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Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees, and the Measure of Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Zachery A. Carter
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New Blackfriars , Volume 87 , Issue 1009 , May 2006 , pp. 288 - 301
Copyright
© The Author 2006. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

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References

1 Reviewing Rush Rhees on Religion and Philosophy, ed. D. Z. Phillips assisted by Mario von der Ruhr, and Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse, by Rush Rhees, ed. D. Z. Phillips, New Blackfriars, January 1999, pp. 46–51.

2 Rhees, Rush, Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse, ed. Phillips, D. Z. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 51.

4 This essay owes much to H. O. Mounce and the many discussions we had in 2003. After a spring and summer of argument in regards to the philosophy of language, I finally understood the point he was making.

5 Philosophical Investigations, 2nd Edition, ed. Anscombe, G. E. M. and Rhees, Rush, tr. Anscombe, G.E.M. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1958).Google Scholar

6 Wittgenstein's Lectures: Cambridge, 1930–1932, from the notes of John King and Desmond Lee; edited by Desmond Lee (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979).

7 Note the contrast to his early view in the Tractatus wherein language was a calculus and his later work On Certainty wherein he implies a unity in speaking of a system of propositions.

8 Rhees, Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse, p. 113.

9 Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse, p. 258. Rhees also makes this point in In Dialogue with the Greeks: Plato and Dialectic(Burlington: Ashgate, 2004)Google Scholar.

10 Before changing his own view, Mounce attacked the weaker version of Protagoras in Moral Practices(Routledge & K. Paul, 1969)Google Scholar, a book he co-authored with D. Z. Phillips. It can also be found in the reprint edition, Vol. 6: Moral Practices, Studies in the Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, ed. D. Z. Phillips (Routledge, 2003).

11 It is interesting to note that counter to how Protagoras is often portrayed, he died in high repute. In 443 BC, chosen by Pericles, he drafted the laws of Thurii in Southern Italy. Moreover, not only did Protagoras attach himself to a venerable tradition of poets and Presocratic philosophers, his posthumous esteem is evidenced in the Ptolemaic era c. 300–350 BC by a statue of him built in the Serapeum in Egypt alongside a circle of Greek poets and philosophers including Homer, Thales, Heraclitus and Plato. It does seem that he was forced to leave Athens in 415 BC because of charges of impiety, but so it could be argued were progressives like Anaxagoras and Socrates.

12 Malcolm was a pupil and close friend of Wittgenstein’s. During the time Rush Rhees resided in Cambridgeshire, Norman Malcolm (in retirement from Cornell University and a visiting Professor at King's College, London) along with Peter Winch and Raimond Gaita met at Rhees’ house for weekly discussions.

13 Malcolm, Norman, “Wittgenstein: The relation of language to instinctive behaviour”, Philosophical Investigations, Vol. 15, no. 5, January 1982, p. 3–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is reprinted in ed. Wright, Georg Henrik von, Wittgensteinian Themes: Essays 1978–1989(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. Rhees, Rush, “Language as Emerging from Instinctive Behaviour”, Philosophical Investigations, Vol. v, No. 1, January 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certainty, ed. Anscombe, G. E. M. and Wright, G. H. von, tr. Paul, Denis and Anscombe, G.E.M. (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1972)§475Google Scholar.

15 Wittgenstein, , Culture & Value, ed. Wright, G.H. von and Nyman, Heikki, tr. Winch, Peter (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1980), p. 31Google Scholar.

16 Malcolm, “Wittgenstein: The relation of language to instinctive behaviour”, p. 7.

17 Ibid., p. 8.

18 Ibid., pp. 11–12.

19 Rush Rhees, , “Language as Emerging from Instinctive Behaviour”, Philosophical Investigations, Vol. 20, No. 1, January 1997, p. 6Google Scholar.

20 Rush Rhees, Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse, p. 136.

21 “Language Without Conversation”, Philosophical Investigations, Vol. 15, No. 3, July 1992, p. 210.Google Scholar

22 Rhees, Rush, “Wittgenstein's Builders” in Discussions of Wittgenstein(New York: Schocken Books, 1970)Google Scholar; Malcolm, Norman, “Language Game (2)” in Phillips, D. Z and Winch, Peter, eds., Wittgenstein: Attention to Particulars(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Norman Malcolm, “Language Without Conversation”, op. cit.

23 Zettel, ed. Anscombe, G.E.M. and Wright, G.H. von, tr. Anscombe, G.E.M. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967)Google Scholar.

24 Malcolm, Norman, “Language as Expressive Behaviour” in Nothing is Hidden(Oxford: Blackwell, 1986) p. 152Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., p. 153.

26 The point, as H. O. Mounce says, is not “that Wittgenstein belongs to the tradition of classical realism;” but rather that “he has evident connections with that tradition.”“Wittgenstein and Classical Realism” in Moyal-Sharrock, Danièle and Brenner, William, eds., Readings of Wittgenstein's On Certainty(Palgrave 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar,

27 Mounce, H. O., Hume's Naturalism(London: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar. Also see his essay, “The Philosophy of the Conditioned”, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 175.Google Scholar

28 “The Notion of ‘Suggestion’ in Thomas Reid's Theory of Perception”, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 3, 1953, p. 339Google Scholar.

29 Ibid.

30 In Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, ed. Woozley, A. D. (London: Macmillan, 1941)Google Scholar, Thomas Reid writes:

I touch the table gently with my hand, and I feel it to be smooth, hard, and cold. These are qualities of the table perceived by touch; but I perceive them by means of a sensation which indicates them. This sensation not being painful, I commonly give no attention to it. It carries my thought immediately to the thing signified by it, and is itself forgot, as if it had never been. But by repeating it, and turning my attention to it, and abstracting my thought from the thing signified by it, I find it to be merely a sensation, and that it has no similitude to the hardness, smoothness, or coldness of the table which is signified by it.

It is indeed difficult, at first, to disjoin things in our attention which have always been conjoined, and to make that an object of reflection which never was so before…(p. 143)

31 G. E. M. Anscombe's essay in question is entitled “The Intentionality of Sensation” in The Collected Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, Volume Two: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind(Oxford: Blackwell, 1981)Google Scholar.

32 Malcolm, Norman, “The ‘Intentionality’ of Sense-Perception”, Wittgensteinian Themes: Essays 1978–1989, ed. Wright, Georg Henrik von (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995) p. 112Google Scholar.

33 Ibid., p. 114.

34 I was helped on these points by a splendid essay by Mounce entitled “On Sensation and its Intentionality”(forthcoming).

35 Mounce, H. O., “Morality and Religion” in Davies, Brian OP, ed., Philosophy of Religion: A Guide to the Subject(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998) pp. 258–259Google Scholar.

36 Chesterton, G.K., Saint Thomas Aquinas(New York: Doubleday, 1956) p. 149Google Scholar.

37 Lubac, Henri de, The Discovery of God, tr. Dru, Alexander (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996) p. 36Google Scholar.

38 Ibid., p. 37.

39 For a criticism of metaphysical conceptions of God, see Phillips, D. Z., “What God Himself Cannot Tell Us: Realism Versus Metaphysical Realism”, Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 4, October 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Henri de Lubac, The Discovery of God, p. 37.

41 See my forthcoming essay “Wittgensteinianism and the Loss of Transcendence: The Reality of Christ and His Church”.

42 Henri de Lubac, p. 36.

43 Ibid., pp. 36–37.

44 Ibid. p. 38.

45 H. Paissac, Preuves de Dieu quoted in Henri de Lubac, ibid., p. 64 fn. 17.

46 Henri de Lubac, p. 65.

47 Ibid., p. 38 (my emphasis). Plato makes this point in Laws IV, 716c.

48 My thanks to D. Z. Phillips for the invitation to spend a year as an academic visitor at the Associated Centre for Wittgensteinian Studies at the University of Wales Swansea.