ANITA AVRAMIDES
Here are three characterizations of ordinary language philosophy:
A loosely structured philosophical movement holding that the significance of concepts, including those central to traditional philosophy […] is fixed by linguistic practice.
(Heil, 1995, p.551)
A method of doing philosophy rather than a set of doctrines. It is diverse in its methods and attitudes. It belongs to the general category of analytic philosophy …
(Martinich, 1998, p.143)
The label ‘ordinary language philosophy’ was more often used by the enemies than by the alleged practitioners of what it was intended to designate. It was supposed to designate a certain kind of philosophy that flourished, mainly in Britain and therein mainly in Oxford, for twenty years or so, roughly after 1945.
(Warnock, 1998, p.147)
I shall take it that it is as much a question how we understand “ordinary language philosophy” as it is a question how we are to understand Wittgenstein’s relationship to it. Had this chapter been written some time before the turn of the twenty‐first century, and so closer to the time when many of the philosophers under discussion here still roamed the philosophical landscape, it would very likely have had a rather simpler structure. The question how we understand the work of at least some of those who are often characterized as ordinary language philosophers has taken an interesting turn in recent years. And while there have always been interesting questions to be addressed when considering Wittgenstein’s relationship to this school (or, movement) in philosophy, work in more recent times has opened up important and interesting new avenues of exploration in this connection.
All three characterizations of ordinary language philosophy (OLP) given above bring out an important aspect of it: the first identifies language – or linguistic practice – as of central concern. The second reminds us that we should see those labeled as “ordinary language philosophers” as proposing a method and as adopting an attitude, as opposed to setting out a doctrine or set of doctrines. It also informs us that OLP belongs to that larger movement referred to as “analytic philosophy.” The third explains that this style of philosophy flourished largely in Oxford during the period from, roughly, 1945 until the mid‐1960s (and, thus, is sometimes referred to as “Oxford Philosophy”). It also suggests that the very name of this movement was the work of those hostile to it, indicating that this way of proceeding in philosophy while attractive to some was vigorously rejected by others. At the heart of the very business of philosophy lies the question how we are to understand the business of philosophy: what is its method and how should it proceed? These questions received a very particular definition around the early‐to‐mid twentieth century.
When one looks back on the history of philosophy, there are periods – some of them relatively prolonged – where there appears to be general agreement about the business of philosophy. But from around the mid‐to‐late nineteenth century one sees certain upheavals and partings of the way. From common roots in Kant’s writings one sees philosophy on the Continent proceed in one direction (the phenomenological movement) while in Britain proceed in quite another (the analytic movement). The origin of analytic philosophy is itself a controversial matter. Michael Dummett has argued that the sources of analytic philosophy were the writings of philosophers who wrote, principally or exclusively, in the German language, namely in the work of such philosophers as Husserl, Bolzano, Brentano, Meinong, and Frege (see Dummett, 1993, p.ix). Dummett has largely concentrated his efforts on explaining Frege’s contribution to the origins of analytic philosophy, and to that moment which many take to characterize this origin: the linguistic turn. Dummett claims that the linguistic turn occurs in Frege’s Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik of 1884, when Frege raises the Kantian question, “How are numbers given to us, granted that we have no idea or intuition of them?” Frege’s answer to this question relies on his celebrated context principle, which is formulated in terms of an inquiry into language rather than into modes of thought: it is only in the context of a sentence (Satz) that a word has meaning. With this principle Dummett takes Frege to have turned an epistemological inquiry into a linguistic one – sweeping aside a tradition initiated by Descartes and ushering in a new era in philosophy. The analytic era takes from the work of Frege its most fundamental tenet: that a philosophical account of thought can be attained through a philosophical account of language. Dummett gives Frege the title of “grandfather of analytic philosophy,” while identifying Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore as “uncles” (Dummett, 1993, p.171). Russell and Moore pursued their analytic philosophy in Cambridge, where they were joined by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus has been characterized by Peter Hacker as a form of critical philosophy that accepts the Kantian task of circumscribing the bounds of thought while taking a most unKantian – linguistic – point of departure. (Cf. TLP 4.0031: “All philosophy is a ‘critique of language’ […].”) Somewhat at odds with Dummett’s interpretation, Hacker suggests that it was Wittgenstein’s Tractatus that engendered the linguistic turn characteristic of twentieth‐century analytic philosophy (see Hacker, 1997, p.3).
Early analytic philosophy was associated with logical positivism. According to von Wright (1982, p.108), the Tractatus made Wittgenstein one of the “spiritual fathers” of logical positivism. This may be because many read that work as, in the words of Hacker, “the swan‐song of metaphysics” and the rejection of metaphysics was a major tenet of logical positivism (Hacker, 2001, p.330). The logical positivists agreed with Hume that philosophy that contains neither abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number nor experimental reasoning concerning matters of fact and existence should be committed to the flames because it must contain “nothing but sophistry and illusion” (Hume, [1748/51] 1975, p.165). “Sophistry and illusion” also summed up the positivist attitude toward the metaphysics that they saw as being practiced largely in Continental Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many early analytic philosophers – for example, Bertrand Russell, and others who took themselves to be following in Frege’s footsteps – joined forces with these logical positivists in their combat against metaphysics, and they also embraced the logical positivist enthusiasm for science and logic. However, while these analytic philosophers turned their attention to language, the turn was not yet to ordinary language. In fact these analytic philosophers are often found denouncing ordinary language, expressing their frustration with its vagaries and imprecision. In the place of ordinary language, they promoted the development and study of ideal or formal languages, languages that answer to the rigors of logic and science – language abstracted from its daily use.
Thus one finds a divide developing within early analytical philosophy. While all analytic philosophers can be taken to be united in their rejection of the “the deep paradoxes and mystery mongering of their continental contemporaries” and while all were hostile “to the lofty, loose rhetoric of old‐fashioned idealism” (Warnock, 1998, p.147), they were divided in their approach to the study of language. Just as some early analytic philosophers turned away from metaphysics and toward ideal language, others can be seen to turn away from metaphysics and the ideal language of logic and science. These analytic philosophers argued that imprecision and ambiguity are of the essence of the expressive power of language and they insisted that language cannot be studied in abstraction from its daily use. They emphasized a more humanistic attitude, central to which was a deep respect for language as it is used in its everyday context. These are the so‐called “ordinary language philosophers.”
Among the philosophers associated with OLP, J.L. Austin holds a particular place. Oswald Hanfling suggests that, more than anyone else, it is Austin who has come to be regarded as “the archetypical ordinary language philosopher” (Hanfling, 2000, p.26). Hanfling also suggests that Austin was fascinated by words and their meanings – quite apart from their relevance to problems in philosophy. Indeed, Austin writes that his work may be seen in times to come as the beginning of “a true and comprehensive science of language” (1956b, p.232). Once this science has been established, Austin believes that “we shall have rid ourselves of one more part of philosophy” (ibid). What Austin has in mind here can, perhaps, be made clearer if we consider a metaphor that he offers. Austin suggests that when we look over the history of human inquiry we can consider philosophy to have a place akin to the sun’s place in the solar system: just as the sun throws off parts of itself that cool and progress in a well‐regulated manner toward being a planet, so philosophy throws off parts of itself (e.g., mathematics, and physics) that come in time to “take up station as a science” (ibid). Insofar as Austin is to be regarded as an ordinary language philosopher, these remarks suggest that he is willing to think of such a philosophy as an early moment in the birth of a new science.
Other ordinary language philosophers may be considered more strictly philosophical in their interests in language. The list here most certainly includes Gilbert Ryle and John Wisdom. Some would also include P.F. Strawson, while others add H.P. Grice (although there is good reason to doubt that this is correct). According to Warnock, the presence of Wittgenstein “broods, so to speak, over the group” (1998, p.149). The question of Wittgenstein’s relationship to this group is complex. Firstly, it should be clear that insofar as Wittgenstein’s work is associated with this movement in philosophy, it is the work he produced in the 1930s and 1940s. After a lengthy break from philosophy, Wittgenstein returned to philosophy and to Cambridge in 1929 and began to develop a new approach to his thinking in philosophy (how new is not an issue I shall engage with here, although I shall come back to the question at the end of this chapter). Central to this new approach is the attitude taken toward language. While in his earlier work Wittgenstein sought to discover a rigid logical structure within language, he sought in his later work to let language off that leash. Wittgenstein’s later attitude is that we must not constrain language but simply observe it. David Pears describes Wittgenstein’s later work as “full of perfectly detailed descriptions of language, which are presented dialectically in a way that invites the reader to take part in the dialogue” (Pears, 1971, p.14). Observing language in use while using it, one might say. This may be the work of an analytic philosopher, but it is no longer work that can be closely aligned with that of Frege, Russell, and Moore. Russell himself firmly rejected Wittgenstein’s later work as “a trivial investigation of language” (Pears 1971, p.19).
This rejection by some of Wittgenstein’s later work has been taken to mark an important moment in the divide between analytic philosophers. While many Cambridge philosophers were distancing themselves from Wittgenstein’s new work, many Oxford philosophers were embracing it. These Oxford philosophers saw Wittgenstein’s new work as at one with what they were practicing. Austin, for example, writes that language is a long‐evolved, complex, and subtle instrument and advises that philosophers should afford it careful scrutiny. He points out that language has evolved over many generations and that the distinctions made within it and the connections marked by it “have stood up to the long test of time of the survival of the fittest” and are “more subtle […] than any you or I are likely to think up in our armchairs of an afternoon” (Austin, 1956a, p.182). Austin acknowledges that ordinary language has no claim to be the last word in philosophy, but he insists that it would be prudent to at least allow it the first word (ibid, p.185). Referring to ordinary language, Austin remarks in his characteristically lively manner: “too evidently, there is gold in them thar hills” (ibid, p.181). This attitude, which can be identified in Austin’s work, is sometimes taken to be the central credo of the ordinary language movement. We can compare what Austin writes here with Wittgenstein’s suggestion that we turn our attention to the employment of words (cf. Z §463).
It is clear that certain ideas are in the air, and the air is breathed in by many in Oxford and some in Cambridge. I leave it to the scholars to identify the details of influence. What I can record is that Wittgenstein, while living and working in Cambridge, is said to have regarded Oxford as a “philosophical desert” (Warnock, 1998, p.148). Warnock also tells us that, while the substance of Wittgenstein’s later work was akin to that going on in Oxford, “the characteristic cool, ironic urbanity of manner was odious to him.” Warnock concludes that Wittgenstein would have “furiously disclaimed any kinship” with the ordinary language philosophers of his day (ibid). Marie McGinn and Oskari Kuusela remind us that Wittgenstein rejected the idea of parties and taking sides in philosophy, but explain that they can see why those identified as ordinary language philosophers “would have wanted to claim a powerful mind such as the later Wittgenstein to be on their side” (2011, p.6). Dummett goes so far as to write (admittedly in a rather bad‐tempered review of Ernest Gellner’s Words and Things) that “Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is totally distinct both from logical positivism and from the ordinary‐language movement” (Dummett, 1978, p.433). In another place Dummett writes in a more even‐tempered manner that “the doctrines of ‘ordinary language philosophy’ were a caricature, but not a gross caricature, of the views of the later Wittgenstein” (1978, p.445).
From all this we may conclude that one needs to separate out the question of whether Wittgenstein would himself have identified his work with OLP from the question whether those who are identified as ordinary language philosophers would claim Wittgenstein as an ally. Separate from both of these is the question whether there is a tendency on the part of many to amalgamate the work of these philosophers. This is clearly the case. This tendency can be attributed as much to those who champion this work as to those who are hostile to it, but I am inclined to believe that it is largely the work of the latter group. According to those who rejected the work being done both by the likes of Austin and Ryle and by Wittgenstein there was a tendency to cast Wittgenstein as a heresiarch and Austin as a pedant (see Warnock 1998, p.149).
Perhaps it would be best simply to agree that the impact of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy was coincident with the influence of ordinary language philosophy and that this can in part be attributed to certain overarching ideas shared by both. While there are important differences amongst those classified as ordinary language philosophers, for those who are hostile they do not matter. As indicated earlier, there is a rejection by all those classified as ordinary language philosophers of the idea that philosophy is in the business of constructing grand metaphysical systems. According to OLP – and here one need not hesitate to include Wittgenstein’s name – there is a tendency to be misled by language into metaphysical pseudo‐profundities. Pears explains that what Wittgenstein tries to do is to teach us to resist the enchantment of language, which tempts us to accept the pictures associated with metaphysics and other philosophical errors (Pears, 1971, p.16). For instance, the ready availability of nominalizations in our language can lead us to reify meanings, minds, or possibilities. Austin, too, advises that we need to be careful about our use of words – we must “examine what we should say when” and thereby “forearm ourselves against the traps that language sets us” (Austin, 1956a, pp.181–2). Thus we find that in as much as we are to pay attention to the uses of language, we should not accept everything we ordinarily say blindly or without careful consideration. One area where Wittgenstein believes we are led astray by language is when thinking about the mind. There is, for example, a certain asymmetry recorded in our language concerning what we feel in our own case and what we observe in the case of another when we say, “I know what I mean by ‘toothache’ but the other person can’t know it” (LPE 276). Wittgenstein notes that we observe this asymmetry and we “look on this as a mirror image of the nature of things” (LPE 277). There is no doubt that this is how some philosophers reason. Wittgenstein comments: “But if you look closer you will see that this is an entire misrepresentation of the use of the word ‘toothache’” (LPE 281). We have allowed ourselves to be bewitched by language. McGinn observes that, for Wittgenstein, language is “both the source of philosophical problems and the means to overcome them” (1997, p.12).
In PI §114 Wittgenstein refers explicitly to the Tractatus, and writes, as though speaking to his earlier self: “One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the thing’s nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it.” The frame to which he refers is the frame of language, and what our language does is frame a picture that holds us captive (cf. PI §115). So language can be the source of the problem but, if we are careful, language can also be the means to overcome our problems. What we will find is that: “The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doing work” (PI §132). In PI §116 Wittgenstein writes the lines that some have pointed to as evidence of his standing as an ordinary language philosopher: “What we do is try to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use” (auf ihre alltägliche Verwendung). These words are clearly designed to turn us away from metaphysics. Whether they are words designed to turn us in the direction of ordinary language is disputed by some, as we shall see below.
The turn away from metaphysics that one finds in the work of Wittgenstein and OLP is connected with the idea – expressed particularly well by Wittgenstein – that the study of language should content itself with surveying what lies on the surface. Philosophers run into problems and difficulties when they do not rest content with this surface, but insist on trying to reach beyond our words to something that “lies beneath the surface” (PI §92). We insist on trying to understand what we take to be “the essence of language,” and we take it that such understanding will tell us something about the essence of the world (whether, for example, it is to be understood as the realist thinks or the idealist); we are led back to metaphysics. Where philosophers tend to strive to understand by amassing generalities that lead ultimately to pronouncements about the nature of the things, Wittgenstein advises that we simply observe what we do (cf. BB 19–20). Rather than start with the question “What is language?” – anticipating a reply that can settle the question once and for all and independently of any future experience – Wittgenstein asks us to “simply look and see” how we use language (cf. PI §93). From time to time we find Wittgenstein commenting on his own earlier views of language, of his own tendency to turn away from natural and toward ideal languages. In PI §107 he explains that we want to understand what we take to be the hidden essence of language, and we find that the examination of “actual language” (die tatsächliche Sprache) does not yield this. In reaction, we decide to move in the direction of logic and an ideal language in order to achieve the understanding we seek. He comments:
We have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!
(PI §107)
The rough ground is provided by the tatsächliche Sprache, in other words, the Sprache des Alltags.
At the point at which Wittgenstein asks us to observe what we do with language he insists that we rest content with descriptions and eschew explanations: “Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it” (PI §124). Here we find Wittgenstein introducing a certain attitude toward the business of philosophy, and it appears to be different from the business of science. In PI §126 he writes, “One might also give the name ‘philosophy’ to what is possible before all the new discoveries and inventions.” And in PI §128 Wittgenstein tells us that it is not the business of philosophy to advance theses. Pears writes of the “new philosophy” – which he attributes to both Wittgenstein and OLP – that its “method is always to bring us back to the linguistic phenomenon” (Pears, 1971, p.16). This method has been characterized as “piecemeal” (Bernard Williams) or “plodding if necessary” (G.E. Moore) (Warnock, 1998, p.149). Austin also warns philosophers not to bite off more than they can chew. An adherence to this piecemeal method sometimes – but not always – manifested itself in a hostility to philosophical theories, systematic examinations, and general conclusions. However, a notable exception here is Austin. While Austin acknowledged that philosophers should pay close attention to the use of words (“our tools”), he was not hostile to systematic theory (see Austin 1956a, pp.185ff).
In a paper devoted to exploring the question of whether analytic philosophy can – or ought to be – systematic, Dummett tells us that,
in those English philosophical circles dominated by the later Wittgenstein or by Austin […] the answer given to this question is a resounding “No”; for them, the attempt to be systematic in philosophy was the primal error, founded upon a total misconception of the character of the subject.
(1978, p.438)
This attitude manifested itself somewhat differently in the work of Austin and that of the later Wittgenstein. As Dummett reads Wittgenstein, the resistance to systematization in philosophy is connected to a particular view about the nature of philosophy. Dummett understands Wittgenstein to advocate a fundamental difference between the business of philosophy and the business of science – and Dummett tells us that we are here to understand “science” in the most general sense, as embracing “any discipline (art history, for example) whose aim is to arrive at and establish truths” (ibid). In the place of establishing truths what Wittgenstein urges is that philosophy should be thought of as aiming “to substitute a clear vision for a distorted one,” a vision that will reveal “very familiar facts known to everybody” (ibid, p.439). Not all philosophers would agree that Wittgenstein opposes systematization in philosophy, as I explain below.
Dummett also claims to find a resistance to systematization, especially of language, in Austin’s work. And he sees a connection between this and the fact that Austin repeatedly urges philosophers to collect particular facts about our language use (Dummett, 1978, pp.439–40). But it is not clear that Dummett is right to see a connection here. As noted earlier, Austin is not resistant to systematization, nor does he contrast the business of science and that of philosophy as sharply as Dummett implies. For example, Austin acknowledges that psychology produces novel cases and that it also produces new methods for bringing the phenomenon under study, and he tells us that such work may require that we revise the classifications of ordinary life – the classifications embodied in ordinary language and studied by philosophy (Austin, 1956a, p.186). We must here recall that Austin does not take attention to ordinary language to be the last word in understanding.
Dummett also notes a connection between the fact that ordinary language philosophers turn their attention to the particular use of particular sentences and a tendency on their part to disregard any distinction between semantics and pragmatics, between the literal meaning of our words and what someone may choose to convey by uttering them (cf. Dummett, 1978, pp.445–7; cf. also Grice, 1989). The idea of literal meaning was sometimes rejected by these philosophers as yet another attempt at generalization and theory‐building in philosophy. Attention to the use we make of words in our ordinary speech thus came to be seen as deeply threatening to much work in philosophy. But Dummett also believes that Wittgenstein should not be taken to have agreed with OLP here. What Dummett takes Wittgenstein to be drawing attention to is the way in which our, human, linguistic practice is interwoven with our nonlinguistic activities (ibid; for an interesting discussion of this issue see Glock, 1996).
According to Hacker, Wittgenstein “thought of himself in 1931 as the destroyer of the great tradition of Western philosophy” (2007, p.102), and as developing a “new subject” (2001, p.332). This new philosophy “is above all an activity, not a body of doctrine” (ibid, pp.332–3). Hacker writes that for the later Wittgenstein philosophy can be taken to have “a double aspect” (2001, p.324). We can think of philosophy as a kind of therapy for diseases of the understanding, for the conceptual entanglements to which we are prone. According to Hacker, this aspect of philosophy has a “negative tenor,” which he takes to be “counterbalanced by the more positive notion of attaining a survey of philosophically problematic domains of grammar” (ibid, p.333). Hacker takes Wittgenstein – along with many of the ordinary language philosophers – to be interested in what sometimes gets called “conceptual geography.” Hacker writes:
It is the business of philosophy […] to make it possible for us to get a clear view of the conceptual structure that troubles us: the state of affairs before the contradiction is resolved.
(Hacker, 2001, p.334)
Hacker reads Wittgenstein as taking the business of philosophy to be the assembling of rules for the uses of words, and the exploration of the ways in which our concepts hang together. The important point, as he sees it, is that these rules and mappings are such that everyone would acknowledge them. Hacker sees nothing either dogmatic, or intrinsically conservative, in this exercise (cf. Hacker, 2007, p.105).
This positive aspect of philosophical investigation introduces a certain systematization into philosophy that Hacker is careful to distinguish from the systematization to be found in science. This positive aspect is not to be confused with the construction of theories – whether scientific or philosophical. Rather, philosophers should aim to provide thorough surveys of the sources of error and confusion; they should give methodical descriptions of segments of grammar (cf. 2001, p.342; and also 1972/86, ch.vi, sec. 6). Hacker takes this to count as being systematic in philosophy – but this is not the systematization of theory‐building and it should not be taken to be knowledge accumulation (1972/86, p.178). Hacker reads Wittgenstein as distinguishing between the amassing of knowledge in science and the achievement of understanding in philosophy (2001, p.324). Thus, Hacker allows that Wittgenstein aims to solve problems in his work (ibid, p.336), and he believes he is following Wittgenstein when he writes: “Philosophy is neither the queen of the sciences nor their under‐labourer, but is rather the tribunal of sense” (ibid, p.343). Philosophy plays this important role through careful attention to the use of language. In one place Hacker writes: “This may appear to trivialize a profound subject to a matter of mere words. But […] there is nothing trivial about language. We are essentially language‐using creatures.” Language, he reminds us, moulds our nature, informs our thought, and infuses our lives (1997, pp.11–12).
The idea that Wittgenstein’s work should be read as containing a negative and a positive “aspect” is something fiercely contested by Gordon Baker. Baker was a one‐time collaborator with Hacker, and together they published several important volumes devoted to the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s work. But Baker, in his mid‐to‐late career, found himself in deep disagreement with Hacker’s (and his own earlier) interpretation of Wittgenstein. Much of this disagreement can be focused on Baker’s rejection of what Hacker identifies as a positive and a negative aspect in Wittgenstein’s later work. It should be noted that if Wittgenstein is indeed as hostile to a positive project as Baker suggests, he is also arguably more remote from those ordinary language philosophers that regard such a project as legitimate, notably from Austin and Strawson.
In PI §122 Wittgenstein writes: “A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of [übersehen] the use of our words.” Baker teases out different understandings of what Wittgenstein might mean here. One understanding he labels the “Birds Eye View Model,” and he claims this represents what Hacker identifies in his positive, systematic, aspect of the business of philosophy. Baker rejects this view precisely because of its aim of systematization, of providing a “logical geography” of concepts. Baker understands the avowed aim of this view as to obtain “a kind of synoptic view without getting lost in the details” and to obtain this by delineating “the salient logical articulations forged by grammar, the central structure of the net of language, not the local refinements” (Baker and Hacker, 1980/2009, p.543). Baker came to see this project as a mistaken understanding of PI §122, one that turns its back on the very thing it should be embracing – that is, drawing attention to differences in our use of words understood as drawing attention to “hidden aspects” or unnoticed patterns in the use of our words (Baker, 1991, p.41).
Baker’s understanding of the way in which philosophy draws attention to neglected aspects of the uses of our words also brings him into conflict with Hacker. According to Baker, the philosophical method has much in common with therapies such as psychoanalysis. There are references dotted throughout Wittgenstein’s later writing to the idea of philosophy as a form of therapy (cf. PI §255 and PI §133). Hacker acknowledges references to therapy and to psychoanalysis in Wittgenstein’s writings, but he insists that Wittgenstein only intended us to understand an analogy here and that this analogy does not play an important part in the understanding of method in philosophy. Hacker insists that the confusions that Wittgenstein is concerned to head off with his method are not targeted at individual patients (as is the case in psychoanalysis) so much as at schools of thought or ways of thinking that one finds in philosophy. Baker, on the other hand, understands these references to therapy as crucial to understanding Wittgenstein’s method in philosophy. The centrality and importance of therapy in Wittgenstein’s work, he argues, goes hand‐in‐hand with Wittgenstein’s method of drawing attention to the neglected aspects of the uses of our words. Baker writes at one point: “Accepting Wittgenstein’s methods of therapy as a form of philosophical investigation presupposes reconceptualising the boundary between logic and psychology” (Baker, 2003, p.219). What Baker takes Wittgenstein to be concerned with, when looking at the uses of sentences, is what the speaker of those sentences has in mind when uttering them (Baker, 2003, p.208). We look at what the speaker is trying to say, we observe the puzzling things she does say, and we direct her attention to how those words are used in everyday life. We do this by offering to change her aspect on her use of her words, and we do this with the use of analogies, comparisons, pictures, and the like. As Baker reads him, Wittgenstein sees philosophical problems as “deep disquiets” on the part of individuals (ibid, p.213). It follows that the role of philosophy is a therapeutic one, and this does not stand in contrast to any other role.
The stark contrast between these two interpretations of Wittgenstein’s later work can be seen if we look at what they have to say about psychological concepts. While Baker takes Hacker to understand Wittgenstein as urging that philosophers discern “the genealogical tree of psychological concepts,” Baker himself understands Wittgenstein to urge that philosophers discern the variety of language‐games to which these psychological concepts belong and to which “new joints” are added (Baker, 1991, p.47). Baker understands the “clear view” of which Wittgenstein writes in PI §122 as “a view from nowhere,” which should not be confused with any particular way of seeing things (ibid). Baker writes: “Wittgenstein advocated nothing more (and nothing less!) than different possible ways of looking at things” (ibid, p.45). Baker does not read Wittgenstein as advocating another way of doing philosophy, but rather as simply pointing out the many different ways in which our words are “integrated into human activity” (ibid, p.78).
Baker’s understanding of Wittgenstein’s method in his later philosophy extends to an understanding of PI §116, quoted above: “What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.” Baker notes, not unreasonably, that this passage has often been cited as “decisive textual evidence” for the assimilation of Wittgenstein’s later work with that of OLP (Baker, 2002, p.94), and Baker suggests that this assimilation partly explains why Wittgenstein’s work has “been relegated to the sidelines in contemporary analytic philosophy” (ibid, p.105). Baker takes this assimilation to be in error and believes that appreciation of this might help to bring Wittgenstein’s work in from the sidelines. Baker reminds us of the traditional conception of metaphysics as a science of essences, and he agrees that there is a clear emphasis in Wittgenstein’s later work on the idea that philosophy should turn its back on this business. What Baker thinks is less clear is whether we should understand reference to “everyday use” in PI §122 as a reference to ordinary language. In particular, Baker questions whether we really do find in Wittgenstein’s later work an idea that philosophy should concern itself with the surveying and mapping of ordinary language. As Baker reads PI §122, “everyday” is to be read as simply equivalent to “non‐metaphysical” (ibid, p.92). And as Wittgenstein draws our attention away from the metaphysical use of language he draws it to the myriad of possibilities that exist in our language – possibilities that cut against the metaphysical search for essence. We should resist the idea that language must be a certain way. Baker writes, “No claim is made that this [non‐metaphysical] use is sacrosanct, or that we have no right to depart from it” (ibid, p.103). Baker takes it to be a mistake to put any emphasis on the everyday or ordinary use of language.
Baker’s work on the later Wittgenstein has opened up new avenues of exploration and debate, and at the heart of this debate we can identify the issue of Wittgenstein’s standing as an ordinary language philosopher. Of course, whether Baker is right to distinguish between Wittgenstein and the other so‐called ordinary language philosophers will depend not just on his interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later work but also on an examination of the work of these other philosophers. Avner Baz (2012) and Alice Crary (2010) advocate that we read Wittgenstein’s work in a new light, arguably akin to that in which Baker reads it, but they also urge us to read Austin’s work in this light.
Thus we see that Baker is not the only philosopher in recent times to have opened up fresh avenues for debate. Within the world of Wittgenstein scholarship there is a group that has come to be known as “the new Wittgensteinians.” Just as the label “ordinary language philosophy” can be thought to bring together a range of different ideas, so the work here referred to also brings together a variety of new ideas in Wittgenstein scholarship. As well as those mentioned above, the names associated with this movement include James Conant, Juliet Floyd, Warren Goldfarb, Oskari Kuusela, Marie McGinn, and Rupert Read. Inspiration for this work comes from such philosophers as Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, and John McDowell.
One strand in this new work in Wittgenstein interpretation relates directly to our discussion of Wittgenstein’s relationship to ordinary language philosophy. McGinn and Kuusela accept the thought, prevalent in this “new” literature, that there is less of a discontinuity between Wittgenstein’s early and later work than earlier commentators generally supposed. They argue that Wittgenstein, in his later work, comes to reject only the idea that there is a logic of language. What they take Wittgenstein to have come later to appreciate is that formal logical methods can also be “complemented with other methods of conceptual, grammatical, or logical clarification that take into account other aspects of language besides its rule‐governedness” (2011, p.6). McGinn and Kuusela suggest that, if they are correct in their interpretation, then not only is there an underlying unity to Wittgenstein’s work, but one can point to this in an attempt to uncover an underlying unity within analytical philosophy itself. In particular, they suggest that there need not be a perceived conflict between “the scientific aspirations of analytic philosophy and [a commitment to] common sense” (ibid). Some, following this line of thought, have suggested that science should be thought of as one way in which we ordinarily use language (see, for example, Read, 2010).
The question of the business of philosophy, and its relationship to the business of science are matters of deep importance to the academic and intellectual life of the community. One issue that these questions touch on is this: is our study of use confined to what we do at present, or can it be expanded to incorporate new and creative extensions of use? Baz suggests that the important contrast is between use that serves the purposes of the speaker and use that undermines these purposes – the former is genuine, while the latter is only apparent use (Baz, 2012, p.3). If we look back to the writing of Cavell, someone to whom Baz is indebted, we find an interesting observation. Cavell claims that when we read in the work of Wittgenstein and Austin references to “what we ordinarily say” the emphasis is not so much on the “ordinariness” of our words but on the “we” who use them (1979). Human beings share, not just a language, but a nature. While we might agree that language evolves through use, we must also acknowledge that this evolution is ultimately answerable to the agreement of those who use it – and that agreement will ultimately be determined by the nature of those language‐users. Wittgenstein writes, for example:
The teacher will sometimes say “That’s right”. If the pupil should ask, “Why?” – he will answer nothing, or at any rate nothing relevant, not even: “Well, because we all do it like that”; that will not be the reason.
(Z §319)
While there has been a tendency in philosophy as it is practiced today to confine the work of both Wittgenstein and the “ordinary language philosophers” to a particular moment in the history of philosophy, I have tried to demonstrate the continued relevance and importance of this work to philosophy. The question of what is the business of philosophy is itself an important philosophical question.