Abstract
Wittgenstein writes in the preface to the Philosophical Investigations: ‘I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own.’ In the following I argue that this indicates something essential about Wittgenstein’s approach. In order to remain true to his conception of philosophy without theses, he could not, for example, aim to instruct his reader about about grammar or put forward prescriptions about grammar, logic or language use. Thus, there is an essential connection between the aim of stimulating the reader to thoughts of their own, and philosophizing without theses. In order to clarify this I will discuss both Wittgenstein’s early and later account of philosophy without theses, his later rejection of philosophical foundations and the hierarchical organization of philosophy, such as assumed in his early philosophy, the notion of agreement in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and certain remarks from the Nachlass on the composition of his book, eventually published as the Philosophical Investigations.
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- 1.
Although Russell does not explicitly speak about informing anyone in the quote, Russellian philosophical logic is meant to result in true propositions regarding logical forms, thus placing the statements of logic in the same category as those of science (OKEW, 66–67).
- 2.
For an account of the function of the sentences of the Tractatus as intended to introduce logical concepts and principles constitutive of a logical notation, see Kuusela 2019, Chaps. 2 and 3.
- 3.
Possibly the reason why Wittgenstein changed his terminology was simply that around this time, in the early 1930s, Carnap and other logically oriented philosophers started using the term ‘metalogic’ in a different way, as referring to concepts and principles articulated in a metalanguage. However, I am not aware of any comments by Wittgenstein on this issue.
- 4.
These two conceptions of language correspond to the senses in which language is, according to Wittgenstein, both arbitrary and non-arbitrary, as explained in PI §492. Different variants of Wittgenstein’s methods are discussed in Kuusela (2019, Chaps. 4–6).
- 5.
Wittgenstein’s view seems in this respect reminiscent of Kant who famously said that it is not possible to teach philosophy (in the sense of philosophical doctrines), only philosophizing.
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Acknowledgements
This paper was presented in a philosophy of education seminar at the University College London, Institute of Education in December 2017. I would like to thank those present for their questions and comments.
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Kuusela, O. (2020). Philosophy as Education in Thinking: Why Getting the Reader to Think Matters to Wittgenstein. In: Wuppuluri, S., da Costa, N. (eds) WITTGENSTEINIAN (adj.). The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27569-3_3
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