Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy: Thinking Through his Philosophical Investigations

405 Pages·2020·3.936 MB·English

by  Rupert Read

Highly engaging and thought-provoking. Read’s central claim that it is time to cash
in the worn-out metaphor of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy as therapy in exchange
for a liberatory understanding of his work, together with the detailed readings of
the Philosophical Investigations that support it, is likely to provoke much debate.
– Edmund Dain, Providence College, co-editor,
Wittgenstein’s moral thought
This timely, provocative and original reading of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Inves-
tigations argues that the point of his later philosophy is fundamentally ethical and
political: to free us from our preconceptions. In pursuing this goal, Read has the
courage of his convictions, criticising not only Wittgenstein’s previous interpreters,
but even Wittgenstein himself. A reader comes away from this book with a new
appreciation of Wittgenstein’s relevance to our current global and environmental
challenges.
– David Stern, Univ. of Iowa, author, Wittgenstein’s
Philosophical Investigations
Rupert Read’s book is a seminal contribution to the conversations that Wittgen-
stein’s daring approach to the practice of philosophy initiated. It contends that if
liberation constitutes the ethical heart of philosophy, and is one of the ultimate
justifications of philosophical activity, then philosophy must be conducted in a di-
alogical, social spirit. Philosophy comes, and must come inevitably, with an ethical
attitude. Read presents a radically relational interpretation of Wittgenstein, as dis-
tinct from an individualistic one. Wittgenstein is wise when he observes that lan-
guage cannot be private. Language only has its being in a living cultural context that
necessarily transcends the individual. What is less obvious is that if this is true, nor
can freedom be a private affair. This is the burden of the courageous book the reader
holds in his hands. Read cautions against a passive reliance on an ethical system, as
though that exempts us from the active responsibility to be good, something Read
quotes Gandhi on. As successive chapters throw light on a wide range of questions
pertaining to language, freedom, and the good life, the book serves as an insightful
guide to Wittgenstein’s master-work Philosophical Investigations.
– Aseem Shrivastava, Ashoka University, author,
Churning the Earth: The making of global India
Rupert Read has long been one of the most passionate and prolific contributors
to contemporary attempts to get Wittgenstein’s way of doing philosophy properly
into focus. This systematic engagement with the Philosophical Investigations pulls
together his previous work in a way which highlights the unity of its underlying con-
cerns, and clarifies the internal relation between its content and its very distinctive
form. For this book presents Read’s eagerness to engage so widely with the work of
other commentators, and to make startling connections with writers in other disci-
plines, all in prose of ummistakable idiosyncrasy, as a sustained expression of his
belief that Wittgenstein’s work is meant to attract us to the task of liberating our-
selves from compulsions and prohibitions that inhibit our capacity to achieve indi-
viduality in community. And if that task requires dispensing with stances central to
his earlier writing, or even reformulating Wittgenstein’s own signature concepts and
claims – what one might call liberating himself from his philosophical exemplar,
and from himself – then Read doesn’t hesitate. It’s a radical embodiment of an ethics
and politics of thinking.
– Stephen Mulhall, Oxford Univ., author,
Inheritance and originality
In this bold and precise book Rupert Read provides a careful reading of Wittgen-
stein’s posthumously published Philosophical Investigations. The book will obvi-
ously be of interest to all Wittgenstein specialists. One hopes it will reach many more
readers as well, because Read’s work presents nothing less than a full-scale portrait
of the formidable resources Wittgenstein offers for political philosophy. The key to
Read’s success is his resolute overcoming of the influential notion that there are two
Wittgensteins: One, who was a great philosopher of language, meaning, logic and
other topics familiar to professional philosophers, and another, who was a conserva-
tive, Viennese critic of progressive modernity. The persistence of this schizophrenic
image of Wittgenstein is one of the great scandals of philosophy in our times. Read’s
work invites us to read Wittgenstein as a philosopher whose work is indispensable
for all who are engaged in the theory and practice of justice, dignity and freedom in
the age of ecological crisis and authoritarian capitalism.
– Thomas Wallgren, Univ. of Helsinki, author,
‘Transformative philosophy’
An impassioned and exciting call to see the philosophy of Wittgenstein (and beyond)
in a radically new light: as second-person in perspective, transcending the merely
subjective or objective, fundamentally ethical in nature, and yet avoiding the pitfalls
of ‘philosophy as therapy’. An inspiring work.
– Iain McGilchrist, All Soul’s, author, The master and his emissary
Rupert Read’s “liberatory” account of Wittgenstein opens up an exhilarating new
way of looking at this philosopher. In his detailed and sympathetic analysis of key
sections of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations Read seeks to show how the
idea of liberation from ideologies, ideas, and assumptions that we have adopted un-
thinkingly is crucial to that text and how Wittgenstein conceives of liberation as an
interactive and interpersonal process. In highlighting this aspect of Wittgenstein’s
thought, Read seeks to bring out its deep ethical and political significance. We can
be sure that the book will stimulate a whole new line of thinking about Wittgen-
stein’s work.
– Prof. Hans Sluga, Berkeley, author, Wittgenstein
The phrase ‘philosophy as therapy’, especially as a way of looking at Wittgenstein’s
philosophical procedure, now tends to elicit either a shrug or a snarl. Rupert Read,
like the late Gordon Baker, sees that what is central to Wittgenstein’s analogy with
therapy is liberation. On the one hand, those who are genuinely gripped by a picture
that they cannot see beyond, or whose craving for generality is so insatiable that
they gloss over vital differences, may be freed from such tyranny by ‘the liberating
word’; on the other, such freeing is entirely non-coercive: in Waismann’s famous
words, ‘There is to be no bullying with the stick of logic or the stick of grammar’.
Read, moreover, sees something that Baker never quite did: clinging to Baker’s later
work were, in Read’s words, ‘the eggshells of our civilisation’s “individualism” and
concomitantly … its reluctance to take the 1st-person- and 2nd-person- plurals seri-
ously’. And, wonderfully, Read does something which Baker almost never did: apart
from his work on the disastrously misnamed ‘private language argument’, most of
Baker’s later writing was programmatic. In this magnificent book, Read shows in
detail how this vision of Wittgenstein’s philosophical procedure sheds new light on
all the familiar passages and ‘topics’ in Philosophical Investigations. This is the
Wittgenstein book I have been waiting for.
– Dr. Katherine Morris, Oxford Univ., co-author with Baker of Descartes’s
Dualism and editor of Baker’s posthumous Wittgenstein’s method
Wittgenstein’s Liberatory
Philosophy
In this book, Rupert Read offers the first outline of a resolute read-
ing, following the highly influential New Wittgenstein ‘ school’, of the
Philosophical Investigations. He argues that the key to understanding
Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is to understand its liberatory purport.
Read contends that a resolute reading coincides in its fundaments with
what, building on ideas in the later Gordon Baker, he calls a liberatory
reading. Liberatory philosophy is philosophy that can liberate the user
from compulsive ( and destructive) patterns of thought, freeing one for
possibilities that were previously obscured. Such liberation is our prime
goal in philosophy. This book consists in a sequential reading, along
these lines, of what Read considers the most important and controver-
sial passages in the Philosophical Investigations: 1, 16, 43, 95 & 116 &
122, 1 30–3 , 1 49–1 51, 186, 1 98– 201, 217, and 284– 6. Read claims that
this liberatory conception is simultaneously an ethical conception. The
PI should be considered a work of ethics in that its central concern be-
comes our relation with others. Wittgensteinian liberations challenge
widespread assumptions about how we allegedly are independent of and
separate from others.
Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy will be of interest to scholars
and advanced students working on Wittgenstein, and to scholars of the
political philosophy of liberation and the ethics of relation.
Rupert Read is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of
East Anglia. His books include: Applying Wittgenstein (2 007), Wittgen-
stein among the Sciences ( 2012), A Wittgensteinian way with Paradoxes
( 2013) and A Film- Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightenment ( 2018).
He was co- editor of the curriculum- changing collection The New Witt-
genstein ( 2000), also with Routledge.

Wittgenstein’s Liberatory
Philosophy
Thinking Through His
Philosophical Investigations
Rupert Read
First published 2021
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Rupert Read
The right of Rupert Read to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Read, Rupert J., 1966– author.
Title: Wittgenstein’s liberatory philosophy : thinking through
his philosophical investigations / by Rupert Read.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020037363 (print) |
LCCN 2020037364 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367547684 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781003090977 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889–1951.
Philosophische Untersuchungen.
Classification: LCC B3376.W563 P5327145 2021 (print) |
LCC B3376.W563 (ebook) | DDC 192—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037363
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037364
ISBN: 9 78- 0- 367- 54768- 4 ( hbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 003- 09097-7 ( ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
“ The philosopher strives to find the liberating word, that
is, the word that finally permits us to grasp what up until
now has intangibly weighed down our consciousness”.
Wittgenstein.
“ A picture held us captive”. Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations.

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements xi
0 Introduction: Thinking through Wittgenstein 1
1 The Philosopher and Temptation: Wittgenstein’s
Augustinian Opening Move 42
2 “ It Is as You Please”: PI 16 as an Icon of
Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Freedom 78
3 What Is ( Wittgenstein’s Own Account of) Meaning?:
PI 43 and Its Critics 108
4 When Wittgenstein Speaks of ‘ Everyday’ Language,
He Means Simply Language: A Liberatory Reading
of PI 9 5–1 24 143
5 Objects of Comparison to the Real ( Philosophical?)
Discovery: PI 1 30–1 33 188
6 Wittgenstein Dissolves the Know- How vs
Knowledge- that Debate: PI 149– 151 206
7 Logical Existentialism?: An Approach to PI 186 226
8 The Faux- Freedom of Nonsense: Kripke’s
Wittgenstein and Wittgenstein’s Wittgenstein at
PI 198– 201 260
9 Overcoming O ver- Reliance on ‘ The Bedrock’?:
On PI 217 279