The Features of Hinges

Abstract

As we have just seen, Wittgenstein uses many images and concepts in an effort to understand the certainties that perplexed G.E. Moore and philosophers long before him. The heterogeneity of Wittgenstein’s images and concepts signal the difficulty involved in trying to capture the nature of these certainties; it does not however imply an ultimate lack of conceptual coherence. Indeed, all these images point towards the same conceptual features; hinges are all:

• (1) indubitable: doubt and mistake are logically meaningless

• (2) foundational: they do not result from justification

• (3) nonempirical: they are not derived from the senses

• (4) grammatical: they are rules of grammar

• (5) ineffable: they cannot be said

• (6) enacted: they can only show themselves in what we say and do

On Certainty traces the arduous process by which Wittgenstein comes to see hinges as having the above features.