Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Wittgenstein, the Ordinary and Certainty
Matteo Negro
"Es muß uns etwas als Grundlage gelehrt werden" (Wittgenstein, 1990, 209).
The reasonableness (Vernünftigkeit) of ordinary experience is guaranteed by the
understanding of meaning as a linguistic object in a discourse universe, which we accept
in a more or less spontaneous way. In reality, it is a problem of the relationship between
facts and propositions. Can we really sustain that a fact is external to, or separate from,
the content of the thought or utterance that expresses it? The fact, the event, is itself
emergent in the linguistic universe, as it is a part of it. In a certain sense, therefore,
linguistic practice precedes and establishes fact as meaningful. One can try to save facts
without necessarily referring to an ontology of facts. According to Wittgensteinian
realism, the idea of a relationship of adjustment between propositions and the world,
between propositions and facts, is not to be found elsewhere but in language, and is
therefore not based on metaphysics. Wittgenstein's real problem is to find a point of
contact between the self and the other, between the individual and the speaker
community. The positive outcome of a similar research aims at building a possible
alternative to scepticism, as to the objectification of meaning. The usage of language is
acceptance and sharing of the forms of life. The role of the genealogy of use is defined
above all as acceptance of the properties in the speech environment. This acceptance
tends to determine the meaning of the word inserted in that discourse universe. Meaning
is therefore an utterance that explains and reveales its use.
The proposal is simply to consider concepts ultimately as grammatical rules, and not
as mental structures, which precede the grammatical sphere. Meanings are not
generically universal, but dependent on rules of use.
Such an antimetaphysical attitude, or more simply non-metaphysical, does not
avoid, however, the question of foundation (Grundlage) and, in this sense, the
valorization of ordinary experience assumes a central role. The ordinary for Wittgenstein
is characterised, in Über Gewißheit in particular , in the following ways.
I) It is a spontaneous certainty. Ordinary experience conforms to the reality of the forms
of life, in which it assumes spontaneous meaning. Action, of whatever type, expresses
a strong correspondence with general criteria, from which it assumes its own immediate
comprehensibility. The simplest action, such as calculation, does not postulate a
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