Wittgenstein’s creative sublimation of Kant

Jamal

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. — Wittgenstein

It's far from original to say that Wittgenstein's philosophy has a lot in common with Kant's. The above quotation is where you can see it most clearly, and several commentators describe it as a peculiarly linguistic flavour of transcendental idealism. I think this is either right or almost right. But I want to bring in Wittgenstein's later philosophy and the notion of language games and forms of life to emphasize that the locus of his new kind of transcendental philosophy is ultimately taken out of the head and placed in social practices.

In some ways this non-cognitivist transcendentalism is a huge departure from Kant, who unlike Wittgenstein was concerned with reason above all, with the mental faculties of the rational subject, and with systematization. But in other ways, these philosophies are getting at the same point. I've already described them both as transcendental. What do I mean by that?

The transcendental perspective concerns the necessary conditions for the human experience of the world and defines the limits of this experience and the knowledge of objects therein; and from this perspective, the world around us, what is real in experience, is limited accordingly: the limits of my experience mean the limits of my world.

So it's clear enough that Wittgenstein's early philosophy can fairly be described as transcendental. What about his later work? This is where he is concerned with the ordinary ground and public context of our utterances, and with the way that a failure to pay attention to these leads thinking astray, down roads that lead nowhere, such as the search for a definition of linguistic meaning, the demand for definitions in general, the need for absolute certainty, and the question as to the nature of the "language of thought," and so on.

The language games that constitute the lives of human beings thereby constitute the human "form of life," because human beings are linguistic to the core.

In the later Wittgenstein the notion of "forms of life" takes the place of the Tractarian doctrine of the boundary between what can and cannot be said, which determines in turn the "limits of my world". My world takes on the limits of my form of life. — Jean-Pierre Cometti, 'Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, and the question of expression'

In other words, the limits of my form of life mean the limits of my world.

But is it idealism? Under most definitions, maybe not. But in the terms of Kant's transcendental idealism, whose primary thrust is to drop the myth of transcendent, absolute knowledge, then the answer might be yes. I'll say no more about that at this stage.

One more interesting thing to note is that Kant and Wittgenstein are similar not only in their transcendental perspective on human beings, but also in their use of this perspective to show that most philosophy hitherto has gone astray by asking questions that cannot be asked.

Notes:

I lifted the idea that Wittgenstein had "creatively sublimated" Kant from Robert Hanna's "Wittgenstein and Kantianism," available here:

Wittgenstein . . . carefully read The Critique of Pure Reason along with Ludwig Hänsel in 1918, three years before the publication of the Tractatus. I do not think that Wittgenstein’s reading of the first Critique in 1918 directly or substantially influenced the Tractatus itself, since in fact virtually no changes were made to the manuscript of the Tractatus between 1918 and its publication in 1921. . . . But I do think that Wittgenstein’s early philosophy is essentially the result of his indirect engagement with Kant’s Critical philosophy, via Schopenhauer, prior to 1918, and also that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is essentially, although mostly implicitly and without fanfare, the result of Wittgenstein’s direct engagement with Kant’s Critical philosophy after 1918. . . . So whereas Moore and Russell explicitly abandoned and rejected Kant’s Critical epistemology and metaphysics, Wittgenstein, both early and late, creatively absorbed and sublimated them. — Robert Hanna

Very interesting. Do you think the later Wittgenstein was in sympathy with the idea that reason can be self-reflective, or at any rate can reflect critically upon the forms of understanding? I’m not sure how to read Wittgenstein on this. In the Tractatus, I think LW is saying that such a critical project would be just "metaphysics". But can a “form of life” include a more generous scope for philosophical language that abstracts from experience (or "my world") to question itself?

Jamal

Do you think the later Wittgenstein was in sympathy with the idea that reason can be self-reflective, or at any rate can reflect critically upon the forms of understanding? I’m not sure how to read Wittgenstein on this. In the Tractatus, I think LW is saying that such a critical project would be just "metaphysics". — J

Interesting question. They were both engaged in critical projects directed at exposing the emptiness of philosophy, especially metaphysics, but whereas Kant was an insider doing a salvage operation, Wittgenstein had no such commitment—he was an outsider who was not optimistic about philosophy, seeing it as mostly nonsense. What this meant was that Wittgenstein went much further, and thus had no real sympathy for the form that Kant's critical project took: as you say, the critical reflection upon the forms of understanding.

However, Wittgenstein's later philosophy is full of critical reflection; it's just that he chooses not to focus on the traditional topics of reason, the understanding, and so on. And crucially, this is largely because he believes that the misuse of language is responsible for the problems in the philosophy of mind and psychology. That is, philosophers literally do not know what they're talking about when they talk about concepts, reason, and the understanding—Kant included.

So there's only so far you can take the parallel I'm making.

Jamal

But can a “form of life” include a more generous scope for philosophical language that abstracts from experience (or "my world") to question itself? — J

I forgot about this bit. I'm not sure what that would look like. Wittgenstein is sceptical not only of other philosophers, but even of his own philosophy, so I don't think he has much time for philosophy at all except for a therapeutic use, in clearing up the mess made by philosophy.

Moliere

↪Jamal

That makes sense to me -- The purposes of philosophy differ between them.

I couldn't find a free version -- I wish I could because when I read this I had access, but no longer do. Alas, as a counter-point to the notion I enjoyed this paper: On Interpreting Kant's Thinker as Wittgenstein's 'I' -- would have read it before posting but there's a possible clue for thinking through the thought from the opposite side.

Fooloso4

The above quotation is where you can see it most clearly, and several commentators describe it as a peculiarly linguistic flavour of transcendental idealism. — Jamal

I think this misses the mark. It is logic rather than language which is transcendental. Logic is the transcendental condition that makes language possible. Language and the world share a logical structure. Logic underlies not only language but the world. It is the transcendental condition that makes the world possible.

The claim that:

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

(5.6)

is followed immediately by:

Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.

(5.61)

Note the shift from language - my world to logic - the world.

However:

The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.

(5.62)

I am my world. (The microcosm.)

(5.63)

The world is my world but my world is not the world, for my world is not anyone else's world.

In the Tractatus both logic (6.13) and ethics (6.421) are transcendental.

Ethics stands outside the limits of language. (6.421)

Logic stands on one side of the limit of the world. Ethics on the other.

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.

(6.43)

The proposition that the limits of my language mean the limits of my world does not mean that all there is is the linguistic or propositional world. That all there is is what can be said.

The language games that constitute the lives of human beings thereby constitute the human "form of life," because human beings are linguistic to the core. — Jamal

Human forms of life are linguistic but language games cannot be understood by abstracting or isolating what is said from what is done, from the other activities of our lives.

In other words, the limits of my form of life mean the limits of my world. — Jamal

This does not mark the same kind of limit.

In the Tractatus limits are drawn to what can be thought by way of what can be said. The primary reason for doing this is similar to Kant's denying knowledge in order to make room for faith (CPR Bxxx). Ethics is experiential. Outside the limits of the propositional. He later abandons this line of investigation:

Theology as grammar

(PI 373)

The form of life of a cloistered monk is not my form of life, but it is possible for me to become a monk and for the monk to leave the monastic life.

Jamal

↪Moliere

I'd like to read that. Patricia Kitcher is great. I see the abstract mentions McDowell's linking of Kant and late Wittgenstein but I haven't read that.

180 Proof

... Wittgenstein's later philosophy and the notion of language games and forms of life to emphasize that the locus of his new kind of transcendental philosophy is ultimately taken out of the head and placed in social practices. — Jamal

:100:

I think, just before Witty, Nietzsche & Peirce (among others) in their own ways also elevate "social practices" and deflate "pure reason" as well. Witty's way might still be the most insightful, even compelling.

It is logic rather than language which is transcendental. Logic is the transcendental condition that makes language possible. Language and the world share a logical structure. Logic underlies not only language but the world. It is the transcendental condition that makes the world possible. — Fooloso4

:fire:

This is the gist of the TLP but I think Witty extends this from formal – "transcendental" – logic (re: world-structure) to a concrete 'logic of practice' (re: forms-of-life, language-games (i.e. being-with-others-in-the-world aka "mitsein")) later on.

Jamal

↪180 Proof

:up:

Arne

But can a “form of life” include a more generous scope for philosophical language that abstracts from experience (or "my world") to question itself? — J

Fascinating question. It would be odd indeed if a being having a generous scope regarding the use of language for the questioning of being lacked the scope of language necessary to formulating the question, let alone proposing some possible answers.

Arne

It is logic rather than language which is transcendental. — Fooloso4

Are logic and language separable? First we divide the whole into parts to facilitate an understanding of the whole and then we proceed to destroy the whole by declaring some parts more real than others. The notion of either logic or language without the other is as non-sensical as a one sided coin.

Tom Storm

↪Arne

I would have thought language depends or is grounded upon the logical axioms: identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle. Without which... incoherence...

Fooloso4

Are logic and language separable? — Arne

According to the Tractatus language pictures the world. This is possible because there is a logical structure underlying both language and the world.

↪Jamal That makes sense to me -- The purposes of philosophy differ between them. — Moliere

Makes sense to me as well, though I think there is indeed a parallel, which you've pointed out.

Moliere

↪J

Oh yeah. I liked that paper because it gave me something to think through weaknesses in the parallel -- I also made the comparison fairly early on and came across that paper in an effort to push against it and feel out its dimensions.

There's a lot in common: the centrality of ethics, for instance, as well as the limitation on knowledge in light of the ethical and logical, ala

↪Fooloso4

Arne

↪Tom Storm

chicken or the egg. and with no language to express the axioms, silence. and speaking only for myself, silence is preferable to incoherence.

↪Fooloso4

Arne

This is possible because there is a logical structure underlying both language and the world — Fooloso4

Be that as it may, that does not answer the question of whether logic and language are separable. All it does is raise the parallel question of whether logic and the world are separable. I suspect they are not. No logic, no language. No language, no logic.

And to simply say that one underlies the other gives no necessary primordiality to one or the other. It is not as if we could strip the world away and examine the underlying logic or take away the underlying logic and observe the world. No logic, no world. No world, no logic.

The only useful purpose of their intellectual separation is to facilitate an understanding of the unitary phenomenon of the logical world created with language. Can it get more transcendental than that?

Paine

The transcendental perspective concerns the necessary conditions for the human experience of the world and defines the limits of this experience and the knowledge of objects therein; and from this perspective, the world around us, what is real in experience, is limited accordingly: the limits of my experience mean the limits of my world. — Jamal

On Kant's side, the "limit of experience" is not so much trying get beyond a particular domain, like a dog straining against a tether, but a problem of perceiving the self, particularly a self in the world:

From all this one sees that rational psychology has its origin in a mere misunderstanding. The unity of consciousness, which grounds the categories, is here taken for an intuition of the subject as an object, and the category of substance is applied to it. But this unity is only the unity of thinking, through which no object is given; and thus the category of substance, which always presupposes a given intuition, cannot be applied to it, and hence this subject cannot be cognized at all. Thus the subject of the categories cannot, by thinking them, obtain a concept of itself as an object of the categories; for in order to think them, it must take its pure self-consciousness, which is just what is to be explained, as its ground. Likewise, the subject, in which the representation of time originally has its ground, cannot thereby determine its own existence in time, and if the latter cannot be, then the former as a determination of itself (as a thinking being in general) through categories can also not take place. *

* The "I think" is, as has already been said, an empirical proposition, and contains within itself the proposition "I exist." But I cannot say "Everything that thinks, exists"; for then the property of thinking would make all beings possessing it into necessary beings. Hence my existence also cannot be regarded as inferred from the proposition "I think," as Descartes held (for otherwise the major premise, "Everything that thinks, exists" would have to precede it), but rather it is identical with it. It expresses an indeterminate empirical intuition, i.e., a perception (hence it proves that sensation, which consequently belongs to sensibility, grounds this existential proposition), but it precedes the experience that is to determine the object of perception through the category in regard to time; and here existence is not yet a category, which is not related to an indeterminately given object, but rather to an object of which one has a concept, and about which one wants to know whether or not it is posited outside this concept. An indeterminate perception here signifies only something real, which was given, and indeed only to thinking in general, thus not as appearance, and also not as a thing in itself (a noumenon), but rather as something that in fact exists and is indicated as an existing thing in the proposition "I think." For it is to be noted that if I have called the proposition "I think" an empirical proposition, I would not say by this that the I in this proposition is an empirical representation; for it is rather purely intellectual, because it belongs to thinking in general. Only without any empirical representation, which provides the material for thinking, the act I think would not take place, and the empirical is only the condition of the application, or use, of the pure intellectual faculty. — CPR, Kant, B421

On the Wittgenstein side, I do not read the "form of life" as a replacement for what could not be explained by Kant. It seems to me that Wittgenstein avoided expressing the idea as 'essential' as this:

The language games that constitute the lives of human beings thereby constitute the human "form of life," because human beings are linguistic to the core. — Jamal

Tom Storm

↪Tom Storm chicken or the egg. and with no language to express the axioms, silence. and speaking only for myself, silence is preferable to incoherence.↪Fooloso4 — Arne

I'm quite partial to incoherence, but it depends on the context. I think between language and silence there are also grunts, growls and purring....

Jamal

On Kant's side, the "limit of experience" is not so much trying get beyond a particular domain, like a dog straining against a tether — Paine

I agree. I don’t think I implied anything like that, but it’s certainly worth emphasizing.

but a problem of perceiving the self, particularly a self in the world: — Paine

From all this one sees that rational psychology . . . — CPR, Kant, B421

As it happens I’ve been reading the paralogisms recently. But I don’t know what you’re getting at with respect to my attempt to describe the transcendental perspective. What Kant has to say in the paralogisms is about “rational psychology” and the indeterminacy of the “I”. It is certainly a consequence of the transcendental perspective but I can’t quite see its specific relevance.

On the Wittgenstein side, I do not read the "form of life" as a replacement for what could not be explained by Kant. — Paine

Nor do I. Actually though, I don’t know what you mean.

frank

. But I want to bring in Wittgenstein's later philosophy and the notion of language games and forms of life to emphasize that the locus of his new kind of transcendental philosophy is ultimately taken out of the head and placed in social practices. — Jamal

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. His later philosophy breaks the last rule in the Tractatus. He knew that.

Arne

↪Tom Storm

but even grunts, growls, and purring excite our language based desire to interpret. is it not in our linguistic nature to interpret the as-structure of all that comes at us? though the grunt, growl, and purr lack discernable syntax, it could be risky to interpret them as semantically void.

Tom Storm

though the grunt, growl, and purr lack discernable syntax, it could be risky to interpret them as semantically void. — Arne

Indeed. I'm not arguing this. I'm just saying they are not propositional and are not as clearly beholden to local axioms as a more fully developed linguistic system is. My point was a minor one - that between silence and linguistic 'coherence' lies noise.

Arne

they are not propositional and are not as clearly beholden to local axioms as a more fully developed linguistic system — Tom Storm

Well said. And more than a minor point.

Paine

What Kant has to say in the paralogisms is about “rational psychology” and the indeterminacy of the “I”. It is certainly a consequence of the transcendental perspective but I can’t quite see its specific relevance. — Jamal

As a criticism of Descartes, the quoted section shows how Descartes presumed a private experience to be able to stand for what can be said of all humans. Kant was willing to approach 'Reason' as that kind of universal but not the individuals using it. As a consequence, a different psychology is needed.

Nor do I. Actually though, I don’t know what you mean. — Jamal

I was objecting to your expression of "the human form of life" on the basis of such a proposition being more explanatory than Wittgenstein intended.

Arne

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. — Wittgenstein

One could just as well say that the limits of my language and the limits of my world are the limits of me.

And I for one am tired of being written out of the equation.

Janus

↪Jamal

The way I see it the "critical reflection" you speak about is the practice of phenomenology, not metaphysics (although interestingly as far as I understand it Heidegger equated metaphysics with phenomenology).

Indeed. I'm not arguing this. I'm just saying they are not propositional and are not as clearly beholden to local axioms as a more fully developed linguistic system is. My point was a minor one - that between silence and linguistic 'coherence' lies noise. — Tom Storm

:up: An excellent point!

Jamal

↪Fooloso4

Thank you for the detailed points. I’m not really interested in promoting the view that Wittgenstein was a linguistic idealist, especially not with regard to his later philosophy, where I agree that “other activities” are part of our forms of life—as I try to say in the OP, it’s our life and social practices in general that matter here. In the OP I do emphasize (perhaps over-emphasize) the linguistic nature of forms of life, but I certainly don’t think that’s all there is to them.

A potentially damaging criticism in your post is your point that in the Tractatus it’s logic, not language, which is transcendental, which means that 5.6 can’t serve as the model of transcendental philosophy in the way I’m using it in the OP. I’m not sure about this, but I suspect it’s not a big deal. By which I mean that I could continue to hold pretty much the same position if I just ditched those statements of the form, the limits of my X mean the limits of my world.

And then there’s this:

In other words, the limits of my form of life mean the limits of my world — Jamal

The form of life of a cloistered monk is not my form of life, but it is possible for me to become a monk and for the monk to leave the monastic life. — Fooloso4

Fair. But I meant it more loosely and suggestively, simply to show that W’s transcendental came to be centred on our concrete practices, rather than on language/logic as it was in the Tractatus, and rather than on the mind as it was for Kant. Perhaps I could have worded it differently, or, again, just ditched 5.6 as model statement.

Incidentally, I tend to think of forms of life hierarchically, as if there’s a multiply nested plurality all within the general human form of life.

Janus

cidentally, I tend to think of forms of life hierarchically, as if there’s a multiply nested plurality all within the general human form of life. — Jamal

Would it not be better then to say "human forms of life", since the only common form of life is the basic biological form which, as basic, is not culturally mediated (even if our understanding of it is).

Jamal

↪Janus

I feel like denying that “the only common form of life is the basic biological form”, but I’m not ready to pursue it right now. Anyway, you might be right.

Janus

↪Jamal

No, on second thought you are probably right, as I imagine there would be basic pragmatic forms of life common to all peoples, which are socially, if not culturally, mediated.

Wittgenstein’s creative sublimation of Kant

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