Denis McManus

Wittgenstein is arguably the greatest philosopher of the last hundred years and scepticism is one of the central problems that modern philosophy faces. This collection is the first to be devoted to an examination of how that great philosopher's work bears on this fundamental philosophical problem. Wittgenstein's reaction to scepticism is complex, articulating both a sense that sceptical problems are ultimately unreal and a sense that scepticism teaches us something about the fundamental character of the human predicament. The essays, specially written for this collection by distinguished philosophers and commentators on Wittgenstein, explore that reaction, addressing, in particular, scepticism about the existence of the external world and of other minds. In doing so, it explores issues not only in theory of knowledge but also in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, language, perception and literature, as well as raising questions about the nature of philosophy itself. Several of the papers address the work of Stanley Cavell, perhaps the most influential commentator on the work of Wittgenstein, and Cavell replies in the final pieces to four of those papers. This collection is essential reading for students and scholars of Wittgenstein and anyone interested in the debate surrounding scepticism.

Though Heidegger’s Being and Time is often cited as one of the most important philosophical works of the last hundred years, its Division Two has received relatively little attention. This outstanding collection corrects that, examining some of the central themes of Division Two and their wide-ranging and challenging implications. An international team of leading philosophers explore the crucial notions that articulate Heidegger’s concept of authenticity, including death, anxiety, conscience, guilt, resolution and temporality. In doing so, they clarify the bearing of Division Two’s reflections on our understanding of intentionality, normativity, responsibility, autonomy and selfhood. These discussions raise important questions about how we may need to rethink the morals of Division One of Being and Time , the broader project to which that book was devoted, the shaping influence of figures such as Aristotle and Kierkegaard, as well as Heidegger’s relationship with his contemporaries and successors. Essential reading for students and scholars of Heidegger’s thought, and anyone interested in key debates in phenomenology, ethics, metaphilosophy and philosophy of mind. Contributors: William Blattner, Clare Carlisle, Taylor Carman, Steven Galt Crowell, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Sophia Dandelet, Hubert Dreyfus, Charles Guignon, Jeffrey Haynes, Stephan Käufer, Denis McManus, Stephen Mulhall, George Pattison, Peter Poellner, Katherine Withy, Mark A. Wrathall.

This paper explores difficulties that resolute readers of the early Wittgenstein face, arising out of what I call the ‘sheer lack’ interpretation of their ‘austere’ conception of nonsense, and the intelligibility of philosophical confusion—there being a sense in which we rightly talk of a ‘grasp’ of philosophical nonsense and indeed of its ‘logic’. Such readers depict philosophical and ‘plain’ nonsense as distinct psychological kinds; but I argue that the ‘intelligibility’ of philosophical confusion remains invisible to the kind of psychology that the ‘sheer lack’ interpretation would make available to Wittgenstein. These concerns relate to well-established worries concerning whether the Tractatus’s ‘ladder’ can be climbed by thinking through arguments—or indeed by thinking full stop—if it is austerely nonsensical. Though I argue that these worries can be met, doing so requires another interpretation of ‘austerity’, which I call the ‘equivocation’ interpretation, and reveals the difference between resolute and non-resolute readings to be less clear cut than has been thought. Key here is the failure of some hard-and-fast distinctions that inform the literature—distinctions shaped by intuitions about mind, meaning, inference, logic, and nonsense—to serve us well.

This paper attempts to explain the abiding appeal of the suspicion that Wittgenstein is a conservative thinker. Among Wittgensteinians, there is a growing orthodoxy which takes the notion of 'Wittgenstein's conservatism' to be 'nutty' (Diamond 1991 p34). One justification for this opinion is that the charge of conservatism has typically been defended on the basis of highly implausible interpretations of Wittgenstein. However, the critical core of the conservatism charge has been mislocated by Wittgenstein's supporters and by most of his critics. No conservative theses are defended in his work. But in challenging the conceptual tools so often used in justifying criticism of our practices, Wittgenstein appears to abandon us to a conservatism by default. To understand this charge, we must broaden the context within which Wittgenstein's work is normally discussed. Odd as it may sound, what Wittgenstein actually says may only be one (and perhaps not the most important) consideration that we must bear in mind in assessing whether he is a conservative thinker

Phenomena such as our “understanding in a flash” and our immediate knowledge of the meaning of our own utterances seem to point to problems that call for philosophical explanation. Even though the meaning of an utterance appears to depend on where and when we use it, on what we use it for and on what we expect in response, we do not examine such circumstances when asked what we mean. Instead we simply say what we mean. Similarly, our having grasped a rule is something shown by how we perform certain tasks and respond to certain requests. But we frequently declare that we have indeed grasped a rule without paying any attention to those overt performances and, despite this, we are normally correct. These facts seem puzzling and impel us towards a certain philosophical picture of meaning and understanding. This picture identifies the meaning of a subject’s utterances, and his understanding of the rules that he follows, with some kind of structure of which he has immediate knowledge. By virtue of their connection with these private, meaning-constituting phenomena, the public manifestations of meaning and understanding are invaluable as clues to the meaning of an utterance or a subject’s understanding of a rule. But the latter are, nevertheless, ultimately fixed by the inner structures to which only the subject in question has immediate access and upon which he or she therefore has authority. This picture prompts a host of perplexing questions. “What are these immediately-knowable structures?” “What does it mean to say that we have immediate acquaintance with them?” “How are these private structures connected with those public performances?” These questions are notoriously difficult to answer.

Christina Lafont has argued that the early Heidegger's reflections on truth and understanding are incompatible with ‘the supposition of a single objective world’. This paper presents her argument, reviews some responses that the existing Heidegger literature suggests, and offers what I argue is a superior response. Building on a deeper exploration of just what the above ‘supposition’ demands, I argue that a crucial assumption that Lafont and Haugeland both accept must be rejected, namely, that different ‘understandings of Being’ can be viewed as offering ‘rival perspectives’ on a common subject-matter. I develop this case by drawing on an alternative account of what a Heideggerian ‘understanding of Being’ might be like

Recently the attempt has been made to demonstrate Heidegger's relevance to the concerns of analytic philosophers. A focus for this effort has been the criticism in his early work of Cartesian ontology. While a number of important works have mapped out this area of Heidegger's thought, a crucial task has not been carried out, namely that of assessing how Heidegger can accommodate those phenomena which motivate the Cartesian to adopt his highly counter-intuitive ontology. As long as we fail to examine how Heidegger's early ontology copes with the possibilities of error and of hallucination, the suspicion will remain that Heidegger is simply insensitive to those phenomena on which the Cartesian focuses. Neither Heidegger nor the Cartesian have been done any favours by commentators showing little inclination to bring the opponents into closer combat. This paper attempts to correct that omission.

While all of the great philosophers are difficult to read, Heidegger and Wittgenstein seem to be so in striking ways. Their writings are oddly reluctant to yield up to us what we might think of as ‘their philosophical claims’; and both seem to manifest an attitude towards argument unlike that of most contemporary philosophers. This paper will re-consider these features of Heidegger’s and Wittgenstein’s work in the light of some common themes in their understanding of philosophical confusion. Given that understanding, writings that would combat such confusion must meet rather distinctive objectives and, as a result, may be required to take on rather distinctive forms. The paper will explore these possibilities, drawing, in particular, on the motif of ‘recollection’ upon which both Heidegger and Wittgenstein draw, Heidegger's scattered remarks on 'formal indication', and The Sophist lectures’ discussion of Platonic dialectic.

This paper explores the place of realist and idealist themes in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. It takes as its starting point Adrian Moore’s denial that transcendental idealism is present in that text only as an “enemy”—to be “diagnosed and dispelled,” as Peter Sullivan puts it. I question whether reflection on TI can perform the positive task which Moore’s reading assigns to it—in particular, whether coming to recognize its ultimate incoherence leads us to a recognition of “the forces that give this nonsense the appearance of sense in the first place.” On the basis of an understanding of those forces that is present in Moore’s own work, I argue that reflection on the quasi-realist themes manifest in Wittgenstein’s remarks on picturing perform that task more successfully. In this way, I question the special status that Moore assigns to TI in the Tractatus, his claiming—“with... myriad qualifications”—that “Wittgenstein is a transcendental idealist.”

This paper identifies a problem that Aristotle revealed and that Heidegger’s own insights, into the diverse forms that the Being of entities takes, exacerbated: the problem is whether there is sense to the idea of ‘Being in general’—‘Being as a whole’—and this is a problem because there not being such sense threatens the very possibility of the discipline of ontology. The paper proposes that Heidegger envisaged the project which a completed Being and Time would have carried out as an attempt to solve this problem. The project considers what the subject who intends ‘Being as a whole’ would have to be like; crucially this requires reflection on what it would be for that subject itself to be a whole; and we find such reflection in Heidegger’s discussion of authenticity. By looking in particular at his notions of ‘guilt’ and ‘Being-towards-death’, and the role that they play in identifying an ‘ecstatic’ form of temporality, we can identify a ‘horizon’ against which the authentic can be seen as ‘being-a-whole’ and as living in the light of an understanding of what might indeed be called ‘Being as a whole’.

Heidegger’s discussion of ‘Being-towards-death’ occupies a prominent position in his reflections on authenticity; but it has attracted fierce criticism, and poses profound interpretative challenges. This paper will offer a novel interpretation of that discussion as contributing to the articulation of a not-implausible account of self-knowledge and self-acknowledgement. The term typically translated as ‘authenticity’—‘Eigentlichkeit’—can be translated more literally as ‘ownness’ or ‘ownedness’; and my reading reveals Eigentlichkeit to be the ‘owning’ of one’s own judgment, an ‘owning’ that manifests itself in a distinctive relationship to one’s death. The reading builds on a comparison of Heidegger’s discussion of ‘Being-towards-death’ with his examination in 1920-21 of St Paul’s remarks on the Last Judgment. I propose that Heidegger sees in the latter remarks an understanding of what it is to be willing to stand before God, and that this provides a model for Heidegger of an understanding of what it is to be willing to stand before oneself. The (confused) desire to escape God’s judgment is a desire to avoid what one takes to be the facts about oneself and manifests itself in a distinctive relationship to the Last Judgment; alienation from one’s own judgment is the avoidance of the same facts and can be identified, I argue, with Heideggerian inauthenticity and its distinctive mode of Being-towards-death.