? That was the project Wittgenstein undertook in the Tractatus. But he now saw that as a misguided project: “Instead of pointing out something common to all that we call language, I’m [now] saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common in virtue of which we use the same word for all…” (PI §65). Wittgenstein was taking the exact opposite position from Socrates. In fact, Wittgenstein said as much: “I can characterize my standpoint no better than by saying that it is the antithetical standpoint to the one occupied by Socrates in the Platonic dialogues. For if I were asked what knowledge is, I would enumerate instances of knowledge and add the words ‘and similar things’. There is no shared constituent to be discovered in them since none exists” (VW, p. 33).
The example that Wittgenstein famously considered in detail was that of a game. He mentioned a few: “board-games, card-games, ball-games, athletic games, and so on.” Then he asked: “What is common to them all?—Don’t say: ‘They must have something in common, or they would not be called “games” ’—but look and see whether there is anything common to all” (PI §66). Then he proceeded to shoot down several possible definitions.
It is an interesting exercise for the reader to try to define “game.” Or, better yet, choose your favorite genre of music (country, pop, hip-hop, blues, jazz). Now, define that genre—exactly what makes a song fall into that genre, or be excluded from it. Chances are you will be able to list some common characteristics and some things that distinguish it from other genres. But can you come up with a foolproof set of cond
itions? It’s doubtful.
As for “game,” the philosopher Bernard Suits took on Wittgenstein’s challenge and wrote a whole book aimed at defining it. The short version of his definition is: “Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles” (SG, p. 55). That sounds pretty good. Then, he spent 10 chapters considering objections, defenses, slight modifications of his definition. Who knows what Wittgenstein would have said? I’m not sure how Wittgenstein could be so confident that “no shared constituent…exists.” As far as the challenge to Wittgenstein, I would say that Wittgenstein’s real point was not that game could not be defined, but that it did not need to be defined (in essentialist terms) to be a perfectly useful concept. Remember, his plea was: “Don’t say: ‘They must have something in common, or they would not be called “games” ’.”
Family Resemblance
For Wittgenstein, the unity of a concept lay not in its having some essence, but in “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing, similarities in the large and in the small” (PI §66). In the case of the blues genre of music, we can point to similarities of history, lyrical subject matter, chord progressions, and rhythms, but not all examples of blues will share them, and they may be shared with songs from other genres. Still, they give the best sense of what the blues is.
This variety of affinities holds its instances together in a way that is workable for most purposes. Wittgenstein said, “I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’; for the various resemblances between members of a family—build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, and so on and so forth—overlap and criss-cross in the same way. And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.”
The resemblances within Wittgenstein’s own family were powerful. As noted at the start of this book, his father’s temperament as a businessman influenced Ludwig himself in his self-conception as a philosopher. Yet, his other brothers were more artistic and unable to accept that pressure.
Three of the brothers committed suicide—one or perhaps two because of their inability to accommodate their father’s pressure. Another of Ludwig’s brothers killed himself during the war because the soldiers under his command refused to obey his orders. An older brother seems to have ended his life because he could not bring himself to follow his father’s “orders.” Ludwig himself struggled with suicidal thoughts very consciously—especially from his mid-20s (while studying at Cambridge before the war) through his late 30s (while training to be a teacher and later as a teacher). The reasons for this inner struggle were not always clear. Russell recalled his time with Wittgenstein at Cambridge before the war:
He used to come to me every evening at midnight, and pace up and down my room like a wild beast for three hours in agitated silence. Once I said to him: “Are you thinking about logic or about your sins?” “Both!” he replied, and continued his pacing. I did not like to suggest that it was time for bed, as it seemed probable both to him and me that on leaving me he would commit suicide.
Suicide threatened to become a kind of common thread that ran though the Wittgenstein family.
On the positive side, love of music was another family trait. While this stemmed from Ludwig’s mother, it seems to have been shared by all. His brother Paul, who was a talented pianist, lost his right arm during the war. Ludwig feared for what this would mean for him: “What sort of philosophy would be needed to get over this?” (October 28, 1914, GT, p. 35). Yet, Paul had the strength to overcome this tragic setback. He went on to have a successful career as a pianist and as a piano teacher. He even commissioned piano works for the left hand from composers such as Maurice Ravel and Sergei Prokofiev. Ravel’s “Piano Concerto for the Left Hand” and Paul Wittgenstein’s story were the theme of an episode of the TV show “M*A*S*H” (Season 8, Episode 19: “Morale Victory”).
Of course, love of music would not distinguish the Wittgensteins from all other families. Perhaps the combination of business and music is rarer. But that was not even shared by all in the family. The suicides indicate a seriousness of purpose in the family. Wittgenstein is reported to have insisted: “Of this I am certain, that we are not here in order to have a good time” (CW, p. 88). He “saw life as a task,” and often recommended, “Go the bloody hard way.” All told, these characteristics do give a sense of the Wittgenstein family, and of Ludwig in particular.
In explaining the unity of a concept, Wittgenstein goes on to add another metaphor: “In the spinning of thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread resides not in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres” (PI §67).
Socrates sought an essential definition so that he could use it to resolve his controversial issues: “Tell me then what this form itself is, so that I may look upon it and, using it as a model, say that any action of yours or another’s that is of that kind is pious, or if it is not that it is not” (EU, 6e). But this supposes that there is a precision to definitions. Wittgenstein rejected the need for this precision: “We don’t know the boundaries because none have been drawn. …we can draw a boundary—for a special purpose. Does it take this to make the concept useable? Not at all!” (PI §69).
Here we see how practical Wittgenstein was. Vagueness and inexactness do not constitute problems if vague or inexact concepts serve our purposes. Socrates supposed there was some ideal of precision that all concepts must have. But Wittgenstein was interested in the varied and ordinary ways in which we use our concepts. We do not solve philosophical perplexities by discovering a precision previously unknown, but by appreciating the imprecision that suffices for our everyday purposes. If we happen to need a high degree of precision for some purpose, then we can “precisify” a concept for that purpose, but that does not tell us anything about the true nature of the concept. A “pace” may suffice to lay out the bases for a sandlot baseball game at 36 paces apart, even if we do not have a precise definition of pace. We could define a pace as 75 centimeters (PI §69), but it is doubtful that this will improve the game.
Exactness and inexactness depend on one’s purposes. “Am I inexact when I do not give our distance from the sun to the nearest foot, or tell the joiner the width of a table to the nearest thousandth of an inch? No single ideal of exactness has been laid down…unless you yourself lay down what is to be so called” (PI §88).
Wittgenstein’s own standards for exactness, however, were far from ordinary. When he was building the house for his sister, he designed corner radiators. His sister Hermine recounted:
Each of these corner radiators consists of two parts standing precisely at right angles to each other and with a space between them, the size of which has been calculated down to the last millimeter….it became clear that the kind of thing Ludwig had in mind could not be cast anywhere in Austria. Castings…were then obtained from abroad, but at first it seemed impossible to achieve with them the degree of precision demanded by Ludwig. Whole batches of pipe sections had to be rejected as unusable, others had to be machined to an accuracy of within half a millimeter…caus[ing] great difficulties. (MB p. 7)
She insisted that the precision was worth the effort and expense. But she also noted that, on a related matter, “the engineer handling the negotiations broke down in a fit of sobbing. He did not want to give up the commission but despaired of ever being able to complete it in accordance with Ludwig’s wishes” (p. 8).
Freedom of Religion
While defining “game” or a musical genre may seem like a pedantic exercise, the concept of “religion” can raise issues of real significance—such as, what practices are legally protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution? It might be supposed that here we would require real precision.
In the 1890 case of Davis v. Beason, the US Supreme Court viewed religion in traditional theistic terms: “The term ‘religion’ has reference to one’s views of his relations to his Creator, and to the obligations they im
pose of reverence for his being and character, and of obedience to his will.” And it is natural to suppose that belief in some kind of Supreme Being would at least be a necessary condition for a practice to be religious.
But by the 1960s, the court acknowledged that a wide variety of practices deserved the title of “religion” without necessarily postulating the existence of a god. In Torcaso v. Watkins, in 1961, the court distinguished between: “those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.” It went on to list “religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God … Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others.”
The court was pressed to provide a fuller interpretation of the notion in a conscientious objection case, where the statute required belief in a “supreme being.” In United States v. Seeger, the court considered “whether a given belief that is sincere and meaningful occupies a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by the orthodox belief in God of one who clearly qualifies for the exemption.” It held that “Where such beliefs have parallel positions in the lives of their respective holders we cannot say that one is ‘in relation to a Supreme Being’ and the other is not.”
In essence, the court eventually went on to equate moral, ethical and religious principles, distinguishing them from considerations of policy, pragmatism, and expediency, and clarifying that they must be part of a consistent practice, which “precludes allowing every person to make his own standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests” (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972).
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