Wittgenstein

In my opinion there is not a sharp line to be drawn between
philosophy and scholarship. Whatever philosopher I am
reading, I find the asking of philosophical questions to be an
indispensable tool of scholarship: such questions as 'If I take
this argument this way, is it a good argument? If not, is there a
better argument that can be read in the words in which this
one is expressed?', or 'Does what he seems to be saying here
make any sense, and if not is there any way of taking his
words so that they do make sense, or make better sense?' I find
that the pursuit of such questions leads me again and again to
a richer understanding of another philospher's problems, and
to an interpretation that not only passes scholarly tests, but
gives me a new respect for the author's views and arguments.

In Wittgenstein's case I find this leavening of scholarship
with philosophy to be particularly essential, because where
most other philosophers make every effort to minimise the
interpreter's task by careful and precise articulation, Wittgen­
stein on the contrary seemed to make some point of avoiding
explaining what he wished to say. He prescribed work pro­
grammes, but did not explain how to carry them out, or in
what way he thought their results would be relevant; he asked
questions but did not answer them; posed questions he
thought ought not to be asked, without saying so until much
later, and then only indirectly; asked apparently rhetorical
questions when it turned out he thought they called for care­
ful answering; and (if I am right) contrived his most forth­
right statements in such a way as to conceal the point he
wished to make.

No doubt some people will disagree with this description
of Wittgenstein's philosophical practice, but if, as I believe,
he does in this way systematically avoid expressing his
views, clearly the interpreter's task will be a peculiarly diffi­
cult one, and there will be no way of understanding him
without the philosophical activity of carrying out his work
programmes, working out the significance of their results,
answering his questions, deciding which of them thought
deserved answers, and untangling his ambiguities and
obscurities of his apparently forthright position statements.

If you wonder sceptically what Wittgenstein's motivation
could be for hiding his views in the way I have described, the
answer is no doubt at the end of the Preface to the Philo­sophical Investigations

-viii-


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Publication Information: Book Title: Understanding Wittgenstein: Studies of Philosophical Investigations. Contributors: J. F. M. Hunter - author. Publisher: Edinburgh University Press. Place of Publication: Edinburgh. Publication Year: 1985. Page Number: viii.