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Wittgenstein’s On Certainty as Pyrrhonism in Action

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WITTGENSTEINIAN (adj.)

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Abstract

I want to suggest a way of approaching On Certainty that treats what Wittgenstein is doing in the notebooks that make up this work as manifesting a kind philosophical practice that is broadly Pyrrhonian, at least on one reading of what this involves. Such a reading fits with the general philosophical quietism found in Wittgenstein’s work, particularly in his later writings, and is also supported by independent textual evidence that he was profoundly influenced by Pyrrhonian scepticism. Crucially, however, it also helps to clarify the sense in which the Pyrrhonian sceptical techniques, and hence (I claim) the kind of philosophical quietism that goes along with them, can have an essentially disquieting effect on the subject (which in the sceptical case I dub epistemic vertigo).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The contrast here is especially clear when one compares the focus of Moore (1925) and Moore (1939). The exegetical point in play is one emphasised by Williams (2004, 2005) and Pritchard (2015a, part two; forthcomingb).

  2. 2.

    The text of particular interest in this regard is Newman (1979 [1870]). See especially Pritchard (2015b). See also Kienzler (2006) and Pritchard (2011b, 2017a, 2018b).

  3. 3.

    The list of commentators who fall into this camp (at least to some significant degree anyway) includes Morawetz (1978), Strawson (1985), McGinn (1989), Stroll (1994), Moyal-Sharrock (2004), and Schönbaumsfeld (2016).

  4. 4.

    For some of the key Wittgenstein-inspired proposals, see Williams (1991), Wright (2004), Coliva (2010, 2015), and Sosa (2013). I offer my own Wittgenstein-inspired stance—which I call the non-belief reading (since a key part of the view is the claim that the propositional attitudes involved in our hinge commitments are not to be understood as beliefs, at least in the knowledge-apt sense of that term)—in Pritchard (Pritchard 2015a, part two). See also Pritchard (2012, 2014, 2018a). (Note that in earlier work I advanced a very different Wittgenstein-inspired proposal, one which treated our hinge commitments as knowledge, at least in an externalist, non-rationally grounded, sense—see Pritchard (2001; 2005)) See also endnote 5.

  5. 5.

    This is the line I have taken in previous work myself, as it happens. See, especially, Pritchard (2015a, part two). For a recent survey of interpretations of On Certainty, see Pritchard (2017b). See also Pritchard (2011c).

  6. 6.

    I describe Pyrrhonism as a ‘stance’ in order to distance it from a philosophical position or proposal. Clearly the Pyrrhonians couldn’t consistently advance any kind of philosophical thesis.

  7. 7.

    See Sluga (2004) for further discussion of how Mauthner’s brand of Pyrrhonian scepticism influenced Wittgenstein. Interestingly, Weiler (1958) argues that Wittgenstein’s use in the Tractatus of the metaphor of the ladder that one should discard once employed, which will be familiar to anyone who has read Sextus Empiricus, was gained from reading Mauthner’s work (though this metaphor also appears in other work that Wittgenstein is likely to have read, such as Schopenhauer (1909, 256)). See Wittgenstein (1922, §6.54), and Sextus Empiricus (2005, 183, II 480–81).

  8. 8.

    I have in mind here especially Cavell (e.g., 1979). For something like the therapeutic line applied to On Certainty, see Conant (1998), Crary (2005), and Maddy (2017). See also the closely related ‘resolute reading’ of the Tractatus as offered by Diamond (1991) and Conant (1989).

  9. 9.

    I have previously explored the relationship between Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and Pyrrhonism in Pritchard (2011a; forthcomingc).

  10. 10.

    There are very interesting commonalities here between Pyrrhonism (on this specific reading anyway) and the Madhyamaka Buddhist school of thought. For further elaboration, see Brons (2018).

  11. 11.

    For a recent defence of this reading of Pyrrhonian scepticism, see Perin (2012). For an earlier, and influential, account of this reading, see Barnes (1982).

  12. 12.

    For an overview of Pyrrhonian scepticism, roughly so conceived, see Vogt (2015, §31.1; 2017, 91–92).

  13. 13.

    For some useful discussions of the ‘liveability’ of Pyrrhonian scepticism, see Naess (1969, ch. 2), Burnyeat (1980), Stough (1984), and Ribeiro (2002).

  14. 14.

    For some other key discussions in this regard, see Burnyeat (1980; 1984) and Frede (1984).

  15. 15.

    Since drafting this paper I have come across some very interesting unpublished work by Gutschmidt (2018a, b). He argues for the related, though stronger, thesis that the employment of the Pyrrhonian sceptical modes is transformative, in the technical sense offered by Paul (2016). Like me, he also draws a connection between the Pyrrhonian sceptical strategy, so construed, and the kind of Wittgensteinian quietism that I describe below (indeed, he also makes appeal to my notion of epistemic vertigo in this respect, which we will discuss below).

  16. 16.

    Though it was also present in the Tractatus. See, especially, the ‘resolute reading’ of this work as offered by Diamond (1991) and Conant (1989).

  17. 17.

    See McDowell (2009) for a similar reading. See also Lear (1982). For further discussion of different varieties of quietism, see Virvidakis (2008).

  18. 18.

    He makes this point explicit in the following famous passage from the Tractatus:

    “The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.

    Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

    A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.

    The result of philosophy is not a number of “philosophical propositions”, but to make propositions clear.

    Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.” (Wittgenstein 1922, §4.112).

  19. 19.

    Elsewhere I have argued that the anti-sceptical import of Wittgenstein’s remarks only applies to one aspect of the Cartesian sceptical problematic. See Pritchard (2015a) for the details.

  20. 20.

    He actually refers to them as hinge propositions (OC, §§341–3), though as I explain in Pritchard (Pritchard 2015a, part two) it is more helpful to focus on the nature of the propositional commitment involved rather than on the particular propositional content that the subject is committed to (as the latter can lead to confusion).

  21. 21.

    I discuss the contrast between undercutting and overriding strategies for dealing with (putative) philosophical paradoxes in more detail in Pritchard (2015a, part one). Similar distinctions regarding types of responses to philosophical paradoxes are advocated by Williams (1991, ch. 1) and Cassam (2007, ch, 1).

  22. 22.

    See especially Pritchard (2015a, part four). See also Pritchard (forthcominga; forthcomingc).

  23. 23.

    The pedantic reader should, of course, replace the ‘vertigo’ metaphor with (less catchy) acrophobia.

  24. 24.

    I explore the more general philosophical consequences of epistemic vertigo in Pritchard (forthcominga). I take the general idea in play here to be one that is explored quite extensively, albeit often under a very different guise, in the work of Cavell (e.g., 1979, 1988, 2003).

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  1. University of California, Irvine, USA

    Duncan Pritchard

  2. University of Edinburgh, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD, Scotland, UK

    Duncan Pritchard

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Pritchard, D. (2020). Wittgenstein’s On Certainty as Pyrrhonism in Action. In: Wuppuluri, S., da Costa, N. (eds) WITTGENSTEINIAN (adj.). The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27569-3_7

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