Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Thomas Meyer
is at least some reason to suppose this project deserves a new exploration working
differently through the stretch of territory whose view Cavell commands. Much seems
to be at stake in the precise manner in which we resolve the issues surrounding this
topic of rightness without rules, at stake not only for Kant and Wittgenstein, but for the
ongoing debates in philosophy that connect in some way with the work of these figures
on this topic. At one point in his writing on this analogy and the distinctive philosophical
problematic it highlights, Cavell asks openly just what this problematic, this territory, this
Wittgensteinian and at moments at least Kantian predicament is after all. Is it, together
with the issues it contains, a philosophical practice of "psychology", or "logic", is it the
explicitation of "grammar" or the churning of "phenomenology"? "I cannot," Cavell
confesses, "describe to anyone's satisfaction what it is" (Cavell 93). This practice for
which Cavell sought a name is one characterized by what I call and describe as
indeterminacy. The way this talk of indeterminacy comes to meet or mute the issues
with which it shall be faced is what shall set it apart from the competing discourses that
have laid themselves over the landscape of Wittgenstein's therapeutic projects.
Against the background of this view of Cavell's conception of the aesthetic character
of Wittgenstein's disputes, the therapeutic reading of Wittgenstein propounded in The
New Wittgenstein appears unexpectedly silent concerning its allegedly aesthetic core.
In fact, the aesthetic character of Wittgenstein's remarks goes largely uncontemplated.
Indeed, the issue of judgment in the absence of rules, or indeterminate judgment,
remains surprisingly unconsidered. Instead, discussions such as that of Martin Stone on
the relationship of Wittgenstein and deconstruction focus on judgments in the presence
of rules (Crary 96-97). The "indeterminate" appears here as the vestigial quality of
meaning possessed by an uninterpreted sign (Crary 101). Rather, the indeterminate,
the lack of determinacy, pervades Wittgenstein's texts on language, beginning with the
discussion of "games" in section 54. And to embrace indeterminacy is to abandon the
necessity of something determining the meaning of our words, a necessity that cries out
for the philosophical therapy Wittgenstein undertakes in his Investigations. So if we
particularly need therapy when imagining an external perspective on our uses of
language which "determines their correctness" (Crary 3), then that therapy is, if Cavell
is right, significantly aesthetic in character, and in the end may benefit from this reminder
from what remains a salient and timely meditation.
Literature
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