Wittgenstein and Classical Realism

Abstract

The dispute between realists and their opponents has a long history. In classical philosophy, the realists denied that order is imposed on the world by the human mind. Rather the mind can make sense of the world only because it partakes of an order which exists independently of it. This view was defended, for example, by the Pythagoreans, Plato and Aristotle. It was opposed by the Sophists and Sceptics, who argued that the measure of things is in the human will as it expresses itself through the individual, social consensus or the conventions of language. In short, man is the measure of all things.