Republicanism and rule-following: subjectivity in the later ludwig wittgenstein's philosophy of language and philip pettit's theory of freedom

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MASTER THESIS

Republicanism and rule-following: subjectivity in the later ludwig wittgenstein's philosophy of language and philip pettit's theory of freedom

Alexander Finiarel

student

Field of Study 41.04.04 Political Science Master's Program “Politics. Economics. Philosophy”

Moscow, 2020

Introduction

Background. Neo-republican theorist Philip Pettit defines republican concept of freedom on the basis of the idea of fitness to be held responsible, accompanied by the idea of ownership and underdetermination. These definitions in their turn are based on a concept of subject, which is very close to Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea of subject. Wittgenstein's concept of subject is most vividly represented in Saul Kripke's investigation of the problem of rule-following and the notion of private language. These conceptions settle subject in the sociolinguistic context that surrounds the subject and in such a way partially externalize the subject.

Pettit studied the problem of rule-following and proposed his own solution to it. I suppose, that he builds his political theory on the basis of this solution. However, in his political works he does not refer neither to Wittgenstein or Kripke nor to his solution. Besides, in politics, he mainly ignores private language argument that is in my opinion important part of rule-following paradox. Unfortunately, there was no any comparative research on neither of these matters.

Problem statement. Pettit does not directly address his investigations of Wittgenstein's ideas of rule-following and private language when drawing his concept of freedom even though in his political theory he follows the same logic that he used resolving the skeptical paradox.

Delimitations of the study. My study is aimed to compare Pettit's ideas on freedom as non-domination and Wittgenstein's research of the problem of rule-following. Therefore, since it is not concerned with the problem of rule-following itself I am not going to investigate the debate on this matter. Neither am I going to discuss the context of Pettit's arguments on rule-following and freedom further than it is necessary for their understanding.

Professional significance. Republican theory of freedom is mostly dominated by historians. Pettit's work gives an interesting perspective on it because he approaches the matter from a more philosophical and psychological perspective. Interpretation of his work from Wittgensteinian perspective could let us to build a bridge between purely political and philosophical aspects of neo-republicanism providing new insights in political sphere.

Literature review

One of the central topics of my research is the discussion of Wittgenstein's idea of subject and the paradox of rule-following investigated by Saul Kripke (1982). Neither of them explicitly defined subject anywhere mostly because Wittgestein's method was based on description of the phenomena he found strange in the language system rather than on creation of a philosophical system. Nevertheless, the relation between the subject and the object or the world is fundamental for his investigations both in his early and in his late periods. His description of this relation undergoes a cardinal change from his early to his late philosophy. This change helps us to understand better his concept of subjectivity. That is why I am going to compare his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein 2011) with his late Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein 1986). The most important things to address for this comparison are Wittgenstein's investigation of the problem of solipsism and the problem of private language. The latter is closely connected with the problem of rule-following. This is why I am going to show how Wittgenstein solves this problem in Saul Kripke's interpretation.

This discussion has important implications for political philosophy. Wittgenstein's early work have a lot in common with revolutionary socialist ideas shared by the members of his circle (Russel 2004; Carnap 1932). They aimed to destroy the old world and build a new, better one with the help of reason (Puchner 2005). However, liberals and conservatives often use his later philosophy to criticize socialism (Nyнri.1982; Giddens 1994; Gray 1984; Oakeshott 1991). Such an interpretation is only possible when one tries to avoid pluralism in politics and either leave it to relations between homogenous communities or to the sphere of private (Mouffe 2000). Wittgenstein never tried to escape pluralism and in his later works criticizing his early ideas considered such attempts as meaningless abstractions (Williams 2019). Shoam Shiva (2016) is the only one who tries to connect Pettit's solution to the paradox of rule following ideas with political philosophy. He compares him with Jьrgen Habermas's criticizing him as excessively abstract but he obviously misses the way Pettit overcomes this abstraction through grounding the rules in the everyday use of language.

I want to show how Pettit's own political philosophy being grounded in his epistemology is illuminating in this matter because it shows how different parts of this epistemology work together avoiding depolitization and conservation of the language that is common to communitarianism and conservatism and such modernist political movements as liberalism and socialism. I will look at Pettit's (1990; 1991; 1993) solution to the problem of rule-following and connect it to his political theory. Pettit's solution to the problem of rule-following is very similar to the Kripke's one but has its specifics. He adopts dispositionalist (Johnston 1989; Gendersen 2010), perspective in order to solve the skeptical paradox. In such a way, he restricts both realism and Kripke's purely sociocentric interpretations. Then, Pettit (2001) makes the same move. He is balancing between realism and subjectivism. His approach is based on the idea of fitness to be held responsible that is realistic in the sense that it is an objective property but at the same time it is ethocentric in the sense that the concepts and rules are grasped by the agents in the process of common reasoning and mutual authorization.

The last part is devoted to the discussion of the implications of the connection between Pettit's political philosophy with his ideas on Wittgenstein's later work. I try to show that the relationships between freedom and domination is similar to the ones between rule-following and private language. In order to do that I try to elaborate on Giddens's (1994) and Hayek's (1982) epistemological argument against socialism connecting them to Wittgenstein's private language argument that is mostly ignored by Pettit as an obvious premise for his philosophy. I want to show why an ideal of non-domination is an ideal that the society should reach for developing an epistemological argument against domination. For demonstration of the contradictory nature of domination I want to address Hannah Arendt's (1963; 1968) ideas about totalitarianism as an opposition to Pettit's outline of a free society.

Methodology

Chapter I. Evolution of Wittgenstein's ideas

In such a way, in his early philosophy Wittgenstein sets the subject as the limit of the world and denies the possibility to talk about the reality beyond what can be said. He describes a transcendental and in a way solipsist subject, which is that dominated European post-Cartesian philosophy. In his later views, according to Saul Kripke he deconstructs this system dissolving the subject in language that creates intersubjective space. In this later system, the existence of individual [rational] subject, which uses a private language understandable only for oneself, is impossible because no rules are possible under control of only one subject because since in this case nothing and no one that can point out to the violation of the rules there is no control at all. The subject always exists together with other subjects in the intersubjective world created by language that they use together. If the early Wittgenstein tried to blur the line between the subject and the world, the later Wittgenstein blurs the line between the subjects themselves as they and their worlds are interpenetrating and their worlds are mingling even though in their public representation as the ones who speak and the ones who hear or respond they are definitely different.

Chapter II. Political implications of Wittgenstein's theory

Revolutionary roots of the early Wittgenstein's ideas and conservative readings of the later Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein himself, Bertrand Russel, Rudolf Carnap and other positivists and members of the Vienna Circle were mostly socialists. Wittgenstein did not engage in political philosophy but nevertheless expressed sympathy for the socialists and traveled to the Soviet Union. Russell (2004) has an essay titled “The Case for Socialism”. Martin Puchner (2005) notes that The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in essence and form was a manifesto similar to The Manifesto of the Communist Party. Besides, the Tractatus became a foundation for a collective Manifesto written in 1929 where the members of the Vienna Circle call for solidarity “to all friends of scientific worldview” against “the reactionary forces of metaphysics and theological thinking”. Their attempt was similar to the intentions of scientific socialists to overcome all social problems with the help of science.

This manifesto of the "scientistic world view" has fully absorbed the language of the socialist and the avant-garde manifesto, including its revolutionary rhetoric, its high concentration of exclamation marks, and its use of bold letters and caps that underline central slogans and demands (ibid, 286)

Carnap corresponded with Karl Popper regarding Popper's book The Open Society and its Enemies, where he criticizes Marx and scientific socialism (Notturno 1999). This criticism reflects his ideas about the incompleteness of all knowledge that was opposed to the modernist intentions of Carnap and Wittgenstein to overcome all the problems of philosophy with the help of a logical analysis of the language (Carnap 1932).

Friedrich von Hayek (1982), who helped Popper publish The Open Society, takes a very similar position to the one that was expressed by Popper but he used arguments that are also very similar to the ideas expressed by the latter Wittgenstein who partially renounced his early views. Hayek put forward an epistemological argument against socialist economic planning that was later developed by Antony Giddens (1994). It should be noted, that Hayek comes to his ideas independently of Wittgenstein and derives his ideas predominantly from Kant and Hume (Pleasants 1997) but Giddens developed this argument on the basis of the latter Wittgensteinian philosophy and rule-following paradox. According to this argument, economic planning is impossible because the knowledge of any person or a group of people who could organize such planning is limited. If the planning board alone are to assign values these values will be devoid of any standard of truth. Whatever is going to seem right to the board will be proclaimed right. Consequently, on Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's private-language argument, there could be no objective correctness at all here. According to Hayek and Giddens the knowledge that is necessary for successful coordination of the economy is distributed among the population and rooted in its ability to follow the rules. In this case, he relies on the theory of tacit knowledge of Michael Polanyi (1967). This knowledge is possessed only by the entire population as a whole, but not by separate individuals.

Nigel Pleasants (1997) thinks that Hayek' and Giddens' arguments are deeply conservative even though they pose their views as liberalism. They use Wittgenstein to prove that a particular social structure - the one that already exists, the status quo - is epistemologically superior and for this reason it should not be changed. However, there are more traditional conservative readings of Wittgenstein's theory that rely on the same logic. For example, John Gray (1984) tries to show using again Hayek's ideas that “forms of life” as basic constitutive traditions of social life are simply given to us, and must be accepted by us. Kristуf Nyнri (1982) famous for his attempts to link Wittgenstein with conservatism also tries to undermine his critical potential trying to depict “forms of life” as the ultimate givenness. Conservative thinkers try to connect Wittgenstein's thinking with the political philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (1991) who thought that political governance must be grounded in “practical knowledge” and that conservatism is a “disposition to prefer the familiar to the unknown”. The same way, in their opinion, Wittgenstein tends to describe language as an everyday practice and explain its functioning saying “this is simply what I do” (PI, §217).

Criticism of these approaches

Karl Popper was sometimes called in Cambridge “the official opposition”. He extensively criticized the revolutionary scientism of the Vienna Circle together with Marxist ideas. In The Open Society (2012) does not completely abandon the attempts of scientific rearrangement of the world. He even supports Marx's ethical arguments against capitalism. He only criticizes the path proposed by Marx saying that his historicism leads to mysticism - which is also often ascribed to Wittgenstein (i.e. McGuinness 1966) - and, as a result, to fascism that is based on it (Notturno 1999, 40-42).

Popper did not say that socialism cannot be scientific. He said that no science can be `scientific' in the way Marx thought. Science, on Popper's account, is not a set of a priori certain or even empirically justified true beliefs. It is an everfallible, never-justified, and frequently changing process of conjecture and refutation--a process of proposing hypotheses to solve our problems, testing them against experience, and readjusting the one in light of the other in an effort to make the two of them fit. (Ibid, 48-49)

At the same time, he believes that freedom that liberals value so much cannot be maintained without when there is high inequality. However, inequality cannot be overcome without the preservation of freedom and democracy. It is no accident that, as he believes, Plato, whom he criticizes on a par with Hegel and Marx, comes to the conclusion that the most just social order can be built only by the philosopher king but this philosopher king in his methods is indistinguishable for an outside observer from a tyrant .

Criticizing Hayek and Giddens Nigel Pleasants (1997) notes that in their view of knowledge are more likely to be the skeptics Wittgenstein argues with. They confuse the different meanings of “possession of knowledge” implying by it direct accessibility of experience for individuals. This experience since it is directly accessed cannot be doubted while Wittgenstein's knowledge is dialectically connected with doubt, the ability to describe it to another, and the possibility to be either confirmed or refuted. Wittgenstein's view presupposes that if agents act differently they should at some point face their disagreement and resolve it rationally trough deliberation. Their habits can no way represent the ultimate truth that cannot be contested. In order for their practices to be considered as rules they need to be known and understandable for other agents so they could judge if the rules are followed in a right or wrong way. Without mutual exchange of the information and the process of mutual correction and rationalization, their habits cannot be even counted as rules because they are random.

Similarly, different meanings of “ownership” are confused by free-market proponents criticized by Marx and Engels (1964) when they say that even after the abolition of private property individuals will still own themselves and their private experience. However, both knowledge and property are rooted in social institutions and structures that certify them to other people; they cannot depend on individuals. Private experience is not a matter of public identification and hence not a property. For this reason both private language and “private owning” so to say - in a sense that it is confirmed by only one individual - are impossible: they do not give the possibility of their public identification.

Thus, Giddens and Hayek not only describe an epistemic state of affairs but privilege a certain type of knowledge, namely the most distributed tacit knowledge based on the spontaneous desires and preferences of individuals, which supposedly should be formed in a spontaneous order. However, as Daniel Luban (2019) notes, speaking of a spontaneous order Hayek arbitrarily determines who are the external actors for the economic system and who are the internal ones. A large company can arise in the same way due to self-interested behavior and begin to impose its own rules as a bureaucratic machine, which incidentally also arose as a result of such behavior, competition of self-interested individuals, and spontaneous order. Proponents of the spontaneous order theory say that all plans and reforms have unintended consequences because people will always behave in unimaginable ways, therefore the results of the reforms cannot be predicted. However, they simultaneously state that the results of spontaneous order are predictable. For example, the predictable market arises from spontaneous economic activity. Therefore, Polanyi's argument can be directed back against Giddens and Hayek: it is not that individuals reveal their knowledge through the price mechanism; rather, the price mechanism records responses of individuals, which are largely the product of their social environment. Consequently, since the spontaneous order is organized by the entrepreneurs tacit knowledge it thereby becomes impossible to question their competence or rationality and whatever is going to seem right to the entrepreneur will be right.

Bernard Williams (2019) points out that communitarian political thinkers who oppose liberals relying in the idea of the ration of an individual to the community rather that to the human rights and freedoms use the same logic interpreting Wittgenstein as the conservatives. They reject liberal attempts to find objective political values on the grounds of rational reasoning, pluralism and procedural fairness regarding such values as excessively abstract and questioning commitment to pluralism as the most just social arrangement and a sufficiently binding social force. Just like Kripke, they regard any social arrangements as the result of inherently particular historical and environmental conditions. Instead of universal pluralist values, they promote particularistic approach giving their preference to more or less culturally homogeneous societies formed around shared values.

Although Williams shares communitarian concerns regarding ahistorical and out contextual universalism of liberals he rejects the conclusions made by communitarians. He thinks that they overestimate the differences between different communities. If values and meanings were indeed as context and society dependent as communitarians think the differences between societies would be incomprehensible. In that case, it would be Impossible for modern people to understand Homeric heroes, for example, and any ancient or foreign literature would be of no use for us at all. Nevertheless, we find ourselves capable to relate to these characters and learn some lessons from them.

The case is plurality is a precondition of modern social life. Any society, however homogenous it is has to face alternatives to their ways of life both inside and outside overlapping with other societies and in such a way creating a new dimension of homogeneity and heterogeneity. That is why Williams finds both universality of reason - be it liberal or socialist universality - and particularity of communitarianism inadequate to describe the complicated reality.

Wittgenstein and the critique of liberalism and socialism

The remark about liberal and socialist universalism is important here. Liberalism and socialism can be considered as two modernist “grand projects” or grand narratives as Jean-Franзois Lyotard (2010) would call them. They are both aimed to solve all political problems and disagreements by the means of reason and science - a project that Lyotard is very skeptical of and that he criticizes again using the latter Wittgenstein. As Hekma, Oosterhuis & Steakley (1995) point out they inherit the Enlightenment's distinction between sin and crime, passion and reason, private and public, family and the state but treat differently the contradictions that emerge from the fact that this distinction is an illusion and private is actually political and therefore part of the public. This distinction was essential to liberalism so liberals had to adopt double standards condoning promiscuous behavior of bourgeoisie men with lower class women because their (men's) private life was sacred but at the same time since sexually transmitted diseases were a subject of the public matter controlling sex-life of these women.

Marx and Engels (Marx 1964; Marx and Engels 1968; Engels 1968) criticized the existence of these double standards but never questioned the distinction itself. Instead, they argued that the fall of capitalism would reinforce the family bounding men the same way it bounds women arguing with social utopists such as Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon or Henri Saint-Simon who on the contrary envisioned dissolution of the family and the community of women. As a result, communist governments ended up considering family a public matter and trying to control private life of individuals the same way liberal governments controlled such its manifestations as prostitution and homosexuality.

Liberal and socialist approach to this distinction is illuminating. As it was said earlier, proponents of scientific socialism wanted to use science and reason not only to solve all philosophical problems but wanted to solve all political problems and resolve all disagreements. Liberal thinkers like John Rawls (1971), Isaiah Berlin (1969) or Jьrgen Habermas (1984; 1989) want, on the contrary, to retain the sphere where disagreement and deflection are possible. Just as dispositionalists want to find objective criterions for normal subjects and circumstances that would ensure that the dispositions of the subjects' interpretation of the rules provoked by interactions with objects to be correct, liberals want to find objective criterions for delineation of such a sphere, where the rules of nature would be fallible and disagreement would be possible.

However, in this goal they actually subvert the meaning of the Political. The very fact of final and rational delineation destroys it. As Chantal Mouffe (2000) points out both Rawls and Habermas try to avoid competition, agonism and disagreement that is in the basis of democracy and politics. Instead, they both reserve the space for pluralism outside political process: Rawls positions it in the private sphere that is opposed to the public sphere; Habermas does that with the ethical sphere that is opposed to morals. In order for their political projects to be functional, all individuals should be connected by rational consensus that excludes the possibility of competition and agonism. In these systems, politics should be protected against the consequences of pluralism. Not denying the necessity to restrict political pluralism in order to protect democracy from non-democratic forms of politics that drives Rawls's and Habermas's desire to restrict disagreement to the spheres of private or ethical because they confuse agonism with antagonism Mouffe suggests that we should just acknowledge the political nature of such exclusion and not try to preset it as objective and rational criterion especially since politics in her opinion is driven not by reason but by passion. Mouffe, referencing Oakeshott and his interpretation of Wittgenstein, notices that rationality is not enough for establishment of political order and political community. Any political order should be grounded in practices corresponding to this order because it is not enough just to agree with it but it is essential that the citizens constantly confirm their devotion and obligations to this order before each other. This order cannot be purely theoretical; it should be a form of life.

Beyond this criticism towards a positive political theory based on Wittgenstein

To sum it up, early Wittgenstein and his Cambridge colleagues tried to create a philosophy that would change the world eliminating all its flaws with the help of reason and science. This approach proved unattainable because any knowledge is limited and there cannot be any final solution or absolute knowledge. Consequently, there cannot be a political solution that would satisfy everyone and get rid of any disagreement.

Wittgenstein had to partially renounce the universalism of his early views and move to a philosophy that concentrates on local language arrangements, language games that work only in particular situations and particular communities of language users in order to account for all the difference of the real linguistic practices. This move was often interpreted by the conservatives not only for the criticism of any universalism but also for the support of the status quo as epistemologically superior.

However, some critics such as Bernard Williams and Chantal Mouffe note that this view requires universalism no less than Wittgenstein's early philosophy at least at the level of the community that holds on to its practices. They point out that pluralism is a precondition of any political life and any philosophy and Wittgenstein knew it. On this premise Williams criticizes both the early Wittgenstein views and the conservative interpretations of his later philosophy but he does not propose any positive philosophy. Mouffe suggests that pluralism means eternal struggle for hegemony between communities, which is only an extension of conservative interpretations.

Philip Pettit offers a model of politics and ontology based on his own development of Wittgenstein's ideas that presupposes disagreement, fallibility and constant reconsideration due to new information and possible disagreements between the agents. Unlike conservatives and communitarians who are prone to stick to the already existing course of things because they thing that language and politics as a form of life are a given he remains devoted to rationality and change. The main driver of this change is pluralism that inevitably leads to discrepancies in responses and the main solution to the problem of pluralism is rational negotiation that determines, which conditions the responses of the agents are favorable and which are not. In the next chapter, I am going to get back to the rule-following paradox in order to show how Pettit solves it and how his solution is implemented in his political philosophy.