Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations A Critical Guide

Having introduced these three separate camps, the naturalists who do not even read
Wittgenstein, and another two sets of followers who read him very differently, it is Rorty’s aim to
explore the differences between these followers in greater detail. This is quite apart from any
misgivings the reader may by this point be harbouring over Rorty’s belief that the real issues at
stake can even be properly discussed at this level of generality. Whilst Rorty then claims to have
been persuaded ‘by reading Conant, Witherspoon, Diamond and other contributors to The New
Wittgenstein’ (Ibid., 137), that with their evaluations of ‘nonsense’ and of a Wittgenstein who aimed
to produce the Tractatus as a self-imploding work, they have succeeded in providing him with a
truly illuminating account of Wittgenstein’s intentions, he nevertheless wishes to retain his wholly
‘pragmatic’ outlook. As he earlier argues, Wittgenstein’s real contribution rests in his having been
able to formulate arguments which anticipated, complemented and reinforced Quine & Davidson on
the language-fact distinction, and Sellars & Brandom on knowledge by acquaintance. According to
the pragmatic Wittgensteinian, ‘comparing and contrasting the writings of these later philosophers
with the Philosophical Investigations helps us filter out what is merely idiosyncratic in Wittgenstein’s
writings. Pragmatic Wittgensteinians do not want to recapture Wittgenstein’s own way of thinking,
but rather to restate his best arguments in more effective ways’ (Ibid., 134).
The reader will have heard all of this before, and from lesser philosophers than Rorty, so that
even if the dispiriting effect of these observations is partly alleviated by his mildly amusing aside that
‘Cest magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre’ (Ibid., 137) - commenting on a resolute interpretation - he
will unfortunately discover that the remainder of the paper serves only to restate Rorty’s basic claims.
He observes towards its close, for example, that rather than regard philosophical talk as something
which needs to be ‘elucidated out of existence’ (Ibid., 144), it should be regarded as just another, yet
different way of talking, ‘on all fours with suggestions made by scientists and poets’ (Ibid.)
Any reader who is even remotely inclined to see this disappointing reaction as a failure to
engage with the spirit of Wittgenstein’s writings and with the way in which his approach is capable
of illuminating the nature of philosophical problems, regardless of any temptation he may have to
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