Tradition and Individuality: Essays

182 Pages·1992·5.564 MB·English

by  J. C. Nyíri (auth.)

TRADITION AND INDIVIDUALITY
SYNTHESE LIBRARY
STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY,
LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Managing Editor:
JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University
Editors:
DONALD DAVIDSON, University o/California, Berkeley
GAB:ru::EL NUCHELMANS, University 0/ Leyden
WESLEY C. SALMON, University ofP ittsburgh
VOLUME 221
J. C. NYlRI
Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
TRADITION
AND
IND IVID U ALITY
Essays
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nylrl. Janos Kristof.
Tradition and individuality : essays / J.C. Nyiri.
p. cm. -- (Synthese 11brary ; v. 221)
Includes blbliographlcal references and index.
ISBN 978-94-010-5176-7 ISBN 978-94-011-2660-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-2660-1
1. Tradltion (Philosophy) 2. Wlttgenstein. Ludwlg. 1889-1951.
3. Knowledge. Theory of. 4. Language and languages--Phl1osophy.
1. Title. II. Serles.
B105.T7N95 1992
148--dc20 91-39683
ISBN 978-94-010-5176-7
printed on acid-free paper
AII Rights Reserved
© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Origina11y published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1992
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1992
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utiIized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
incJuding photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retr.ieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
For /lanka
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
CHAPTER 1: Wittgenstein's New Traditionalism 1
CHAPTER 2: Wittgenstein 1929-31: Conservatism and Jewishness 9
CHAPTER 3: Collective Reason: Roots of a Sociological Theory
of Knowledge 25
CHAPTER 4: Some Marxian Themes in the Age of Information 39
CHAPTER 5: Tradition and Practical Knowledge 47
CHAPTER 6: "Tradition" and Related Terms: A Semantic Survey 61
CHAPTER 7: Historical Consciousness in the Computer Age 75
CHAPTER 8: On Esperanto: Usage and Contrivance in Language 85
CHAPTER 9: Heidegger and Wittgenstein 93
CHAPTER 10: Writing and the Private Language Argument 105
NOTES 115
BIBLIOGRAPHY 159
INDEX 171
vii
PREFACE
During the last fifteen years I have experimented with two successive
approaches to the problem of the social embeddedness of individual
behaviour. The first approach was community-centred, traditionalist; the
second more individualistic. The present volume contains essays from
both phases: chapters one to six representing the earlier, chapters seven to
ten the later approach.
I have chosen to have those earlier essays published along with the
later ones for two reasons. First, because my current arguments (for what
they are worth) clearly presuppose the background of my former en
deavours. Secondly, I still do not think that my earlier attempts were
entirely misdirected. In fact the choice in favour of the one or the other
position depends on the evaluation of a single cluster of arguments: those
pertaining to the epistemological significance of writing. I have come to
believe that it is the medium of writing which creates, historically and
psychologically, a space for individual, critical thinking. But one can have
doubts about how far this space extends; how deeply it permeates social
interactions; whether the written word will retain, in the future, the role it
has now. And to the extent that communication remains pre-literal, or
becomes post-literal, the issue of traditionalism still appears to be a living
one.
I am fully aware that the transformations in my views are not independ
ent of recent political changes in Eastern Europe; that both my earlier and
later theoretical attitudes are in some measure reflections of a certain
political bias. By presenting them side by side, I hope to avoid the danger
of apparent extremism which either alone might represent. The source of
my traditionalist leanings was the Hungarian experience of social decay,
from the 1960s to the 1980s: the recognition that the Hungarians have
become a people without traditions, that their traditions were undermined
by a totalitarian bureaucracy, and the impression that they were yearning
not just for freedom, but also for rootedness, stable institutions, social
cohesion. Today the politically dominant ideology in Hungary is a
traditionalist one, and the fruits it bears seem to be hypocrisy, intolerance,
social and economic bankruptcy. It seems that stable institutions in a
IX
x PREFACE
modem society do, after all, rely on a liberal culture; on learning,
education, and critical thinking.
I wish to acknowledge the profound debt lowe to Professor Georg
Henrik von Wright for essential inspiration and assistance. His influence
upon my work has been decisive. Research fellowships granted by the
Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung in 1986-87 and 1990-91 for work at
the University of Bochum gave me the leisure and opportunity to develop
my ideas in detail, and to write most of these essays. I am greatly
indebted to my colleagues in Bochum. Special thanks are due to my host
Prof. Gert Konig, who not only provided generous scientific guidance, but
also convinced me to put together this volume and was instrumental in
organizing its publication. To my friend Barry Smith I am indebted for
the invaluable and unfailing support he gave me during all these years.
Without his stimulus and constant help the volume could not have been
completed.
The essays have been to some extent edited in order to avoid overlaps.
"Wittgenstein's New Traditionalism" appeared originally in Essays on
Wittgenstein in Honour o/G. H. von Wright (Acta Philosophica Fennica
28/1-3, 1976), pp. 503-512. In this essay the reference to Wittgenstein's
"General Remarks", a manuscript compilation since published as
Vermischte Bemerkungen, could of course have been easily updated. I left
it as it is deliberately, in order to preserve something of the flavour of
those early days of scholarly work on Wittgenstein's manuscripts.
"Wittgenstein 1929-31: Conservatism and J ewishness" is an abridged
version (with note 25 newly added) of the study "Wittgenstein
1929-1931: Die Riickkehr" (KODIKAS/CODE - Ars Semeiotica 4-5/2,
1982, pp. 115-136, English translation in Stuart Shanker, ed., Ludwig
Wittgenstein: Critical Assessments, vol.4, London: Croom Helm, 1986,
pp. 29-59). I wish to express my thanks to the members of the now sadly
defunct Wittgenstein Archive in the University of Tiibingen, without
whose technical support this study, prepared in October 1979, could not
have been written. "Collective Reason: Roots of a Sociological Theory of
Knowledge" appeared in W. Gombocz et al., eds., Traditionen und
Perspektiven der analytischen Philosophie: Festschrift fUr Rudolf Haller,
Wien: HOlder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1989, pp. 600-618, note 48 newly added.
"Some Marxian Themes in the Age of Information" appeared in Doxa 15
(Budapest: 1989), pp. 169-182. ''Tradition and Practical Knowledge"
appeared in J.C. Nyfri and B. Smith, eds., Practical Knowledge: Outlines
0/ a Theory o/Traditions and Skills, Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1988, pp.
PREFACE xi
17-52; the pennission of Routledge (fonnerly Croom Helm) to reprint
this piece is gratefully acknowledged. "'Tradition' and Related Tenns: A
Semantic Survey" appeared in Doxa 14 - Semiotische Berichte 1-2/1988
(Budapest - Vienna), pp. 113-134. "On Esperanto: Usage and Con
trivance in Language" appeared in Rudolf Haller, ed., Wittgenstein -
Towards aRe-Evaluation, Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1990, vol. II,
pp. 303-310. The pennission of the publisher to reprint this essay, and the
essay "Collective Reason", is gratefully acknowledged. Chapters 7, 9 and
10 have not been hitherto published.
The volume is dedicated to my wife.
Dunabogdany, June 1991
J. C. Nyfri
CHAPTER 1
WITIGENSTEIN'S NEW TRADmONALISM*
Towards the end of his life Wittgenstein wrote: "Men have judged that a
king can make rain; we say this contradicts all experience. Today they
judge that aeroplanes and the radio etc. are means for the closer contact of
peoples and the spread of culture".' This remark is a rather clear allusion
to what Wittgenstein, in my opinion, always believed: that man's so
called historical progress, and especially the positive role reason is
supposed to play in it, is an illusion. The same conviction is reflected in
Wittgenstein's choice of the motto for his Philosophical Investigations, a
quotation from Nestroy: "Uberhaupt hat der Fortschritt das an sich, daB er
viel groBer ausschaut, als er wirklich ist". That this motto refers to the
social-historical progress of mankind and not, say, to Wittgenstein's own
progress in philosophy, becomes obvious when viewed together with the
Foreword written to the Philosophical Remarks, dated 6.11.1930, where
Wittgenstein states that the spirit of his work is different from that of the
mainstream of European and American civilization, since the latter is
characterized, as the former is not, by the idea of a constant progress.
Wittgenstein 's attitude towards the liberal idea of progress is that of a
conservative. This attitude is, actually, not conspicuous in the
Philosophical Remarks, to which the Foreword was written subsequently;
but it was already there, I believe, at the time of the Tractatus and it
becomes quite manifest in Wittgenstein's later writings. My purpose in
the present paper is to suggest that Wittgenstein 's so-called later
philosophy is the embodiment of a conservative-traditionalist view of
history, and, in particular, to show that this philosophy in fact provides a
logical foundation for such a view.
There can be no doubt at all that the conservative-traditionalist
sentiment really was a basic element in Wittgenstein's personality. True,
many of his later friends in England were left-wing; and his plans, in the
thirties, to settle down in the Soviet Union, might suggest communist
sympathies. But Wittgenstein could have been attracted by the personal
integrity of some Marxists without being in agreement with their political
views; and even if he shared, as I believe he did, their contempt towards
bourgeois society, the background of that contempt was, in Wittgenstein' s
1