Abstract
The use of language is capable of adapting to the extremely diverse situations of a game and of responding adequately to each one, a capacity that can be understood with reference to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Language-games begin to occupy a central place in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. From primitive language-games he moves on to more complex forms that function with the help of “paradigms”. Even the more complicated uses of language remain tied to the body’s practical use. Wittgenstein looks at rule-following in the language games as a “technique” that has its origins in the body, structured by social practice. The final problem of this chapter is the question of how the factual existence of regular actions can give rise to the normative concept of rules.
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Notes
- 1.
Further below in this chapter I will describe why such an interpretation is justified.
- 2.
- 3.
This example was given by Jacques Bouveresse in his lecture, “Health and Sickness in Philosophy and Life,” delivered in French at the Freie Universität Berlin on October 6, 2006.
- 4.
Stegmüller (1986), p. 65.
- 5.
See Bouveresse (1976), p. 411.
- 6.
“The private language problem is one of those paradigmatic problems in which a world of philosophical problems, as it were, has condensed itself.” (Wellmer 2004, p. 90)
- 7.
In a notebook entry dated May 9, 1930, Wittgenstein admits having held this view himself: “One often thinks—and I myself often make this mistake—that everything one thinks can be written down. In reality, one can only write down—that is, without doing something stupid & inappropriate—what arises in us in the form of writing. Everything else seems comical & and as it were like dirt. That is, something that needs to be wiped off.” (Movements of Thought, p. 35)
- 8.
See Wellmer (2004), p. 97 f.
- 9.
See Z, §314 “The difficulty here is: to stop.”
- 10.
Wittgenstein’s intellectual background was not that of the Anglo-American-influenced analytical philosophy of the 1950s and 1960s but rather the socialist-oriented discussion circle of the early 1930s in “red” Cambridge; see Veigl (2004), who places a number of Wittgenstein’s discussion partners in these circles; along with Piero Sraffa, he mentions Maurice Dobb, Roy and Fania Pascal, George Thompson, and Nicholas Bachtin.
- 11.
See Ginzburg (2000), in particular pp. 110 f.
- 12.
This draft was not published by Marx during his lifetime, but made public in 1903 by Karl Kautsky. In the following, it is cited as Marx (1974).
- 13.
Marx (1973), p. 83.
- 14.
Marx, on the other hand, had no interest in the general structure, separate from all relation to historic and social specifics; his focus was on “socially determined individual production” (p. 83). He admitted that it is possible, however, to “single out common characteristics” from the different modes of distribution and production “and just as possible to confound or to extinguish all historic differences under general human laws.” (p. 87f.) But he never considered adopting this general point of view.
- 15.
Marx (1974), p. 91. On February 12, 1931—a day, incidentally, on which he had also met with Sraffa—Wittgenstein noted: “Only the use of language can show how it is used.” (WA III, p. 199)
- 16.
Marx (1974), p. 91.
- 17.
As shown above, Wittgenstein already assumed intentional use and thus a forward-looking aspect of language as early as 1929: see the examples of expecting and promising, which one can understand in a given, present context by recognizing the behavior of the speaker as a certain structure aimed at a particular future action.
- 18.
Marx (1974), p. 92.
- 19.
Marx (1974), p. 92.
- 20.
Note dated February 11, 1931, WA III, p. 196.
- 21.
Remark dated February 15, 1931, WA III. S. 205. The preceding remark, to which the quotation apparently refers, is: “Someone pulls a knife and I say: ‘I understand that as a threat.’”
- 22.
In the quote from On Certainty, what is at issue is a much greater relationship than that between life-forms and practice. The citation above is preceded by the sentence: “But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness.” (OC, §94) Chapter 9 of this book deals with this relationship in more detail.
- 23.
J. Searle (1995); see especially the section “Background Causation,” pp. 137–148.
- 24.
Searle (1995), p. 146.
- 25.
Searle, ibid. p. 144. The causal explanation of action proposed by Searle is not compatible with Wittgenstein’s program of description. For my argumentation, Searle’s causal interpretation only forms an interim step that I will withdraw again below when introducing Bourdieu’s conception of habitus, which does not assume causality.
- 26.
Searle, ibid. p. 144.
- 27.
Searle (1995), p. 132: “My discussion of the Background is related to other discussions in contemporary philosophy. I think that much of Wittgenstein’s later work is about what I call the Background. And if I understand him correctly, Pierre Bourdieu’s important work on the ‘habitus’ is about the same sort of phenomena that I call the background.” In what follows, Searle’s formulation comes close to Bourdieu’s description of the ‘practical sense’: “…in fact in many situations, we just know what to do, we just know how to deal with the situation. We do not apply the rules consciously or unconsciously…Rather, we develop skills that are responsive to that particular institutional structure” (Searle 1995, p. 143).
- 28.
See Krais and Gebauer (2002).
- 29.
See Taylor (1993), p. 57.
- 30.
In his discussion of the normativity of language, Wellmer quotes the Blue Book (BB, p. 20): “If we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use.” And then continues: In “this use of the word ‘use,’ the normativity of meaning must be considered the normativity of a social practice.” (Wellmer 2004, p. 57).
- 31.
Taylor (1993), p. 54.
- 32.
For a justification of rule-following, see also WA III, p. 100 and p. 169. Among the characteristics that Wittgenstein considers criteria for the fulfillment of a rule are the utterances that A makes about himself and his own behavior. If A’s utterances do not correspond to his behavior, those around him will decide how to deal with this. There is no general rule to which they will refer, but this theoretical open-endedness of the situation does not imply a state of permanent uncertainty as to which criteria to use. In the overwhelming majority of cases, we are familiar with the relevant customs and are capable of attaining a practical understanding that seems almost self-evident.
- 33.
This problem is discussed at length in Gebauer (2006), Chap. 6 “Die Regeln und die List” (Rules and Cunning).
- 34.
I am thinking here about all rules that are followed in soccer games today. I am interested in the social practice of the game as it is actually played: a social practice is constituted of all those rules that are involved in its generation.
- 35.
On the rules of soccer, see also Elias and Dunning (2003).
- 36.
When I take off my shoes upon entering a Japanese home, I do so because I want to fulfill the prevailing requirements of cleanliness in Japan. My action is aimed at observing a norm that I acknowledge by fulfilling what it demands. I therefore take off my shoes whenever I enter a house in Japan, no matter whether someone is watching or not, and no matter what my attitude toward my hosts.
- 37.
See Gebauer (1981), Chap. 3.
Other Authors
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Gebauer, G. (2017). The Interaction Between Rules and Habitus. In: Wittgenstein's Anthropological Philosophy. History of Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56151-6_6
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