***************************************************************** * * Titel: Book review NEWTON GARVER: THIS COMPLICATED FORM OF LIFE, Essays on Wittgenstein. Open Court, Chicago and La Salle, Illinois, 1994 Autor: Orsolya Schreiner Dateiname: 18-2-96.TXT Dateilänge: 21 KB Erschienen in: Wittgenstein Studies 2/96, Datei: 18-2-96.TXT; hrsg. von K.-O. Apel, N. Garver, B. McGuinness, P. Hacker, R. Haller, W. Lütterfelds, G. Meggle, C. Nyíri, K. Puhl, R. Raatzsch, T. Rentsch, J.G.F. Rothhaupt, J. Schulte, U. Steinvorth, P. Stekeler-Weithofer, W. 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Those articles and excerpts from * * articles which the subscriber wishes to use for his own * * private academic purposes are excluded from this * * restrictions. * * * ***************************************************************** Newton Garver's THIS "COMPLICATED" FORM OF LIFE is a collection of essays examining both naturalism and transcendentalism in Wittgenstein's philosophy. It is an unusual and surprising enterprise to argue that two prominent attributes from completely different philosophical doctrines can simultaneously apply to Wittgenstein. This is even more surprising, since it is unusual to apply any doctrine to Wittengenstein: it is generally considered that he never established any philosophical doctrines or tenets of his own. However, if we consider the term naturalism, in the specific sense that it excludes the idea of any alternative ultimate reality, allowing only the natural world to exist, the application of the term to Wittgenstein appears at once more likely. Here Garver detaches from an exclusive metaphysical meaning of this term the epistemological layers of previous centuries of thought, allowing for a more liberal analysis. And if we approach, as Garver suggests, transcendentalism similarly, as the unchanging basic problem of how the phenomena of meaning and understanding accord, the reference to Wittgenstein here too becomes more evident. Reflecting upon the common features of Wittgenstein's philosophy and that of Aristotle or Kant, Newton Garver arrives at the conclusion that both grammar and traditional metaphysics are inseparable from each other. The role of grammar, the constantly reinterpreted key concept in the later philosophy of Wittgenstein is to describe the appropriate use, and more specifically the proper meaning of linguistic signs. The parallel between traditional metaphysics and Wittgensteinian grammar is supported by three characteristics: a criticism of speculative or fundamentalist metaphysics, as with Kant; the constructive account of the essence of objects, as with Aristotle; and finally the presupposition of a pre-linguistic reality. Wittgensteinian grammar is descriptive, and therefore it presupposes something that it describes. Alluding to the quotation from Goethe's Faust, "Am Anfang war die Tat", which had a special importance for Wittgenstein, Garver's interpretation analyzes Wittgenstein's presupposition of the world as the stage of human actions - where human action transcends the scientific world. Unless metaphysics is disengaged from epistemology the concept of action is incomprehensible. In the diverse set of grammatical remarks constituting Wittgensteinean grammar, criteria merely represents one variety. Only utterances with truth values, i.e. only typically scientific and epistemic utterances, possess criteria. According to Garver's interpretation, Wittgenstein crushed the hegemony of epistemology over metaphysics by devising such a concept of grammar. It is widely known that Wittgenstein firmly stated: one can imagine a language the speakers of which do not use questions or commands, and even a language without statements of truth is imaginable. Linguistic universals such as questioning, ordering and stating were held to be contingent by Wittgenstein. These general types of utterances can be comprised in certain particular forms of life or linguistic usage while others lack them. From this, grammar can be considered contingent and transcendental simultaneously. Wittgenstein's naturalism can be derived from natural history, rather than from natural science. It is founded on certainty, excluding doubt, rather than on knowledge that in principle can always be questioned. What is meant by certainty and knowledge is that one can be sure of something without regarding it as necessary, whereas what can be known is only that which is taken to be necessary. In Garver's view, there should consequently be a direct concept of naturalism which does contain an element of the transcendental, although not in its original Kantian signification: naturalism transcends knowledge. Kant restricted knowledge in order to make room for faith, Wittgenstein confined it a similar manner, seeking room for grammar and natural history. The chapters of Garver's book offer numerous reasons and evidence warranting the transcendental feature of Wittgenstein's philosophy in its original sense, in the proper sense in which space, time and causality are not the objects of empirical cognition but of the transcendental. In the sense in which Garver claims that critical philosophy prevails over philosophical polemics by ignoring unjustified criteria as to the importance of the problems. In order that a criteria should be justifiable at all, something should be presumed as given or as natural at the starting point. If critical criteria are not anything that could be taken as given, in the menacing shadow of a 'circulus vitiosus', their importance can be confirmed by themselves alone. The later philosophy of Wittgenstein assumes that people have language, i.e. they acquire a number of language games. Moreover, Wittgenstein supposes that grammar is constituted by the totality of rules describing and not explaining language; making grammatical rules is exactly one of the universal though not primitive language games. From this outline, Garver construes grammar, and knowledge of grammar, as first a fact of natural history, secondly as the main characteristic distinctively marking the human form of life, and thirdly as the source of the critical criteria from which Wittgenstein's critical philosophy arises. Garver devotes several chapters to comparing certain concepts - such as the Aristotelian categories with Wittgensteinian language games, or Kantian schemes with that of Wittgensteinian criteria. He puts forward in detail his view that Wittgenstein followed in Aristotle's footsteps rather than Kant's, and that it would be advantageous to regard Wittgenstein as having accomplished the generalization that Aristotle dealt with on a specific level in Categories. Garver calls our attention to the fact that Wittgenstein, although he used the expression "category" in two lectures delivered directly after returning to Cambridge, and again in his later writing about certainty, introduced the phrase "language games" in PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS. A point in favor of the resemblance between these two terms is that the discussion about language games figures prominently in the early part of the book, this is similar to the explication of categories being placed at the outset of the ORGANON. When assessing this argument one should of course bear in mind the that the arrangement of the Aristotelian corpus cannot as such be ascribed to its writer. However, Garver applies a linguistic interpretation towards Categories justifying its authenticity by arguing that a linguistic interpretation has an early tradition and is confirmed by it's position in the corpus of Aristotle's work. It is precisely the possibility of the linguistic interpretation of Aristotle's works that allows a close relationship between the Aristotelian categories and Wittgenstein's language games. The most fruitful linguistic method for this examination, in Garver's opinion, is the distinctive feature analysis which enables us to endow Aristotelian categories with discourse features. This linguistic analysis distinguishes speech acts by means of two criteria: with the aid of discourse conditions, that is circumstances in which these linguistic acts could be suitable; and with the help of discourse possibilities, responses such as various questions, remarks and so on, which can be made to the utterances. Aristotle did not define categories, he examined what is differentiating between them. For the sake of understanding the construction of the Categories, Newton Garver attaches special importance to what Ackrill maintains about Aristotle's classification of categories, that Aristotle became aware of the fact that different types of answers are appropriate to different questions only through his classification of categories. In addition, Garver mentions various examples supporting another conviction, namely that the distinctive features listed by Aristotle often are founded upon the opposite insight: different questions fit with different predications. Garver inclines highly towards the idea that in opposition to Kant's categories being within the logical or propositional realm the Aristotelian categories are determined by pre-propositional rhetorical discourse features. The language games of Wittgenstein are closely bound up with the latter. From this it can be argued that Wittgenstein insists on the impossibility of determining a finite number of language games; in addition it can be also reasoned that language games have an emphasis on action rather than cognition or intention. As Garver concludes, this stress on action results in the creation of a metaphysical dimension of language games and grammar. Garver demonstrates that the notion of the Wittgensteinian language game can be applied to psychological reality as well as to material reality. From this, Garver says, the naturalism and transcendentalism of Wittgenstein's opinions could have been derived. These two realities and human actions are mutual conditions of each other, therefore no contradiction can exist between naturalism and transcendentalism. In the exegesis of the pair of concepts of Kantian scheme and Wittgensteinian criterion, Newton Garver highlights a certain "agreement" among the two philosophers, observing that both are firmly convinced that it is not satisfactory to rely merely on rules alone in commanding a language or for a thorough acquisition of the use of concepts. Both Kant and Wittgenstein view the participants of speculative debates as disregarding the presuppositions which are required for the proper use of words. Both recognize that rules governing the use of words and concepts differ from their logical and semantical rules. It is the task of the Kantian schemes and of Wittgensteinean criteria to establish the critical provisos at issue, while of course differences between the two conceptions remain. The status of criteria is completely unambiguous in the case of Wittgenstein, although the same cannot be said about Kant's schemes. Criteria are deemed by Wittgenstein as a kind of grammatical proposition, whereas Kant would define these as analytical statements. In turn, the nature of propositions expressing the schemes of several concepts are very problematic for Kant. According to the most well-known definition of the terms "analytical" and "synthetical" the propositions which express these schemes cannot be ranked among either the analytic, nor among the synthetic propositions. From the above roughly outlined considerations Newton Garver infers that the ideas of Wittgenstein are more lucid than Kant's regarding our ability to attain and master the use words or concepts, since for the former this is not some additional knowledge besides our acquirement and command of language. On the other hand, Garver points out that the work of Kant is more perspicuous in respect to the separation of the semantical and the pragmatical components than that of Wittgenstein. In connection with this, he sheds light upon the problem of a subtle distinction made by Wittgenstein, in PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS, the meaning of a word is identified with the use of it, literally with its "Gebrauch in der Sprache". Garver however notes that the use of a word does not coincide with its actual use, that is its application or "Verwendung / Anwendung". In contrast to words, sentences lack normal use in language, but are normally applied. The distinction between use and application is rather unexplained and unexposed in Wittgenstein's later work. Let us also refer to the supposed twofold aspects within criteria that are necessarily in essential relationship with both the application in phenomena and the meaning of a word - an assumption clearly further to complicate the grasping of this distinction. Apart from this divergence, Newton Garver believes it is of decisive significance, from the viewpoint of Kant's and Wittgenstein's common intention to build up a critical philosophy, to realize that schemes and criteria are components comprising the presuppositions of judging. The basic aim of Garver's studies is to argue for the continuity of thought in Wittgenstein's works. He evaluates the TRACTATUS as an unaccomplished or imperfect attempt at creating a critical philosophy, critical because its criterion of signification is deduced from the explanation of how sentences are possible at all, and unaccomplished or imperfect since the work declares itself to be nonsense. Throughout several chapters in Garver's volume he deals with transcendental idealism, the so-called dualism of the TRACTATUS. Garver thinks the Kantianism of Wittgenstein's early work partly consists in the dichotomies drafted in the TRACTATUS, and partly concentrates specifically on the dichotomy which holds between that what is given for people and what people do with the given. Revising the inherited Fregean dichotomies, Wittgenstein frames a more straightforward and clear-cut system of dichotomies than Frege. According to Garver's interpretation, the notion of the sentence versus that of the name amounts to the dichotomy on the level of symbolism. While on the level of semantics the concepts of sense and reference create the dichotomy, and on the level of metaphysics, the concept of the facts and objects constructs the single dichotomy These together, with the dichotomy of the famous "picture theory" mentioned above, add up to the dualism of the TRACTATUS. As one proceeds in reading the TRACTATUS, these enumerated dichotomies can be complemented with the further dichotomy of the "expressing of the expressible" against silence - relating to the proper method of philosophy according to Wittgenstein. Also, we can stumble on the distinction between two types of happiness: the moral dichotomy of being in harmony with the world, i.e. the totality of facts, or being in harmony with the substance of the world, i.e. the atomic facts. Garver establishes an analogy between the dichotomy of the world versus picturing or language which has a closer relationship to the metaphysical dichotomy and the Kantian idea about passive receptivity of the senses and the active spontaneity of the intellect. The common feature in both of these approaches is the sharp opposition between the originally given and the human actions manifested upon encountering it. Howewer, the framework is different. The epistemological setting of Kant is substituted for a logical-metaphysical model by Wittgenstein, where traces of an early dualism can be also discovered in his later philosophy. Wittgenstein's INVESTIGATIONS set words against sentences at the level of symbolism, while the above- mentioned obscure dichotomy of use and application can be found at the level of semantics. The early metaphysical dichotomy of the TRACTATUS is challenged and defeated by the later opposition of human dimensions of rules or practices versus those of acts and intentions. These jointly make up the "dualism" of the INVESTIGATIONS, the component of ontological-metaphysical dichotomy which Garver calls the robust naturalism of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. The book dwells in depth on the issues concerning the naturalism and transcendentalism of Wittgenstein. The author deals, among many other subjects not discussed in this review, with questions concerning the language games of knowing and not-knowing, the difficulties with the meaning of words which cannot be identified by use, the problem of ambiguous words discussed in the INVESTIGATIONS, and also enquires into the private language argument and the American reception of Wittgenstein. In his title THIS "COMPLICATED" FORM OF LIFE, (the same words stand at the very beginning of the second part of PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS) Garver highlights the interconnections between Wittgenstein's non-scientistic, liberal sense of a naturalistic framework and a transcendentalism free from epistemology. The human actions or practices posited as given constitute the foundation of the naturalism of Wittgenstein. Norms that these actions or practices involve sow the seeds of transcendentalism into naturalism. According to Garver, the remarks about the grammar and form of life which are meant to fix or determine these norms can be regarded as transcendental on three counts: because they are beyond scientific challenge; because they are the requirements or preconditions of our understanding; and because of their self-reference or reflexivity. Newton Garver does not attempt the impossible in his analysis. He accomplishes a comprehensive and full-fledged interpretation of the oeuvre of Wittgenstein, losing sight neither of the traditional, nor of the contemporary interpretations - creating a new window from which to view Wittgenstein's philosophy. Orsolya Schreiner