Wittgenstein and relativism

Abstract

Wittgenstein is often associated with different forms of relativism. However, there is ambiguity and controversy about whether he defended relativistic views or not. This paper seeks to clarify this issue by disambiguating the notion of relativism and examining Wittgenstein's relevant texts in that light.

Keywords:

• Wittgenstein
• relativism
• logic
• epistemology
• rationality
• Gaskin

Notes

See, for example, D. Z. Phillips, Faith and Philosophical Inquiry (London: Routledge, 1970) for an initial statement, and for a later reconsideration of his views, ‘Religious Beliefs and Language‐Games’, in Wittgenstein and Religion (London: Macmillan, 1993).

Peter Winch, ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’, in Bryan R. Wilson (ed.) Rationality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974).

PI 7.

PI 122.

Z 447.

PI 23.

PI 217.

PR, p. 332.

RFM, p. 122.

RFM, p. 255.

OC 96–7.

PI II, p. 223.

Z 383, 387.

RFGB, p. 119.

PR, p. 7.

e.g. NB 83, PR, Foreword, PI 109, 144.

PI 122.

Hans Johann Glock, Wittgenstein Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 126.

Robert Kirk, Relativism and Reality (London: Routledge, 1999).

Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Ibid., p. 172.

Cyril Barrett, Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Belief (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).

Ibid., p. 157.

I draw here on the analysis of cognitive relativism given in Paul O'Grady, Relativism (Chesham: Acumen, 2002).

See ibid., section 2.1 for more details.

RFM, p. 377.

OC 336.

Z 357.

PI II, p. 223.

PI 241.

PI 206.

RFGB, p. 119.

OC 422.

PI 251.

PI 217.

OC 204.

RFM, p. 92.

RFM, p. 353.

OC 475.

Richard Gaskin, ‘Nonsense and Necessity in Wittgenstein's Mature Philosophy’, in R. Gaskin (ed.) Grammar in Early Twentieth Century Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2001).

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, q.25, a.4, ‘Can God make what had been not to have been?’

PI 23.

Insight and Illusion, revised edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 189–90.

PI, p. viii.

• Abbreviations of Wittgenstein's works

  	1.	NB  Notebooks 1914–1916, 2nd edn, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979
  	2.	OC  On Certainty, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969
  	3.	PI  Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953
  	4.	PR  Philosophical Remarks, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975
  	5.	RFGB  ‘Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough’, in J. Klagge and A. Nordmann (eds) Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993
  	6.	RFM  Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, 3rd edn, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978
  	7.	TLP  Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus, London: Routledge, 1974
  	8.	Z  Zettel, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967