Artículo Sobre Wittgenstein

1
2
3
4 What Wittgenstein’s ‘Grammar’ Is Not
5
6 On Garver, Baker and Hacker, and Hacker on Wittgenstein
7 on ‘Grammar’1
8
9 Mauro L. Engelmann, Belo Horizonte
10
11 Abstract
12
13
‘Grammar’, for Garver, delivers what he calls a “critical criterion” of sense, i. e. a
criterion that determines what makes sense to say that should not be senseless by
14 its own lights. For Baker and Hacker the “critical criterion” is “rules of grammar”.
15 I argue that ‘grammar’ in the form of a critical criterion is not compatible with
16 the way that the later Wittgenstein describes his own goals. This because such a
17 criterion expresses a (disputable) philosophical conception and asks for a philo-
18
sophical doctrine or justification; moreover, it may not be meaningful by its own
lights. There is, however, important textual evidence that supports the idea that
19 Wittgenstein has or wants a critical criterion in his works from 1929 – 33. At the
20 end of this paper, I indicate why that material should not be used in the inter-
21 pretation of his later works. Finally, I point out that as long as we do not show in
22 details why writings from 1929 – 33 cannot be used in the interpretation of Witt-
23
genstein’s later philosophy, we don’t have a real alternative to the current under-
standing of ‘grammar’ – even though we may be convinced that it is incorrect.
24
25
26
1. Introduction
27
28
The word ‘grammar’ is used quite often in Wittgenstein’s manuscripts,
29
typescripts, dictations, classes and published works. It appears already
30
in the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (henceforth Tractatus) in the form
31
of “logical grammar” or “logical syntax”, i. e., the correct syntax of a for-
32
mal language (TLP 2004: 3.325). However, the role of ‘grammar’ in the
33
34
35
36 1 Thanks to Peter Hylton, Bill Hart, Wolfgang Kienzler, and Mike Beney for com-
37 ments on an early draft of this paper. Thanks to Peter for encouragement and
advice. This paper is a revised and reworked version of the introductory chapter
38
of my PhD dissertation (of which he was the adviser). Thanks to Andrew Lugg
39 and David Stern for comments on the last draft of this paper. Thanks to an anon-
40 ymous reviewer of Wittgenstein-Studien for suggestions made.
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72 Mauro L. Engelmann
1 Tractatus is not the subject of this paper.2 As important as it may be in the

2 Tractatus, ‘grammar’ seems to be central only after Wittgenstein’s return
3 to Cambridge in 1929.3 His philosophy in the Middle (1929 – 36) and
4 Late (1937 – 51) Periods seems to be of a grammatical nature. In the
5 Big Typescript, for instance, Wittgenstein says that “the rules of grammar
6 determine the sense of a sentence; and whether a combination of words
7 has sense or not” (BT 2005: 79).4 In the Blue Book, Wittgenstein points
8 out that philosophical problems arise by “grammatical misunderstand-
9 ings” (BBB 1960: 9), suggesting that a grammatical investigation is the
10 proper activity of a philosopher in the “fight against the fascination
11 which forms of expression exert upon us” (BBB 1960: 27). In the Phil-
12 osophical Investigations Wittgenstein says that his “investigation is … a
13 grammatical one” (PI 2001: 90).
14
Given those statements, it seems natural to conclude that ‘grammar’ is
15
what properly characterizes Wittgenstein’s later philosophical activity and
16
is, therefore, the key to the understanding of his later philosophy. But
17
18 2 Concerning the notion of ‘grammar’ in the Tractatus, the two major current in-
19 terpretations are from Hacker and Conant and Diamond (one can think that the
20 readings derive, respectively, from Norman Malcolm, and Rush Rhees and Peter
21 Winch – see Diamond (2006) and Hacker (1999) about the ‘lines of interpreta-
22 tion’). Baker and Hacker (but not the later Baker) think that logical syntax (or
logical grammar) in the Tractatus has the function of determining “the combina-
23 torial possibilities of symbols” (Baker and Hacker 1994: 34). Logical syntax, or
24 “deep grammar”, can do it in two different levels: by determining rules for com-
25 bining atomic propositions into molecular propositions and finding out correla-
26 tions of names and objects established by “mental acts” that “project names on to
27 objects” (Baker and Hacker 1994: 35). For Conant, logical syntax (or logical
grammar) in the Tractatus “treats of the categorically distinct kinds of logically
28 significant components into which sinnvolle Stze can be segmented…” (Conant
29 2001: 42). This segmentation depends on the use of symbols in meaningful
30 propositions. In both readings Wittgenstein’s concern in logical syntax is with
31 the meaning of words. The difference is that Conant emphasizes the context
32 principle (TLP 2004: 3.3), while Baker and Hacker emphasize the “mental”
act of naming (projection is seen as a mental act that combine names and simple
33 objects) as the source of meaning. For a very illuminating discussion of the no-
34 tion of projection in the Tractatus see Mounce (1997), Hacker (1999), and Dia-
35 mond (2006).
36 3 Quotation marks are always used to refer to talk about grammar because the no-
37 tion is under scrutiny here.
4 Something similar is said in Wittgenstein’s lectures: “Grammar circumscribes
38 language. A combination of words which does not make sense does not belong
39 to language” (LWL 1989: 48); see also (LWL 1989: 46 – 7 and 87) (all from
40 1931 – 2); also from the same period (MS 112: 53).

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What Wittgenstein’s ‘Grammar’ Is Not 73
1 what does Wittgenstein mean by ‘grammar’? What is the relation between

2 ‘grammar’ and Wittgenstein’s methodology in the Philosophical Investiga-
3 tions? Is it the traditional use of the word ‘grammar’ that he has in mind?
4 According to Moore’s notes on Wittgenstein’s lectures from 1930 – 33,
5 Wittgenstein claimed that he was using the same notion of grammar as
6 we ordinarily use – “in its ordinary sense”, as writes Moore (MWL
7 1965: 276). Nevertheless, in his lectures from 1932 – 33, Wittgenstein
8 says that he “left the realm of what is generally called grammar” (AWL
9 1979: 31). Thus, the very status of ‘grammar’ as a term of ordinary lan-
10 guage is not clear.5 An obvious problem is whether Wittgenstein is using
11 it in a metaphysical way (therefore nonsensical in his own terms?), given
12 that his use of the word is not equivalent to its ordinary use. Is ‘grammar’
13 the tabulation of rules that determine whether each sequence of words
14 makes sense or not, as is suggested by the passage from the Big Typescript
15 quoted above? How does this view, if true, fit Wittgenstein’s struggle to
16 present a method of philosophy that is free from substantial philosophical
17 views (or theories)?
18 Commentators have discussed these questions, but, as I will show, no
19 satisfactory answer has been found. In fact, a more careful analysis of the
20 present understanding of Wittgenstein on ‘grammar’ indicates that at
21 best one can be sure that there is something puzzling about it. If Witt-
22 genstein’s philosophical practice is consistent with what he says, I
23 argue, these views can only show what ‘grammar’ is not for Wittgenstein.
24 I concentrate on two major interpretations of the role of ‘grammar’ in
25 Wittgenstein’s later philosophy (those of Garver, and Baker and Hacker).
26 These authors are the best examples of a widespread tendency of attrib-
27 uting a substantial view of ‘grammar’ to Wittgenstein.6 Most current
28
29 5 This question is relevant because of what Wittgenstein says: “What we do is to
30 bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use” (PI 2001: 116).
31 6 A third author who discusses Wittgenstein’s views on grammar at length is For-
32 ster. Forster’s major concern is to present and defend Wittgenstein’s “thesis to the
effect that for all grammatical principles in all areas alternatives are either actual
33 or at least possible and conceivable” (Forster 2004: 3). Forster clearly attributes
34 theses to Wittgenstein and recognizes a “collision” between them and “Wittgen-
35 stein’s quietism” (Forster 2004: 86 – 7), but thinks that the latter “ought to be
36 sacrificed anyway” (Forster 2004: 87). Similar to Garver (and at some extent
37 to Baker and Hacker) Forster also sees Wittgenstein’s as a more radical Kantian
project (almost Hegelian, perhaps). In Forster’s view, Wittgenstein extended
38 “Kant’s explanation of the necessity of so-called synthetic a priori principles in
39 terms of mind-imposition and our constraint to cover it” to include also all an-
40 alytic principles (Forster 2004: 128). It is significant that he shares with Garver

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1 views either explicitly attribute philosophical doctrines to Wittgenstein or

2 do so in disguise.7 Wittgenstein’s philosophy is seen with Strawsonian
3 glasses: notions such as ‘descriptive metaphysics’ and ‘bounds of sense’
4 play a central role in current interpretations.8
5 In part 2 of this paper, I argue that Garver attributes to Wittgenstein
6 doctrines that are plainly incompatible with the way that Wittgenstein
7 describes his goals. In part 3 I analyse Baker and Hacker’s interpretation,
8 which is certainly the most through and systematic overall interpretation
9 of Wittgenstein at present. Baker and Hacker are not guilty of Garver’s
10 mistakes. However, even for them ‘grammar’ seems to open the door to
11 attributing substantial philosophical theses, opinions or conceptions to
12 Wittgenstein by means of notions such as “the bounds of sense” and “ar-
13 bitrariness” of grammar.9 In part 4 I show that Baker and Hacker’s inter-
14
pretation is supported by the assumption that Wittgenstein’s writings
15
after 1930 are all variations of the same philosophy. This suggests that
16
17
and Baker and Hacker the assumption that Wittgenstein has the same philosophy
18 and understanding of ‘grammar’ after 1930 (he quotes Wittgenstein’s writings
19 from different periods without paying attention to possible changes in Wittgen-
20 stein’s ideas). In what follows I criticize the attitude of not taking seriously Witt-
21 genstein’s non theoretical approach to philosophy, the use of different philoso-
22 phers to supposedly understand Wittgenstein and the attribution to him of sub-
stantial vies on grammar based on writings from the early 30’s when I discuss
23 Garver’s and Baker and Hacker’s interpretations. I think that the most important
24 criticisms presented against them directly apply to Forster as well.
25 7 See, for instance, the debate between Glock (2008) and Kalhat (2008) concern-
26 ing the supposedly “conventionalist account” of necessity and sense given by
27 Wittgenstein (see also Schwyzer (2001), O’Neil (2001) and Forster (2004)).
Kuusela (2006) and (2008) is an important exception among interpreters who
28 discuss Wittgenstein’s ‘grammar.’ He clearly sees that Wittgenstein does not in-
29 tend to explain the “nature of necessity” by means of “rules of grammar” and
30 that the idea of a “criterion of sense” (or “standard of sense,” as he says) is incom-
31 patible with Wittgenstein’s later work. In general, I think, his approach is the
32 right one and, in my view, he describes what Wittgenstein ‘grammar’ is or, at
least, might be. I express some worries about his views in footnote 46.
33 8 See Strawson (1975) and (1996). My goal here is not to reveal and explain the
34 historical background of the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘gram-
35 mar’; however, Strawson’s influence on several interpretations seems to me unde-
36 niable (see footnotes 7, 15, 41, and 42 of this paper).
37 9 The late Baker substantially disagreed with Baker and Hacker. It is difficult,
nonetheless, to draw a line between them (especially concerning Wittgenstein’s
38 changes in the 30’s) because the former’s late work is comparatively rather frag-
39 mentary. But I will take into consideration some aspects of Baker’s late disagree-
40 ment with his early views in this paper.

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1 only the revaluation of Wittgenstein’s Middle Period writings can show to

2 what extent Wittgenstein changes his views on ‘grammar’ and is meth-
3 odologically consistent in his late work.
4
5
6 2. Garver on Grammar: A Philosophical Doctrine and
7 A “Critical Criterion”
8
9 In his essay Philosophy as Grammar, Garver defends the view that ‘gram-
10 mar’ takes the place of logic in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. In the
11 Tractatus, he argues, Wittgenstein regards logic as a model of reality
12 that provides “the basis for the meaning of sentences…” (Garver 1996:
13 142). In his view, logic in the Tractatus gives us “the key to reality”
14
and takes the place of traditional metaphysics because logic, presumably,
15
tells us what the correct metaphysical view is. In his later philosophy, ac-
16
cording to Garver, Wittgenstein “retains virtually the same view about the
17
relation of the forms of language (whether they be grammatical or logi-
18
cal) to metaphysics” (Garver 1996: 142).10
19
Concerning the change from the Tractatus to Wittgenstein’s later phi-
20
losophy, Garver believes that Wittgenstein noticed that incompatibilities
21
of color, for instance, are present in all languages and because of this the
22
23
views of the Tractatus needed to be expanded. Garver is aware of the fact
24
that Wittgenstein doesn’t engage in a grammatical investigation immedi-
25
ately after his return to philosophy. He thinks that Wittgenstein “some-
26
times” spoke about phenomenology in the Middle Period as the alterna-
27 tive for the talk about logic in the Tractatus, but he doesn’t see any par-
28 ticular reason for this vocabulary. The change from ‘phenomenology’ to
29 ‘grammar’ is, for Garver, not much more than terminological. In Garver’s
30 view, Wittgenstein changed the terminology because other philosophers
31 had used the word ‘phenomenology’ before him and it had a Cartesian
32 flavor. This, however, Wittgenstein certainly knew before beginning his
33 phenomenological project.
34
35 10 To justify his view, Garver cites PI 2001: 371 – 3 in the following way: “Essence is
36 expressed by grammar… Grammar tells what kind of object anything is”. He
37 leaves out the enigmatic 372: “Consider: “The only correlate in language to
an intrinsic necessity is an arbitrary rule. It is the only thing which one can
38 milk out of this intrinsic necessity into a proposition””. Note that Wittgenstein
39 quotes the passage. It is not clear who is saying it. Is it Wittgenstein, the inter-
40 locutor or one of the interlocutors? What could be the purpose of the quotation?

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1 Garver skips over the problems concerning the origins of Wittgen-

2 stein’s use of ‘grammar’ too quickly. It cannot be a mere terminological
3 change that occurred, for Wittgenstein characterizes phenomenology in
4 his notebooks as what “isolates/separates/ the visual field and what goes
5 on in it from everything else” (MS 107: 4). It seems that phenomenology
6 is concerned with “the first system” (MS 105: 85), “the primary” (see MS
7 106: 177), “the immediately given” or “primary language” (MS 107:
8 295), while the notion of grammar to which Garver refers is related to
9 ordinary language. Garver would need an argument to show that, in
10 spite of appearances, there is a strong continuity between phenomenology
11 and grammar.
12 Garver maintains that Wittgenstein has a central motto for his later
13 philosophy: “Philosophy consists of grammar and metaphysics: grammar
14 is its basis” (Garver 1996: 142).11 One should be suspicious of Garver’s
15 attribution of the view that grammar is the basis of metaphysics to Witt-
16 genstein, for Wittgenstein’s goal is (so it seems) to show how metaphysical
17 claims are confused; he also takes himself as not offering any theoretical
18 views.12 Garver’s answer to such worries is that Wittgenstein is hostile to
19 speculative or scientific metaphysics, but also made “continuing contribu-
20 tions to descriptive metaphysics” (Garver 1996: 157).13 What characteriz-
21 es speculative or scientific metaphysics for Garver is the “enquiry into
22 transcendent facts” (Garver 1996: 157). This kind of inquiry is, for Garv-
23 er’s Wittgenstein, nonsense because it confuses two language-games,
24 namely, the discussion of problems related to facts and the discussion
25 of problems related to concepts. This conception that Garver attributes
26 to Wittgenstein, however, already presupposes a very strong philosophical
27 thesis: that there is an essential distinction between questions of facts and
28 questions of concepts. Descriptive metaphysics is sound according to
29
30 11 Garver is paraphrasing a remark that Wittgenstein made in 1913: “Philosophy
31 consists of logic and metaphysics: logic is its basis” (TS 201a).
32 12 On December 1931, for instance, Wittgenstein says (making a clear reference to
TLP: 6.53): “Once I wrote: The only correct method of philosophizing would
33 consist in not saying anything and leaving it to another person to make a
34 claim. This is what I now hold [modified translation; my emphasis]” (WWK
35 1979: 183).
36 13 It seems that Garver is referring to Strawson’s Individuals when he talks about
37 “descriptive metaphysics”. The mixture of Strawson and Wittgenstein is also
present in Baker and Hacker, for they constantly use the Strawsonian expression
38
“the bounds of sense” as if it originated in Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. Simi-
39 larly both, Garver and Baker and Hacker, give more or less Kantian readings of
40 Wittgenstein’s late philosophy.

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1 Garver (probably because he thinks that it doesn’t conflate different lan-

2 guage-games) and Wittgenstein is, in his opinion, one of its major con-
3 tributors with his descriptions “in the form of human natural history”
4 (Garver 1996: 158). What Garver has in mind are, as he says, “very gen-
5 eral matters of fact” such as the fact that “in all human groups there are
6 distinctions between ordering, asking, urging and praying” and that the
7 rules for those activities, according to Garver, are “valid with respect to
8 any particular language” (Garver 1996: 228).
9 Here, one has the impression that Garver himself is conflating the
10 two kinds of questions that he strives to distinguish. He ends up attrib-
11 uting to Wittgenstein assumptions concerning how the world is. Since
12 Wittgenstein relies on descriptions of the uses of words and other activ-
13 ities, Garver thinks that the contingency of the facts that comprises the
14 world is “the most prominent feature of Wittgenstein’s metaphysical
15 commitments” (Garver 1996: 159). For Garver, in his later philosophy
16 “Wittgenstein clearly also remained interested in what kinds of things
17 there are, and he took pains to describe or determine the form or essence
18 – though he did not call it that – of such things as pain, memory, inten-
19 tion, seeing, colours, numbers, and so forth.” (Garver 1996: 142). Is
20 Wittgenstein, then, simply wrongly using his own words and is really de-
21 termining the form or essence of memory, intention, etc?
22 I think that the point of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is distorted
23 by Garver. The only results of Wittgenstein’s philosophy are “the uncov-
24 ering of one or another piece of plain nonsense” (PI 2001: 119). Philos-
25 ophy, as it is practiced by the later Wittgenstein “leaves everything as it is”
26 (PI 2001: 124). The aim of Wittgenstein’s philosophy is to make philo-
27 sophical problems “completely disappear” (PI 2001: 133). What is really
28 distinctive in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is that the attack on philo-
29 sophical claims is not founded in any philosophical assumptions. This is
30 at least what he claims. Therefore, if one attributes philosophical views
31 about the nature of language or grammar to Wittgenstein, one has to sup-
32 pose that he is inconsistent.14 He may be inconsistent, but then the incon-
33 sistency has to be presented as such.
34
35 14 See for instance Fogelin (1996), who thinks that Wittgenstein “has transgressed
36 his self-imposed restrictions against substantive philosophical theorizing” (Foge-
37 lin 1996: 45). Another interpreter who sees Wittgenstein’s position of non ad-
vancing philosophical theses (“Wittgenstein’s quietism”) as incompatible with
38 his other views is Forster. For Forster, the “doctrine of meaning as use” (Forster
39 2004: 83) and Wittgenstein’s views on grammatical principles are incompatible
40 with his “quietism”: “…It is surely hard to believe that our ordinary language

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1 Once Wittgenstein’s point is distorted by Garver’s interpretation,

2 what takes its place is a series of comparisons with philosophers who, sup-
3 posedly, have views in common with Wittgenstein.15 This comparison is
4 threefold: Saussure, Aristotle and Kant.
5 In Garver’s view, both Saussure and Wittgenstein use ‘grammar’ de-
6 scriptively and think that ‘grammar’ is arbitrary in the sense of not
7 being made true or false by the facts in the world. But, for Garver, Witt-
8 genstein “doesn’t aim at a systematic description of language use”, because
9 of his supposed “disdain for the systematic” (Garver 1996: 150 – 1). An-
10 other difference, according to Garver, is Wittgenstein’s “integration of
11 language with activity and the consequent necessity for agreement in
12 practical judgment” (Garver 1996: 151). For Saussure, according to
13 Garver, language is isolated (linguistic phenomena are supposedly segre-
14 gated from other activities). It is not clear what the “isolated language”
15 attributed to Saussure may be, but it is interesting to notice that, in Garv-
16 er’s view, the “agreement in judgments” is a “discourse condition” found
17 by Wittgenstein (Garver 1996: 150). Thus, according to Garver, Witt-
18 genstein thinks that there is at least one necessary condition for language
19 to exist, namely, agreement in judgments.16
20
21
22 concept of meaning includes requirements of the sort of usefulness, and, as an
essential part of this in the case of grammatical principles, the sort of threefold
23 empirical application, in question” (Forster 2004: 84) (According to Forster, “the
24 threefold empirical application” is the following: that grammatical principles are
25 used in factual judgments, that they have a regulative role in factual judgments
26 and that the factual judgments that they regulate prove not to be recalcitrant).
27 15 The view that Wittgenstein is better understood by means of the understanding
of other philosophers, especially Kant, is quite popular. See, for instance, Finch
28 and his claim that Wittgenstein is “the ultimate Kantian” (Finch 1977: 248). An-
29 other interpreter who claims that Wittgenstein is Kantian is Pears (see Pears’ in-
30 troduction for his 1970). A recent version of Wittgenstein’s Kantianism is given
31 by Forster (2004). He says: “…Wittgenstein’s position can quite properly be de-
32 scribed as idealist, in a sense closely analogous to that in which Kant was” (Forster
2004: 17). Thus, Garver is exemplar in this aspect of his interpretation. For a
33 good discussion of the risks involved in seeing other philosophers’ views in Witt-
34 genstein’s works see Hilmy (1986).
35 16 What Garver has in mind is this passage: “If language is to be a means of com-
36 munication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as
37 this may sound) in judgments.” (PI 2001: 242). Of course, “the must” in the sen-
tence strongly suggests a transcendentalist interpretation of the passage. But nei-
38 ther the German word ,mssen’ nor any other similar that could be directly trans-
39 lated as ,must’ occurs in the German text: “Zur Verstndigung durch die Sprache
40 gehçrt nicht nur eine bereinstimmung in den Definitionen, sondern (so selt-

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1 The problem with this comparison is that it doesn’t tell us what Witt-
2 genstein is doing or how he is doing it. And this is a risk for interpreta-
3 tions that appeal to different philosophers in order to understand Witt-
4 genstein’s work. Why is Wittgenstein’s ‘grammar’ descriptive? In what
5 sense is Wittgenstein (if he is) unsystematic?
6 There is a similar problem with Garver’s comparison between Witt-
7 genstein and Aristotle the author of Categories. According to Garver, the
8 Categories are “an early and fragmentary version of what today we may
9 call Wittgensteinian grammar” (Garver 1996: 154). Unfortunately, Garv-
10 er doesn’t say precisely what Wittgensteinian ‘grammar’ is (so we cannot
11 know what the Categories are supposed to be a fragmentary version of ).
12 Instead he only hints at the nature of ‘grammar’ by means of the differ-
13 ences between Wittgenstein and Aristotle’s Categories. For Garver, both
14 the later Wittgenstein and Aristotle describe “actual uses of language”,
15 but Wittgenstein doesn’t focus on truth-claims as Aristotle and the earlier
16 Wittgenstein did. He also contrasts Aristotle’s scientific approach and
17 Wittgenstein’s non-scientific approach. There is still a third difference ac-
18 cording to Garver: while “Wittgenstein’s language-games early in Philo-
19 sophical Investigations are preliminary to diagnosis and treatment of phil-
20 osophical problems”, Aristotle’s Categories are “preliminary to just the sort
21 of scientific metaphysics that Wittgenstein found especially in need of his
22 therapy” (Garver 1996: 154). Note that Garver could have concluded
23 from this last claim that the projects of Aristotle and Wittgenstein are
24 completely different and that the comparison is unhelpful. For if Witt-
25 genstein wants to stop exactly what Aristotle wants to start, they must
26 be looking at language in very different ways. Moreover, if what Wittgen-
27 stein and Aristotle share is the description of “actual uses of language”,
28 then both have it in common with practically all the philosophers of lan-
29 guage of the 20th century.
30
31
32
sam dies klingen mag) eine bereinstimmung in den Urteilen.” An alternative,
33 more literal, translation could be: “To the understanding [communicaton] by
34 means of language belongs not only an agreement in the definitions, but
35 [also] (weird as this may sound) an agreement in judgments.” In this more literal
36 translation, it is clear that the ‘must’ is the product of an interpretation and
37 doesn’t belong to the original text. Here I am indebted with Goldfarb, who
made that point in a talk. The new translation by Hacker and Schulte reads:
38 “It is not only agreement in definitions, but also (odd as it may sound) agreement
39 in judgments that is required for communication by means of language.” (PI
40 2009).

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1 Garver’s comparison between Wittgenstein and Kant is more prom-

2 ising, for it can point to a valuable insight into Wittgenstein’s late philo-
3 sophical activity. For Garver, what characterizes a critical philosophy in a
4 Kantian style is the aim to overcome “the usual philosophical controver-
5 sies” by means of an assumption that is uncontroversial and the deriva-
6 tion of a “framework” (a “critical criterion”) to criticize philosophical
7 views (Garver 1994: 272). But the controversies, for Garver, can be over-
8 come in this way only if the “critical framework” is itself justified. In
9 order to avoid an infinite regress, argues Garver, the “critical criterion”
10 has to provide its own justification without being, so to speak, its own
11 victim (the criterion cannot turn against itself ).17 This is, in Garver’s
12 view, exactly what characterizes the “critical project” of the Philosophical
13 Investigations. Wittgenstein’s strategy, according to Garver, is to take for
14
granted the human form of life and its language-games. From this, Witt-
15
genstein derives his “critical framework”: “grammar and grammatical
16
knowledge – specially that part of grammar which is invariant for differ-
17
ent languages…” (Garver 1994: 273). Thus, ‘grammar’ as the “critical
18
criterion”, for Garver, is important especially because it is universal,
19
and it makes Wittgenstein’s philosophy free of problems of a self-defeat-
20
ing framework.18
21
To justify this last point, Garver says:
22
23 it is obvious and unproblematic that we teach and learn how to teach and
24 learn language; that is, that grammar is self-referential is as unproblematic
25
as that there is a spelling for the word ‘spelling’ (Garver 1996: 165).
26 This argument is certainly problematic. It is true that it is “unproblematic
27 that we teach and learn how to teach and learn language”, but this has
28 little to do with what could be a test of self-referentiality or self-defeat
29 concerning Wittgenstein’s ‘grammar’. An important question would be,
30 for instance, whether Wittgenstein’s use of ‘grammar’ is itself grammatical
31 in the sense that Garver takes Wittgenstein to use the term: i. e. Garver
32
33 17 One could think, for instance, that the principle of verification is an example of a
34 problematic “critical criterion”, for one can ask: is the principle itself verifiable?
35 Garver’s example of a problematic criterion is the Tractatus: since it is itself a col-
36 lection of nonsense, how can it possibly show that metaphysical propositions are
37 nonsense? Garver claims: “It [the Tractatus] was a failed attempt because it was,
by its own lights, nonsense” (Garver 1996: 273).
38 18 Garver says: “Grammar is a universal language-game, in that there is no natural
39 language in which it is not possible to instruct people in the use of language”
40 (Garver 1996: 165).

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1 should have asked whether there is a language-game in our ordinary lan-

2 guage in which there are rules that agree with Wittgenstein’s use of the
3 word ‘grammar’. So, it is irrelevant whether ordinary grammar is self-ref-
4 erential and not self-defeating, since it is not clear whether Wittgenstein’s
5 use of ‘grammar’ coincides with it. How can Garver show that the ordi-
6 nary use and Wittgenstein’s use of ‘grammar’ coincide? In fact, he cannot.
7 It is clear that Garver (if he wants to be consistent) has to defend the
8 claim that Wittgenstein’s ‘grammar’ is completely different from the or-
9 dinary one. If we strictly observe what Garver says about ‘grammar’,
10 we have to conclude that Wittgenstein’s use of the term is not only broad-
11 er than the ordinary use, but also peculiar. It is peculiar because in Garv-
12 er’s interpretation it remains inside a metaphysical tradition. For him,
13 Wittgenstein’s ‘grammar’ “expresses certain essential qualities of the per-
14 sons and actions” (Garver 1996: 160). This, obviously, has no relation at
15 all with the ordinary understanding of ‘grammar’.
16 Garver’s comparison between Wittgenstein and Kant shows, however,
17 that it is difficult to see how radical Wittgenstein’s philosophy is. It is very
18 tempting to attribute to it some kind of foundation, some kind of crite-
19 rion from which to judge the sense of philosophical claims. It seems that
20 if Wittgenstein claims that philosophers talk nonsense, then he must have
21 a criterion to decide whether a given philosophical statement is nonsen-
22 sical. But, in this case, the criterion would be obviously suspicious, for we
23 could ask what its status is. Here we see how particular a correct interpre-
24 tation of Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘grammar’ has to be (under the assump-
25 tion that Wittgenstein is consistent). If we accept that Wittgenstein pres-
26 ents a criterion of sense (or defends that there are “bounds of sense”),
27 then we seem to get into the predicament of Baron von Muenchhausen,
28 who has to pull himself out of the quicksand without somebody else’s
29 help. For if a critical criterion (‘grammar’, or ‘ordinary language’, or
30 ‘being part of a language-game’, or ‘rules of grammar that constitute
31 meaning’, or any other related “criterion”) is the criterion to be used to
32 determine what it makes sense to say, then this criterion has to make
33 sense according to what it prescribes. Of course, there is always the pos-
34 sibility of biting the bullet and assuming that Wittgenstein is the victim
35 of his own criticism. But in this case we could ask what the relevance of
36 Wittgenstein’s criticism is. In Garver’s understanding of ‘grammar’, the
37 notion of a critical criterion is its own first victim, for Wittgenstein’s
38 ‘grammar’, as understood by Garver, is not part of a language-game of
39 ordinary language. However, the very idea of a “critical criterion” of
40 sense is problematic. For even if the criterion is not self-defeating, as

Angemeldet
1 Garver correctly urges, it asks for a theoretical justification. Why would

2 one accept that there is a “critical criterion” of sense? The problem is that
3 a justification of a critical criterion would be, of course, philosophical.
4 Therefore, it seems that a philosopher who does not want to present a
5 theory, doctrine, or a conception should not claim that there is such a cri-
6 terion.
7
8
9
3. Baker and Hacker, and Baker, and Hacker
10
Baker and Hacker are aware of the mistake of taking the later Wittgen-
11
stein as a new Aristotelian or as a new Kantian. So they avoid attributing
12
a philosophical explanatory role to ‘grammar’ in line with traditional phi-
13
losophy.19 It is certainly ‘grammar’ that characterizes Wittgenstein’s phi-
14
losophy in their view, but the “grasp of grammar”, as they say, is envi-
15
sioned by Wittgenstein in order to dissolve philosophical problems and
16
not to explain, for instance, how propositions a priori are possible.20
17
The following passage shows this point clearly:
18
19 There are no philosophical propositions; philosophy can only produce a dis-
20 tinctive kind of understanding of non-philosophical propositions, as well as a
grasp of the illegitimacy of putative philosophical propositions. The distinc-
21
tive understanding is a grasp of the grammar, the logical articulation of or-
22 dinary propositions, which will dissolve philosophical questions and put at
23 rest philosophical worry (Baker and Hacker 1985: 275).
24
So what is distinctive in philosophy is the grasp of ‘grammar’, which
25
Baker and Hacker take to be the grasp of “the logical articulation of or-
26
dinary propositions” (‘ordinary’, I take it, in contrast to philosophical
27
propositions). In their view, the grasp of ‘grammar’ expresses the positive
28
task of philosophy as practiced by Wittgenstein. Negatively, ‘grammar’ is
29
designed to fulfill the task of showing that traditional philosophical prob-
30
lems are the product of confusions related to misunderstandings of the
31
functioning of language. Those problems, according to them, arise not
32
because the ‘grammar’ of our language is somehow hidden underneath
33
the sentences of language as, say, the elementary propositions in the Trac-
34
tatus; rather, the ‘grammar’ of ordinary language is not easily surveyable
35
and the lack of surveyability led traditional philosophers to develop con-
36
37
19 At least explicitly. Hacker understands the project of the Tractatus as similar to
38
Kant’s project (Hacker: 1997) and Baker and Hacker’s interpretation of the
39 later Wittgenstein brings Wittgenstein very close to Strawsonian-Kantianism.
40 20 For a view on ‘grammar’ similar to Baker and Hacker see O’Neil (2001).

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1 fused philosophical theories based on grammatical mistakes. ‘Grammar’,

2 for Baker and Hacker, only needs to show a “perspicuous representation”
3 or “survey” of what is already open to view in language.21
4 The task of the Wittgensteinian philosopher is, then, “to give us a
5 perspicuous representation of that segment of language which generated
6 our confusion” (Baker and Hacker 1985: 276). According to Baker and
7 Hacker, the Wittgensteinian philosopher aims at an “overview of the con-
8 ceptual field”, at an arrangement of “grammatical data”, which should
9 bring us to the dissolution of philosophical puzzles (Baker and Hacker
10 2005: 284). Thus, the positive task of philosophy characterized by a
11 ‘grammatical investigation’ is determined by and dependent on its nega-
12 tive task of dissolving philosophical problems. Thus, they certainly take
13 seriously Wittgenstein’s goal of not defending philosophical conceptions.
14 But what counts, for Baker and Hacker, as a perspicuous representa-
15 tion? A “perspicuous representation”, according to them, is a kind of con-
16 ceptual map of the use of expressions in language. It is “a grasp of the
17 logical network of concepts within a given domain” (Baker and Hacker
18 1985: 286). It is not a complete map, but a partial one, a map of part
19 of the grammar that has some stability over time: “…at least some seg-
20 ments of our grammar can be definitely mapped for a given generation.”
21 (Baker and Hacker 1985: 286). Even if the conceptual map or the “con-
22 ceptual geography” that is supposedly the task of ‘grammar’ is not com-
23 plete, it is at least, according to them, systematic: “For a survey does not
24 consist of a haphazard collection of apercus. If it is not comprehensive, at
25 any rate it is systematic” (Baker and Hacker 1985: 291).
26 What troubles one with Baker and Hacker’s interpretation, at this
27 point, is that Wittgenstein doesn’t seem to give “perspicuous representa-
28 tions” or “conceptual maps” of grammar very often, if he does it at all.22
29 This depends, of course, on what should count as an example of a per-
30 spicuous representation in Wittgenstein’s work, but it is clear that more
31 has to be explained here if the concept has really the central role attrib-
32 uted to it by them.23 The only example given by Wittgenstein that is la-
33
34 21 See PI 2001: 122, where “bersichtliche Darstellung” is translated by Anscombe
35 as “perspicuous representation”.
36 22 The role of a “surveyable representation” in Wittgenstein’s philosophy is one of
37 the major disagreements between Hacker and Baker. In the discussion that fol-
lows I am indebted to Baker (2004).
38 23 Baker and Hacker have a good reason to think that the concept is central to Witt-
39 genstein, for he says “the concept of perspicuous representation is central to us”
40 (PI 2001: 122). The question is, of course, whether its centrality is connected

Angemeldet
1 beled as ‘perspicuous representation’ is the color octahedron (WWK

2 1993: 42 and PR 1975: §§ 51 – 2). One can see in the octahedron
3 that some combinations of color are not possible (for instance ‘greenish
4 red’) while others are allowed (for instance ‘yellowish red’). In the octa-
5 hedron the opposition of red and green shows this. The octahedron
6 seems to be an interesting example of ‘perspicuous representation’ because
7 it shows in a glance (it is surveyable) the different possibilities of color
8 combination. But, of course, a set of rules prescribing the combinations
9 that are allowed would also suffice. According to Baker and Hacker, this
10 is actually the clue to understanding the difficulty involved in Wittgen-
11 stein’s account of the notion of ‘survey’ (Baker and Hacker 2005:
12 307 – 334)24. A surveyable representation, according to them (or at
13 least according to Hacker), can be understood broadly or narrowly.25 Nar-
14
rowly, it means “a grammatical proposition or a few propositions that
15
shed enough light on the matter at hand to dispel illusion and to high-
16
light the grammatical category or role of the expression in question”
17
(Baker and Hacker 2005: 332). Broadly, it means a “synopsis of gram-
18
matical rules”. It is clear, for Baker and Hacker (or Hacker), that there
19
are no examples in Wittgenstein’s later work of tabulating rules of gram-
20
mar in the synoptic sense. The exception is “his plan for treatment of psy-
21
chological concepts” in Zettel § 472 (Baker and Hacker 2005: 333). For
22
them, Wittgenstein was too worried with the details and ramifications of
23
24
concepts involved in philosophical confusion and therefore didn’t expend
25
time trying to tabulate “the grammar of expressions in a surveyable man-
26
ner” (Baker and Hacker 2005: 333). But according to Baker and Hacker
27
an attentive reader could do the job for “scattered throughout his volumi-
28 nous notes we often find numerous grammatical observations that can be
29 used by the judicious cartographer who has the inclination to master the
30 geography of concepts” (Baker and Hacker 2005: 334).
31
32 with their claim that a perspicuous representation is the positive part of Wittgen-
stein’s philosophy (a grammatical map) used to show how philosophical prob-
33 lems are nonsensical (negative task of philosophy).
34 24 Hacker wrote the second edition of the first two volumes of the commentary
35 alone (Baker and Hacker (2005) and (2009)). Baker’s views are expressed in
36 Baker (2004). There are several disagreements pointed out by Baker, but the
37 common source of practically all of them is the dogmatism that is implicitly at-
tributed to Wittgenstein in Baker and Hacker’s reading.
38 25 Since Hacker is responsible for the new edition of Baker and Hacker’s commen-
39 tary, one could ascribe most of the views expressed in the new edition to him
40 alone. However, it is difficult to clearly separate their views.

Angemeldet
1 But is this cartographer sure that he can find an overview of the con-
2 cepts that he needs to investigate? For Baker and Hacker (or Hacker), our
3 grammar is “deficient in surveyability”, but it must be surveyable: “that
4 which one has in view must be something that is, in principle, surveyable
5 (uebersehbar)” (Baker and Hacker 2005: 310). The justification for this
6 in principle necessity is the following:
7
The surveyability that Wittgenstein exhorts us to pursue is no will o’ the
8 wisp. It is not a contingent feature of language that its grammar is surveyable.
9 That it must be possible in one way or another to describe our use of lan-
10 guage and to remind ourselves of the grammatical explanations we normally
11 accept as criteria of understanding is a reflection of the contention that a per-
son’s conduct cannot be described as rule-governed unless he himself sees it
12
as rule-governed (Baker and Hacker 1985: 308).26
13
14 The first thing to notice about this claim and its justification is that it is
15 far too dogmatic to be Wittgensteinian. One of Wittgenstein’s major con-
16 cerns in his later writings is the tendency that philosophers have to ex-
17 press conditions that must be satisfied in order for this or that be the
18 case. Wittgenstein, therefore, doesn’t fit the “transcendentalist” who is
19 looking for “conditions of possibility” of rule following or language.
20 This seems to be well expressed in Wittgenstein’s criticism of the Tracta-
21 tus’ conception of logic in the Philosophical Investigations: 27
22 We want to say that there can’t be any vagueness in logic. The idea now ab-
23 sorbs us that the ideal ‘must’ be found in reality. Meanwhile we do not as yet
24 see how it occurs there, nor do we understand the nature of this “must”. We
25 think it must be in reality; for we think we already see it there (PI 2001:
101).
26
27 One could paraphrase § 101 and say that for Baker and Hacker (or Hack-
28 er) “there can’t be a non-surveyable grammar…the ideal ‘must’ be found
29
30 26 It is not clear why Hacker didn’t include that justification for his claim in the
31 second edition of Vol. 1 of the commentary. Baker was unsatisfied with this pas-
32 sage, for he quotes it and criticizes its dogmatism in Baker (2004: 71, footnote).
It may be that Hacker decided to leave out the justification of their early claim
33 because of Baker’s disagreement, but a very similar claim remained in the second
34 edition notwithstanding.
35 27 See PI 2001: 89 – 109, and 131. Important (Early) Middle Period passages on
36 dogmatism are: (WWK 1993: 182 – 4), (BT 2005: 260), (MS 110: 222),
37 (MS 111: 87); later period passages are: (MS 115: 57), (MS 122: 84r), (MS
130: 53), (MS 142: 111 – 2). It seems very plausible that Wittgenstein fought
38
against his own tendencies of dogmatism until late in his life, for even in his
39 later writings he points to his own dogmatic positions (see, for instance, from
40 1939 – 40: “Here I always tend to dogmatism!” (MS 122: 71v)).

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1 in language”. But, we could go on, what is the nature of this ‘must’? The
2 short answer is: it has a dogmatic nature. It shows only the requirements
3 that one wants to impose on language. Wittgenstein is, in fact, explicit
4 about the dogmatism behind the philosophical must: “”It has to be this
5 way” is not a sentence of philosophy. Dogmatism” (MS 130: 53).28 So
6 Baker and Hacker’s grammatical or linguistic necessities don’t seem to
7 quite fit Wittgenstein’s Late Period Philosophy.29
8 How could Wittgenstein defend claims about language and its con-
9 ditions of possibility and at the same time claim that he “won’t say any-
10 thing which anyone can dispute” in his Cambridge Lectures on the Foun-
11 dations of Mathematics from 1939? To see how strong Wittgenstein’s
12 point is, it is useful to look at the whole passage:
13
14
15
16 28 According to von Wright’s catalog, most of the manuscript is from 1946 (Von
17 Wright 1980: 44 and 53), but the quoted passage is probably from 1944 – 45.
(Thanks to a reviewer, who pointed this out to me).
18 29 I am skipping here a detailed discussion of an important part of the role of ‘gram-
19 mar’ according to Baker and Hacker. For them, one of Wittgenstein’s most im-
20 portant insights is that mathematical and geometrical propositions are ‘rules of
21 grammar’, while some metaphysical propositions are disguised ‘rules of grammar’.
22 Necessary propositions are “expressions of internal relations between concepts
that are themselves used in stating truths about the world”; and their role, accord-
23 ing Baker and Hacker, is “to license (or prohibit) transitions between concepts,
24 i. e. transitions from one expression of an empirical proposition to another”
25 (Baker and Hacker 1994: 269). They don’t see Wittgenstein as merely suggesting
26 an analogy between mathematical, geometrical and metaphysical propositions
27 with rules of ‘grammar’. They claim that Wittgenstein’s contention was “that
they were rules” (Baker and Hacker 1994: 57): “Notoriously he [Wittgenstein]
28 claimed that mathematical propositions are rules of grammar” (Baker and Hack-
29 er 1994: 61). (See also Baker and Hacker 2009: 62). This again, in my view,
30 sounds more like a philosophical doctrine concerning the nature of necessity
31 than any description of our practices. That is, it seems that Baker and Hacker
32 are attributing a dogmatic position to Wittgenstein. In this case, they may be
right. It may be that Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics is still dogmatic
33 even in the 40’s, but I cannot evaluate the details of this possibility in this paper
34 (see also Putnam (2007)). In part 4 of this paper I briefly discuss passages from
35 Wittgenstein’s lectures on the philosophy of mathematics in order to suggest that
36 even in the philosophy of mathematics ‘grammar’ is not to be seen as an explan-
37 ation of necessity. It is important to notice, however, that Wittgenstein’s philos-
ophy of mathematics was never ready for publication – except maybe for TS 222,
38 published as the first part of Bemerkungen ber die Grundlagen der Mathematik,
39 which must be read as the second part of TS 221 (see Schulte’s introduction to
40 the Kritisch-genetisch Edition and Schulte (2006)).

Angemeldet
1 The investigation is to draw your attention to facts you know quite as well as
2 I, but which you have forgotten, or at least which are not immediately in
3
your field of vision. They will all be quite trivial facts. I won’t say anything
which anyone can dispute. Or if anyone does dispute it, I will let that point
4 drop and pass on to say something else [my emphasis] (LFM 1976: 22).
5
6 If Wittgenstein is willing even to let the “point drop”, it seems very un-
7 likely that he would defend a view of the nature of language suggested by
8 Baker and Hacker – unless his goals and practice were inconsistent, which
9 is, of course, also possible. Moreover, we should not expect that Wittgen-
10 stein was not aware that to give necessary conditions of possibility of lan-
11 guage would not be disputed by philosophers. It cannot be taken as a
12 “trivial fact” that surveyability is a necessary condition of language.
13 Baker and Hacker’s view certainly has the appearance of a philosoph-
14 ical theory, which contradicts what Wittgenstein prescribes.30 As he says:
15 “And we may not advance any kind of theory” (PI 2001: 109). Wittgen-
16 stein does not say that he does not want to advance a scientific or phil-
17 osophical theory in § 109; rather, he says “any kind of theory”. The claim
18 that grammar must be surveyable doesn’t look like a claim that “every-
19 body would agree to” (PI 2001: 128), but more like an aspect of a phil-
20 osophical doctrine that will be endlessly discussed. It looks simply like a
21 “kind of theory”.
22 Another important aspect of a ‘grammatical investigation’ for Baker
23 and Hacker is its opposition to what would count as an empirical inves-
24 tigation: philosophy as a grammatical investigation doesn’t have empirical
25 concerns; it is only interested in the relation of concepts, in sense and not
26 truth (Baker and Hacker 2009: 57). For them, the reason why philoso-
27 phy is not concerned with empirical questions is its “special concern
28 with the limits of sense”, which it “describes from within” (Baker and
29 Hacker 1985: 281). This concern with the limits of sense (or “bounds
30 of sense”) is what is proper to a ‘grammatical investigation’: “Grammar
31 determines what is logically possible, i. e. what it makes sense to say”
32 (Baker and Hacker 2005: 324).
33 Baker and Hacker see the rules of grammar as descendents of the
34 rules of logical syntax of the Tractatus and think that “like rules of logical
35
36 30 It is a common move among interpreters to attribute to Wittgenstein a philo-
37 sophical theory or opinion and, then, of course, say that what he means by ‘theo-
ry’ is only scientific theory (see, for instance, Hanfling (2004)). In my view, such
38
moves distort Wittgenstein’s philosophy and miss one of the most important
39 characteristics of it: it is a critique of philosophy that is not based on a critical
40 theory.

Angemeldet
1 syntax, rules of grammar determine the bounds of sense” (Baker and

2 Hacker 1994: 40). Given this point of proximity between the later and
3 the earlier Wittgenstein, Baker and Hacker offer us what they take to
4 be a clue for the difference between the philosophical activity of both pe-
5 riods: while the structure of language was taken to be hidden in ordinary
6 language in the Tractatus (simple names as constituting elementary prop-
7 ositions), it is open to view for the later Wittgenstein. According to them
8 (or Hacker), Wittgenstein’s first change was to abandon the Tractarian
9 view that there is a hidden isomorphism between reality and language.31
10 In their view, the idea of the connection between world and language by
11 means of proper names and simple objects discovered by analysis is aban-
12 doned in favor of a view that ostensive definitions are rules within lan-
13 guage. The meaning of a word is the set of rules which constitute mean-
14 ing (Baker and Hacker 2009: 364). Because ostensive definitions are rules
15
of language, they are part of language and its ‘grammar’. This shows, for
16
Baker and Hacker, that language is “self-contained and autonomous”
17
(Hacker 2000: 91; Baker and Hacker 2009: 46). The “transgression”
18
of those autonomous rules “yields nonsense” (Baker and Hacker 2009:
19
19). For them, the real turn in Wittgenstein’s philosophy is, then, the
20
abandonment of “the metaphysical aspirations of investigating an objec-
21
tive essence of the world” (Baker and Hacker 2005: 252) in favor of “the
22
de dicto conception of essence endorsed in the Investigations §§ 92, 371,
23
24
373” (Baker and Hacker 2005: 252, footnote 3). Thus, for them (or for
25
Hacker), Wittgenstein in the Tractatus has a de re conception of essence or
26
necessity, while in the Philosophical Investigations he has a de dicto concep-
27
tion. Here, they (or Hacker) are attributing, again, a philosophical doc-
28 trine to the later Wittgenstein.
29 It is interesting to observe that Hacker does not include § 372 of the
30 Philosophical Investigations in the list of Wittgenstein’s remarks that sup-
31
32 31 It is not clear to me that Wittgenstein really defended such a view in the Tracta-
tus. – see, for instance, Diamond (1996) and (2004), Conant (1990) and (2006),
33 and (2001), Kremer (2001) and (2007) and Ricketts (1996). It is, nonetheless,
34 true that some passages in the Middle Period suggest that Wittgenstein held
35 that there is an isomorphism between language and reality, but that it cannot
36 be described (see, for instance, the first pages of MS 108, from 1930). But if
37 it is really true that this was Wittgenstein’s view, then he must have defended
the idea that one can quantify over the inexpressible (there is a x such that x
38 is inexpressible), which is also nonsense. In this case, Wittgenstein believed inex-
39 pressible nonsense, even though the point (or an important point) of the Tracta-
40 tus was to stop nonsense.

Angemeldet
1 posedly express a de dicto conception of necessity (Baker and Hacker

2 2005: 252; quoted in the last paragraph).32 However, in the first edition
3 of their commentary Baker and Hacker clearly assumed that § 372 ex-
4 presses a defense of the “arbitrariness of grammar” which they, then, at-
5 tribute to Wittgenstein himself (Baker and Hacker 1994: 329). Later, in
6 the third volume of the commentary, Hacker recognizes that § 372 is a
7 quote, but simply tries to make it fit his old interpretation by assuming
8 that in the quote Wittgenstein is opposing the Tractatus to the Philosoph-
9 ical Investigations (Hacker 1998). He interprets the first claim of the
10 quote as an allusion “in a generalized way to the position delineated in
11 the Tractatus” (Hacker 1998: 237). Hacker says that “at that stage [Trac-
12 tatus] Wittgenstein firmly believed that there are intrinsic necessities”
13 (Hacker 1998: 237). He opposes this view to a view that he attributes
14 to the Philosophical Investigations:
15
16 …we are being invited to consider the quoted remark by way of contrast
with the conception of necessity or essence that characterizes Wittgenstein’s later
17
philosophy [my emphasis] (Hacker 1998: 238).
18
19 Hacker’s interpretation of § 372 (and, therefore, passages surrounding it)
20 characterizes his general views concerning the Philosophical Investigations:
21 on the one hand, he claims that, for instance, the ‘arbitrariness of gram-
22 mar’ is “not a philosophical thesis at all” (Hacker 2000: 89); on the other
23 hand, he claims that Wittgenstein has a “conception of necessity or es-
24 sence” and talks about “Wittgenstein’s later account of necessity”
25 (1998, 238) in terms of the “arbitrariness” or “autonomy” of grammar.
26 In volume 4 of the commentary (Hacker 2000), Hacker does not men-
27 tion § 372 to support his views on the “arbitrariness of grammar” any-
28 more. He justifies his views making reference, not accidentally as we
29 will see, to the Philosophical Grammar and to lectures from the period
30 1930 – 33.
31 Baker and Hacker try to deny that Wittgenstein’s ‘grammatical re-
32 marks’ have doctrinal or dogmatic characteristics (Baker and Hacker
33
34 32 Here is the remark: “Consider: “The only correlate in language to an intrinsic
35 necessity (Naturnotwendigkeit) is an arbitrary rule. It is the only thing which
36 one can milk out of this intrinsic necessity into a proposition.”” (PI
37 2001:372). One should not forget that the remark is quoted and, as such,
may not be the expression of Wittgenstein’s view. It is not quoted, however, in
38 the original version of the Big Typescript, which suggests that Wittgenstein
39 held the view at the time. Later Wittgenstein added quotation marks and the
40 word “consider’’ to the remark.

Angemeldet
1 2009: 20). For them, there are two categories of ‘grammatical remarks’.
2 The first is “evident truisms concerning our use of expressions and undis-
3 puted rules for their use” (Baker and Hacker 1994: 23) (Ex: it makes
4 sense to say ‘I know you have a toothache’, that ‘to understand’ doesn’t
5 have a continuous present tense, or that ‘two’ may be correctly explained
6 by ostension). The second category of remarks are the “overviews” and
7 synoptic descriptions. Baker and Hacker give the following examples of
8 ‘overviews’:
9
that the sense of a sentence is its method of verification, that the proper answer
10
to ‘What are numbers?’ is a description of the grammar of number and of
11 numerals, or that inner states stand in need of outward criteria [my empha-
12 sis] (Baker and Hacker 1994: 23).33
13
14
According to Baker and Hacker, however, those propositions are not the
15 “axiomatic basis for the grammar of our language” (Baker and Hacker
16 1994: 23) and so they are not theses or dogmatic remarks. This because,
17 in their view, Wittgenstein never uses his grammatical remarks as premises
18 of arguments. Such propositions appear as “the coda of reasoning”: “there
19 are no grammatical arguments from grammatical propositions in his
20 work” (Baker and Hacker 1994: 23). If these ‘grammatical remarks’ are
21 not used as parts of arguments, then it seems plausible to think that
22 they don’t have the weight of philosophical theses.
23 Even though the explanation above is helpful, it is incompatible with
24 what they say later. Later, the interesting clue that grammatical remarks
25 are not part of arguments seems to be forgotten (Baker and Hacker
26 2005). They (or Hacker) seem to give a lot of weight to ‘grammatical ob-
27 servations’ in Wittgensteinian philosophical arguments when discussing
28 the nature of Wittgenstein’s arguments:
29
…it is not evident that there cannot be deductively valid arguments in phi-
30 losophy, the premises of which spell out conditions of sense and the conclusion
31 of which is that a given form of words lacks sense (since it fails to accord
32 with the conditions of sense) [my emphasis] (Baker and Hacker 2005: 294).
33
34 33 It is strange that Baker and Hacker include “the sense of a sentence is its method
35 of verification” among the ‘grammatical remarks’. This is obviously a very disput-
36 ed view in philosophy and it is very doubtful that Wittgenstein defended such a
37 view in his later philosophy even if he defended something similar between
1929 – 1931. For Wittgenstein’s verificationist claims see, for instance, MS
38 105: 10 and 16, from 1929 (“Each proposition is the instruction of a verifica-
39 tion”). After 1931, the use of the expression rarefies and never appears in the
40 form of “the sense of a sentence is its method of verification.”

Angemeldet
1 An argument of this kind, writes Hacker, “proves that a form of words is

2 excluded from language [my emphasis]” (Baker and Hacker 2005: 294).
3 It seems that after all, according to Baker and Hacker (or Hacker), the use
4 of ‘grammatical rules’ as premises is not a bad idea; as such they have the
5 role of axioms of sense.34
6 This role aggravates another problem. Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘gram-
7 mar’ understood as the guardian of the limits of sense is very different
8 from the ordinary use of the word ‘grammar’. No grammar book has
9 in it a description of the “bounds of sense”. No grammar book contains
10 ‘grammatical remarks’ similar to the following made by Baker and Hack-
11 er: “necessary truths are a product of grammar, not descriptions of the
12 structure of reality” (Baker and Hacker 1985: 279). Thus, one of Moore’s
13 famous objections to Wittgenstein’s use of the word ‘grammar’ seems to
14 be justified: Wittgenstein doesn’t use ‘rules of grammar’ as it is ordinarily
15 used (Moore 2007). Here, again, we have the problem of the criterion
16 that does not pass its own test.
17 According to Baker and Hacker, both the grammarian and Wittgen-
18 stein are “concerned with the rules for the use of words” (Baker and Hacker
19
1994: 56; Baker and Hacker 2009: 60), but those rules can be seen in
20
different ways. Wittgenstein and grammarians occupy themselves with
21
the same general subject, namely, the rules of language, but have different
22
23 34 It is important to notice that Hacker (Baker and Hacker (2005) and (2009))
24 doesn’t seem to believe that there is any fundamental change in the way he under-
25 stands Wittgenstein’s philosophy between Baker and Hacker’s early books and the
26 second edition of the first two volumes of the commentary. It is true that Hacker
27 says he saw “numerous errors” in their interpretation (Baker and Hacker 2005:
xv) and talks about errors “made twenty-five years earlier” (Baker and Hacker
28 2009: xiii), but those errors are not indicated to the reader. The exception is
29 the supposedly wrong “emphasis on the Augustinian picture” (Baker and Hacker
30 2005: xv). Not much is said about specific changes made and the reasons under-
31 lying them. One could, of course, think that Hacker changed his mind in his
32 later work and this would then explain tensions and inconsistencies in their in-
terpretation. But as a matter of fact, they are inherent to Baker and Hacker’s early
33 and to Hacker’s later interpretations. On the one hand, according to Baker and
34 Hacker, Wittgenstein’s ‘grammatical investigation’ dissolves philosophical prob-
35 lems (negative task of philosophy); on the other hand, to dissolve philosophical
36 problems, according to them a ‘grammatical investigation’, must determine the
37 “bounds of sense” (positive task of philosophy). The very claim (which appears
in several volumes of their commentary) that bounds of sense are to be made
38 clear supposes philosophical criteria to determine them and, thus, a philosophical
39 justification. Such a justification is, however, absent in Wittgenstein’s writings
40 and is in tension with Wittgenstein’s goal of not presenting theories or opinions.

Angemeldet
1 purposes with their occupation (Baker and Hacker 1994: 54; Baker and
2 Hacker 2009: 58). In their view, the philosopher “tabulates the use of the
3 words” (Baker and Hacker 2005: 330; Baker and Hacker 1985: 292); in
4 this way she shows that traditional philosophical propositions are non-
5 sense because they transgress the “bounds of sense”. They think, however,
6 that the ordinary grammarian wishes not exactly the same, for instance, to
7 teach children how to speak correctly (Baker and Hacker 2009: 57).
8 Wittgenstein, for Baker and Hacker, broadened the notion of ‘rules of
9 grammar’ based on similarities between rules of language in ordinary
10 grammar and in philosophical grammar. A similarity of both concerning
11 the bounds of sense is, for instance, that a grammarian also considers
12 some combination of words nonsensical (for instance, “they was wall
13 tiger ball”). In their view, the ordinary grammarian is only worried
14 with syntactical aspects of nonsense, while Wittgenstein’s quest is for se-
15 mantic nonsense (Baker and Hacker 2009: 60). Here, I think, Baker and
16 Hacker assume that for Wittgenstein meaning is circumstance dependent
17 (for the meaning of a word can vary according to the context of use) in
18 order to deny the sharp demarcation of semantics, syntax and pragmatics
19 and, thus, defend that the ordinary and the philosophical grammarians
20 are not that far apart. (They assume it explicitly in (Baker and Hacker
21 1994: 58)).35 If this is correct, however, the demarcation of syntax, se-
22 mantics and pragmatics doesn’t have force as a consequence of a philosoph-
23 ical conception defended by Wittgenstein. It is only if the philosophical
24 claim that meaning is context dependent is a true statement that Wittgen-
25 stein’s ‘grammar’ can be seen as about the same things as ordinary gram-
26 mar. Here a philosophical justification seems to be needed for the general
27 view about context dependency that justifies the similarity between gram-
28 mar and ‘grammar’.
29 However, whatever we do with this philosophical claim about mean-
30 ing, it is still obvious that nobody but Wittgenstein, as read by Baker and
31 Hacker, uses the word ‘grammar’ as the activity of laying down the
32 bounds of sense and judges that some propositions are disguised nonsense
33 because they don’t fit these limits. The major problem concerning Witt-
34 genstein’s use of ‘grammar’, then, remains: Is Wittgenstein violating the
35 ordinary use of the word ‘grammar’? Does Wittgenstein’s notion of
36 ‘grammar’ serve a dogmatic purpose? If there is a solution for this prob-
37 lem (or a way to avoid it), it seems that one of its aspects will need to be a
38
39 35 However, as we will see soon, in a different context Baker and Hacker presuppose
40 a sharp distinction between semantics and pragmatics.

Angemeldet
1 reduction of the significance of ‘grammar’. ‘Grammar’ should not be a

2 discipline that manages the “bounds of sense” if Wittgenstein is consis-
3 tently non dogmatic. It should not be a critical criterion.
4 I think that Baker and Hacker have to ascribe to Wittgenstein still an-
5 other philosophical presupposition that looks like a conception or a theo-
6 ry. According to them, for Wittgenstein, ‘grammar’ is arbitrary, i. e. ‘rules
7 of grammar’ are neither true nor false and there is no reality correspond-
8 ing to grammatical facts (Baker and Hacker 2009: 57). This means that
9 we could have a different ‘grammar’, of course. But in this case, the ques-
10 tion “Why this grammar and not a different one?” seems pressing.36 They
11 actually have an answer for this question: “grammar is autonomous, but
12 many reasons guide our concept-formation, e. g. in mathematics, and
13 many reasons can be given why certain concepts are useful.” (Baker and
14 Hacker 1994: 336).37 The pragmatic reasons pointed out by them are
15 four: experience prompts us, practical needs, theoretical needs and aes-
16 thetic considerations (Baker and Hacker 1994: 336; Baker and Hacker
17 2009: 343).38
18 Thus, for Baker and Hacker, “grammar is antecedent to truth” (Baker
19 and Hacker 2009: 57) and Wittgenstein presupposes a clear distinction
20 between questions of fact and questions of meaning (or sense):
21
22
It [Grammar] incorporates any rules for using expressions that have to be de-
termined antecedently to questions of truth and falsehood (Baker and Hack-
23
er 2009: 61).
24
25 That is a philosophical thesis. One has the impression, here, that Witt-
26 genstein, a philosopher who does not have philosophical opinions, is en-
27 gaged in a defense of Carnap against Quine. Moreover, as we have just
28 seen, for them Wittgenstein also needs a distinction between questions
29 of truth and pragmatic questions (Baker and Hacker 2009: 57).39 This
30
31 36 Wittgenstein says explicitly that grammar is arbitrary in the Big Typescript. The
32 question that should guide one’s investigation is: to what extent such views cor-
respond to his views in the Philosophical Investigations?
33 37 On this topic see also (Hacker 2000, 78): “To be sure, a system of rules which is
34 simple, convenient, and easily taken in is pragmatically justified.” See also O’Neil
35 (2001) for the same view.
36 38 In this point this interpretation certainly finds support in, for instance, BT 2005:
37 236.
39 I have no doubt that Wittgenstein himself, in the Middle Period, defended the
38 view that grammar is autonomous and that grammar can only be pragmatically
39 justified. However, this does not mean that he defended the same view later (see
40 part 4 of this paper).

Angemeldet
1 sounds like ‘tolerance’ concerning different grammars. Most serious, how-

2 ever, is that Baker and Hacker cannot hold such a distinction in light of
3 their claim that the distinction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics
4 doesn’t have force in Wittgenstein’s philosophy (Baker and Hacker 1994:
5 22; see Baker and Hacker 2009: 60). As we have seen, they presuppose
6 the lack of force of this distinction in order to justify Wittgenstein’s non-
7 ordinary use of ‘rules of grammar’. Their interpretation goes, once more,
8 to two directions: the distinction between pragmatics and semantics must
9 have force for them to distinguish between questions of truth and ques-
10 tions of ‘grammar’, but it cannot have force in the justification of Witt-
11 genstein’s use of ‘grammar’.
12
13
14 4. The Middle Period
15
16 If one wants to avoid the uncomfortable position of attributing disguised
17 or explicit philosophical doctrines to the later Wittgenstein, it is best to
18 take his remarks on the nature of his own activity more seriously than
19 Baker and Hacker, Hacker and Garver do. Wittgenstein certainly thinks
20 that philosophers are confused and that they talk nonsense. Nevertheless,
21
this doesn’t mean that Wittgenstein needs a non self-defeating “critical
22
criterion” to determine the “bounds of sense” in order to show that.
23
He may not need a “critical criterion” at all.40
24
Fortunately, Wittgenstein doesn’t use the expressions “critical criteri-
25
on” or “bounds of sense”.41 However, Wittgenstein does say that “all con-
26
ditions of the comparison of the proposition with reality/with the facts”
27
belong to ‘grammar’ (BT 2005: 43); he also says that “grammar deter-
28
mines what should count as a proposition” (BT 2005: 77); also, he
29
says that “the rules of grammar determine the sense of the proposition
30
and whether a combination of words has sense or hasn’t [my emphasis]”
31
32
40 See Goldfarb (1983) and (1997), and Minar (1995).
33 41 The expression comes probably from Strawson’s book The Bounds of Sense. Baker
34 and Hacker also say that “Kant too argued that his antagonists transgressed the
35 bounds of sense” (Baker and Hacker 2005: 294). This is a dubious thesis defend-
36 ed in Strawson’s book. Dubious because Kant tries to establish a limit to what can
37 be known, and not to what can be meaningfully said. The talk about the totality
of nature, god, the soul and other ideas that transgress our theoretical knowledge
38 is not nonsense for Kant (proof of this is that Kant himself in the Critique of
39 Practical Reason gives “practical proofs” for the existence of god and the eternity
40 of the soul).

Angemeldet
1 (BT 2005: 79). Arguably, what Baker and Hacker (or Hacker) say about
2 the Philosophical Investigations fits well the Big Typescript. 42 This because
3 in the Middle Period Wittgenstein is still concerned with the tabulation
4 of rules of sense in the “book of grammar” (BT 2005: 58). The tabula-
5 tion of rules counts as a description of the calculus of language (BT
6 2005: 155). In the Big Typescript Wittgenstein still thinks that to “under-
7 stand a language” is “to have command of a calculus” (BT 2005: 35). The
8 rules of ‘grammar’ are the rules of the calculus. They prescribe what
9 counts as a move in language, i. e. what makes sense to say, because ac-
10 cording to the Big Typescript ‘grammar’ is a transcendental condition of
11 language: “without grammar it isn’t a bad language, but no language”
12 (BT 2005: 194). Moreover, there, ‘grammar’ is arbitrary because the
13 rules of ‘grammar’ constitute meaning:
14
15 The rules of grammar determine meaning (constitute it), and therefore they
are not answerable to any meaning and it this respect are arbitrary (BT 2005:
16
233).
17
18 This is why in the Big Typescript Wittgenstein does not quote the passage
19 concerning the arbitrariness of ‘grammar’ from Philosophical Investigations
20 § 372; he explicitly defends it there:
21
In language the only correlate to natural necessity (Naturnotwendigkeit) is an
22 arbitrary rule. It is the only thing one can remove from this necessity and put
23 into a proposition. (BT 2005: 235)
24
25
All those passages from the Big Typescript (from 1932 – 33) seem to show
26
that Baker and Hacker have good textual evidence for the claim that
27
Wittgenstein uses ‘grammar’ as a “critical criterion” and wants to deter-
28 mine the “bounds of sense.”43 And there are several passages in the Mid-
29 dle Period writings that can certainly be used to justify their view.44
30
31 42 This does not mean that Baker and Hacker have invented their interpretation
32 after reading the Big Typescript. My point is simply that what they write fits
the conception of ‘grammar’ of that TS. It is quite possible, however, that the
33 source of their interpretation of the Philosophical Investigations was the Blue
34 Book (here I am indebted to conversations with David Stern). Perhaps it was a
35 Strawsonian reading of the Blue Book that influenced them. For an early dissent-
36 ing voice concerning the Blue Book and how to read Wittgenstein’s works see
37 Bouwsma (1961).
43 Wittgenstein, however, makes important changes when he revises BT 2005: 235.
38 He adds quotation marks and ‘consider’ in handwritten remarks added to the
39 passage (see footnote 32).
40 44 For instance LWL 1989: 46 – 7, 48, 61 and 87.

Angemeldet
1 It is not mere coincidence, thus, that Baker and Hacker’s (or Hack-
2 er’s) interpretation of Wittgenstein’s remarks on ‘grammar’ lean heavily
3 on quotations from the Big Typescript, manuscripts, and lectures from
4 1929 – 1933. They (or Hacker) quote passages from Wittgenstein’s manu-
5 scripts and typescripts after 1929 as though it was not relevant to consider
6 the date of the remarks (a similar claim can be made about Garver). The
7 consequence of this practice is that Wittgenstein’s views on ‘grammar’
8 from 1930 – 33 are considered to be the same in the Philosophical Inves-
9 tigations. In Hacker (2000), for instance, in the chapter called The Arbi-
10 trariness of Grammar and the Bounds of Sense, the vast majority of the rel-
11 evant passages quoted or indicated to support his reading are from the
12 period 1929 – 1933.45 The passages from the Middle Period guide the in-
13 terpretation of passages from the Philosophical Investigations. It is taken
14
for granted that from 1930 on the changes in Wittgenstein’s philosophy
15
are variations of one basic idea, namely, ‘grammar’ as the discipline that
16
determine the bounds of sense and accounts for the nature of necessity in
17
a de dicto fashion.
18
Sometimes Baker and Hacker (or Hacker) explicitly assume the con-
19
tinuity in Wittgenstein’s middle and later work: “…the rotation of our
20
examination or way of thinking that Wittgenstein wrote of in 1937 is
21
a further aspect of this same transformation in his conception of the nature,
22
goals and methods of philosophy that dawned on him in 1929/30 [my em-
23
24
phasis]” (Baker and Hacker 2005: 275). The ‘new method’ discovered “in
25
late 1929”, according to them, is “essentially the transition from the quest
26
for truth to the quest for sense” (Baker and Hacker 2005: 279). This is
27 utterly misleading, for already the phenomenological investigations from
28 early 1929, i. e. the quest for a phenomenological language, is character-
29 ized by Wittgenstein as the investigation of “sense and not truth”. This
30 can be clearly seen in MS 105, in a passage from 02. 04. 1929, where
31 Wittgenstein distinguishes phenomenology from physics:
32 Physics strives for truth, i. e., correct prediction of events, while phenomen-
33 ology does not do that, it strives for sense and not truth.
34
Thus, if they (or Hacker) were right, Wittgenstein’s phenomenology from
35
1929 would have to be considered part of Wittgenstein’s late philosophy,
36
37
45 The following is the complete list: lectures between 1930 and 1932 in LWL
38
1989: 8, 20, 21, 27, 31, 44, 49, 64, 86, 94, 95; lectures from 1932 – 33 in
39 AWL 1979: 4, 48; PR (from 1929 – 30): 53, 55; from the PG (remarks originat-
40 ed in the BT 2005): 53, 88, 126, 129, 185, 304, 311, 313.

Angemeldet
1 which is certainly false. What “dawned on” Wittgenstein in 1929 was the
2 fact that a phenomenological language was unnecessary, which has not so
3 much to do with what happened with Wittgenstein’s philosophy in 1937,
4 I think.
5 There is another oddity in Baker and Hacker’s (or Hacker’s) charac-
6 terization of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy as striving for “sense and not
7 for truth”. In their interpretation of the Tractatus one finds that also there
8 Wittgenstein is establishing the “conditions of sense” which demarcate
9 the “bounds of sense”. In fact, they claim:
10
An important point of continuity was the insight that philosophy is not con-
11
cerned with what is true and false, but rather with what makes sense and
12 what traverses the bounds of sense (Baker and Hacker 1994: 39).
13
14 In one sense, then, they subscribe to the view that there is only one Witt-
15 genstein, while at the same time attribute to Wittgenstein a change
16 (“striving for sense and not truth”); however, in light of their own inter-
17 pretation, this should not be a change at all, since this is already the view
18 of the Tractatus.
19 Even though those discrepancies in Baker and Hacker’s (or Hacker’s)
20 account of Wittgenstein’s development are serious, it is far from clear that
21 one can show in details that they are wrong in their use of Wittgenstein’s
22 Middle Period writings to support the attribution of a de dicto conception
23 of necessity to the Philosophical Investigations. If Hacker is right in using,
24 for instance, the Big Typescript in his interpretation of the Philosophical
25 Investigations, he is right in his understanding of ‘grammar’ there as well.46
26 I can only suggest here that Wittgenstein’s use of the word ‘grammar’
27 changed after 1934. In the Brown Book, for instance, the word appears
28 only four times and there ‘use’ and ‘grammar’ are synonyms (BBB
29 1960: 109, 130, 135 and 171). They are synonyms, I take it, because
30
31 46 In his critique of Baker and Hacker’s interpretation, Kuusela (2006) and (2008)
32 emphasises Wittgenstein’s works after 1933, but does not explain why. This is
problematic because Kuusela’s major concern is Wittgenstein’s struggle against
33 dogmatism (Kuusela 2008). Wittgenstein wants to give up dogmatism already
34 in 1931 (see WWK 1993: 182). Thus, the Big Typescript should count as non-
35 dogmatic (see, however, the quotations from the Big Typescript above). It
36 seems, therefore, that Wittgenstein’s struggle against dogmatism took place be-
37 tween 1931 and 1933, a period that Kuusela does not discuss. This means
that he does not seriously discuss very important textual evidence that gives
38 Baker and Hacker’s reading support. One would expect him to do so, since
39 Baker and Hacker’s interpretation is discussed throughout his book (Kuusela
40 2008).

Angemeldet
1 there is no space for ‘grammar’ as the discipline that demarcates the

2 bounds of sense and explains the nature of necessity in Wittgenstein’s phi-
3 losophy after 1934 in an anti-realistic fashion. In his 1939 lectures, Witt-
4 genstein goes as far as denying not only the idea that he defends philo-
5 sophical theses, but any opinion whatsoever:
6
One of the greatest difficulties I find in explaining what I mean is this: You
7
are inclined to put our difference in one way, as a difference of opinion. But I
8 am not trying to persuade you to change your opinion. I am only trying to
9 recommend a certain sort of investigation. If there is an opinion involved,
10 my only opinion is that this sort of investigation is immensely important,
11 and very much against the grain of some of you. If in this lectures I express
12 any other opinions, I am making a fool of myself [emphasis in the original].
(LFM 1976: 103).
13
14 Wittgenstein is also, in his own view, making a fool of himself if he ex-
15 presses opinions concerning ‘grammar’. In one of his lectures, Lewy
16 said “I know what you want me to say”. This was a “severe criticism” ac-
17 cording to Wittgenstein (LFM 1976: 55). When he goes on and explains
18 that he cannot have opinions he exemplifies it with ‘grammar’:
19
…I have no right to want you to say anything except just one thing: “Let’s
20
see” –One cannot make a general formulation and say that I have the right to
21 want to make you say that. For what could that general formulation be? My
22 opinion? But obviously the whole point is that I must not have an opinion…
23 For instance, I have no right to want to make you say that mathematical prop-
24 ositions are rules of grammar [my emphasis]. (LFM 1976: 55).
25 This suggests that the very idea that ‘grammar’ gives the “bounds of
26 sense” or that ‘grammatical’ rules give us a de dicto or normative source
27
of necessity is not an opinion that we should ascribe to Wittgenstein.
28
‘Grammar’ is better taken as a heuristic device that can be thrown
29
away if Wittgenstein’s “whole point” is really that he “must not have
30
an opinion”. Maybe ‘grammar’ is part of “an interpretation” of language
31
and necessity that is as arbitrary as any other, “gas to expel old gas”, as
32
Wittgenstein says:
33
34 I may occasionally produce new interpretations, not in order to suggest they
35 are right, but in order to show that the old interpretation and the new are
36
equally arbitrary…I will only make gas to expel old gas. (LFM 1976: 14;
my emphasis).
37
38 Those passages from 1939 certainly suggest, to say the least, a very deflat-
39 ed notion of ‘grammar’. They suggest that the supposedly de dicto explan-
40 ation of necessity that Hacker takes to be an alternative to the supposedly

Angemeldet
1 Tractarian realism is itself an “equally arbitrary” ism (‘grammaticism’, ‘lin-

2 guistic essentialism’, or ‘anti-realism’).
3 If it is correct, as I think it is, that Wittgenstein parts away from his
4 Middle Period notion of ‘grammar’ in his later philosophy, many (new)
5 questions arise. Is ‘grammar’ merely an “arbitrary interpretation” in the
6 Philosophical Investigations? Are Wittgenstein’s goals and practice really
7 consistent in his later writings? Why and how did Wittgenstein change
8 his views concerning ‘grammar’? What is the internal dialectic in Witt-
9 genstein’s Middle Period writings that brings him to a new role for ‘gram-
10 mar’? All those questions indicate that an alternative to Baker and Hack-
11 er’s interpretation, and a consistent detailed interpretation of Wittgen-
12 stein’s philosophy, needs to introduce a parallel account of Wittgenstein’s
13 development. One needs to revaluate Wittgenstein’s Middle Period Phi-
14
losophy and explain how and why his views changed.47 It is quite amazing
15
that, comparatively, so little research about the Middle Period has been
16
done among Wittgenstein scholars. This is certainly an urgent task espe-
17
cially for those who think that Hacker’s account is not quite true to Witt-
18
genstein’s intentions in the Philosophical Investigations. One can, of
19
course, also argue for an inconsistency between Wittgenstein’s goals
20
and practice in that book, a way-out that I personally don’t wish to take.
21
22
23
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1

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1 Tractatus is not the subject of this paper.2 As important as it may be in the

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1 what does Wittgenstein mean by ‘grammar’? What is the relation between

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1 views either explicitly attribute philosophical doctrines to Wittgenstein or

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1 only the revaluation of Wittgenstein’s Middle Period writings can show to

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1 Garver skips over the problems concerning the origins of Wittgen-

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1 Garver (probably because he thinks that it doesn’t conflate different lan-

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1 Once Wittgenstein’s point is distorted by Garver’s interpretation,

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1 Garver’s comparison between Wittgenstein and Kant is more prom-

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1 should have asked whether there is a language-game in our ordinary lan-

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1 Garver correctly urges, it asks for a theoretical justification. Why would

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1 fused philosophical theories based on grammatical mistakes. ‘Grammar’,

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1 beled as ‘perspicuous representation’ is the color octahedron (WWK

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1 syntax, rules of grammar determine the bounds of sense” (Baker and

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1 posedly express a de dicto conception of necessity (Baker and Hacker

Bereitgestellt von | ULB Bonn

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1 An argument of this kind, writes Hacker, “proves that a form of words is

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1 reduction of the significance of ‘grammar’. ‘Grammar’ should not be a

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1 sounds like ‘tolerance’ concerning different grammars. Most serious, how-

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1 there is no space for ‘grammar’ as the discipline that demarcates the

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1 Tractarian realism is itself an “equally arbitrary” ism (‘grammaticism’, ‘lin-

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1 Goldfarb, Warren: “I Want You to Bring me a Slab.” Remarks on the Opening

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1 Schulte, Joachim: What is a Work by Wittgenstein?, in: Pichler, A. and Saatela,

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