Edited by Alice Crary and Rupert Read

414 Pages·2012·1.41 MB·English

THE NEW WITTGENSTEIN
“This collection provides an accessible and stimulating introduction to a
radically different way of interpreting the philosophical significance of
Wittgenstein’s work (both early and late) that is becoming increasingly
influential. The editors and their contributors manage to illuminate the widely
ramifying implications of this interpretation without underplaying its highly
controversial status. Their work opens up an important and potentially fruitful
field for future debate.”
Stephen Mulhall, New College, Oxford
The New Wittgenstein offers a major re-evaluation of Wittgenstein’s thinking. This
book is a stellar collection of essays that present a significantly different portrait of
Wittgenstein. The essays clarify Wittgenstein’s modes of philosophical criticism and
shed light on the relation between his thought and different philosophical traditions
and areas of human concern. With essays by Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Cora
Diamond, Hilary Putnam and John McDowell, we see the emergence of a new way of
understanding Wittgenstein’s thought.
This is a controversial collection, with essays by the most highly regarded
Wittgenstein scholars that will change the way we look at Wittgenstein’s body of
work. Anyone interested in gaining a new and fresh understanding of Wittgenstein’s
work will find this a fascinating read.
Contributors: Stanley Cavell, David R.Cerbone, James Conant, Alice Crary, Cora
Diamond, David H.Finkelstein, Juliet Floyd, P.M.S.Hacker, John McDowell, Hilary
Putnam, Rupert Read, Martin Stone, Edward Witherspoon.
Alice Crary is a Tutor in Philosophy at Harvard University. Rupert Read is a
Lecturer in Philosophy at The University of East Anglia.

THE NEW
WITTGENSTEIN
Edited by
Alice Crary and Rupert Read
London and New York
First published 2000
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
Selection and editorial matter © 2000 Alice Crary and
Rupert Read; individual chapters, respective contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
The new Wittgenstein/edited by Alice Crary and Rupert Read.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889–1951. I. Crary, Alice Marguerite,
1967–II. Read, Rupert J., 1966–
B3376.W564 N49 2000
192–dc21
99–048803
ISBN 0-203-44940-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-75764-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-17318-3 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-17319-1 (pbk)
CONTENTS
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
PART I
Wittgenstein’s later writings: the illusory comfort of an
external standpoint 19
1 Excursus on Wittgenstein’s vision of language 21
STANLEY CAVELL
2 Non-cognitivism and rule-following 38
JOHN MCDOWELL
3 Wittgenstein on rules and platonism 53
DAVID H.FINKELSTEIN
4 What ‘There can be no such thing as meaning anything by any
word’ could possibly mean 74
RUPERT READ
5 Wittgenstein on deconstruction 83
MARTIN STONE
6 Wittgenstein’s philosophy in relation to political thought 118
ALICE CRARY
v
CONTENTS
PART II
The Tractatus as forerunner of Wittgenstein’s later writings 147
7 Ethics, imagination and the method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus 149
CORA DIAMOND
8 Elucidation and nonsense in Frege and early Wittgenstein 174
JAMES CONANT
9 Rethinking mathematical necessity 218
HILARY PUTNAM
10 Wittgenstein, mathematics and philosophy 232
JULIET FLOYD
11 Does Bismarck have a beetle in his box? The private
language argument in the Tractatus 262
CORA DIAMOND
12 How to do things with wood: Wittgenstein, Frege and the
problem of illogical thought 293
DAVID R.CERBONE
13 Conceptions of nonsense in Carnap and Wittgenstein 315
EDWARD WITHERSPOON
A dissenting voice 351
14 Was he trying to whistle it? 353
P.M.S.HACKER
Bibliography 389
Index 395

vi
CONTRIBUTORS
Stanley Cavell is Walter M.Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General
Theory of Value, at Harvard University. He is the author of Must We Mean What We
Say? A Book of Essays (Cambridge University Press, 1969; reprinted 1976), The Claim
of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy (Oxford University Press,
1979), In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism (University of
Chicago Press, 1988), This New yet Unapproachable America: Lectures after Emerson
after Wittgenstein (The Living Batch Press, 1989), Conditions Handsome and
Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (University of Chicago
Press, 1990), A Pitch of Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1994) and Philosophical
Passages: Wittgenstein, Emerson, Austin, Derrida (Blackwell, 1995).
David R.Cerbone is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at West Virginia University.
He has published articles on Wittgenstein, Heidegger and the analytic and
phenomenological traditions more generally.
Alice Crary is a Tutor in Philosophy at Harvard University. Her interests include
ethics, moral psychology and philosophy and literature.
James Conant is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He has
published articles on Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Frege, William James,
Wittgenstein, Carnap and others.
Cora Diamond is Kenan Professor Philosophy and Professor of Law at the
University of Virginia. She has also taught at Princeton University, Aberdeen
University and the University of Sussex. She is the author of The Realistic Spirit:
Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind (MIT Press, 1991) and the editor of
Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge 1939
(University of Chicago Press, 1976).
David H.Finkelstein is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Indiana University. His
interests include topics in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. He has written
about Wittgenstein on expression, the idea of inner sense and the distinction between
conscious and unconscious mental states.
Juliet Floyd is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. She has
published papers on Kant, Frege, Moore, Wittgenstein (early and late) and Gödel.
vii
CONTRIBUTORS
She is the editor of Future Pasts: Perspectives on the Place of the Analytic Tradition
in Twentieth Century Philosophy (with Sanford Shieh; Oxford University Press,
2000).
P.M.S.Hacker is Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St.John’s College, Oxford. He is
the author of Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein (Oxford
University Press, 1972; revised edition, 1986), An Analytic Commentary on
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations in 4 volumes (vols 1 and 2 with G.P.
Baker; Blackwell, 1984), Scepticism, Rules and Language (with G.P.Baker;
Blackwell, 1984), Frege: Logical Excavations (with G.P.Baker; Blackwell, 1984),
Appearance and Reality (Blackwell, 1987) and Wittgenstein’s Place in 20th Century
Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996).
John McDowell is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Pittsburgh. His recent publications include Mind and World (Harvard University
Press, 1994; second edition, 1996), Mind, Value and Reality (Harvard University
Press, 1998) and Meaning, Knowledge and Reality (Harvard University Press,
1998).
Hilary W.Putnam is Cogan University Professor at Harvard University. His books
include Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge University Press, 1981), Realism
With A Human Face (Harvard University Press, 1990), Renewing Philosophy
(Harvard University Press, 1992), Words and Life (Harvard University Press, 1994)
and Pragmatism (Blackwell, 1995).
Rupert Read is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia (Norwich,
England). He has published articles in Philosophical Papers, Philosophical
Investigations and The Philosophical Forum. He is the editor of The New Hume
Debate (Routledge, 2000) and Thomas Kuhn (Polity, 2000).
Martin Stone is Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Duke
University. He also teaches in the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke. His
previously published essays are on the philosophy of law and on Wittgenstein.
Edward Witherspoon is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Colgate University.
His interests include the history of analytic philosophy, epistemological skepticism
and twentieth-century continental philosophy.
viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like here to thank the many individuals who at different stages made
useful suggestions about this project and who in various ways helped to bring it to
completion. Our thanks are due, in particular, to Stanley Cavell, James Conant,
Tobyn DeMarco, Anne DeVivo, Cora Diamond, James Guetti, Nathaniel Hupert,
Kelly Dean Jolley, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, Wes Sharrock and Emma
Willmer. We are indebted also to Adrian Driscoll, Anna Gerber and Ruth Jeavons, at
Routledge, for their support and suggestions.
Stanley Cavell, ‘Excursus on Wittgenstein’s vision of language’ is reprinted from
The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy, copyright ©
1979 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Used by permission of Oxford University
Press, Inc., Oxford. John McDowell, ‘Non-cognitivism and rule-following’ is
reprinted from Wittgenstein: to Follow a Rule, S.H.Holtzman and C.M.Leich (eds),
London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981, pp. 141–62. Hilary Putnam, ‘Rethinking
mathematical necessity’ is reprinted by permission of the publisher from Words and
Life, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. Copyright © 1994 by the
President and Fellows of Harvard College. Cora Diamond, ‘Ethics, imagination and
the method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’ is reprinted from Bilder der Philosophic,
R.Heinrich and H.Vetter (eds), Wiener Reihe: Themen der Philosophic, Vienna and
Munich, Oldenbourg, 1991, pp. 55–90.
ix