5
A Response to Bronzo
I
There are many excellent parts of Silver Bronzo’s essay, “Context, Compositionality, and Nonsense in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus”: a helpful exposition of the historical development of the context principle and the principle of compositionality into conflicting philosophical-semantic positions, an astute delineation of issues essential to the ongoing scholarly debate about reading “nonsense” in the Tractatus, and a clever attempt to model the therapeutic approach to that problem favored by the resolute reading he champions. I will not argue against his claim that “alternative understandings of the two principles according to which they are compatible with one another and indeed positively interdependent” (p. 84)1 are more coherent in their ability to describe a variety of actual speech phenomena than is the way he shows each fails to do independently if they are taken as mutually exclusive. Instead I want to question the (idea of) “philosophical superiority” he assigns to his analysis, and to explore how relevant this term can be when applied to the broader issues at stake in his essay.
It is clear from the outset that Bronzo’s aim is not to address any confusion in the use of a term, provide an insight to a psychological or “medical” problem that might arise in the course of language acquisition, or even to bring to light an unappreciated element of the Tractatus as a composition. It is instead to promote the New Wittgensteinian/resolute reading of the Tractatus by privileging the austere conception of nonsense that is vital to it over the concept of substantial nonsense that grounds the standard2 reading against which it is contrasted.3 The most powerful “argument” Bronzo offers for a New Wittgensteinian reading of the Tractatus comes in his effort to “question our craving for a reductive explanation [of our linguistic capacity], and therefore to achieve a more stable satisfaction” (p. 104) than the one that is achieved by choosing between mutually exclusive versions of the context principle and the principle of composition for an explanation of certain linguistic phenomena like “our capacity to understand and form sentences” (p. 100) and “various kinds of non-compositional uses of language (such cases as single-word sentences)” (p. 102). This is paradigmatic “philosophical therapy,” precisely the sort of maneuver that resolute readers see as the central method of the Tractatus. As Bronzo has it, the urge to spell out the context principle and the principle of composition as philosophical-linguistic positions was an error from the start, and his resolution of them dispels a psychic need for the explanation of how language works by replacing the incoherence of either as a separate explanans with the coherency of co-dependent principles in a description of language as it actually happens.4
I am left, however, with a sense of discomfort about the essay because, in its adherence to the resolute “program,” it epitomizes a failing of resolutists who make the mistake of feeling that a “justification” for that reading needs to be given at all. This takes the resolutist away from home, as it were, playing on the turf of the standard reader in the games of textual and anecdotal evidence, etc., where not only are they sometimes at a historical disadvantage but they are also entertaining questions that simply do not bear on the real value of a resolute Tractatus. The value of resolutism, for me anyway, is that it moves us away from “philosophizing” (read here in Wittgenstein’s famous, “negative sense”)—away from abstract questions of truth values, for instance—and toward action in the lived world in a clear-headed way free from philosophical or academic pretension.5
While exactly this kind of “freeing-up” from philosophical pretensions seems to be the end-goal of Bronzo’s therapy, I do not think it successfully achieved on the program he provides, for two reasons:
As noted above, the resolution of the context principle and the principle of compositionality that he indicates and offers is only a preliminary move in a larger philosophical game—the ascription of meaning to the Tractatus via choosing between competing sets of interpretations; a fundamentally troubled hermeneutical exercise that necessarily perpetuates problematic “philosophical” approaches to chimerical problems of textual analysis, etc. (and that, I think, is done only at some tension with the resolute “program” in general).
Even considered on its own, i.e. without the context of privileging one reading of the Tractatus over another, resolving the two principles still leaves us on the philosophical mouse-wheel, calling on a philosophical impulse to supposedly quench a philosophical thirst.
In the sections that follow, I’ll briefly discuss and elaborate upon these two points.
In the first enumerated section of his paper, Bronzo6 lists his aims (p. 88):
to arrive at understandings of the context principle and the principle of compositionality respectively such that they are (1) compatible with one another, (2) compatible with the austere conception of nonsense, and thus (3) entail the falsity of the substantial conception of nonsense.
Were he to have left off after (1) there is a chance that his therapy would succeed in achieving a kind of philosophical quietude (see Section IV below). However, having tied his resolution of these principles to privileging a conception of nonsense, he has made this philosophical investigation merely an initiation into another one from which an exit is not to be found. (Especially once he describes the substantial conception of nonsense as “false,” rather than nonsensical.) Thus the supposed philosophical quietude achieved—the result upon which the “philosophical superiority” of his reconciliation of them is made to rest—is only a liminality followed almost immediately by another state of philosophical perplexity: to borrow the Tractatus’s famous closing metaphor, it is an extending of the ladder, not a jettisoning of it.
To reiterate: Bronzo’s establishment of coherent semantic principles might not lead to this perpetual state of philosophical perplexity were it not tied to a resolution of what nonsense in the Tractatus is, which, as he convincingly argues, is one of the key questions in the Tractatus wars that precede (and will most probably go on after) his essay. In essence, it is a proxy question for the more clearly philosophically problematic question of what the Tractatus means.
There are several reasons why attributing a meaning to the Tractatus is a deeply problematic philosophical enterprise; chief among them is its dependence upon a mentalistic picture of “meaning,” that is to say one that ultimately requires one to hold that it is possible to know “what was in Wittgenstein’s mind” when he wrote that book (and that this can be determined by knowing what was in his mind when he wrote x, y, or z work, or made such and such remark marshaled as evidence, etc., etc.).7 And while it is natural for one philosophical question to lead to another, for Bronzo’s coherent principles to be philosophically superior to the mutually exclusive ones it contrasts against—using the idea of philosophical therapy as a model—any chain of philosophical conundra it initiates will have to actually terminate in quietude. But as the ongoing debate between resolutists and standard readers (in fact, the existence of this book!) suggests, this doesn’t seem to be the case with Tractatus interpretation.8
Let me be clear, I am not advocating for some kind of dissolution of meaning here—I’m not saying, for instance, that anyone is justified in claiming that the Tractatus means whatever he wants it to mean. What I am saying is that trying to resolve what Wittgenstein intended for it to mean is unnecessary (and often an unhelpful distraction) in determining how to interface with it,9 and that, by hitching his conclusions to this task, Bronzo undercuts the ability to claim any philosophically therapeutic superiority for his analysis at all. By contrast, resolutism is at its best when freed from a narrow, textual conception of the Tractatus’s meaning; it suggests that the only necessary “meaning” we need to attach to it can be found in what we actually do “off of the ladder.”10
III
In this section I will try to show that nothing philosophically superior is achieved even if we divorce the third of Bronzo’s aims from the first two. In fact, I suggest that there is nothing meaningful at all achieved by privileging austere nonsense over substantial nonsense absent the goal of privileging one reading of the Tractatus or another.
Dissatisfaction with the substantial conception of nonsense is not surprising. By itself, substantial nonsense amounts to nothing; like any bit of language (if it were a bit of language), any bit of substantial nonsense matters for nothing if it is not “put into play” in the lived world.11 But my claim that it doesn’t amount to anything at all applies even if one tries to “put it into play”—if one takes up an ineffabalist position—precisely because it cannot be put into play. The idea that reference can be made to entities or conditions beyond our experience, but that they cannot fully enter into human discourse, is, frankly, bizarre. At most, ineffabalism is a delusion (though even this term may lend it too much psychological viability) that something beyond experience (as if that weren’t difficult enough to understand on its own) can be mutually tapped into by many people.12 At the least it is a wink and a nod, a “knowing” glance that individuals are sharing in something—for lack of a better word—magical.
What comfort is the austere conception of nonsense? Does it connect with life in a way that renders it superior to holding that substantial nonsense amounts to something? At least austere nonsense has had an important psychological role attached to it within the resolute reading: as one rung of the Wittgensteinian ladder to be ultimately jettisoned—that it does in fact move one to abandon abstract philosophizing and do other things.13 It is important to note, though, that making this claim does not entail actually doing anything with resolute nonsense.14
It is true that some efforts have been made to link “austerity” to such lived-world activities as dissecting political spin or “double-speak.”15 I have great respect for these efforts, and do not wish to diminish them, but, in these cases, the philosophical background is relevant only as a kind of gateway for an audience with a certain disposition, or in that it has provided a kind of training in closelooking on the part of the dissector. If a resolutist’s point of view or disposition is the key element to the ability and/or willingness to proffer such a dissection, then more to its credit. But must one have such a point of view or disposition to participate in or benefit from such a dissection? The essential point is undiminished: even if it prompts clear-headed thinking in the real world, agreeing with resolutism, holding the austere conception of nonsense, is not the same as performing this kind of action.
By comparison, consider guidebooks, on how to take up an effective study of Zen, for instance. None of these books counts as the action itself, and, while a guidebook may help initiate one to the principles and practices of a certain pursuit, encourage her to undertake it, or suggest a valuable perspective or mindset to be taken into it, simply reading or mastering the guidebook can never take the place of that action—I would otherwise simply have to read about gardening to grow my own food. Similarly, while it may be tempting to claim that adopting an austere view of nonsense is correlated with practically useful skills, this correlation—even if true and demonstrable—does not in itself constitute something “philosophically superior” to holding a substantial view of nonsense.
More to the point, without tying one conception of nonsense to something else, it is difficult for me to see not only what would be superior in holding one view of nonsense over another but more importantly what it is to hold a position on nonsense at all. It may be tempting to claim that the austere conception of nonsense is philosophically superior to holding the substantial conception of nonsense because it helps one avoid other philosophical (or even practical) trouble. That position would look something like this: “Holding the position that there can be such a thing as substantial nonsense allows for philosophically seductive practices such as latching onto a metaphysical view of religion (versus the decidedly antimetaphysical conception of it championed by many Wittgensteinians—famously Winch, for example) and thus, for instance, really believing that praying is like having a telephone conversation with an invisible old man in the clouds. This then leads to more bizarre practices that hinge upon the believed-in reality of cloud-world, and detachment from life on Earth. Given this, a position on nonsense that holds that all nonsense is pure nonsense, and that, therefore, there are no things that are placed in principle beyond our experience, etc. leads indirectly, but no less certainly, to less problematic action, hence benefit (and therefore philosophical superiority) on Earth.” Here, however, there are at least two problems. First, it would be a clearly troubling slippery slope to argue that metaphysical dispositions (not only) needs must (but also even tend to) lead to detachment from the world (some kind of “Heaven’s Gate” Cult scenario). Second—even overlooking the slippery-slope—the tail wags the dog, here. People don’t pray, e.g., because they have a certain view of nonsense. Instead, their “view of nonsense” is “determined” after looking at their practice (and usually by somebody else), and this is even if one felt some need to ascribe some position on nonsense to them. If I were to ask a penitent in the middle of intense prayer, “What is your position on nonsense?,” that person would most likely have no idea what I was talking about or why I asked the question. Furthermore, if I tried to explain the context, it seems just as likely to me that she would fail to see any necessary link between her praying and the substantial conception of nonsense.
It could be argued that Bronzo has simply mislabeled the pro-austerity conclusions drawn from his resolution of the context principle and the principle of compositionality. Perhaps they were not aims, but consequents, of this effort, and consequents that he is happy have occurred. That is to say, one could claim that the impossibility of quietude I point to in Section II, above, can be short-circuited if one removes the intentional link between the coherent semantic principles and a pro-resolutist reading of the Tractatus. If I am right in Section III, above, then the idea of philosophical superiority depends upon (1) only: whether Bronzo’s reading of coherent semantic principles is “philosophically superior” to the two mutually exclusive ones.
My first response is to say that coherence certainly seems a positive outcome, and that Bronzo’s reading has broadened our understanding of language in practice. But “philosophically superior”? This could only be said given certain particular provisos. First, it is superior but just as much aesthetically as philosophically, and both in only the most trivial way. Second, it is philosophically superior, but only for one in the very particular kind of philosophical muddle of seeking a one-off explanation of language …
… but even here I cannot completely banish the thought that Bronzo has done one in this kind of muddle a disservice by holding up logical cohesion as an acceptable “answer” to the problematic philosophical impulse. To use a phrase of Wittgenstein’s, “the decisive movement of the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one we thought quite innocent”:16 the problem of the impulse has not really been addressed, just the supposed, tenuous resolution of that impulse. Really, the point of philosophical therapy should be to dispel the impulse to seek out such things as an all-inclusive explanation for language completely. Instead, suggesting that there can be some logically determined “superior” position to be had just as well may encourage more “philosophizing” where no philosophizing is appropriate, while so much applied critical thinking of the sort philosophers can do so well, and are well-trained in, is desperately needed elsewhere. For instance, Bronzo certainly seems successful in demonstrating the insufficiency of Glock’s “resolution” of this impulse, but, as his essay doesn’t simply end by dispensing that resolution, it seems quite clear the impulse itself is no less diminished. Thus, despite the desire to the contrary, we are left on the ladder—I’m tempted to say “possibly a bit less” if it is in fact possible to be less on a ladder than one was before—even after Bronzo’s best efforts to the contrary.
V
I think it likely that Silver Bronzo shares some of the concerns I laid out in Section II; and that this is why he has developed such a novel and interesting approach to advocating resolutism. Likewise, the careful craftsmanship of his essay suggests that, if he did not address the concerns I put forward in Sections III and IV, this is only because he saw them as tangential to his broader objective. With thinkers like him in the game, it seems likely that the New Wittgenstein debate will continue to produce interesting and insightful argumentation. However, the success of his essay for this reader has been to redouble the thought that we Wittgensteinians, and the world in general, will be better off if we stop talking about how to get off the ladder and rather just endeavor to get off it (and this is the directive at the end of the Tractatus, no?).
A full embracing of the “end of philosophy” directive of §7 of the Tractatus—“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent”—and that I am, I hope, articulating here, has been called “Jacobinism” (by Goldfarb—in a different, unpublished version of the paper included in this book—and others).17 And while there are possibly negative associations of this historical metaphor—that it is “very nihilistic and ultimately destructive”18—this is a crude misreading that fails to grasp what seems to be the point of such non-philosophical remarks as this one, from Wittgenstein in a letter to Norman Malcolm:
What is the use of studying philosophy if all it does for you is enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc. & if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life [my emphasis]?19
This question loses its force if read simply as an admonition to examine questions of rather than prompting action in the real world, whether or not it is what Wittgenstein “meant.” With a well-honed skepticism about philosophy itself, and a commitment to avoiding easy answers and seeing problems through to the end (even if that end is to realize that there is no problem to begin with), Wittgensteinians are ideally prepared to transfer the benefits of a properly trained “philosophical disposition” to problems outside of philosophy. The energy and intelligence so well displayed in Bronzo’s wrestling with issues of Tractatus interpretation are desperately needed outside of the academy at a time of great global peril. Regardless of how one gets there, this, it seems to me, is what lies beyond the ladder.20
Notes
1 For the sake of convenience, I will give references to Bronzo’s paper in this book parenthetically in text.
2 Perhaps “irresolute” is a better word here in that it allows for the understanding that these readings are not monolithic, even if often lumped together for their opposition to some of what the equally diverse resolute readers claim (though it has the drawback of suggesting that these approaches were developed as a response to their counterparts). On this score, and to avoid going over ground that has been more than adequately covered in both Goldfarb’s and White’s essays in this book, I do not give yet another history of the development of both “camps” in the text above. All that needs to be established, and I think the essays in this book do this admirably, is that the (at least) two readings make clear that there are a number of competing, viable interpretations of the Tractatus.
3 I will not belabor the point here that the dichotomy between the standard and resolute readings has been argued by many to be false. I do note, however, that Bronzo is at best incomplete in answering those for whom “it has seemed as if [resolutists] deprive us of the possibility of making coherent sense of the work as a whole” (p. 85) although he acknowledges this as an explicit aim: “(This means that one of my aims … is to see if we can arrive at an outline of a coherent reading of the Tractatus as it stands.)” (p. 88). He seems to take it for granted that providing a coherent concomitance of compositionality and contextualism leads necessarily to a coherent Tractatus, but this in itself does not answer all concerns about a resolute reading, for example that resolutism seems to require one to exempt certain portions of the text from its overall self-destruction at 6.54.
4 An inkling of the misgivings I will go on to describe is given here: Bronzo says that “It is quite natural to interpret these two semantic principles in a manner that renders them mutually incompatible” (p. 89). But, for whom is it natural to interpret semantic principles? It is only from a philosophical starting point that a philosophical therapy needs to be conducted here. Most people understand and use language without ever questioning it in a non-trivial way at all. Even the great majority of teachers of grammar aren’t troubled in any way by, e.g., opposing semantic rules.
5 It is important to note that doing the first—dissolving temptations to philosophize—does not entail doing the other—taking action in the lived world. I discuss this in more detail in Section III.
6 When referring to papers published in this book, I shall put the page numbers in the text rather than in endnotes.
7 This issue was discussed in greater length in a paper I gave at the 2007 Joint Session in Bristol. Many thanks to the moderators and participants of that session for their contributions to the subsequent development of those thoughts and, thus, to this essay.
8 Central to this claim is the idea that the sustained existence of coherent, mutually exclusive interpretive communities establishes the impossibility of selecting one of them as “correct” when each reasonably and coherently marshals similar kinds of evidence from similar sources (which each would have difficulty maintaining itself as a dialogic community if it could not do). While this might seem to suggest that any issue debated by mutually exclusive communities cannot be resolved—for example, “debates” between historians and holocaust deniers, or even evolutionists and creationists—it is safe to say that in many cases there are forces motivating the persistence of communities (xenophobia, for example, or a desire to gain or maintain political power) other than the desire to “get it right” or even to prove a point. In these cases, what is offered as “evidence” is often only the flimsiest sort of propaganda, even if clung to fiercely by one set of interlocutors. Suffice it to say that outside of abstract intellectual debates it is most often the case in arguments such as these that one group is just patently wrong, even if they are strongly motivated to not admit it.
9 Likewise, none of this should be taken to suggest that authorial intention isn’t relevant at all, in any context. But: can we talk about authorial intent, and how much bearing can it have on a work’s meaning, when the author is no longer around and the meaning is in question? Turned away from this kind of abstract, philosophical question, one is able to explore different readings to see how each may link up with life, even in a piecemeal fashion—finding some of the standard reading helpful here, the resolute reading there, etc. It should be noted that I think the standard reading has very little to offer, unless one accepts a typical claim of standard readers, namely that on the resolutist reading one must discount the logical insights the text offers. On the other hand, the resolute reading offers a novel approach to doing philosophy that has already borne fruit. (I am indebted, again, to Rupert Read for reminding me of this point.)
10 And here we have the bulwark against a kind of progressive deconstruction of the Tractatus: were someone to derive a fantastical “interpretation” from it (that it presented an argument for the oppression of a particular minority, for instance)—the kind that could not support the same sustained dialogical communities that “resolutism” or “the standard reading” have—it would also happen that this interpretation wouldn’t succeed in linking up with life at all, at least not any kind of life any of us would recognize.
11 Of course the way that language is “put in play”—as Wittgenstein’s work so often demonstrates—is highly varied, often extremely subtle and unexpected, and often not obvious. Keeping this in mind, I do not mean this sentence as a kind of theoretical claim, rather as a statement of an obvious fact. An example from the contrast class would be something like burning a slip of paper on which a machine had printed a word chosen at random from a database (versus, for example, burning a book!).
12 It should be obvious how such talk would necessarily run into the type of deconstruction of “private language” that Wittgenstein famously makes in Philosophical Investigations.
13 By contrast, one of the most problematic aspects of the substantial conception of nonsense is that it encourages more use and exploration of substantial nonsense, i.e. once one introduces that idea of substantial nonsense, she seems to have to rely upon more and more substantial nonsense to give further exposition.
14 It is important to foreground here my awareness that this paragraph could be seen as an attempt to do the same thing I criticize Bronzo for doing: offering a kind of backdoor argument for resolutism. And while I have no particular stake in championing resolutism, if an appreciation for its novelty, etc., and a distaste for ineffabalism render me a resolutist, then so be it. As it is, I couldn’t care in the least to argue for a “correct” interpretation of the Tractatus (on its conception of nonsense), or whether the Jacobinistic stance the Tractatus prompts me to is “justified” by it.
15 The best examples of this, in my thinking, are those of my co-editor, see particularly chapters 6, 7, and 8 of Philosophy for Life, London, Continuum, 2007, and his Applying Wittgenstein, London, Continuum, 2007.
16 See §308 of Philosophical Investigations.
17 See Anat Biletzki’s (Over)Interpreting Wittgenstein, London, Kluwer, 2003, p. 101.
18 Ibid., p. 101.
19 See p. 425 of Monk’s The Duty of Genius, New York, Macmillan, 1990.
20 I am indebted to Rupert Read and Silver Bronzo for helpful comments on previous versions of this essay, and for their patience in accommodating my revisions.