Wittgenstein Never was a Phenomenologist

References

• An earlier version of this essay was to have been delivered at the annual meeting of the Husserl Circle, June 5–7, 1987, at Washington University, St Louis, which I was unfortunately unable to attend due to a sudden illness. I wish to thank Herbert Spiegelberg for some very useful written comments on that essay. I presented another version of part of this essay, “Was the Early or Middle Wittgenstein a Phenomenologist?” to the North Texas Philosophical Association, November 7, 1987, at Southern Methodist University. I wish to thank the members of the Association for their helpful comments, especially my commentator Ted Klein. I also feel that I owe a few words of appreciation to the other persons whose stimulating views I am criticizing. An earlier (longer) version of the paper was more balanced in its criticisms. Unfortunately, in trimming it down for publication the tone of my critiques came to appear more harsh than it was in its original expression. I offer my view in the spirit of dialectic and apologize for the tone.
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• See Rush Rhees, ed., Personal Recollections of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Totowa, N. J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981), p. 131, hereafter cited as Personal Recollections. On the date, see Herbert Spiegelberg, “Wittgenstein Calls His Philosophy “Phenomenology”: One More Supplement to “The Puzzle of Wittgenstein's ‘Phänomenologie,’”” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 13(1982), pp. 296–299, quotation taken from p. 298, n. 1. Hereafter this work of Spiegelberg will be referred to as Supplement.
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• Paul Ricoeur, “Husserl and Wittgenstein on Language,” in E.N. Lee and M. Mandelbaum edd., Phenomenology and Existentialism (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), pp. 207–217, especially p. 211.
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• Gerd Brand, The Essential Wittgenstein, tr. and intro. Robert Innis, (N.Y.: Basic Books, 1979), p. xxv. Hereafter cited as EW.
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• Herbert Spiegelberg, “The Puzzle of Wittgenstein's Phänomenologie (1929–?),” Ch. 15 of his The Context of the Phenomenological Movement (Phaenomenologica, no. 80) (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981), p. 228. This essay first appeared in The American Philosophical Quarterly 5(1968), pp. 244–256. Hereafter this essay will be referred to as Puzzle.
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• Puzzle, p. 215.
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• Don Ihde, “Wittgenstein's ‘Phenomenological Reduction,’” in Philip Bossert and H.L. Van Breda eds., Phenomenological Perspectives: Historical and Systematic Essays in Honor of Herbert Spiegelberg (Phaenomenologica, no. 62) (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975), pp. 47–60.
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• Merrill and Jaakko Hintikka, Investigating Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 148–149.
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• Nicholas Gier, Wittgenstein and Phenomenology: A Comparative Study of the Later Wittgenstein, Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty (SUNY Series in Philosophy) (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1981), p. 98. Hereafter cited as Gier.
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• See my Language and Experience: Descriptions of Living Language in Husserl and Wittgenstein (Current Continental Research, No. 301) (Lanham, Md.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1984). Hereafter cited as LE. LE presents much more evidence for many of the claims in the present essay. In the interest of brevity I will refer to LE only rarely, although it is a necessary supplement to many of the arguments presented here.
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• These features of phenomenological method are discussed at greater length in several of my earlier works: “Hermeneutics and Apodicticity in Phenomenological Method,” presented to the annual meeting of the Husserl Circle, June, 1986, at DePaul University; LE, Ch. 3–4; and The Theory and Practice of Husserl's Phenomenology (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986). Hereafter cited as TP.
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• A precise account of the different epochés of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty is a subject for a lengthier discussion than can be entered upon here. It is sufficient to note the following point made by Merleau-Ponty: “…phenomenological reduction belongs to existential philosophy: Heidegger's ‘being-in-the-world’ appears only against the background of the phenomenological reduction.” Phenomenology of Perception, tr. Colin Smith (International library of Philosophy and Scientific Method) (N. Y.: The Humanities Press, 1962), p. xiv. Cf. Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, tr. Albert Hofstadter (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1982), §5. Hereafter cited as Basic Problems.
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• For a classical account of this paradox, see David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. xxiii. Cf. Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book, General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology tr. F. Kersten, (Edmund Husserl: Collected Works, Vol. II) (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982), §§69–70. Hereafter referred to as Ideas.
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• This is a central focus of the works cited in note 11, above. Cf. Heidegger, Basic Problems, p. 23: “Construction in philosophy is necessarily destruction, that is to say, a de-constructing of traditional concepts carried out in a historical recursion to the tradition.”
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• Desmond Lee, ed., Wittgenstein's Lectures, CAMBRIDGE, 1930–1932, from the notes of John King and Desmond Lee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 68ff, 80f. Hereafter cited as Lectures, 1930–1932.
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• Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, tr. Dorion Cairns, (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970), p. 127. Hereafter cited as CM.
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• Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, tr. David Carr, (Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 137. Hereafter cited as K.
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• I find it both ironic and unfortunate that Husserl chose the term ‘reductions’ for the descriptive shift of focus required for phenomenological description.
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• Spiegelberg, Supplement, p. 299, n. 4, and Gier, p. 10.
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• Lectures, 1930–1932. Alice Ambrose, ed., Wittgenstein's Lectures: CAMBRIDGE, 1932–1935: From the Notes of Alice Ambrose and Margaret Macdonald (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), hereafter cited as Lectures, 1932–1935. Friedrich Waismann, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, Brian McGuinness, ed., Joachim Schulte and Brian McGuinness tr., (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), Hereafter cited as WVC.
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• Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society IX (1929), pp. 162–171.
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• Felix Kaufmann, a “maverick” member of the Vienna Circle and a follower of Husserl's phenomenological method, clearly expressed that phenomenology must go beyond logical analysis. See “Phenomenology and Logical Empiricism,” in Marvin Farber, ed., Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940), 124–142, especially pp. 130f,(reprinted by Greenwood Press, N.Y., 1968). See also Kaufmann's Methodology of the Social Sciences, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 240.
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• The Hintikkas share this interpretation. See their Ch. 6. See also TLP 2.1–2.19, 2.221, 3, 3.12, 3.2, 3.201, 3.25.
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• On the notion of de facto and de jure epistemological foundations, see José Huertas-Jourda, “On the Two Foundations of Knowledge According to Husserl,” in Lester Embree, Ed., Essays in Memory of Aron Gurwitsch (Current Continental Research, No. 007) (Lanham, Md.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1983), pp. 195–211.
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• Gier's interpretation of this passage differs significantly: “…Schlick asks a question about phenomenology and Wittgenstein knows enough to answer specifically using the name Husserl” (p. 98). Given the nature of Waismann s notes, it is not inconceivable that Schlick, and not Wittgenstein, first introduced the name of Husserl.
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• LI, I, pp. 291–295. This seems to refute Gier's suggestion (p. 98) that Wittgenstein's distinction between Sinn and Unsinn may have come from his reading of the Logical Investigations.
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• Personal Recollections, p. 131. On the date, see Spiegelberg, Supplement, p. 298, n. 1.
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• See, e.g., Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, G.H. von Wright, R. Rhees, and G.E.M. Anscombe, eds., G.E.M. Anscombe, tr. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), pp. 51, 53. Hereafter referred to as RFM.
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• Spiegelberg, Puzzle, p. 202. Spiegelberg is quoting from R. Rhees, “The Tractatus: Seeds of Some Misunderstandings,” The Philosophical Review 72(1963), pp. 213–220.
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• Spiegelberg, Puzzle, p. 202. Spiegelberg quotes from Rhees' “The Tractatus: Seeds of Some Misunderstandings,” The Philosophical Review 72(1963), pp. 213–220.
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• Gerd Brand seems to claim that Wittgenstein was a phenomenologist throughout his philosophical life. The nature of Brand's “argument” will be examined below.
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• My argument for this is presented in LE, Ch. 2, §§6–13. See also H. Reeder, “Language and the Phenomenological Reduction: A Reply to a Wittgensteinian Objection,” Man and World 12(1979), pp. 35–46.
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• Spiegelberg notes this tension between two seemingly different senses of the term ‘phenomenology’ in the Remarks. See Puzzle, p. 205, and cf. RFM, p. 51, and WVC, p. 63.
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• Husserl clearly had an epoché in the Logical Investigations. See H. Reeder, “A Phenomenological Account of the linguistic Mediation of the Public and the Private,” Husserl Studies I (1984), pp. 263–280, especially p. 275.
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• My interpretation of these passages seems to be shared by the Hintikkas (pp. 165–167).
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• p. 105. Recall here that Wittgenstein began his 1932–1935 lectures by rejecting appeals to experience. Lectures, 1932–1935, p. 4.
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• Husserl, Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic rev. and ed. Ludwig Landgrebe, tr. J.S. Churchill and K. Ameriks, (Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 343. Hereafter cited as EJ.
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• Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary studies of the creation of meaning in language, tr. R. Czerny with K. McLaughlin and J. Costello, S.J., (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), p. 258.
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• While there is much in the Hintikkas’ book which agrees with the interpretation of the later Wittgenstein in LE, I there place the so-called “middle period” of Wittgenstein's thought with the thought of Wittgenstein's later period.
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• See, e.g., Ideas §3, especially p. 49: “The essence (Eidos) is an object of a new type.” Cf. LI, I pp. 339–342, II pp. 775–779; and EJ, §§81–82, 86–90. As the Hintikkas note, Wittgenstein also discusses expectations (e.g., p. 61, with a quotation from the Remarks). Wittgenstein's discussions of expectation, intention, relations, and other seemingly non-sensualistic phenomena also seem to me to be un-phenomenological in character. See LE, Ch. 2, especially §§7, 9–11.
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• See e.g.: 1.1–1.2, 2.0131, 2.02–2.021, 2.027–2.04, 3.2–3.201; and cf. Hintikkas, pp. 100, 128, 130–134, 162–165.
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• See: Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, ed. Martin Heidegger, tr. James S. Churchill, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), §§7–11; LI, II, pp. 536, 541–542; K, §§22, 46; and Ideas, §§38–39.
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• TLP, 5.6. Cf. MS 108, dated 1929–1930, as cited by the Hintikkas, p. 19. Cf. also their pp. 164–168, 241. Also compare this with: Husserl, LI, II, pp. 543–544; Ideas, §§34,75, 84, 124; K, §59; and TP, Ch. 7.
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• See LE, §12.1. My use of Wittgenstein's style was quite brief, and was intended to make explicit some of the shortcomings of that style, especially its ability to be interpreted in multiple ways.
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• See LE, Ch. 2, where I claim to have found a rather different theory which seems to span all the “later” works of Wittgenstein (from about 1929 on). The fact that I came up with a different theory than Brand should surprise no one familiar with the diversity of Wittgenstein interpretation.
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• I have argued elsewhere that Wittgenstein is not an ordinary language philosopher. He does move in some sense beyond ordinary language with his language-games. Nonetheless, I think his tendency to reduce all problems to linguistic ones merits the epithet ‘linguistic reduction- ism.’ See LE, §5.
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• The quote appears on p. 65 of Brand's book, and is taken from WVC, p. 45. The translation in Brand's book differs somewhat from the translation in WVC.
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• p. 89. Brand refers here to WVC, p. 45. This passage was dealt with in §3 above.
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• David Pole notes that “Wittgenstein in fact requires something more than a mere description, or the acceptance of a description.” The Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein (London: Athlone Press, 1958), p. 92. See LE, Ch. 2, for more evidence for this interpretation, stemming from the full range of Wittgenstein's works from 1929–end.
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• The Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein, p. 57.
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• “A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” PI, § 115. One theory Wittgenstein particularly wished to unseat was the Tractatus's picture theory of meaning. See LE, Ch. 2, and H. Reeder, “Husserl and Wittgenstein on the ‘Mental Picture Theory of Meaning’,” Human Studies 3(1980), pp. 157–167.
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