Abstract
In the so-called philosophical tradition from the beginning of Greek philosophy to the present time, we find different conceptions of philosophy; different ideas of what philosophy is, or should be. According to some, philosophy is very close to science; according to others, philosophy must be seen as having a practical objective; still others relate philosophy to mystical experience and religious belief. Perhaps the trouble with us today is that we sometimes ignore or blur this difference, calling “philosophy” what in the past was known by such terms as sophia, episteme,philosophia, prote philosophia, phronesis, dialectica, among others. I shall try to show here, that although to a certain extent in the Anglo-Saxon world, the conception that relates philosophy primarily to science and to epistemological problems has dominated for the past fifty years or so, Wittgenstein can be considered as defending a different conception, in which philosophy is closer to practical purposes and concerns, similar in many ways to classical scepticism.
Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. C. S. Peirce
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Notes
See, for example, R. Watson, “Sextus and Wittgenstein,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 7.3 (1969): 229–236: J. Bogen, “Wittgenstein and Scepticism,” Philosophical Review 83 (1974): 364–373; A. Cohen, “Sextus Empiricus: Scepticism as a Therapy,” The Philosophical Forum 15. 4 (1984): 405–424.
For example, see J. Annas, “Doing without objective Values: Ancient and Modern Strategies,” in The Norms of Nature: Studies in Hellenistic Ethic, eds. M. Schofield and G. Striker ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986 ).
Some passages are particularly relevant in this respect: “The clarity we are aiming at is complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear. The real discovery is one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to” (L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations,3d ed. [Oxford: Blackwell, 1973], p. 133). Also: “The difficulty here is: to stop” (L. Wittgenstein, Zettel,2d ed. [Oxford: Blackwell, 1980], p. 314). See also Cohen, “Sextus Empiricus,” p. 419): “The anti-philosopher can do away with philosophy only by doing philosophy.”
SeeConversations with Druryin R. Rhees,Ludwig Wittgenste: Personal Recollections (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981).
In Rhees, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
See Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Pyrrhonism (hereafter H.P.), in Works, trans. R. E. Bury, Loeb Library (London: Heinemann, 1976), I. Ch. 34.
I think this echoes Kant’s distinction between doctrine and critical inquiry: “Such a science must not be called a doctrine,but only a critique of pure reason”(I. Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason,trans. I. K. Abbott (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), p. vii.
M. Williams, “Scepticism without Theory,” Review of Metaphysics 41. 3 (1988): 547–588.
H.P. I, 8.
L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge, Kegan & Paul. 1974 ), 4. 112.
L. Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books,2d ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), pp. 28, 62.
See Cohen, “Sextus Empiricus.”
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 133.
Ibid., § 109.
Ibid., § 124.
Ibid., § 144.
Ibid., § 123.
Ibid., § 111.
L. Wittgenstein, Vermischte Bemerkungen/Cutlure and Value ( Oxford: Blackwell, 1980 ), p. 44e.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 255.
N. Malcolm, “Conversations with Malcolm,” in Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966 ), p. 51.
Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations,p. 309.
Wittgenstein, Vermischte Bemerkungen, p. 7.
Ibid., p. 27e.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 89.
Ibid., § 129.
Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown Books, p. 44.
Adversus Ethicus. in Works, p. 165.
Wittgenstein, “Letter to Malcolm,” in Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein, p. 39.
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics,eds. G. Anscombe et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 57.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.53.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 133.
See Laércio Diógenes, Vida, doutrina e sentenças dos filósofos ilustres (Brasília: ed, UnB, 1988), pp. ix, 62; H.P. II, 246, 250, 254, 258.
H.P. II, 256.
Adv. Eth.,pp. 197–199, 210–215.
See, however, H.P. III, 280.
See C. Hookway, “Scepticism and Autonomy,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 90 (1989–1990); 103–118.
G. E. Moore, “Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–33,” Mind 63.249 (1954): 5.
See T. R. Schatzki, “The Prescription Is Description: Wittgenstein’s Views of the Human Sciences,” in The Need for Interpretation, eds. S. Mitchell and M. Rosen ( London: The Athlone Press, 1983 ), pp. 120–121.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 40.
Ibid., § 122. See Sextus’s criticism of the notions of definition (horos) and mental representation (nooumenon),as well as his attack on the traditional view of concepts (H.P. II, 227–228).
See N. Malcolm, Nothing Is Hidden (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), Ch. 6.
“We want to replace wild conjectures and explanations by quiet weighing of linguistic facts” (Wittgenstein, Zettel,p. 447).
This suggestion comes from my colleague Professor Luìs Carlos Pereira.
His main targets seem to be his own “Tractarian semantics,” Frege’s conception of meaning, Russell’s theory of descriptions, and the “Augustinian picture” of language.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 47.
See Malcolm, Nothing Is Hidden,Ch. 6.
Ibid.
See C. Guignon, “Philosophy after Wittgenstein and Heidegger,” Philosophy and Phenomenology Research 1.4 (1990): 651; Schatzki, “Prescription Is Description,” p. 119.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 435.
Ibid., § 126.
RFM, p. 333.
L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar ( Oxford: Blackwell, 1974 ), pp. 210–211.
M. Burnyeat, “The Sceptic in His Place and Time,” in Philosophy in History, eds. R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984 ), p. 230.
H.P. II, 97–99.
Bumyeat, “The Sceptic.”
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 226.
Ibid.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 124, quoted above.
Bumyeat, “The Sceptic,” p. 251.
Burnyeat, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed,” in Idealism: Past and Present, ed. G. Vesey ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982 ), p. 42.
J. Lear, “Leaving the World Alone,” Journal of Philosophy (1982): 382–403.
Wittgenstein, Zettel, § 315.
Lear, “Leaving the World Alone,” p. 390.
Williams, “Scepticism without Theory,” p. 58.
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De Souza Filho, D.M. (1996). Finding One’s Way about: High Windows, Narrow Chimneys, and Open Doors. Wittgenstein’s “Scepticism” and Philosophical Method. In: Popkin, R.H. (eds) Scepticism in the History of Philosophy. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées, vol 145. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2942-0_12
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