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Wittgenstein and Plato
Connections, Comparisons and Contrasts
Luigi Perissinotto, Begoña Ramón Cåmara, B. Ramón-Cåmara, B. Ramón-Cåmara
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Wittgenstein and Plato
Connections, Comparisons and Contrasts
Luigi Perissinotto, Begoña Ramón Cåmara, B. Ramón-Cåmara, B. Ramón-Cåmara
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Wittgenstein was a faithful and passionate reader of Plato's Dialogues as confirmed by writings and witnesses. Here well-known scholars of Wittgenstein and Plato illuminate the relationship between the two philosophers both philologically and philosophically, and provide new interpretation keys of two of the leading figures of Western thought.
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Filosofia antica e classica1
Wittgensteinâs Debt to Plato
Joachim Schulte
1.
We know that Wittgenstein read a few of Platoâs dialogues. And as he quotes some passages from these works, we even know something about the translations he used. The best-known quotation is a lengthy passage from the Theaetetus accorded a prominent place in Philosophical Investigations (§46). But there are further quotations and allusions in Wittgensteinâs manuscripts and recurrent references to certain Platonic themes, as for example the idea of learning as a kind of remembering.1
In the first two sections of the present chapter I shall discuss two of these Platonic themes and the ways in which Wittgenstein deals with them. These discussions will show that in neither of these cases would it be justified to speak of a specific philosophical debt that Wittgenstein owed to Plato. The question discussed in my third section, however, may give us reasons for speaking of such indebtedness. This is the question of Platonic dialogue and its relation to Wittgensteinian dialogue. The debt, though, is not incurred by following in Platoâs footsteps but by learning through criticizing his technique of writing dialogue.
2.
Waismann, in his account of conversations with Wittgenstein, reports a comment made by the latter on Schlickâs recently published book Fragen der Ethik. Wittgensteinâs words are worth quoting in full, also because this passage has come to claim a certain amount of attention on the part of scholars interested in this sort of question.
Schlick says that in theological ethics there used to be two conceptions of the essence of the good: according to the shallower interpretation the good is good because it is what God wants; according to the profounder interpretation God wants the good because it is good. I think that the first interpretation is the profounder one: what God commands, that is good. For it cuts off the way to any explanation âwhyâ it is good, while the second interpretation is the shallow, rationalist one, which proceeds âas ifâ you could give reasons for what is good.
The first conception says clearly that the essence of the good has nothing to do with facts and hence cannot be explained by any proposition. If there is any proposition expressing precisely what I think, it is the proposition âWhat God commands, that is good.â2
There are various things that could, or should, be said about this passage, and I shall proceed to say some of them presently. But first I want to make the connection with Plato, which is my reason for mentioning this comment of Wittgensteinâs in the first place. The connection I have in mind has been noticed by James Klagge, who makes it explicit in his paper Das erlösende Wort.3
As Klagge points out, there is a striking similarity between Wittgensteinâs comment on Schlick and certain things said by the Platonic Socrates when, in the Euthyphro, he asks whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious or whether it is pious because it is loved by the gods (10a). Euthyphro, to whom the question is addressed, fails to understand it. After a few more or less illuminating explanations Socrates returns to his original question, but now he asks it in a somewhat different form: âIs it [the pious] being loved then because it is pious, or for some other reason?â4 Euthyproâs answer (âFor no other reasonâ) allows Socrates to introduce a contrast between piety and being loved by the gods that enables him to develop his argument.
It is not this argument, however, which is of interest in this context, but the move made by Socrates in reformulating his question in a way that makes Euthyphro end up in his dilemma. As Klagge observes, this reformulation is âclearly a trick question, for it builds in the presupposition that it [the pious] is being loved for some reason or otherâ. Had Euthyphro noticed the cunning behind the question, he might have replied in Wittgensteinian style and said, âFor no reason at all, Socratesâ. In this case, Socrates would have found it more difficult to exploit his concealed presupposition. This is, as Klagge notes, âthe hidden assumption that many of us would accept â that the gods act for reasons, that commands can be justifiedâ.
There is, as Klagge also underlines, an interesting connection here with Wittgensteinâs view that explanations must come to an end, which in its early form recommends the idea held by the âancientsâ, who according to Wittgenstein were more clear-headed than the âmodern conceptionâ in acknowledging a terminus and did not pretend that everything is, or can be, explained.5 But before saying something about this connection, I want to look more closely at the specifically Platonic, or Socratic, âtrick questionâ identified by Klagge.
In the Euthyphro, the âtrickâ consists in smuggling in an unwarranted assumption about reasons. There is nothing exactly corresponding to this in the passage quoted from Waismannâs account of conversations with Wittgenstein, who (as Klagge says) there expresses a view strikingly similar to that articulated by Euthyphro when he claims that âthe pious is what all the gods loveâ (9e): âIf there is any proposition expressing precisely what I think, it is the proposition âWhat God commands, that is goodââ.6
Wittgenstein does not smuggle in any concealed presuppositions, but he plays a trick on his audience nonetheless. This does not involve a trick question; it involves a trick answer. The first point to remember is this, that the whole passage is qualified by the opening remark, which states that what follows is a comment on Schlickâs presentation of a view in theological ethics. In point of fact, this is a double qualification which serves to remove Wittgensteinâs own words from their ostensible target. And if we consider (as we ought to) that in spite of the undoubted authenticity of Waismannâs report the words used by him are words that were not written down by Wittgenstein, we cannot help concluding that there is no clear answer to the question of whether Wittgenstein is simply expressing his own view or a view he might hold if he were Schlick or someone interested in defending views in theological ethics.
This qualification, or double qualification, tends to be forgotten by readers who find the end of our quotation particularly instructive or appealing. But even if we ignore this point, the last sentence remains tricky. For it does not say that the good is what God commands; it says that words to this effect would express what Wittgenstein has in mind if there were words suited to expressing his ideas. In view of the explicit Tractatus-style warning7 contained in the sentence preceding the last one (â ... nothing to do with facts ... cannot be explained by any propositionâ) we should presumably conclude that there are no words that could express what he has in mind, and hence that the dictum âWhat God commands, that is goodâ does not serve to state a view held by Wittgenstein. Maybe one might wish to claim that these words gesture at something that cannot be expressed meaningfully, but that seems to be a reading which risks coming too close to a misunderstanding of the drift of Wittgensteinâs actual words.
All we can affirm, I suppose, is that the attitude of a person who says things along the lines sketched by Schlick in specifying the âshallowerâ view is more to Wittgensteinâs taste than the attitude of someone who talks like a representative of the âprofounderâ interpretation. His preference, however, may well be connected with the other point mentioned by Klagge, viz. Wittgensteinâs approval of the outlook of the ancients, who recognized a clear terminus, in contrast to the modern scientistic view, according to which everything is explained through laws of nature. That is, the divine-command view would be more agreeable to Wittgenstein because it shares certain features with the terminus-of-explanation view of the ancients.8
What features would those be? There seems to be a difficulty here. After all, the moderns seem to recognize a clear terminus as well: only in their opinion the terminus would not be God or Fate but the laws of nature. These laws look like a sufficiently respectable terminus, but Wittgenstein does not accept this for the reason that âthe modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explainedâ. Evidently, by Wittgensteinâs lights an adequate âterminusâ would be one that does not suggest this. It would be an endpoint which does not pretend to explain everything, and perhaps it would not purport to explain anything at all.
So, the decisive point seems to be this. A position that pretends to be able to explain everything is objectionable because it upholds a view which is bound to involve illusion: it deludes itself or hoodwinks others into expecting results that will never be forthcoming. A variant of this position would be one which claims to be able to explain, not everything, but everything worth explaining. This would be objectionable for the reason that it is characterized by arrogance, by having an exaggerated opinion of its own powers and a disdainful attitude towards the achievements of others. It would err through purporting to be able to lay down the law on what is worth explaining and what is not.
This stands in contrast to an attitude of the kind attributed to the ancients and, by extension, to holders of the divine-command view, who do not claim to be able to explain everything, nor to have the right or the power to decide what is worth explaining. This renunciation of arrogance need not have anything to do with bashfulness or self-effacing modesty. As a matter of fact, even certain forms of regarding the gods as the ultimate repository of explanatory power are not necessarily free from arrogance. And the arrogance can come in various ways â for instance by way of regarding oneself as destined to be in cahoots with the gods or by suggesting that one is more qualified than others are to divine where the powers of man must remain ineffective and the exclusive area of divine competence and authority begins.
These considerations are surely not sufficient as an exhaustive account of what Wittgenstein wishes to express in Tractatus 6.371â2 and other passages on the limits of explanation. In particular, what has not been mentioned is the idea that there may be conceptual reasons for thinking that something should count as an explanation only if a terminus of explanation is somehow provided for or envisaged. But enough may have been said to indicate that there tends to be a certain similarity of attitude between those who approve9 of the divine-command view (as opposed to the notion that the good is given independently of divine grace and a possible object of unaided human knowledge) and those who make explicit gestures towards acknowledging the limits of our powers of explanation.
3.
I should now like to discuss a passage which has been published in the first part of the collection Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. This passage contains an explicit reference to Plato as well as several allusions to Platonic thoughts. Neither the explicit reference nor the allusions are easy to understand, and I have gained the impression that people tend to misread this material. A full discussion would require more space than one section of a chapter; but I hope that the following observations are sufficient to indicate fruitful questions and instructive ways of reading Wittgensteinâs remarks.
The following quotation is the central part of the passage I have in mind:
71. When one says: âThis shape consists of these shapesâ â one is thinking of the shape as a fine drawing, a fine frame of this shape, on which, as it were, things which have this shape are stretched (compare Platoâs conception of properties as ingredients of a thing).
72. This shape consists of these shapes. You have shown the essential property of this shape. â You have shown me a new picture.
It is as if God had constructed them like that. So we are employing a simile. The shape becomes an ethereal entity which has this shape; it is as if it had been constructed like this once and for all (by whoever put the essential properties into things). For if the shape is to be a thing consisting of parts, then the pattern-maker who made the shape is he who also made light and dark, colour and hardness, etc. (Imagine someone asking: âThe shape ... is made up of these parts; who made it? You?â)10
These remarks come from a typescript based on manuscripts written in Norway in the autumn of 1937. Thus they form part of Wittgensteinâs first sustained effort at putting together what became the Philosophical Investigations. A few years later he removed this part (containing mostly reflections on vaguely âmathematicalâ themes) from the projected Investigations and later still replaced it by his remarks on rule-following and privacy. To have a rough idea of the development of t...