Jônadas Techio

The Threat of Solipsism

Berlin Studies
in Knowledge Research

Edited by
Günter Abel and James Conant

Volume 16
Jônadas Techio

The Threat
of Solipsism

Wittgenstein and Cavell on Meaning,

Skepticism, and Finitude
Series Editors
Prof. Dr. Günter Abel
Technische Universität Berlin
Institut für Philosophie
Straße des 17. Juni 135
10623 Berlin
Germany
e-mail: abel@tu-berlin.de

Prof. Dr. James Conant

The University of Chicago
Dept. of Philosophy
1115 E. 58th Street
Chicago IL 60637
USA
e-mail: jconant@uchicago.edu

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For Adenir, Elisa, and Karina
I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

T. S. Eliot
(The Waste Land, sec. III: “The Fire Sermon”)
Acknowledgments
Several people have read and commented on this book, or parts of it, at different
stages of its development. My greatest debts are to my friend, colleague and for-
mer supervisor Paulo Faria, both for his helpful comments and suggestions made
on successive drafts and for his continuous incentive and support. I also owe
many important insights, both exegetical and philosophical, to Jim Conant,
with whom I had the opportunity to discuss much of the material comprising
this book on a number of occasions. Eric Ritter read a previous version of the
whole manuscript and made important philosophical suggestions, besides help-
ing me with some grammatical infelicities. Flavio Williges read and made a num-
ber of helpful comments to an initial version of the book’s Introduction and to
chapter 7. Many other colleagues, students and friends contributed, both in writ-
ten and in oral form, to the development of the reflections leading to particular
chapters, and I am afraid I will not be able to recall all of their names at this
point. So I ask the following few to stand as representatives of that larger set:
Alexandre Noronha Machado, André Klaudat, André Porto, Avner Baz, Bento
Prado Neto, Eduardo Vicentini de Medeiros, Erin Seeba, Eros Moreira Carvalho,
Fernando Carlucci, Gilad Nir, Gordon Bearn, Hannes Worthmann, James South,
João Carlos Brum Torres, João Vergílio Cutter, Jolley Dean Kelley, Lizzie Finne-
gan, Marcelo Carvalho, Martin Shuster, Mauro Engelmann, Nykolas Correia
Motta, Plínio Junqueira Smith, Priscilla Tesch Spinelli, Rafael Vogelmann, Rodri-
go De Ulhôa Canto Reis, Stephen Mulhall, Steven Affeldt, Victor J. Krebs, Waldo-
miro Silva Filho, Wes Atkinson, and William Day.
The research leading to this book was funded by the following sponsoring
agencies and programs: CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Ed-
ucation Personnel, Brazil) via Visiting Scholar Program n. 88881.171587/2018 – 01
and via Institutional Program for Internationalization n. 23038.016333/2017– 85;
CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, Brazil)
via Research Productivity Grant n. 303905/2017– 4; and The Fulbright Founda-
tion (in partnership with CAPES) via the CAPES/Fulbright Visiting Scholar Pro-
gram n. 1043/41– 3. I would like to thank those agencies, as well as the staff
and collaborators from the Universities of Chicago and Leipzig for hosting me
during two sabbatical leaves, in 2014 and 2018 – 2019. Finally, I would like to
thank all of my colleagues from the Philosophy Department at the Federal Uni-
versity of Rio Grande do Sul for authorizing and supporting those leaves.
Previous versions of the following chapters appeared in print before, and I
would like to thank the Editors of their original publications for allowing me
to revise and update them for the present book: chapter 1 appeared in Philosoph-

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110702859-001
X Acknowledgments

ical Topics 42 (2014); chapter 2 appeared in Manuscrito 35/2 (2012); chapter 3 ap-
peared in DoisPontos 9/2 (2012); chapter 4 appeared in Wittgenstein-Studien 11/1
(2020); chapter 5 appeared in Conversations 1/1 (2013); chapter 6 appeared in
Sképsis 14/1 (2016); chapter 7 appeared in Ethic@ 15/2 (2016).

Porto Alegre, June 2020

Jônadas Techio
Contents
Abbreviations XIII

Introduction 1

 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-

Philosophicus 18
. Introduction 18
. The limits of sense: a first pass 20
. The limits of (my) language and the limits of (my) world: the
solipsistic move 27
. The “truth in solipsism”: a first pass 33
. “I am my world”: solipsism coincides with “pure realism” 37
. Throwing the ladder away: a first attempt 40
. Back to the ladder: problematizing the solipsistic move 42
. Throwing the “picture theory of meaning” away 44
. The “truth in solipsism”: a second pass 50
. Throwing the ladder away: a second attempt 54
. Concluding methodological remarks: distinguishing cure and
prevention 58

 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks 61

. Introduction 61
. “The world as idea”: solipsism and the limits of
experience 72
. Time, memory, and sublimation 81
. Solipsism of the present moment 90

 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue
Book 94
. Introduction 94
. “I can’t feel his pain”: a first route to solipsism 96
. When language goes on holiday: some further routes to
solipsism 104
. “‘I’ does not refer”: the peculiar grammar of the first person
pronoun 107
. Teaching differences 117
XII Contents

 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations: Cavell and

Kripke on skepticism about meaning 119
. Introduction 119
. Kripke’s Wittgenstein on rules and private language 122
. Kripke’s Wittgenstein vs. Cavell’s Wittgenstein on rules and
private language 126
. Kripke’s Wittgenstein vs. Cavell’s Wittgenstein on inheriting
language: two readings of the “scene of instruction” 134
. Skepticism and our aspiration for the sublime 137
. Meaning and its risks 140

 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other

minds 143
. Introduction 143
. The problem of other minds in PI I 145
. Outward criteria, and their limits 148
. Aspect perception and the problem of other minds 152
. Soul-blindness (or: “living our skepticism”) 157

 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell 163

. Introduction 163
. Cavell and Stroud on skepticism and meaning 166
. Cavell and Stroud on the truth in skepticism 178
. Coda 185

 Skepticism, perfectionism, and the limits of morality 187

. Introduction 187
. What is the point of a moral argument? 188
. Perfectionism and the limits of morality 195
. Final remarks 200

References 202

Index of subjects 208

Index of names 210

Abbreviations

BB Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1958): The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Blackwell.
BT Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2005): The Big Typescript: TS 213 (German-English Scholar’s Edi-
tion). C. Grant Luckhardt/Maximilian Aue (eds.). Oxford: Blackwell.
CHU Cavell, Stanley (1990): Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of
Emersonian Perfectionism. Oxford and London: The University of Chicago Press.
CR Cavell, Stanley (1979): The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Trag-
edy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
CW Cavell, Stanley (2004): Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral
Life. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
IQO Cavell, Stanley (1994): In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
K Kripke, Saul (1982): Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposi-
tion. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
MWM Cavell, Stanley (1976): Must We Mean What We Say?. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
NAT Cavell, Stanley (1996): “Notes and Afterthoughts on the Opening of Wittgenstein’s Inves-
tigations”. In: Hans D. Sluga/David G. Stern (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Witt-
genstein. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 261 – 295.
NB Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1984): Notebooks 1914 – 1916, 2nd ed. G. E. M. Anscombe/G. H.
von Wright (eds.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
OC Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1969): On Certainty. G. E. M. Anscombe/G. H. von Wright (eds.).
Oxford: Blackwell.
PDAT Cavell, Stanley (2005): Philosophy The Day After Tomorrow. Cambridge, MA and London:
Harvard University Press.
PI Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2009): Philosophical Investigations, 4th ed., translated by G. E. M.
Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Oxford: Blackwell.
PO Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1993): Philosophical Occasions, 1912 – 1951. James Carl Klagge/
Alfred Nordmann (eds.). Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett.
PR Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1975): Philosophical Remarks. Rush Rhees (ed.). Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
RPP I Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1980): Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 1. G. E. M.
Anscombe/G. H. von Wright (eds.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
RPP II Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1980): Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 2. C. G.
Luckhardt/M. Aue (eds.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
SRLF Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1993): “Some Remarks on Logical Form”. In: PO, pp. 28 – 35.
TLP Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1974): Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
WE Cavell, Stanley (2006): “The Wittgensteinian Event” In: Alice Crary/Sanford Shieh (eds.),
Reading Cavell. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 8 – 25.
WLC Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2001): Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1932 – 1935. From the
notes of Alice Ambrose/Margaret Macdonald. Alice Ambrose (ed.). New York: Prome-
theus.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110702859-002
XIV Abbreviations

WWK Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1979): Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations
Recorded by Friedrich Waismann. Brian McGuinness (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Z Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1967): Zettel. G. E. M. Anscombe/G. H. von Wright (eds.). Oxford:
Basil Blackwell.
Introduction
Two ways, in general, are open for an existing individual: Either he can do his utmost to
forget that he is an existing individual, by which he becomes a comic figure, since existence
has the remarkable trait of compelling an existing individual to exist whether he will it or
not […] Or he can concentrate his entire energy upon the fact that he is an existing individ-
ual. It is from this side, in the first instance, that objection must be made to modern phi-
losophy; not that it has a mistaken presupposition, occasioned by its having forgotten, in a
sort of world-historical absent-mindedness, what it means to be a human being. Not in-
deed, what it means to be a human being in general; for this is the sort of thing that
one might even induce a speculative philosopher to agree to; but what it means that you
and I and he are human beings, each one for himself.

(Søren Kierkegaard¹)

Working in philosophy […] is really more a working on oneself. On one’s own interpretation.
On one’s way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them).

(Ludwig Wittgenstein²)

The requirement of purity imposed by philosophy now looks like a wish to leave me out, I
mean each of us, the self, with its arbitrary needs and unruly desires.

(Stanley Cavell³)

I remain too impressed with Freud’s vision of the human animal’s compromise with exis-
tence ― the defense or deflection of our ego in knowledge of ourselves from what there is to
know about ourselves ― to suppose that a human life can get itself without residue into the
clear.

(Stanley Cavell⁴)

Conceptions of philosophy are inextricably tied to conceptions of what it means

to be human. Thus, to take two ends of a spectrum, an essentialist emphasis on
abstract and universal human capacities – such as, say, rationality and thinking
– dovetails with a conception of philosophy as an impersonal pursuit of general
truths, while a non-essentialist (or even an anti-essentialist) emphasis on con-
crete and singular circumstances of human existence fits better with a concep-
tion of philosophy as a practical and personal response to the embodied
needs of individuals – including desires, cravings, temptations, expectations,
aversions, fears, fixations, regrets, anxieties, and numerous other affective and
unruly dispositions related to our finite condition. Philosophers in the Western

 Kierkegaard 1968, 109.

 CV 16.
 CHU 77.
 Cavell et al. 2008, 121.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110702859-003
2 Introduction

tradition have generally gravitated toward the first of these two conceptions. No-
table exceptions to this rule include the authors quoted above, who insist that a
pervasive self-deception may be involved in our tradition, hence that a work of
self-criticism is necessary in order to move forward, toward a deeper and more
realistic understanding of both philosophy and of what it means to be human.
The essays that comprise this book try to unearth some of the causes of this
self-deception, as well as to exemplify an alternative philosophical approach
which is willing to acknowledge human finitude while being equally alert to
the human tendency to deflect or repress that knowledge about itself. These
goals are pursued mainly by means of close readings of representative writings
by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell dealing with a kernel of philosophi-
cal problems conventionally subsumed under the headings of solipsism and/or
skepticism. What unifies these readings is a controversial claim – controversial
both in the sense that it runs against the grain of traditional philosophical con-
struals of those positions and against prevalent interpretations of the texts under
scrutiny – namely that in order to achieve a more adequate understanding of sol-
ipsism and skepticism one must take into account a set of underlying existential
difficulties which are in turn related to disappointments with our finite condi-
tion.
Commencing with solipsism, the following definition may be taken as repre-
sentative of how philosophers in our tradition tend to understand it: “Solipsism
is the doctrine according to which nothing exists save myself and mental states
of myself.”⁵ ― That sounds straightforward enough, at least prima facie and for
someone already used to think of philosophical doctrines in such general terms;
yet, come to think of it, can we really take the content of this definition at face
value? After all who, except perhaps a madman, could possibly subscribe to
such a doctrine? And if there are no real philosophers – no concrete human be-

 Hacker 1986, 216. A more elaborate definition to the same effect is given by Stephen P. Thorn-
ton in the entry “Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds”, in the Internet Encyclopedia of Phi-
losophy: “Solipsism is sometimes expressed as the view that ‘I am the only mind which exists’,
or ‘My mental states are the only mental states.’ However, the sole survivor of a nuclear holo-
caust might truly come to believe in either of these propositions without thereby being a solip-
sist. Solipsism is therefore more properly regarded as the doctrine that, in principle, ‘existence’
means for me my existence and that of my mental states. […] For the solipsist, it is not merely the
case that he believes that his thoughts, experiences, and emotions are, as a matter of contingent
fact, the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions. Rather, the solipsist can attach no meaning
to the supposition that there could be thoughts, experiences, and emotions other than his own.
In short, the true solipsist understands the word ‘pain’, for example, to mean ‘my pain.’ He can-
not accordingly conceive how this word is to be applied in any sense other than this exclusively
egocentric one.” (Thornton 2020, §1)
 Introduction 3

ings – willing to support it,⁶ then what is the point of claiming that solipsism is a
philosophical doctrine to begin with?
Raising these questions should help us get a better grip on the differences
between the two conceptions of philosophy distinguished in the opening para-
graph. For suppose, on the one hand, that philosophy is essentially a disinterest-
ed argumentative activity aiming at obtaining general truths by means of a dia-
lectical contest of theses and counter-theses; given that aim, it suffices for
something to count as a philosophical doctrine that it can be characterized by
some clear and distinct thesis, or a set of them, regardless of their being held
by any real human being. And solipsism, as just characterized, entirely satisfies
that requirement, in that it can be easily distinguished from and dialectically
contrasted with a series of other philosophical doctrines such as realism, anti-re-
alism, idealism, skepticism, and so on. On the other hand, if philosophy is to be
ultimately understood as an expression of existential difficulties affecting indi-
viduals,⁷ it would be crucial to point out that there are plenty of real philoso-
phers willing to support versions of each of the latter doctrines, with the notable
exception of solipsism. Why is that so? Is it because solipsism is too far removed

 Of course many philosophical attempts to elucidate the nature of our experience have been
accused of, at the very least, tending to conclusions which are very reminiscent of the solipsistic
doctrine as defined above. This is particularly true of the modern epistemological tradition – re-
call how much discussion has been (and continues to be) generated by the reception of, say,
Descartes’s polemical proof of the existence of an external world in the Meditations, or Locke’s
harsh appeal to the notion of a material substance to the same effect in his Essay Concerning
Human Understanding. In fact, it was partially because of the problems perceived in those earlier
views that Berkeley ended up claiming that all we can know to exist – besides ourselves qua
percipient beings and God qua efficient cause of our perception – are the very ideas immediately
given to our perception. A similar (epistemologically restrictive) position was held by Hume,
whose theory of the “bundle of perceptions” continued to exert influence on those empiricist
positions entangled with sense-data, qualia, and other similar notions connected with “indirect
realisms” of many sorts. Moreover, much of the discussions concerning German Idealism cen-
tered precisely on the question of whether Kant could be freed of the accusation of solipsism
(a charge which was voiced by Jacobi and other critics only a few months after the publication
of Kant’s first Critique). Notwithstanding these critical reactions throughout the history of philos-
ophy, the fact remains that virtually no philosopher seemed willing to really draw what their crit-
ics describe as the inevitable solipsistic consequences of their initial premises.
 To be clear, thinking of individuals is not supposed to be in conflict with thinking of commun-
ities – on the contrary, as I will argue in the chapters to follow, one important lesson that can be
obtained from investigating the threat of solipsism along the lines I am proposing has to do pre-
cisely with the centrality (but also with the difficulties involved in) the mutually constitutive re-
lationship between the self and other selves. That said, the main reason for keeping the empha-
sis on the individual is precisely to try to avoid the temptation to think of what it means to be
human in the abstract, as opposed to in concrete.
4 Introduction

from our pre-philosophical intuitions even to be considered as a serious candi-

date? But then again, intuitiveness alone will not do, since many philosophers
are rather proud to defend many sorts of admittedly counter-intuitive views
from time to time. Then why has solipsism this peculiar fate of serving as a
mere philosophical scarecrow? What is so special, or so disturbing, about solip-
sism that makes it be seen as at best a temptation, a disease from whose infec-
tion philosophers try, more or less consciously, to escape?
In order to start answering these questions, as a kind of warming exercise,
let us take some further steps into the second route described above, and sup-
pose that traditional philosophical problems and doctrines may be intellectual-
ized versions of perplexities and difficulties related to the human needs of con-
crete individuals. With that supposition in place, we may then ask what kinds of
perplexities and difficulties could be specifically linked to the solipsistic doctrine
as previously defined. Here is a first stab at providing what must remain an es-
sentially open-ended list of facts related to our finite condition – as well as the
temptations and disappointments that they may give rise to – which I will try to
connect more explicitly with solipsism in what follows:
1. Our perception of the objects surrounding us is, at any particular moment,
limited, partial, situated and perspectival.⁸ Reflection upon this fact may
sometimes lead us to feel that there is something we cannot do in perception
– namely, we cannot see the whole of particular objects well in front of us,
even in optimal perceptual conditions. In some moods, this realization will
be disappointing – the conditions of human perception will be felt as limi-
tations, as obstacles to achieving a truly objective view of the world.
2. Our actions take place in time, and the passage of time is inexorable – the
present keeps becoming past and the future keeps becoming present. This
means that once performed, an action (or lack thereof) cannot be undone
or modified, and its consequences, intended or unintended, are out of our
control. In some moods this realization may make us feel either powerless
or overwhelmed – since we cannot change the past or foresee the future,
having to choose a course of action under these conditions means that we
must be able to cope with the always imminent onset of anxiety and regret,

 The following passage from Strawson’s Individuals is exemplary in its articulation of this
point: “Our methods, or criteria, of reidentification must allow for such facts as these: that
the field of our observation is limited; that we go to sleep; that we move. That is to say, they
must allow for the facts that we cannot at any moment observe the whole of the spatial frame-
work we use, that there is no part of it that we can observe continuously, and that we ourselves
do not occupy a fixed position within it.” (Strawson 1959, 32)
 Introduction 5

and that may in turn result in a view of human freedom as either unachiev-
able or inescapable.
3. People often dissimulate their feelings and their thoughts, or they may sim-
ply find themselves involuntarily inexpressive; now, since we cannot point to
people’s feelings and thoughts as we can point to their bodily behavior, we
may well be tempted to conclude (again, in some specific moods and cir-
cumstances) that their body is some kind of obstacle or veil concealing
their real selves – say their souls or their minds – from us.
4. Sometimes it is hard to express our own feelings and thoughts accurately, or
what we express may go beyond our control; thus we may find ourselves
feeling either unable to make our own real selves – our souls or our
minds – known to others, or unable to control that knowledge; in either
case our very identity or self-conception might be at stake.
5. We have a limited amount of time allotted to spend on this planet; we are
also fragile creatures continuously exposed to all sorts of physical injuries
and threats, and as we age that fragility becomes more accentuated, as
does our dependence on others. Given that realization, mortality itself
may sometimes feel like a limitation, something that prevents us from ach-
ieving our full potential.
6. For many of us in the West God is indeed dead, or at the very least mori-
bund. Once this (presumptive) absolute foundation is shaken we are faced
with the task of trying to cope with this loss, finding alternative – and hope-
fully stable and shared – grounds for meaning and value; in the absence of
such grounds we may feel lost or disoriented or simply not at home in our
disenchanted, secularized world.

The facts listed above are all related to the condition of a being who, at least in
some moods and circumstances, might experience its limits as limitations, as ob-
stacles preventing a fuller existence – one with less doubts, less uncertainty, less
impotence, less isolation, less dependence and less disorientation. Finitude thus
sometimes becomes, understandably, disappointing. To be in this condition
means to be constantly exposed to what I will call the threat of solipsism: the
possibility of finding oneself secluded, estranged from the world, from others,
and even from oneself. The wish to escape this condition is at least in part a
wish not to bear the burden of having to constantly negotiate and nurture the
fragile connections with the world and others which, as things go, are our
only available options to try to overcome our (logical, metaphysical and/or epis-
temological) loneliness, achieving meaning and community.
Keeping this point in mind, I want to suggest two ways of reinterpreting the
doctrine of solipsism so as to disclose its connection to the sorts of disappoint-
6 Introduction

ment with finitude lurking in the facts listed above. On the first reinterpretation,
solipsism itself may be seen as an intellectualized version of loneliness, a dis-
placed response to the realization that one is constantly exposed to find oneself
isolated from the world and from others. In this case, rather than facing that risk
and accepting the burdens it brings, one might instead find some solace in a log-
ical or metaphysical story according to which the very idea of there being any-
thing outside or beyond one’s own private experiences is simply nonsensical.
On the second reinterpretation, solipsism may be seen as an intellectualized at-
tempt at avoiding a confrontation with the possibility of loneliness that actually
results in a repression of it, since it replaces for it a fantasy in which all reality
ends up coordinated with the self, as if with no rest, so that the subject herself
would, in a sense, disappear, thus allowing solipsism to coincide with the purest
and more direct form of realism.⁹
One may think of these two reinterpretations, respectively, as the half-empty
and half-full glasses of solipsism. Both are intellectualized responses to a set of
real (and, at least in some moods, really threatening) difficulties faced by finite
beings like us, endowed with such capacities and burdens as we have of taking
up our limited and conditioned experiences of the world and of others and trying
to make sense of them. And since those difficulties are inextricable from the
human condition, solipsism, on both interpretations, may also be thought of
as a particularly radical effort at reckoning with finitude which nonetheless
falls short of the mark and ends up deflecting or repressing the very existential
realization which is at its root. As such, solipsism does differ from other, less
radical philosophical doctrines,¹⁰ and therefore offers a more formidable case-
study for someone interested in thinking some philosophical (self-)images
through in order to achieve a more resolute acknowledgment and acceptance
of finitude.
This brings me back to the two philosophers whose names are cited in the
title of this book: Wittgenstein and Cavell. As we will see, both have paid a re-
markable amount of attention to the issues associated with the threat of solip-
sism in their respective attempts at elucidating what it means to be human.
Moreover, they also share in common a methodological concern with disclosing
the ultimate sources and consequences of the philosophical problems and posi-

 I am in this paragraph echoing passages from Wittgenstein (especially in section 5.6 of the
Tractatus) to which I will return at length later, beginning with chapter 1.
 An implication which I explore in the chapters to follow is that the remaining metaphysical
positions mentioned above – i.e., realism, anti-realism, idealism and skepticism, in their multi-
ple manifestations – might also be seen as deflections from this realization which simply do not
take the consequences of their assumptions to their limit, as solipsism does.
 Introduction 7

tions with which they engage, centrally among which are the problems related to
the conditions of possibility of meaning – the meaning of our words, of our behav-
ior and of our actions, and ultimately of our lives and of our worlds;¹¹ hence their
concern with the various skeptical challenges raised against the possibility of
meaning in each of those spheres, as well as their commitment to indicate, in
each case, how those challenges may be connected with temptations, disap-
pointments and perplexities which can become vivid for finite beings like us
at any time.
Somewhat uncommonly for a member of the analytical tradition, Wittgen-
stein was strongly committed to the methodological requirement just presented,
and took great pains to uncover the ultimate sources of the dissatisfaction lying
at the basis of the solipsistic temptation. As Peter Hacker has pointed out, the
solipsist is nothing less than “the archetypal fly in the original flybottle” from
which Wittgenstein wanted to show a “way out” with his philosophy,¹² and “puz-
zles surrounding solipsism […] became for Wittgenstein the paradigm of the dis-
eases of the intellect to which philosophers are so prone”.¹³ I think we must
agree with that assessment. But this initial agreement hides a deeper disagree-
ment,¹⁴ which gets perspicuously expressed in the conflicting answers we will
consider vis-à-vis the following pair of questions: (i) How exactly is the way
out of solipsism (hence of the other confusions for which solipsism serves as
a paradigm) supposed to be exhibited in Wittgenstein’s writings? And (since
there seems to be an issue about the very continuity of those writings), (ii)
how are we to understand the historical development of Wittgenstein’s views
about solipsism?

 The following passage from Cavell summarizes beautifully the connection between the
meaning of our words and the meaning of our worlds: “A word has meaning against the context
of a sentence. A sentence has meaning against the context of a language. A language has mean-
ing against the context of a form of life. A form of life has meaning against the context of a
world. A world has meaning against the context of a word.” (Cavell 1972, 112).
 See Hacker 1986, 215. (The passage alluded to by Hacker is PI §309.)
 Hacker 1986, 215.
 The main reason for contrasting my own reading with Hacker’s is that I take the latter as
representative of a general approach to Wittgenstein’s philosophy which, for historical reasons,
deserves the title “orthodox”. As is well known, that reading has been strongly criticized in at
least one front in the last few decades by the so-called “resolute readers” of the Tractatus –
among whom notoriously figure James Conant and Cora Diamond (see esp. Conant 1989,
1990, 1993, 2000a and 2002, Diamond 1995 and 2000, and Conant/Diamond 2004). Although
my own approach is surely more aligned to the resolute reading I do not think it is necessary
to assume its truth in order for my argument to be put forward, but I mention that dispute
here in order to indicate that it has been in the background of my own reflections.
8 Introduction

Starting with (ii), I believe Hacker’s answer to that question can be summar-
ized as follows: (a) for the “young Wittgenstein” (by which Hacker means, basi-
cally, the author of the Notebooks and the Tractatus), “there is a sense in which
solipsism is true”;¹⁵ (b) because he held solipsism to be, in some sense, true, we
should conclude that “[young] Wittgenstein himself was not only tempted, but
succumbed” to it;¹⁶ (c) the particular sort of solipsism to which he would have
succumbed is one of Schopenhauerian lineage, which Hacker dubs “Transcen-
dental Solipsism”.¹⁷ (d) Against that young, sympathetic attitude toward solip-
sism, the “later Wittgenstein” (i.e., the one who wrote during the 1930s, and
ended up producing the Investigations) would have changed his mind radically,
offering what Hacker describes as a “detailed refutation of solipsism”, which was
eventually “incorporated, in low key, in the Investigations”.¹⁸ (I emphasize that
“refutation” is Hacker’s preferred term of criticism to describe the way out of sol-
ipsism intended by Wittgenstein in his mature phase because this offers an im-
portant clue to understanding Hacker’s own view concerning question (i) above;
more on this point in a moment.) (e) That refutation, in turn, has its own histor-
ical development, which Hacker summarizes in the following passage:

[Wittgenstein’s] refutation [of solipsism] comes in three phases. The first stage is to be
found in the writings and reports of the transitional period from 1929 to the academic
year 1932/3. The Philosophical Remarks is particularly important here, but the notes taken
by Waismann and Moore are also significant. The second and most revealing phase of
his concern with uncovering the errors of solipsism (in particular) and idealism (in general)
is between 1933 and 1936. The Blue Book and “Notes for Lectures” contain Wittgenstein’s
most important arguments in refutation of solipsism. The third and final phase finds its
full expression in the Investigations, with some additional material in Zettel. Here the direct
and overt interest in solipsism is diminished, and its place taken by the fully developed ar-
gument against the possibility of a private language, a brief sketch of which had already
appeared in the “Notes for Lectures”. Although solipsism is only indirectly alluded to,
most of the arguments developed in the second phase reappear in highly condensed
form in the Investigations and Zettel. (Hacker 1986, 215–216)

There is, in fact, much to be learned from the summary presented above. Partic-
ularly notable is the way Hacker connects Wittgenstein’s early engagement with
solipsism to the celebrated argument concerning the possibility of a private lan-
guage in the Investigations. Again, I agree completely on the importance of draw-
ing that connection, only I want to make it even tighter: in my view, to the extent

 Hacker 1986, 81.

 Hacker 1986, 104.
 Hacker 1986, 99.
 Hacker 1986, 81–82.
 Introduction 9

in which there is some truth in solipsism for the young Wittgenstein, the same
holds of later Wittgenstein’s treatment of privacy; by the same token, I cannot
accept that the way out of solipsism is correctly construed as a matter of refuting
that position any more than I can accept that later Wittgenstein provides a proof
of the impossibility of a private language (i.e., a refutation of it). This is not to say
that there are no differences between the accounts of young and later Wittgen-
stein, but I think the most illuminating way to understand those differences is
by looking at them against the background of their shared (if evolving) methodo-
logical assumptions.
Providing that background will be one of the main tasks of chapters 1 to 5.
As we will see in those chapters, contrary to the rather dismissive attitude toward
such topics as solipsism or privacy commonly adopted by analytic philosophers,
Wittgenstein tried to make the pains of the solipsist/private linguist his own, sys-
tematically engaging in his reflections in an attempt to acknowledge and to give
full voice to these philosophical temptations. In this sense it is not exactly sur-
prising that his attitude could be mistaken for a symptom of his own “succumb-
ing” to those temptations. But I will argue that the truth here is more complicat-
ed, in that for (young and later) Wittgenstein there is no effective treatment of
“the diseases of the intellect to which philosophers are so prone”¹⁹ except immu-
nization by means of one’s own defenses – something which is brought about
only by being first infected oneself. But notice that “effective treatment” is not
to be taken as equivalent to something like “final cure”; this is just to point
out that one of the things we have yet to understand is what exactly one should
expect from the kind of “therapy” that Wittgenstein purports to offer in his writ-
ings. And if solipsism can be seen as not only a paradigm, but also as one of the
most intense of those diseases – an outburst or paroxysm of philosophical anxi-
eties which find more subdued expressions in other problems and positions –
then this could perhaps account for the rather careful, aseptic handling which
characterizes the standard attitude towards it found among analytic philoso-
phers, few of whom are willing to strictly follow through the implications of
their own initial assumptions.
As I read Wittgenstein,²⁰ his is a text where solipsism and privacy, among so
many instances of our all-too-human attempts to evade the “problems of life”,²¹

 Hacker 1986, 215.

 And that applies particularly, though in no way exclusively, to the writings which constitute
the main objects of analysis in the following chapters, namely the Tractatus Logico-Philosophi-
cus (chapter 1), the Philosophical Remarks (chapter 2), The Blue Book (chapter 3), and the Phil-
osophical Investigations (chapters 4 and 5).
 See TLP 5.62.
10 Introduction

are neither exactly refuted nor exactly defended; rather, they are enacted and
thought through, and are supposed to be re-enacted and re-thought through by
the reader, with the ultimate end of being cured by her own means. This, as
we will see, requires a peculiar effort of self-criticism and self-discovery, leading
to the realization that, contrary to what one might be initially tempted to sup-
pose, one’s attempts at formulating those positions end up producing one of
two equally unsatisfying results, namely apparently substantial yet ultimately
pointless statements or meaningful yet trivial ones. And this realization, in
turn, will hopefully enable one to see that resorting to such positions purporting
to state “the essence of reality” may be a way of deflecting the existential diffi-
culties posed by (our responses to) that reality. But in order for that self-diagno-
sis and the corresponding self-therapy to be successful, one needs to be ready to
counteract old philosophical habits, which might be deeply rooted; faced with
that challenge, it is all but impossible not to fall back and take the grammatical
reminders presented by Wittgenstein as further paths, or excuses, for deflection,
thereby reinforcing the repression of the real issues at stake. As we will see, it is
ultimately up to each of us to find a resolution to this situation – to take Wittgen-
stein’s reminders as laying down the (logico-grammatical) Law, or as mere rungs
in so many ladders to be thrown away once the therapeutic progress is over.
The (admittedly shocking) claim made above about there being some truth
in solipsism/privacy has a Cavellian inspiration, which will be brought to the
fore especially in chapters 4 to 7. As it happens, Cavell has notoriously claimed
that there is some truth in skepticism,²² in that one is often not exactly unjusti-
fied in becoming disappointed with (what later Wittgenstein calls) criteria since
these actually cannot ensure, as it were impersonally, that agreement and hence
meaning will be forthcoming. Given that view on the reach of our criteria, Cavell
is constantly driven to emphasize that Wittgenstein does not exactly want to
deny the possibility of a private language;²³ rather, what he wants to show is
that privacy is a standing human possibility, in that our criteria, being grounded
in our human interests and needs (“all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls
‘forms of life’”; MWM 5), and in our sharing of a common “natural history”²⁴
must be always open to the kind of repudiation indulged in by the skeptic.
The implication is that, contrary to what more than a few Wittgensteinian philos-
ophers have argued, recounting our criteria simply cannot be a way to refute

 See, e.g., MWM 258 and CR 241 and 448, just to indicate the main contexts where this idea is
put forward.
 See, e.g., CR 329 and 344.
 See PI §415.
 Introduction 11

skepticism; in fact, it can actually reinforce it by showing how fragile and all-too-
human our grounds for agreement and meaning really are.
This, as we will see, does not mean that privacy is simply insurmountable or
that skepticism should be simply accepted: the skeptic may well be right in
pointing out (as against a dogmatic adversary²⁵) that achievements such as giv-
ing meaning to our words, being connected with the external world or with other
minds cannot be secured impersonally, once and for all, without exposing us to
the burdens of making the right connections, finding shared grounds and be-
coming mutually attuned – or failing in doing so. But the skeptic would be as
mistaken as a dogmatic adversary if she were to interpret the result of her argu-
ments as a demonstration that meaning, the external world or other minds might
well not be real. All that skepticism actually shows is that these are constant
tasks for which each of us has to take responsibility. Put differently, the meaning
of our words, the givenness of the world and the humanity of others are not func-
tions of our (passively) coming to know them, but rather of our (active) engage-
ment in finding and maintaining attunement, in accepting and acknowledging the
claims made upon us by the world and by others. Thus understood, skepticism
turns out to be a constant and real possibility, in that it is always possible to find
oneself isolated, unable or unwilling to share the judgments made by one’s (erst-
while) community or to accept and acknowledge the claims made by the world
and by others. Yet, as we will see with the help of Cavell and Cavell’s Wittgen-
stein, the true costs involved in these skeptical responses are not simply episte-
mic and theoretical, but rather practical or existential – whatever may be the
practical or existential costs of denying or repressing our participation in a com-
munity, our acceptance of the world and our acknowledgment of others. (I trust
it will become clearer as we progress that this makes for a very large set of tasks
and commitments whose limits cannot be foreseen by a priori speculation, and
that by collectively referring to these costs with the expression “the threat of sol-
ipsism” I do not mean to offer a reductionist account, but rather the opposite,
namely pointing to a whole field of investigation whose surface I will barely
be able to scratch.)
The considerations offered up to this point are meant to provide a guiding
thread thematically connecting the readings presented in the chapters compris-
ing this book. Although they all derive from previously published papers,²⁶ and
therefore should be somewhat self-standing, each of them was developed as part

 Two such adversaries to be considered in what follows are Saul Kripke (chapter 4) and Peter
Strawson (chapter 5).
 See the Acknowledgments for references.
12 Introduction

of a unified research project that began with my PhD dissertation²⁷ and contin-
ued for more than a decade. In reworking these materials, I did my best to make
the connections among the individual chapters more evident, and it is my hope
that by presenting them in this unified form, and in an order which roughly re-
flects the chronology of the writings of Wittgenstein and Cavell subsequently
under scrutiny, the result will be a gradual, cumulative and cohesive articulation
of some under-appreciated aspects of their constantly evolving methodology. Be-
fore I summarize the aims and structure of each individual chapter, some words
are in order regarding my general interpretive approach to the writings them-
selves. Throughout this book I will be working with a contrast between what
one might call, on the one hand, a substantial reading of a philosophical text,
which sees it as designed to contribute to the attainment of some sort of theoret-
ical (say metaphysical) knowledge about the essence of reality by answering
bona fide philosophical questions, and, on the other hand what I call a dialec-
tical reading, which takes as the central aim of a text to give voice to or enact
a number of different views, which are then supposed to be put into conversa-
tion, thus allowing the reader to be alternately tempted by metaphysical ques-
tions, urged to uncover the sources of those temptations, and ultimately be
freed from their fascination, achieving that kind of “peace” that Wittgenstein
talks about in various contexts.²⁸ The main inspiration for this latter approach
was an early essay of Cavell’s²⁹ in which he distinguishes two main voices in
Wittgenstein’s (mature) writings, namely: (i) the voice of temptation, which
prompts the reader to theorize or philosophize, and (ii) the voice of correctness,
which aims to return the reader to ordinary life.³⁰ As will become clear in what
follows, I am willing to adapt and apply this Cavellian distinction not only in my
readings of Wittgenstein’s mature writings but also in those of the work leading
up to the Investigations, starting with the Tractatus. I also prefer to distinguish
among different inflections of those two voices – after all, one might be tempted

 Techio 2009.
 Manifestly in PI §133, but also, if less manifestly, in TLP 6.53, where Wittgenstein claims that
the correct method in philosophy would be, for the philosopher tempted to “say something met-
aphysical”, “unbefriedigend” – a word derived from the noun “Fried” (peace) and from the verb
“befrieden”, which we may translate as “to pacify” or “to bring peace to”. (Thanks to Paulo Faria
for pointing this out.)
 “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy”, first published in 1962 and reprinted in
MWM.
 In a later essay Cavell re-dubs the pair of voices, calling them “the voices of melancholy and
merriment, or of metaphysics and the ordinary” (NAT 270).
 Introduction 13

by a number of different philosophical views, and accordingly might need to be

“corrected”, i.e., brought back to ordinary life, by different means.
Let us see how this dialectical approach is applied in each of the individual
chapters to follow.
Chapter 1: Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosoph-
icus. In the Preface of the Tractatus Wittgenstein presents his proposal of “draw-
ing limits” separating sense from nonsense as a way to get rid of philosophical
problems caused by “misunderstandings of the logic of our language” (TLP 3).
But how exactly are such limits supposed to be drawn, and how is this procedure
supposed to help us get rid of logical misunderstandings? Traditional interpret-
ers of the book have answered these questions by suggesting that the limits of
sense are to be drawn by means of a method allowing us to determine whether
a given projection of a string of signs was made in accordance with the rules of
logical syntax, or else violated them, thus generating metaphysical (pseudo-)
propositions. However, as other readers have noticed, the idea of drawing
such limits seems to be in tension with Wittgenstein’s actual procedure in
most of the Tractatus, which from its very first proposition seems to introduce
metaphysical (pseudo) theses again and again in order to achieve the results
programmatically indicated in the Preface – hence the need for the self-undoing
message at the end of the book, urging the reader to recognize those propositions
“as nonsensical, when he has used them – as steps – to climb up beyond them”
(TLP 6.54). This tension creates some of the most challenging questions in the
still ongoing debate about how to read the Tractatus – questions such as:
How we are supposed to use Wittgenstein’s propositions (and which ones?) as
“steps in a ladder”? What “throwing the ladder away” exactly amounts to?
And what does it mean to “see the world aright” upon “overcoming” those prop-
ositions? Chapter 1 attempts to answer these questions by means of a close, di-
alectical reading of a representative set of propositions dealing with solipsism
and the limits of language (TLP 5.6n’s³¹). Although limited in scope, the hope
is that such reading might stand as a test case for parallel readings of other
parts of the book, as well as for the parallel readings of later writings of Wittgen-
stein’s dealing with similar issues, which are offered in subsequent chapters.
Chapter 2: Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks. After a brief
overview of some important philosophical developments that took place in the
period between the publication of the Tractatus and Wittgenstein’s return to
Cambridge in 1929, chapter 2 investigates Wittgenstein’s self-proclaimed new
methodology, focusing on the analysis of the conditions of experience that he

 About the numbering system of the Tractatus, see fn. 46.

14 Introduction

articulates in his Philosophical Remarks. By means of a close reading of some key

passages dealing with solipsism in that work I will try to lay bare their self-sub-
verting character: the fact that they amount to miniature dialectical exercises of-
fering directions to pass from particular pieces of disguised nonsense to corre-
sponding pieces of patent nonsense. Yet, similarly to what I argue we must do
in reading the Tractatus, in order to follow these directions we need to allow our-
selves to become both tempted by and suspicious of their all-too-evident “meta-
physical tone” – a tone which is particularly manifest in those claims purporting
to state what can or cannot be the case, and, still more particularly, those pur-
porting to state what can or cannot be done in language or thought, leading
to the view that there are some (determinate) things which are ineffable or un-
thinkable. I close the chapter by suggesting that in writing these remarks Witt-
genstein was still moved by the ethical project at work in the Tractatus, which
gets displayed in his reiterated attempts to cure the readers (and himself)
from some of the temptations expressed by solipsism.
Chapter 3: Solipsism, privacy and the grammar of the first person in The Blue
Book. Following the same strategy that has been applied in the preceding two
chapters, chapter 3 argues for a dialectical reading of Wittgenstein’s grammatical
reminders concerning the uses of the first person pronoun in The Blue Book.
Against a widespread, “non-referential” view which takes those reminders as di-
rect attempts at blocking some substantial metaphysical results,³² the reading I
put forward emphasizes their topic and therapeutic role as part of an attempt to
unveil the sources of some philosophical temptations, among them particularly
that of solipsism, ultimately aiming to loosen its grip. I conclude by suggesting
that the fundamental gain of Wittgenstein’s grammatical elucidation of the pro-
noun “I” in this context is to remind us of important differences between its var-
ious uses, without trying to fit them into some narrow bins, whatever those may
be (e.g., reference, demonstration, description, expression, etc.).
Chapter 4: The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations: Cavell and
Kripke on skepticism about meaning. Most readers of the Investigations take skep-
ticism about meaning as a target of Wittgenstein’s remarks, something to be re-
futed by means of a clear grasp of our criteria, which should therefore show that
the very idea of a “private language” is misguided or nonsensical. Cavell was ar-
guably the first interpreter to challenge that prevalent view by reminding us that
our criteria are constantly open to skeptical repudiation, hence that privacy is a
standing human possibility. Saul Kripke too contested the orthodoxy in his cele-

 The main exponents of the non-referential reading are Kenny 1984, Malcolm 1995 and Hack-
er 1990 and 1997.
 Introduction 15

brated Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language,³³ arguing that a skeptical par-
adox concerning rules and meaning not only is the central problem of the Inves-
tigations, but that it receives a “skeptical solution”. Chapter 4 offers a critical and
comparative assessment of Cavell’s and Kripke’s readings and tries to show that,
although Kripke has done an outstanding job in articulating and emphasizing
the force of the skeptical arguments in the Investigations – being more faithful
to Wittgenstein’s text it in this particular respect than Cavell – he does not
seem to take privacy as a standing and real threat for finite beings like us,
and instead follows the orthodoxy in reading Wittgenstein as offering an argu-
ment against its very possibility. The chapter closes by delineating an under-
standing of our linguistic practices that acknowledges the seriousness of skepti-
cism while avoiding the kind of evasion shared by Kripke and the orthodoxy,
enabling us to see agreement and meaning as continual tasks whose failure is
imbued with high existential costs.
Chapter 5: Seeing souls – Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other
minds. It is not uncommon to associate Wittgenstein’s “externalistic” remarks
concerning the conditions for the ascription of mental states to others in the In-
vestigations with a “grammatical refutation” of skepticism concerning other
minds.³⁴ Chapter 5 aims to criticize that view, calling attention to its lack of rec-
ognition of the real difficulties involved in our relationship with others. It does
that again by means of a close reading of a number of key passages, aiming
at highlighting some under-appreciated connections between Wittgenstein’s re-
marks concerning human behavior and its relation to the human soul in
(what was once called) Part I of the Investigations and his later discussion
about aspect-seeing in (what was once called) Part II of the book.³⁵ In particular,
I emphasize the importance of the phenomenon of “continuous aspect-percep-
tion” in the context of discussing the problem of other minds. The chapter
ends on a more polemical note, mobilizing the results thereby achieved to assess
one influential “anti-skeptical” argument which was partially inspired by Witt-
genstein’s remarks, namely Peter Strawson’s.³⁶ I argue that although Strawson
is correct in emphasizing the role played by a “non-detached” attitude toward

 Kripke 1982.
 One of the earliest and more influential exponents of this anti-skeptical reading is Malcolm
(see esp. 1954, 1958 and 1995), but it is not an exaggeration to say it is still almost universally
held. In particular, I think it is fair to ascribe it to Hacker (1997).
 The editorial problems of dividing the work that way are explained in Hacker and Schulte’s
preface to the new edition (see PI ix–xi), which drops those titles.
 Especially in chapter 3 of Individuals (Strawson 1959) and in the essay “Freedom and Resent-
ment” (reprinted in Strawson 2008).
16 Introduction

others in his account of the conditions for achieving a “non-solipsistic con-

sciousness” of the world, his analysis does not go far enough toward taking se-
riously the real, existential threat posed by skepticism, namely the fact that it is
up to us (as a challenge which may be resolutely faced as much as quietly de-
nied) to acknowledge the humanity of others.
Chapter 6: Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell. Analytic epistemol-
ogists tend to see skepticism as at best an intellectual game designed to intro-
duce technical problems in their field. In the opposite direction, as the two pre-
ceding chapters show, Cavell tried to convince us of the seriousness or even the
truth in skepticism. Something similar can be said of Barry Stroud, as witnessed
by the title of one of his earliest and most discussed books, The Significance of
Philosophical Scepticism.³⁷ But that attestation, as I argue in chapter 6, does not
imply that either Cavell or Stroud would be willing to accept the skeptical con-
clusions, at least not in the way both the skeptic and her analytic critics tend to
interpret them; rather, their avowed task is to provide a reassessment of the
whole epistemological debate, avoiding to draw negative conclusions premature-
ly, thereby missing the chance of learning what skepticism, if well understood,
has to teach about our condition. Affinities notwithstanding, Stroud suspects
that Cavell’s own engagement with skepticism has failed to live up to those
methodological requirements. There are two main lines of criticism supporting
that suspicion which I intend to reconstruct and balance against each other in
chapter 6, namely: (i) according to Stroud, Cavell wants to show that some of
the skeptic’s “claims” are nonsensical, but in order to achieve that verdict he as-
sumes a theory about the conditions of sense which is not explicitly developed
and buttressed in his writings; (ii) Cavell also proposes an alternative view of our
relations to the world and others which is supposed to be immune to skeptical
threats, but again, on Stroud’s estimation, he fails to offer a satisfactory account
of the nature of those relations. Although both criticisms point to crucial aspects
of Cavell’s argument that deserve to be better articulated – a task I will take up –
I will argue that they ultimately miss their target in virtue of being predicated
upon narrow (if natural) construals of distinctive Cavellian procedures, which I
try to elucidate. I close by suggesting that notwithstanding Stroud’s own positive
appraisal of the significance of philosophical skepticism, he has not fully taken
to heart Cavell’s point about it not being exactly or merely an epistemological
problem in need of a theoretical (dis)solution, but rather an intellectualization
of our disappointment with our finite condition.

 Stroud 1984.
 Introduction 17

Chapter 7: Skepticism, perfectionism and the limits of morality. This final

chapter explores a couple of issues conventionally subsumed under the heading
of “metaethics” which were mostly left implicit in the preceding chapters, name-
ly: What does it mean to lead a moral life? And how should we understand the
role of practical rationality in that life? I try to answer these questions taking as a
test case a single sequence from the movie Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,³⁸ which was
commented upon by Cavell in one of his later writings.³⁹ The most immediate
question that sequence raises is whether there might be situations in our
moral arguments in which the proper and rational attitude to be assumed by
an agent is to give up a conversation without reaching agreement, e.g. by ex-
pressing indignation. Many philosophers seem committed to a conception of
moral reasoning that takes as its end rational agreement among agents; from
that perspective, expressing indignation would just amount to an irrational
way of trying to get rid of the burdens put upon the agent’s shoulders in the con-
text of a moral argument. Against that widespread view I will present and defend
a Cavellian version of moral perfectionism which takes rational disagreement as
a legitimate (and even productive) possible outcome of moral arguments. That
view, as we will see, is predicated upon a distinctive understanding of practical
rationality which I will try to articulate by means of grammatical reminders com-
paring instances of moral arguments with other forms of rational engagement
(particularly aesthetic, scientific and mathematical). I close by emphasizing
the importance of trying not to abandon prematurely the complexities of our or-
dinary lives in favor of general theories and idealized situations when dealing
with ethical and metaethical issues, and by suggesting that films are particularly
suitable objects of comparison for capturing those complexities.

 Frank Capra, USA/Columbia, 1936.

 See CW 207.
1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
In philosophizing we may not cut off a disease of thought. It must run its natural course,
and slow cure is all important.

(Ludwig Wittgenstein⁴⁰)

1.1 Introduction

The first explicit reference to solipsism in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philo-

sophicus⁴¹ occurs relatively late, in section 5.6; implicitly, however, solipsism
may be said to be present from its very beginning – or so I will argue. But
where exactly does the book begin? Is it in the first numbered proposition? In
the first line of the Preface? In the motto from Kürnberger? Or is the real begin-
ning something that precedes the book itself, perhaps going back to Wittgen-
stein’s first recorded philosophical reflections in his notebooks, or even further,
to the texts he read and which influenced his own views in the Tractatus?
Although questions like these can, of course, be asked of any philosophical
book, they are especially pressing in the case of the Tractatus, since much of
what one takes to be the outcome of this particular book will depend on how
and where one decides to start reading it – as well as on how and where one
takes the reading to end. Let me put it this way: I take it that because of the pe-
culiar way in which the Tractatus is organized – call it the book’s dialectical
structure – there is a real risk of extracting conclusions too soon, before its
ideas are ripe, so to speak. Evidently, since the text itself does not change,
this process of ripening must occur somewhere else; and this is precisely how
I am inclined to describe my experience as a reader. The book thus works as a
mirror whose reflected image changes according to the changes it produces in
the perceiver. Moreover, these changes are not merely in details, but rather
akin to Gestalt switches, whose alternating results are the impression that noth-
ing makes sense any longer – that all the pieces of the puzzle are out of place –
followed by the impression that everything is finally fitting together.

 Z §382; translation amended.

 Unless stated otherwise, all the quotations and page numbers in this chapter are from Witt-
genstein 1974 (the revised edition of the English translation of the Tractatus by D. F. Pears and
B. F. McGuinness), hereafter “TLP”.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110702859-004
 1.1 Introduction 19

Admittedly, this image raises a series of difficulties, the most immediate of

which is how to tell when is the right time to stop. In other words, how to be
sure that some particular configuration of those pieces is not yet another illu-
sion? In fact, one of the greatest challenges involved in reading the Tractatus
the way I will suggest is precisely the increasing level of philosophical self-con-
sciousness it produces, accompanied by an equally increasing suspicion about
the results one gets – or takes oneself to get. This, in turn, is the reason why
it becomes so difficult to write about the Tractatus after finding your way through
it.⁴² After all, how to combine the self-subversiveness of the process – the aware-
ness, acquired after each round, that the previous approach was in some impor-
tant respect misguided – with the need to present a linear reconstruction of it?
The answer I came up with was that I should try to present my own development
in some detail, including its self-questioning and self-suspicious moments, as
well as its phases of Gestalt reorganization, so that it could be taken up as an
example – to follow, to improve upon, or to reject. The idea is not to record
every single step in my journey but to pick out some of the points where the
most important changes occurred, in order to make that gradual and evolving
process somehow discrete. Some level of artificiality is implied by this choice,
which, however ultimately unsatisfactory, seemed unavoidable.
Following the path devised by Wittgenstein himself, I will start my reading
with a detailed analysis of the Tractatus’ Preface, succeeded by a first pass at
some of the main propositions in its body, indicating how they are supposed
to fulfill the tasks programmatically presented in the Preface and emphasizing
their connection to issues involving solipsism. Eventually, we will arrive at the
book’s self-undoing last instructions, and again in the manner of a first pass
we will engage in the process it recommends, namely of trying to recognize
the book’s propositions as nonsensical, in order to “overcome them” and “see
the world aright” (section 1.2). The difficulties raised during this first approach
will prompt us to go through a specific and representative set of propositions
dealing with solipsism in more detail (sections 1.3 to 1.5), which in turn will trig-
ger a series of Gestalt shifts leading us back to the text for fresh or more pro-
found insights (sections 1.6 to 1.9) culminating in a suggestion of how to (reso-
lutely) “throw away the ladder” (section 1.10).

 A telling enactment of that difficulty can be found in Conant 1989.

20 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

1.2 The limits of sense: a first pass

The Preface of the Tractatus opens with the following words:

Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself had the thoughts
expressed in it – or at least similar thoughts. – So it is not a textbook. – Its purpose would
be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it. (TLP 3)

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the experience of

reading the book they introduce – of the kind of attitude expected from its read-
ers and of the aims it is designed to achieve. For let us take its first sentence at
face value (and how else can we take it?): if it is true, then what could be the
interest of reading such a book? Is not the reason for reading books to learn
new things? Furthermore, what could be the reason to write it, if not to convince
at least some readers – particularly those who did not already have those
thoughts – of the truth of its theses? Consistently enough, the second and
third sentences seem to reinforce the idea that there is nothing to be learned
from this book – after all, what else could we expect from reading thoughts
we already had, except a kind of (narcissistic?) pleasure?
Needless to say, this is not an auspicious beginning for a book. In fact, it is
so inauspicious and puzzling that it has almost without exception elicited from
the readers an attitude of quick dismissal as if it was obvious – against the par-
enthetical suggestion I made above – that we should not take those introductory
sentences at face value. This should remind us that, notwithstanding the efforts
of an author to guide her readers through a well-defined path, it is always the
reader’s prerogative to follow it or not. Again, this is arguably true for any read-
ing of any book whatsoever; nevertheless, books like the Tractatus – by which I
mean, books written in such an ostensibly self-conscious manner – are peculiar,
in that it is always an open possibility in such cases that they might intend to
elicit just this kind of dismissive attitude from readers who, when reading
these sentences from the first time, are not yet ready to fully grasp their content. ⁴³

 Commenting on an early sentence of Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” – yet another highly self-con-

scious text – Cavell presents some considerations about the relation text/reader which are also
applicable to our predicament facing the opening remarks of the Tractatus. Emerson’s sentence
is: “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts. They come back to us with a
certain alienated majesty.” (Essays, First Series [1841]), available online at: http://www.gutenber-
g.org/files/2944/2944-h/2944-h.htm, accessed 06/06/2020). Here are Cavell’s comments on those
words: “If the thoughts of a text such as Emerson’s (say, the brief text on rejected thoughts) are
yours, then you do not need them. If its thoughts are not yours, they will do you no good. The
problem is that the text’s thoughts are neither exactly mine nor not mine. In their sublimity as
 1.2 The limits of sense: a first pass 21

Assuming that we provisionally decide to leave those difficulties aside, let’s

move to the second paragraph. Wittgenstein’s tone at this point is slightly differ-
ent: “The book deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, I believe, that
the reason why these problems are posed is that the logic of our language is mis-
understood” (TLP 3). I suppose one’s first reaction to this claim may be a quite
skeptical one: are we really supposed to believe, first, that all the problems of
philosophy (just stop to think of some!) have one and only one source and, sec-
ond, that this source is purely and simply this: misunderstandings about the “the
logic of our language”? Even if we restrict our attention to a family of philosoph-
ical methodologies that can in some sense be described as “linguistic” is not the
opposite view more plausible – namely that “posing” (and, hopefully, solving)
philosophical problems will lead us to a better understanding of the logic of
our language? But then again, it is up to us at this point to give the author
the benefit of the doubt – after all, perhaps we are just being presented with a
hypothesis that the book as a whole is supposed to prove. (Notice, however,
that before proving it, the book has yet to clarify what “logical misunderstand-
ings” or “problems of philosophy” mean.)
The next sentence of the paragraph continues in this vein: “The whole sense
of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all
can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in si-
lence.” Naturally, we may suppose, if something like a good or sound under-
standing of the “logic of our language” is the expected result of this book that
should be reflected in our talking clearly. The obvious question to be raised at
this point is how exactly such a clarity can be attained. In particular, how can
it be achieved philosophically, given that we are supposed to dismiss philoso-
phy’s traditional methods as being themselves born from logical misunderstand-
ings? Is Wittgenstein implying that those methods should radically change, or
that philosophy is a hopelessly confused enterprise, which should be simply
abandoned once we understand its true origins and fate?
Be that as it may, the very fact that questions like these are invited at this
point goes some way towards explaining why the book we are reading is not a
traditional philosophical textbook. The following two paragraphs reinforce this
idea:

my rejected – say repressed – thoughts, they represent my further, next, unattained but attain-
able, self. To think otherwise, to attribute the origin of my thoughts simply to the other, thoughts
which are then, as it were, implanted in me – some would say caused – by let us say some Emer-
son, is idolatry.” (CHU 57)
22 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Thus the aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather – not to thought, but to the
expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to
find both sides of this limit thinkable (i. e., we should have to be able to think what cannot
be thought).

It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other
side of the limit will simply be nonsense. (TLP 3) ⁴⁴

That it is necessary to “draw limits” separating sense from nonsense in order to

attain clarity seems again consistent with the idea expressed in the previous
paragraph (about the “whole sense of the book”). But it is important to take no-
tice of the specific modalities involved here,⁴⁵ otherwise we would have to as-
sume that the only options envisaged by this book are completely clear sense
or no talk at all, and as we know our human language is not tailored for such
a clear, binary distinction – there are many gray areas between absolutely
clear sense and plain nonsense. Wittgenstein himself testifies to this by confess-
ing, in the penultimate paragraph of the Preface, his own limitations concerning
the expression of the thoughts contained in the rest of the book:

If this work has any value, it consists in two things: the first is that thoughts are expressed
in it, and on this score the better the thoughts are expressed – the more the nail has been
hit on the head – the greater will be its value. – Here I am conscious of haven fallen a long
way short of what is possible. Simply because my powers are too slight for the accomplish-
ment of the task. – May others come and do it better. (TLP 3 – 4)

So, to summarize this point with the right modal emphases: what can be said at
all can (potentially, ideally) be said clearly; but precisely because it is so hard to
actualize this potential, philosophical confusions abound. This is the reason
why, notwithstanding his confession of having failed to attain perfectly clear ex-
pression, Wittgenstein still shows himself confident about “the truth of the
thoughts that are here communicated”, claiming, in the last paragraph of the
Preface, that it “seems to [him] unassailable and definitive” (TLP 4). The para-
graph keeps this self-confident tone in its second sentence, in which the author
declares himself “to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the
problems”. It is not uncommon for a philosopher to take his or her own achieve-
ments in such a high account, so perhaps this claim is not surprising. What
seems really surprising is the next sentence (the last of the Preface): “And if I
am not mistaken in this belief, then the second thing in which the value of
this work consists is that it shows how little is achieved when these problems

 Original paragraph breaks are maintained in all long quotations throughout this book.
 I owe this indication to Stephen Mulhall.
 1.2 The limits of sense: a first pass 23

are solved”(TLP 5). Again, are we really supposed to believe that the “final sol-
ution” to the problems of philosophy would (if found) be a small achievement?
And even if this were true, then how could such a “small achievement” be
one of the most important – most valuable – results of the whole book?
These are again difficulties that we can decide to put aside provisionally,
waiting to see if the rest of the book can help to make things clearer. Assuming
we do so, we finally arrive at the main body of the book, the first remarkable as-
pect of which is the numbering system employed to organize its propositions.⁴⁶
The impression one gets from this system is that of a perfectly well arranged log-
ical order, so that (again) there seems to be no alternative left for the reader ex-
cept following the path chosen beforehand by the author. (I trust you will by now
be suspicious enough of this kind of impression.)
The second remarkable aspect is, of course, the content of the book’s prop-
ositions. It begins with a seemingly straightforward ontological view (theory?)
about the constitution of “the world”, namely that it is comprised of the totality
of facts (i. e., combinations of objects), not of things (cf. 1.n’s). Those facts, in turn,
are said to be represented by propositions, which, consequently, would amount to
kinds of pictures of the facts (cf. 2.n’s). The relation between propositions and
facts is said to be (at the bottom) a one-one relation between the constituents
of atomic facts and the constituents of elementary propositions (i. e., simple ob-
jects and names, respectively). A proposition “applied and thought out” is a
thought; thoughts themselves represent facts, and so they also can be described
as (special) kinds of “pictures” – logical ones. This “application” (or “thinking
of”) of a proposition is its sense (cf. 3.n’s and 4.n’s). Complex propositions result
of combining the truth-functions expressed by elementary ones (elementary
propositions are truth-functions of themselves – cf. 5.n’s); and since there is a
" !
general form of truth-functions (namely,p! " !" ! N !! ), there is also a general form
of propositions (cf. 6.n’s).
The reason why the results summed up above should be seen as remarkable
is that, after reading the Preface, we should expect anything but this kind of tra-
ditional philosophical talk. Let us again take note of that difficulty and provi-
sionally leave it aside, trying to understand how those propositions could help
with the task presented in the Preface – that of clarifying the “logic of our lan-
guage”, by “drawing limits” separating sense from nonsense. To begin with, it is
worth recalling that the Preface (opaquely) states that the limits separating sense

 In a footnote, Wittgenstein explains the numbering system employed by the book by saying
that “propositions n.1, n.2, n.3, etc. are comments on proposition no. n”, and that “n.m1, n.m2,
etc. are comments on proposition no. n.m; and so on”. Wittgenstein also states that “the decimal
numbers […] indicate the logical importance of the propositions” (TLP 7).
24 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

from nonsense must be drawn “in language”. Now this seems to be exactly the
role of the general form of propositions (§6), in that its application should enable
us to see how any bona fide proposition may be generated from elementary ones,
and, consequently, it should enable us to exclude from the category of “propo-
sition” all the strings of signs which do not satisfy that condition (e. g. the pseu-
do-propositions of mathematics, science, and ethics, dealt with, respectively, in
6.2, 6.3 and 6.4). And this, in turn, is the key to understanding how philosophical
problems are supposed to be solved by this book: as illustrated by the cases of
“skepticism” (6.51) and the “problem of life” (6.521), applying the general form of
propositions to those (alleged) problems should enable us to see that they are in
fact just pseudo-problems, which strictly speaking cannot even be “posed” (the
word used in the Preface), since the kind of “question” we try to formulate to
express them is nonsensical, i. e. it goes against the rules of logical syntax; so
of course there are no possible “answers” to them either (the general lesson of
6.5).
These considerations will also help us understand two further (opaque) pro-
grammatic claims made in the Preface, namely (a) that all the (pseudo‐)prob-
lems of philosophy are consequences of “misunderstandings of the logic of
our language” and (b) that “little is achieved when these problems are solved”.
After all, what we are left with upon applying the procedure mentioned above is
not, strictly speaking, a “solution” to any problem whatsoever, but a demonstra-
tion that there were no (real) problems to solve, only products of logical confusion:
“Of course there are no questions left, and this itself is the answer” (6.52).
The reading delineated thus far receives further support when applied to the
two penultimate propositions of section 6.5:

6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves man-
ifest. They are what is mystical.

6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except
what can be said, i. e., propositions of natural science – i. e., something that has noth-
ing to do with philosophy – and then, whenever someone else wanted to say some-
thing metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to cer-
tain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person
– he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy – this method
would be the only strictly correct one.

Recall that the two propositions above are meant as clarifications of 6.5’s claim
that we should not search for answers when a question “cannot be put into
words”. It takes some work to see how proposition 6.522 could play that role;
as I am inclined to read it at this point, I would say that it does so in a rather
peculiar and negative way: what it “clarifies” is that the idea expressed in 6.5
 1.2 The limits of sense: a first pass 25

is not (perhaps against our expectations) that beyond the “limits of language”
(and sense) there is nothing; rather, there is “something” (or some “things”)
about which we simply cannot talk. Now these “things” are further said to be
(i) “manifestable” (although ineffable), and (ii) “what is mystical”. Let us try
to get a grip on these qualifications before we proceed.
Starting with (ii) “what is mystical”: the first textual occurrence of the term
“mystical” is on 6.44, which reads: “It is not how things are in the world that is
mystical, but that it exists.” 6.45 elaborates this, identifying the “mystical” with a
kind of “feeling” – the feeling of “the world as a limited whole”. Trying to sum
up the view being presented at this juncture, it seems that we can distinguish at
least two claims: (ii.i) the fact that the world exists is what is mystical, and (ii.ii)
we are aware of this fact when we “view” the world “sub specie aeterni” – or,
what amounts to the same, when we “feel” it “as a limited whole”. This throws
us immediately back to the talk about limits (of thought, language, and the
world) introduced in the Preface and developed in section 6. Now, two different
ways of drawing such limits are presented in that section. The first is positive: the
unveiling of limit cases of propositions (i. e., tautologies), which display those
very limits in their face, so to speak. The second is negative: the unveiling of
pseudo-propositions (e. g. those of mathematics, science, and ethics) which
arise from hopeless attempts at expressing something necessary about the
world, hence trying to go (or to see) beyond its limits. Assuming that these are
the ways the limits of language/world are supposed to be made manifest by
the method prescribed by this book, and assuming the equation between (the
awareness of) the mystical and (the awareness of) those limits, we have an an-
swer to the question of how the mystical can be made manifest – i. e., we can
understand qualification (i) above.
Notice, however, that this conclusion depends on a particularly “charitable”
reading of proposition 6.522: taken at face value, it seems to be conveying that
there are “things” (however ineffable) outside or beyond the limits of what can
be said, or thought. And this, by the very standards of the book, should not
be said at all – recall once again the Preface’s programmatic claims about the
need to trace the limits to the expression of thoughts “in language”, i. e., from
within, and, consequently, without having to “find both sides of this limit think-
able”, thinking “what cannot be thought”. To be fair, Wittgenstein is not exactly
saying that we can express, think or talk about what is beyond the limits of
thought and language. So this does not amount to a straightforward contradic-
tion; the problem is, of course, that he does not exactly remain silent either,
thus defying his own advice in the Preface. Again, I will suggest we take note
of this apparent tension, marking it off for later treatment.
26 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Let us turn our attention to proposition 6.53. Again, the first question we
should ask about this proposition is how it can be said to “clarify” 6.5. The an-
swer seems more straightforward in this case: it does so by making explicit an
(otherwise implicit) methodological consequence of 6.5 for dealing with the
(pseudo‐)questions that originate philosophical problems. To this extent, 6.53
is coherent both with the programmatic claims made in the Preface and with
the (potential) applications of the method suggested thus far (I refer to the anal-
yses of “skepticism” and the “problem of life”). But trouble arises when we stop
thinking about these circumscribed cases and start to think about the general
procedure followed by the book as a whole. After all, has Wittgenstein followed
his own advice in the preceding sections, namely by presenting only “proposi-
tions of natural science”? The answer seems to be: not at all; as we saw, he pres-
ents metaphysical (ontological) theses from the very beginning of the book in
order to achieve the results indicated in the Preface. This provides a clue as to
why, for the sake of coherence, the ensuing message presented in the book
would have to be self-undoing:

6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands
me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them – as steps – to
climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has
climbed up it.)

He must overcome these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.⁴⁷

In acknowledging that his own previous “propositions” (all of them?) were non-
sensical, and should be used as steps in a ladder to be thrown away, Wittgen-
stein makes room for accommodating the tension indicated above; after all, in
acknowledging that he is also conceding, however implicitly, that such “propo-
sitions” (but which ones?) were indeed “metaphysical”. – Is this the reason why,
in 6.53, he spoke of what would be the “correct method in philosophy”, instead
of just saying what it is? But then again, why not follow the “correct method”
from the beginning, instead of going by such sideways? Is it because going by
sideways can in some sense be more “satisfying to the other person” (see

 The translation of the last sentence was amended, following a suggestion from Floyd (2007,
187– 188 and n. 29), who in turn owes it to Goldfarb. Both Floyd and Goldfarb think the Pears
and McGinness translation of “überwinden” as “to transcend” is tendentious; although this judg-
ment depends on their particular interpretations, I think is uncontroversial that the verb “to
transcend” is less vague, and, therefore, less amenable to different interpretations, than the Ger-
man one, and this is enough reason to prefer the more literal rendition “to overcome”. (Ogden
uses “to surmount”, which I think would equally do.)
1.3 The limits of (my) language and the limits of (my) world: the solipsistic move 27

6.53)? In any event, to say that the tension above can be accommodated in this
way is not to say that it ceases to be a tension. The challenge remains that we
have yet to understand: (i) how are we (were we?) supposed to use (to have
used?) those propositions (which ones?) as steps in such ladder; (ii) how this lad-
der is supposed to be thrown away; and (iii) what exactly is the result of all that
– what it means to “see the world aright”.
In what follows I will try to meet that challenge by focusing on a specific set
of propositions lying in between the path through which we have been walking
in large steps up to this point – namely those dealing with solipsism and the lim-
its of language (5.6n’s).⁴⁸ Analyzing these propositions in detail will allow us to
gradually go back to all the loose ends left during this first pass, particularly to
the tension created by the apparent reference to “things” existing outside or be-
yond the limits spoken about in the Preface.

1.3 The limits of (my) language and the limits of (my) world:
the solipsistic move
After having been introduced in the Preface, the idea of “drawing limits” (to lan-
guage, thought and the world) will be brought to the foreground again only in
proposition 5.6, which reads: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my
world.” Before reading the sub-propositions offered to elucidate it, let us
pause to reflect on how we have arrived here, i. e., how the general analysis of
the conditions for representation presented in the first two-thirds of the book
can have this seemingly solipsistic conclusion as its consequence. Let us first re-
call that section 5 as a whole is intended as a technical exposition of an idea pre-
sented before in the book: the account of how complex propositions can be gen-
erated from elementary ones – or, to be more precise, the account of how the
truth-values of elementary propositions can be combined by means of “truth-op-
erations” in order to generate the complex ones. Technical details aside, this re-
minder must give us a better sense of how difficult it is, indeed, to understand
the role of proposition 5.6 as a sub-proposition of this whole section – after
all, how can the idea of limits of (my) language be possibly related to the idea
of propositions (in general) being truth-functions of elementary ones?

 Mulhall (2007b) presents a reading of section 6.4 (concerned with “the mystical” and the
“absolute value”) which I see as very congenial to my own in what follows; although I do not
claim complete faithfulness to his strategy, I happily acknowledge that it was one of my main
sources of inspiration.
28 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

In order to answer that question let us notice, first, that proposition 5 itself is
already working (however implicitly, given the account previously presented in
the book) with a relation between language and world: if all the propositions
of our language are truth-functions of elementary propositions (5), and if
“[t]ruth-possibilities of elementary propositions mean possibilities of existence
and non-existence of states of affairs” (4.3),⁴⁹ then of course the totality of our
language must correspond to the totality of possibilities of existence and non-ex-
istence of states of affairs – i. e., to all the possible facts in the world. And by
means of this reasoning we can at least understand in what sense the limits

 By presenting 4.3’s thesis alone here I intend to cut across a much longer path which was
built up to this point since proposition 1, connecting the limits of language and world. It may
be of some help to indicate the most important stops in that path, as follows: section 1 estab-
lished that the world is the totality of facts (instead of things) in logical space; section 2 goes
from that brief and very condensed ontology to an examination of the conditions for the repre-
sentation of those facts which constitute reality. The basic idea is well known: “We picture facts
to ourselves” (2.1); pictures are “models of reality” (2.12), they are themselves “facts” (2.141),
whose (pictorial) elements “correspond to” (2.13) or “represent” (2.131) the objects which consti-
tute the (other) facts which we want to depict. The form which is shared between the fact depict-
ed and the depicting fact is the “pictorial form” (2.17). When we abstract from the particular me-
dium in which these pictures are conveyed (i. e., whether it is a “spatial picture”, or a “coloured
one” – see 2.171), and pay attention only to its logical aspect, we can also call this form a “logico-
pictorial form” (2.2). The next stop, section 3, deals with thought: “A logical picture of facts is a
thought” (3). Thoughts must be made manifest in some perceptible way (3.1), and that is exactly
the role of propositions – more specifically (cf. 3.11– 12), of the “perceptible sign of a proposition
(as spoken or written, etc.)”. 3.2 further specifies the conditions under which the expression of
thoughts is made possible by propositions: since the (pictorial) relation between propositions
and facts is ultimately dependent on a one-one relation between constituents of propositions
(“simple signs” or “names”, cf. 3.201– 3.202) and constituents of facts (objects), there must be
some “objects of the thought” corresponding to the elements of the “propositional sign”. 3.3 tes-
tifies that what really matters in this whole account is the combination – of objects to generate
facts, and of names to generate (articulated) propositions. In other words, 3.3 is the mirror image,
at the level of language, of the ontological thesis expressed in section 1. (3.4 resumes the idea of
a “place in logical space”, and clarifies it by providing an analogy with geometry – the idea
being that as in (analytical) geometry we can use mathematical expressions (e. g., Cartesian co-
ordinates) to represent points in space, so in logic we can use propositions to represent “points”
in “logical space”.) Section 4, in turn, makes more explicit and elaborates the account of how
this connection between language and world ultimately obtains. The basic idea is this: “elemen-
tary propositions” are comprised of names, and names, in turn, refer to the constituents of facts;
if there is an agreement between the way names are related in a particular elementary proposi-
tion and the way simple objects relate in the world, then the truth-value (the actualized “truth-
possibility”) of that elementary proposition will be “true”; otherwise it will be “false”; now, to
express this kind of “agreement” or “disagreement” is further identified (see 4.4) as the role of
propositions tout court (i. e., regardless of being complex or elementary).
1.3 The limits of (my) language and the limits of (my) world: the solipsistic move 29

of language can be said to “mean” the limits of the world: the idea is not, N.B.,
that of equating two independently existing limits, but rather that of calling our
attention to an internal relation, or necessary congruence, in that “both” limits
are grounded on the very same operation, by means of which some elements
(atomic facts/elementary propositions) are combined in order to generate new
“complexes” (factual/propositional). Strictly speaking, then, what we have are
not two limits at all – the limits of language and the limits of the world – but
rather two aspects, say, of the same limits.⁵⁰
This analysis has an important shortcoming, though, in that it does not ex-
plain the appearance of the first personal singular pronoun (in its possessive
form, “my”) in 5.6’s original formulation. Why is that pronoun necessary in the
first place? After all, if we pay attention to the examination of the conditions
for language to represent the world pursued since the beginning of the book,
the closest we will find in the direction of a “subjectivity” is the use of the
first personal plural pronoun (“we”/“our”) – its first occurrence being in 2.1,
where it is stated that “We picture facts to ourselves” (2.1).⁵¹ Now, if we are
not to accept that the “my” simply comes out magically onto the scene, it is rea-
sonable to expect that it should be implicit in the analysis of the conditions of
representation presented before. A case can be made for that hypothesis if we
think about the conditions for applying the method of projection, which is intro-
duced in 3.11, and further worked out in the remaining parts of section 3. For our

 As Cora Diamond (2000) has shown, one of the primary targets of this “solipsistic move” –
i.e., that of equating the limits of (my) language and (my) world, hence showing that, in an im-
portant sense, there is only one limit instead of two — is precisely a Russellian “two limits view”,
according to which, roughly, the limits of my experience (and so the limits of the objects which I
can directly name, and be directly acquainted with) are narrower than the limits of the world (of
all the objects that there are “out there”), so that, in order for me to reach out toward those (“ex-
ternal”) objects, I would have to resort to descriptions (which in turn use quantifiers), which
refer to them only indirectly (see Diamond 2000, 282, fn. 3). Diamond has more to say about
where exactly this “solipsistic move” ends up leading us – and so do I.
 Truly speaking, it is already noteworthy that such “we” should appear at that point, given
the over-impersonal, over-objective way in which the opening propositions of the book are for-
mulated – the talk about “the world” in the 1.n’s seeming to be completely perspectiveless and
subjectless. Of course there is a good prima facie reason for this first change, which has to do
with the transition from the analysis of the ontological conditions for the world “to be the
case”, to the analysis of the logical conditions for representing it – and there is nothing more
natural than expecting that the first analysis should not include the representing subject as
one of its conditions, if, i. e., the world is to exist independently of our representation of it.
The question arises, however, whether after reading the rest of the book we can still have any
confidence in the obtaining of the antecedent of this conditional.
30 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

present purposes, the list of propositions below shall be enough to summarize

Wittgenstein’s view about that method:
1. “We use the perceptible sign of a proposition (spoken or written, etc.) as a
projection of a possible situation. / The method of projection is to think
the sense of a proposition.” (3.11)
2. “A proposition […] does not actually contain its sense, but does contain the
possibility of expressing it.” (3.13)
3. “What a proposition expresses it expresses in a determinate manner, which
can be set out clearly […].” (3.251)
4. “A proposition has one and only one complete analysis.” (3.25)
5. “I call any part of a proposition that characterizes its sense an expression (or
a symbol).” (3.31)
6. “A sign is what can be perceived of a symbol.” (3.32)
7. “So one and the same sign (written or spoken, etc.) can be common to two
different symbols – in which case they will signify in different ways.” (3.321)
8. “In everyday language it very frequently happens that the same word has dif-
ferent modes of signification – and so belongs to different symbols – or that
two words that have different modes of signification are employed in prop-
ositions in what is superficially the same way.” (3.323)
9. “In this way the most fundamental confusions are easily produced (the
whole of philosophy is full of them).” (3.324)
10. “In order to avoid such errors we must make use of a sign-language that ex-
cludes them by not using the same sign for different symbols and by not
using in a superficially similar way signs that have different modes of signi-
fication: that is to say, a sign-language that is governed by logical grammar –
by logical syntax.” (3.325)
11. “In order to recognize a symbol by its sign we must observe how it is used
with a sense.” (3.326)
12. “A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought.” (3.5)

The propositions above introduce a fundamental distinction for the logical task
of the book, namely between sign and symbol. We will come back to this distinc-
tion below, but the immediate purpose of presenting this list is to help us see
how the idea of a representing subject is at least implied – since it is not explic-
itly mentioned – by the analysis of the conditions for the method of projection.
To put it briefly, the idea is that if we are to have propositions with a determinate
sense (i. e., propositions, simpliciter), we need a representing subject who can
think their sense, and, therefore, who can project their perceptible signs in a de-
terminate way, in order to signify a determinate situation. Notice, however, that it
is does not follow from the list above that this subject should himself proceed to
1.3 The limits of (my) language and the limits of (my) world: the solipsistic move 31

a “complete analysis” (supposedly making use of the “sign-language” mentioned

in 10) in order to give a determinate sense to his own propositions; such a “com-
plete analysis” has at most an instrumental role for clarifying possible misunder-
standings, but what really marks off the sense intended by a particular subject,
in a particular context, is the way the proposition is projected – i. e., used, ap-
plied and thought out – by him (11– 12).
This general analysis is nicely illustrated later in the book, in a proposition
which is often presented by commentators as providing the main reason for in-
troducing the idea of a “representing subject” in the Tractatus. I refer to propo-
sition 5.5423, where we are presented with the following figure:

Figure 1

There are, says Wittgenstein, “two possible ways to see the figure [above] as a
cube”, depending on the order in which we look at its corners: “If I look in
the first place at the corners marked a and only glance at the b’s, then the a’s
appear to be in front, and vice versa.” That is because, as the preceding comment
makes clear, “[t]o perceive a complex means to perceive that its constituents are
related to one another in such and such a way” – in other words, the combina-
tion of the constituents in a perceived complex is a matter of how the perceiving
subject arranges those constituents, a matter, i. e., of the method of projection
employed by him. Generalizing this case, we can see how the idea of a “repre-
senting subject” ends up being presented as a fundamental condition of repre-
sentation.⁵²

 I take the following quotation from Peter Hacker as illustrative of the accepted view on this
respect: “Anything which I can understand as a language must have a content which is assigned
to it by my projecting logico-syntactical forms on to reality. ‘Things acquire “Bedeutung” only in
relation to my will’ is not only an ethical principle, but a semantic one. Propositional signs are
merely ‘inscriptions’; only in relation to my will do they constitute symbols. […] From this point
of view language is my language. In order for propositional signs to have sense I have to think
the method of projection. What I cannot project is not language. Without the accompaniment of
my consciousness language is nothing but a husk.” (Hacker 1986, 100). An important alternative
32 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

The considerations above help us understand why the pronoun “my” is in-
troduced in 5.6, by showing that it was already implicated by Wittgenstein’s ac-
count of the method of projection in the preceding parts of the book. This of
course is not the same as explaining what exactly is the meaning of the resulting
thesis – a task which requires that we read the sub-propositions of this section.
However, this analysis already gives us an important clue to understand why sol-
ipsism becomes such an important issue at this point – after all, given the (nec-
essary) congruence between the limits of my language and the limits of my world
(which, N.B., is presented as an inevitable consequence of the general account of
how language works, of how propositions can represent the world), it is only nat-
ural to ask whether my language/world can possibly be the same as everybody
else’s.
Let us then turn back to the main sub-propositions offered to clarify 5.6,
starting with 5.61, which reads:

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

So we cannot say in logic, “The world has this in it, and this, but not that.”

For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and
this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of
the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well.

We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either.

The idea presented in the first sentence (5.61a) is by now familiar – to show that
“logic pervades the world”, and that the limits of the world and the limits of
logic are one, were the essential tasks set out in the Preface, and pursued by
the book as a whole. The second sentence (5.61b) presents a consequence of
this general idea: that logic cannot say what there is and what there is not in
the world. 5.61c further elucidates the nature of the limitation to “what can be
said” (in logic): the idea is not that we cannot talk about what contingently con-
stitutes the world, i. e., a set of facts which are, but could well not be the case;
rather, we cannot talk about what holds (or doesn’t hold) necessarily of the
world, what necessarily is (or isn’t) the case. The possibilities we cannot exclude

reading of the role of the subject is advanced by Rush Rhees (1996). According to him, the whole
set of psychological concepts employed in the Tractatus (e. g., “thinking subject”, “to think the
sense of the proposition”) are to be explained (away) by the logical ones (e. g., “projection”,
“method of projection”, etc.). Although I shall not rehearse Rhees’s argument here, I take it
to be congenial to the results of my own reading. (Thanks to Stephen Mulhall for calling my at-
tention to that reading, and thanks to Paulo Faria for further references.)
 1.4 The “truth in solipsism”: a first pass 33

(and, consequently, include) in logic are those which would depend on going
“beyond the limits of the world”, viewing those limits “from the other side” –
again, a move already indicated (and excluded) by the programmatic claims
of the Preface.
These considerations shall help us see the point of (otherwise very innocu-
ous) 5.61d. What makes the tautology presented in its first part (“We cannot think
what we cannot think”) relevant to the understanding of its second part (“what
we cannot think we cannot say either”) is the implicit assumption (made explicit
above, in the analysis of proposition 5.6) of there being a necessary congruence,
an internal relation between language and thought. The upshot is that to (really)
think is to think something determinate and contingent about the world, and if
we are not doing that, then it is of no use to try to use language to express what
we (wrongly) supposed we were thinking. Given the limiting conditions imposed
by logic to the expression of thoughts, only two options are available: either we
say something determinate and contingently true or false about the world, or
else we are just babbling, in which case we were better advised to remain silent.⁵³
After these considerations, the role of 5.61 as an “elucidation” of 5.6 should
also be clear: basically, it presents a (negative or limiting) consequence of the
congruence established before for the expressive capabilities of our language
– since the limits of (my) language and the limits of (my) world are one, I cannot
use language (logic) to speak of what would presuppose my going beyond those
limits.

1.4 The “truth in solipsism”: a first pass

With that analysis in mind, let’s move to proposition 5.62, which reads:

5.62 This remark provides a key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism.

For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself
manifest.

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.

 This point, besides being already made in the Preface, is presented clearly in proposition
4.116, where we read that: “Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Every-
thing that can be put into words can be put clearly.”
34 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

This time the relation between this sub-proposition and 5.6 is made clear at the
outset: 5.62 explores the consequences of 5.6 concerning the problem of “how
much truth there is in solipsism”. As we saw above, it should come as no sur-
prise that this problem is being brought to view in this context – it arises natu-
rally when we start thinking critically about the congruence between the limits of
my language and the limits of my world. What, on the other hand, seems surpris-
ing is the content of 5.62b, which starts with the claim that “what the solipsist
means is quite correct”. Now, before trying to understand how it can be correct,
let us try to be clear about what it is that “the solipsist means” in the first place.
A rather cryptic answer to that question is given in the first part of 5.62c:
“The world is my world.” In order to unpack this solipsistic thesis it will be use-
ful to repeat the main steps of the argument presented up to this point in the
book: first, let us recall that the “world” was from the beginning identified
with “the totality of facts”; those facts, in turn, were said to be representable
by propositions; a proposition “applied and thought out” was identified with a
thought; that application, in turn, was said to amount to the operation of com-
bining the truth-functions of elementary propositions; and this operation, as
we just saw, presupposes a subject who can put it at work in order to generate
a (particular) projection, hence providing a determinate sense to his proposi-
tions; now, since all representation is based on that sort of operation, room is
made for a solipsistic threat, in the sense that the possibility remains open
that a subject could, at least in principle, generate projections that are private,
and, in that sense, could live in a world made up of facts which he alone can
grasp.
These considerations go some way toward explaining (i) “what the solipsist
means”, i. e., the content of the solipsistic thesis that “the world is my world”,
and also (ii) the sense in which that thesis is said to be “quite correct” – it is,
at the very least, coherent with the general analysis of the conditions of repre-
sentation previously established in the book. But this of course is not the
whole story told in 5.62b – in fact, it is at best half of it. The remaining half is
presented in the last part of 5.62b, which states that the solipsistic thesis, how-
ever inevitable, (iii) “cannot be said”, but (iv) “makes itself manifest”. So, let us
turn our attention to those further qualifications.
As to (iii), again some work of interpretation is needed if we are to go beyond
the absurd (and rather comic) idea that we cannot say what we have just said –
viz., that “The world is my world.” Now the analysis of 5.61b–c provides a model
which can be smoothly applied to the case in view: if the unpacking of the thesis
that “The world is my world” presented above is correct, then what the solipsist
is attempting to express is a general and necessary feature of language, and also
of the world that can be represented by that language (“which alone I under-
 1.4 The “truth in solipsism”: a first pass 35

stand”); being a necessary feature of the world it cannot be expressed by bona

fide, bipolar propositions which, by their own essential (truth-functional) nature
must always present situations for a test, as being true or false, and, therefore,
contingently one or the other. Therefore, what we (as well as the solipsist) imag-
ined to have said (or thought) when looking at the string of signs which compris-
es the “solipsistic thesis” (“The world is my world”), was not really said (or
thought) at all.⁵⁴
Before continuing with the analysis of 5.62 let us pause to reflect about an
important (and possibly unexpected) subversive consequence of the results we
obtained for understanding proposition 5.6. Recall that one thing we (and the
solipsist) imagined to have expressed by employing the signs “The world is
my world” was exactly the necessary congruence of the limits presented in 5.6
(those of [my] world and [my] language). If this is correct we should conclude,
echoing 5.61, that such a “necessary congruence” itself cannot be said, because
when we try to express “it” the (pseudo‐)propositions we generate seem to be
“excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would re-
quire that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way
could it view those limits from the other side as well”. What is paradoxical
about this conclusion is that proposition 5.6 was a necessary step in the argu-
ment leading to the limiting consequence presented in 5.61. In other words, it
seems that we have been somewhat tricked by first being made to stick to the
appearance of sense of proposition 5.6, then extracting an apparent consequence
of it (namely 5.61), only in order to conclude, finally, that “proposition” 5.6 had
no sense at all – it simply was not a proposition.
But the story, as I said, does not end here; we are still left with the fourth and
final point made in 6.52b, according to which “what the solipsist means […]
makes itself manifest”. This last claim seems to promise a way out of our para-
doxical situation. It does so by inviting us to think that, even if we were tricked to
take the pseudo-propositions above as expressions of necessary truths about
language and the world (when they were in fact just nonsensical strings of
signs) we were not just wasting our time, since (hopefully) something was
“made manifest” along the way. And understanding what exactly was thus
“made manifest” is understanding how much “truth” there is “in solipsism”. No-
tice, first, that 6.52b is not saying, nor implying (as it could appear in a first read-
ing) that the pseudo-proposition “The world is my world”, which (admittedly)

 Notice also the parallel between this analysis and that presented in the concluding part of
the book (6.5 ff.), where something (apparently) “said” (or expressed) by a string of signs (the
skeptical “question” and the “problem of life”) is shown not to be really said (or even sayable)
at all.
36 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

says nothing, can by itself “make something manifest”. If such a string of signs
says nothing, it a fortiori cannot say (as we might have imagined it did) “what the
solipsist means”. What the solipsist means — what he tries to say by employing
the signs presented in the first part of 6.52c – is what (supposedly) “makes itself
manifest” by the fact presented in its second half, namely, that when one tries to
go beyond “the limits of language” one says nothing, and just ends up producing
plainly nonsensical combinations of signs.
In the face of these considerations, it seems that we can sum up the content
of 5.62 as the triviality that there is nothing (and no thing either) to understand,
to think, or to talk about, beyond the limits of what I understand, think and talk
about. Now if there is nothing beyond those limits, it follows that the very oppo-
sition between what is “mine” (be it my experience, my language, or my world)
and something else is itself nonsensical, and, consequently, must be abandoned.
To the extent, then, that there is some “truth in solipsism”, its truth would be
simply the inescapable fact with which I am faced when I unsuccessfully try
to express the “solipsistic thesis”, i. e., that I am fated to express only what
my language can express; and this “truth” is not something that I discover be-
cause I can “view those limits from the other side as well” – on the contrary,
it is exactly the failure in my hopeless attempt to do so that shows that this is
impossible.⁵⁵ (By the same token, this trivializing or deflationary reading must
also hold of 5.621, which states that “The world and life are one” – so that its
whole point will turn out to be simply that I cannot live except in the world
that I live.)
But this deflationary rendition of the “truth in solipsism” faces some imme-
diate problems. First, are we really supposed to believe, without further ado, that
such a triviality is “what the solipsist means” – i. e., what the solipsist always
wanted (however hopelessly) to say? How can we (or Wittgenstein) be sure

 H. O. Mounce, in his commentary to the Tractatus, reaches a very similar conclusion. Having
argued that it is an error to think, as some commentators (Hacker included) do, that “although it
is a confusion to express solipsism, nevertheless it is really true” (Mounce 1981, 91), he claims
that there is, in fact, “a truth behind solipsism” – solipsism itself being just the “confused re-
sult” of trying to state such (ineffable) truth. The truth, according to Mounce, “is not that I
alone am real but that I have a point of view on the world which is without neighbours” (Mounce
1981, 91). He adds the following considerations in order to clarify the content of that claim: “[…]
Wittgenstein’s point, I think, is as follows. What I conceive of as the world is given to me in lan-
guage. This conception is the only one there is. I know this not because I have considered other
possibilities and rejected them. Rather, I know this precisely because it shows itself in there
being no other possibilities. For there is no language but language and therefore no conception
of the world other than the one language gives. This conception is my conception. My conception
of the world, therefore, like my visual field, is without neighbours.” (Mounce 1981, 92).
 1.5 “I am my world”: solipsism coincides with “pure realism” 37

about that? Second, and more importantly, are we really clear about the content
of this “truth”? As my own attempt at clarifying it testifies, when we try to spell it
out we inevitably end up producing more and more strings of signs which, by the
Tractatus’ own standards, are simply nonsense, since they are themselves in-
tended as expressions of a necessary feature of our language. Notice that even
if we try to neutralize this problem, as I myself did above, by repeating Wittgen-
stein’s strategy of “pointing to” (supposedly without having to speak about)
some kind of fact, we cannot avoid helping ourselves of some linguistic descrip-
tion (e. g., by describing it as “the fact that I am fated to express only what my
language can express”). Therefore, there seems to be an infinite regress latent in
this strategy – a regress which can only be stopped if we entirely give up the at-
tempt to explain what the truth in solipsism is. If this truth is ineffable, then we
should stop babbling about it – in fact, we should follow the advice given in the
very last proposition of the book (7), and “pass over [it] in silence”. This, of
course, may not be “satisfying to the other person” (i. e., the solipsist), but it
seems to be the only strictly correct attitude to take in this case. But if this is
the case, then why does Wittgenstein continue to invite us to think (or to imagine
that we are thinking) about it in the remainder of the section? Why doesn’t he
remain silent about this subject from this point on? Is it because to really
learn to remain silent we need a greater exposition to the effects of trying to
go beyond the limits of language? But how much further do we need to flutter
in the flybottle before we can get our rest? Let us see if we can get clearer
about these questions by reading the remaining propositions of section 5.6.

1.5 “I am my world”: solipsism coincides with “pure realism”

The next proposition in our list is 5.63: “I am my world. (The microcosm.).”

Taken by itself, this proposition seems again amenable to the kind of deflation-
ary rendition presented above, so that its whole point could be rephrased (if only
it could really be expressed in a proposition!) as saying that the only world in
which I can live in is the world in which I am, the world which alone my lan-
guage can represent. As if the nonsensical and ineffable character of what I
have just tried to say was not puzzling enough, matters become even worse
when we read the sub-propositions which are intended to clarify 5.63. Let us
have a list:

5.631 There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas.

If I wrote a book called The World as I found it, I should have to include a report on
my body, and should have to say which parts were subordinate to my will, and which
38 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

were not, etc., this being a method of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that
in an important sense there is no subject; for it alone could not be mentioned in that
book. —

5.632 The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.

5.633 Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found?

You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really
you do not see the eye.

And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.

5.634 This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is at the same time a
priori.

Whatever we see could be other than it is.

Whatever we can describe at all could be other than it is.

There is no a priori order of things.

The first remarkable thing about proposition 5.631 is that its first part – i. e.,
5.631a, declaring that there is no thinking subject – if taken at face value, directly
contradicts 5.61 – stating that we cannot say in logic what there is and what there
is not in the world; furthermore, it also contradicts (however less manifestly) the
last proposition of the list – i. e., 5.634, about there being no a priori “part of our
experience”, “no a priori order of things”. In fact, the contradiction is so striking
that it cries for some kind of reinterpretation. Following the method we applied
to similar cases before, the first step would be to notice that, contrary to appear-
ances, 5.631a is not a proposition at all, but rather a nonsensical string of signs, a
pseudo-proposition – after all, if, per impossibile, it had a sense, it could not be
false, it should be necessary; hence, it would not satisfy the book’s own stand-
ards for something to count as a bona fide proposition, i. e., its capability of
being true or false, of allowing us to think the opposite of what it says, etc. Con-
sequently, this sentence also has a self-subversive character, in that it first drives
us to imagine that we understood its sense – and that by saying/thinking it we
are “excluding certain possibilities”, thereby presenting an a priori part of our
experience – when in fact the very conditions of representation make that impos-
sible, since “it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the
world”, enabling us to view those limits “from the other side as well” (5.61).
Having noticed this strange predicament, I suppose one would like to ask
what the point of presenting “proposition” 5.631a may be in the first place. If
the comparison with the cases analyzed before is in order, its point must lie pre-
cisely in its self-subversive character, in that something should be “made man-
ifest” after the process triggered by it. What, then, is made manifest by that pseu-
 1.5 “I am my world”: solipsism coincides with “pure realism” 39

do-proposition? To answer that question we shall pay attention to the next sen-
tence, 5.631b. Again, there is something very remarkable about that sentence, in
that it enacts a “method of isolating the subject” just in order to show that failure
in this task is inevitable, hence making manifest that “in an important sense
there is no subject”. Notice, though, that this last phrase is just as nonsensical
as the former one (5.631a): it also appears to “exclude certain possibilities”, to
describe a contingent feature of our world, when in fact it should be presenting
the only actuality there is, and there can be – the “a priori order of things”. So its
whole point cannot lie in what it says (again: because it says nothing), but rather
in what is made manifest by it – i. e., the impossibility of finding an “I” who
could be in any sense separated from the “world”.⁵⁶ And the same goes for
5.633, where we are presented with the very same kind of enactment – of the
search for the “metaphysical subject” – only using another simile, so that in-
stead of something that I am incapable of mentioning in the “great book of be-
ings”, the idea now is that there is something that I cannot find, and not even
infer, from what I “see” in my “visual field”.
This analysis shall help us to understand how 5.631 and 5.633 can be seen as
elucidations of 5.63, i. e., the (pseudo‐)thesis that “I am my world”: to repeat,
what both propositions “made manifest” (even if they were not capable of saying
it) was that we cannot separate subject and world. And this conclusion, in turn,
would provide a further confirmation – a further elucidation – of 5.6’s general
view of a necessary congruence between (my) language and (my) world. The
problem for this reading emerges when we try to apply it to the proposition
which lies in between the former ones, 5.632. More specifically, the problem aris-
es from the idea expressed in its second half: “The subject […] is a limit of the
world”; notice that, if this sentence is true, then we should conclude that the
subject is not exactly a nothing, as the former propositions could have made
us think it was. The key to solving this apparent problem is to take proposition
5.632 not as being in direct opposition to its neighbors, but rather as an attempt
to “soften” or to “balance” the radical view these (seemingly) put forward. Con-

 It is hardly necessary to indicate the parallel between this enactment of a search for the
“thinking subject” and Hume’s notorious (self-aware) failure in attempting to find an “impres-
sion of the subject”. The same point is made in still more clearly Humean fashion in the Note-
books, e. g., when Wittgenstein says that “The I is not an object. I objectively confront every ob-
ject. But not the I.” (NB 80) The parallel is also often noticed by commentators; Hacker again
provides an illustrative opinion on this parallel, his conclusion being that: “Wittgenstein was
willing to adopt a neo-Humean analysis of the empirical self. There is no empirical soul-sub-
stance thinking thoughts, there are only thoughts. The self of psychology is a manifold, a series
of experiences, a bundle of perceptions in perpetual flux.” (Hacker 1986, 86)
40 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

sequently, even if it is true that “in an important sense there is no subject” (it is
not a “something”), maybe it is also true that, in another important sense, there
is one (it is not a “nothing” either). That the subject cannot be separated from the
world does not imply that it cannot be at least distinguished in some way (i. e., as
a limit). In fact, the case here is not like that of “the eye and the visual field”,
where the former is really separated from the later, but rather like the case of
the point in geometry, which does not “exist” in any other way except as a
limit of lines, shapes, and, ultimately, three-dimensional objects.
This analogy with geometry is presented by Wittgenstein himself in the sec-
ond half of the next first-level sub-proposition (5.64), which reads: “The self of
solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality
co-ordinated with it.” It is interesting that Wittgenstein here (re‐)describes the
“metaphysical subject” as “the self of solipsism”; this gives a further reason to
take seriously the idea that there is some “truth in solipsism”, something correct
in what the solipsist means, but is incapable of saying; in fact, this much is re-
peated, with something of a twist, in the first half of the proposition under anal-
ysis: “Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out
strictly, coincides with pure realism.” It may well seem far-fetched to equate sol-
ipsism and (pure) realism, but think about it this way: what could be better for a
“realist” than a complete suppression of the “self” – taken as the “subject that
thinks or entertains ideas” – to give room for a direct apprehension of the
whole reality? If “realism” is epitomized by the thesis that what we experience
directly is reality itself (as opposed to ideas which “stand for” that reality),
then solipsism (as presented so far) is its flip-side – another way of satisfying
the craving for a direct contact with “the whole reality”, therefore avoiding met-
aphysical and epistemological loneliness.⁵⁷

1.6 Throwing the ladder away: a first attempt

Focusing on the set of propositions dealing with solipsism shows that the main
steps of the self-subversive procedure presented at the end of the book were al-
ready at work in that particular stretch. In order to make this clear, the first thing
we should observe is that the dialectical situation presented in 6.53 was repro-
duced in (my reading of) 5.6: on the one hand, we had someone – the solipsist,
say – wanting to “say something metaphysical”, namely that “the world is my

 I am here echoing Floyd 1998, a text to which I shall come back later in some detail (section
1.9).
 1.6 Throwing the ladder away: a first attempt 41

world”; on the other hand we had someone – call him Wittgenstein – trying to
demonstrate to his solipsistic interlocutor that “he had failed to give a meaning
to certain signs in his propositions”. Having noticed that fact, the question arises
whether Wittgenstein has “demonstrated” that the solipsist’s position is prob-
lematic by “saying nothing except what can be said, i. e., propositions of natural
science”. And the answer to that question is: of course not; as we saw, in order to
show that the solipsist was producing nonsense Wittgenstein clearly employed
some “metaphysical theses” – e. g., that “the limits of my language are the limits
of my world” (5.6), that “The subject does not belong to the world; rather, it is a
limit of the world” (5.632), and so on. Yet those “metaphysical theses”, as we also
observed, were themselves self-subversive, in that they attempted to express
something necessary about the world and language – something which, accord-
ing to the general analysis presented before in the book, simply could not be said
by any bona fide proposition. What is more remarkable, however, is that the self-
subversive character of those “metaphysical theses” was also made manifest by
the internal tension generated when we closely compared their (alleged) “con-
tent” with the (alleged) “content” of other claims made in the very same section
(5.6), e. g., that we cannot say in logic, “The world has this in it, and this, but not
that” (5.61), or that “no part of our experience is at the same time a priori”
(5.634).
Given the notorious self-subversive character of the “metaphysical theses”
employed in section 5.6 to point out the shortcomings of solipsism, we must con-
clude that Wittgenstein was making a self-conscious use of nonsense in this con-
text. By thus inviting us to flutter in the walls of language an awareness of the
limits of sense is produced, and that awareness should disavow us (as well as
the solipsistic interlocutor) of tacitly, un-self-consciously, producing nonsense
– in other words, this strategy is useful to make latent nonsensicality patent.
Now this conclusion can be used as a starting point, or as a test case, to an-
swer the questions made at the beginning of this chapter. Question (i) was about
which propositions we should use as rungs in a ladder to be thrown away; given
the analysis above, the answer seems to be: only Wittgenstein’s own self-con-
scious, self-subversive metaphysical claims – those which try to state, or to ex-
press (as opposed to make manifest) necessary truths about the world, language
and thought; as to how we shall use those propositions as such rungs – question
(ii) – the answer is: we can use them as tools which make us aware of the oth-
erwise latent, hidden failure of our attempts to talk about things which are be-
yond the limits of what can be said; as to the result of this whole process – ques-
tion (iii) – the answer is: freedom from the impulse to try to express those things,
and, ultimately, the lesson presented in proposition 7: “What we cannot speak
we must pass over in silence.” To “overcome these propositions”, and to “see
42 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

the world aright”, is to become aware of the limits of our language, and, there-
fore, to “throw away the ladder” is to give up the hopeless attempt to pose prob-
lems where questions cannot be asked – in other words, to give up metaphysics,
as traditionally pursued.⁵⁸

1.7 Back to the ladder: problematizing the solipsistic move

The conclusions above seem to be consistent with many traditional readings of

the Tractatus. However, I do not think the story should end at this point, for the
simple reason that we would then still be firmly on the ladder. In order to show
this, I will continue to use solipsism as my test case, only this time I will focus on
an aspect which was left out in the reconstruction presented in the preceding
section. Recall that a result of the reading offered above (see section 1.4) was
that the “truth in solipsism”, however strictly ineffable, was already implicit
from the beginning of the book’s examination of the conditions for representa-
tion: if we are to have propositions with a determinate sense, which represent
particular and determinate facts, there must be a determinate projection,
which in turn requires a subject who can make it – who can think the sense
of the proposition in such a determinate way. As we saw, this view implies a
prima facie problematic form of solipsism: the possibility of representational pri-
vacy. And yet, as we also saw, Wittgenstein doesn’t seem too concerned with that
theoretical possibility, since he has also provided a tool for dissolving circum-
scribed representational disagreements – that being the role of his method of
logical analysis. Provided that there is only one possible analysis of a (determi-
nately projected) proposition, intersubjectivity becomes just a matter of logical
calculation. He also readily reassures us, at the end of section 5.6, that this pe-
culiar form of solipsism which comes out to have some “truth” in it is actually
the purest form of realism, since it implies that no reality can possibly fall
short of direct and determinate representation in this scheme – I mean, the
one in which the limits of world and language coincide.
I take it that this solipsistic move of making manifest the “necessary congru-
ence” between the limits of my world (the extent of possible experience) and the
limits of my language (the extent of possible expression, or representation) is de-
signed to satisfy two deep-rooted philosophical needs, thus calming down two

 Notice that, according to this reading, there is an important sense in which no “transcen-
dence” is involved here at all – the idea is not to go to “the other side of the limit”, but rather
the very opposite, i. e., to give up the attempt to do so; hence the problem with Pears and
McGuinness’s translation (see fn. 47).
 1.7 Back to the ladder: problematizing the solipsistic move 43

intimately connected philosophical fears, namely (i) the fear of metaphysical

loneliness — i. e., of there being an unbridgeable gulf separating oneself from re-
ality – and (ii) the fear of meaninglessness — i. e., of not being capable to repre-
sent that reality in a determinate and truthful manner. But since the “way out” of
those philosophical predicaments presented thus far requires that, in an impor-
tant sense, the world itself becomes part of the subject’s (private) experience, I
would submit that no matter how well our intersubjective agreement may be ul-
timately backed up – by the availability of a logical method of analysis which
can resolve our disputes – this solution does not seem that reassuring.
In order to put some pressure on this point let us go back to the dispute
enacted in section 1.6 between “Wittgenstein” (let us continue calling him Witt-
genstein) and “the solipsist”. To begin with, remember that the solipsist was try-
ing to express his own philosophical position by means of a determinate thesis
when he employed the signs “The world is my world.” Wittgenstein, on the other
side, was trying to convince us that the solipsist did not say anything with those
signs, but only produced nonsense. Now, trivially enough, this dispute is an in-
stance of a possible dialogue or conversation, an exchange which could take
place in language; therefore, the set of claims that the author of the Tractatus
has been busy to establish (about the nature of language and its connection
to reality – call it his theory of meaning) ought to apply to this instance as
well as to any other communicative exchange. But if this is the case – if, i. e.,
the theory of meaning presented in the book is to have such a reflective applica-
tion, informing or conditioning the nature of this particular dialogue – there aris-
es a problem. Recall that, according to that theory, no string of signs should be
taken as intrinsically expressing a determinate proposition – a determinate sym-
bol, with a determinate sense; in order to do so, the signs must be projected (i. e.,
applied) in a determinate way by a particular subject. The flip-side is that a
string of signs also cannot be intrinsically nonsensical. Consequently, the target
of Wittgenstein’s criticisms when arguing against the solipsist cannot be the
mere string of signs employed by him – it must be rather something like his in-
tended projection. If that is the case, then how could Wittgenstein be so sure that
he got the solipsist’s intended projection right? Couldn’t the solipsist be (justly)
dissatisfied with Wittgenstein’s dogmatic retort that he cannot say what he wants
to say?
It will not do as a way out of this difficulty just to say that this dispute is sui
generis, in that no string of signs whatsoever could possibly play the role intend-
ed by the solipsist who claims that “the limits of my language are the limits of
my world”; in other words (so the reply would go), there are some “things”
which simply cannot be grasped by our signs, which have no corresponding sym-
bol in our language – this being the case of “what the solipsist means”. – If this
44 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

were true, then we should conclude that the limits of language and the limits of
reality (of what there is) are not completely congruent after all. And if this were,
in turn, true, then it would be of no help to say that the “world” (as this word is
technically employed in the book) is just a part of a “greater reality” – the part
which we can talk and think about. The moment we arrive at this kind of claim
we are again forced to face the threat of meaninglessness, of there being insur-
mountable obstacles to what can be represented in our language and thought. In
other words, we are back to our metaphysical bottle, still fluttering against its
walls.
Now I think this is exactly the result that Wittgenstein planned to achieve
with his enactment of a dispute with his solipsistic interlocutor. In fact – al-
though the justification for this claim goes beyond the scope of this chapter –
I am inclined to think that this would apply to any other context in the book
in which a tension is intentionally created between the drive to impose limits
(to what can be said, thought, experienced, represented) and the invitation to
transgress them, which is in turn triggered by (self-subversive) categorical denials
of some possibilities (e. g., that the metaphysical subject, or absolute value, or
God, could be found in the world) – denials which automatically prompt one
to affirm their opposite (e. g., by conceiving that the metaphysical subject, or ab-
solute value, or God, could be found outside the world). In contexts like these,
the further move of saying that the “things” in question are neither inside nor
outside the world, amounting rather to its limits, would be just another way of
playing with our imagination, since we cannot really (can we?) conceive any
limit which does not separate an inside from an outside, the result being again
a feeling – in the back of our minds, so to speak – that there is “something” be-
yond those limits, only we cannot reach “it”.
So, am I suggesting that there is no way out of this vertiginous situation? – I
think there is one, but in order to see it, we have yet to understand how this
whole story of projection is itself intended as a rung in the ladder that we are
supposed to throw away.

1.8 Throwing the “picture theory of meaning” away

Up until this point it looks as if what we should have learned from Wittgenstein’s
contention against the solipsist is that the latter was incapable of expressing his
own philosophical position, since his attempts to do so systematically produced
mere nonsense – strings of signs which were not given a determinate meaning to,
hence which do not amount to any symbol whatsoever. But a problem arises
when we ask how exactly that kind of claim is supposed to be grounded – in par-
 1.8 Throwing the “picture theory of meaning” away 45

ticular, what exactly are the supposed data it should take as a starting point. As
we saw, it cannot be merely the signs offered by the solipsist, since, as Wittgen-
stein himself has warned us, “the sign, of course, is arbitrary” (3.322), in that it
can be used to signify whatever one wants: “We cannot give a sign the wrong
sense” (5.4732). The other candidate would be the symbol(s) employed by the sol-
ipsist in presenting his “thesis”; but this, in turn, will not do, since symbols are
precisely strings of signs (e. g., words) which were already given a determinate
sense, which were employed (projected) to represent a determinate (possible)
fact.
The problem we are facing affects any reading which takes the Tractatus as
providing what I will call, borrowing from Cora Diamond, a wholesale criterion of
nonsensicality⁵⁹ – a philosophical theory that expresses the rules of sense-mak-
ing, enabling one to tell uses of signs that produce symbols from the ones that do
not. The problem with any such reading is that it presupposes that we can spec-
ify, in some way or another, a purported use/projection for the aims of philosoph-
ical elucidation, distinguishing it from other possible uses. In doing so those
readings end up producing the very conflation which, as we saw above, Wittgen-
stein regards as the origin of “the most fundamental confusions” of which “phi-
losophy is full” (3.324), namely the conflation between signs and symbols. Now,
if that is the case, then why would Wittgenstein tempt us to enact that confusion?
I will argue that at least part of the reason is to allow us to enter the frame of
mind in which philosophical “positions” such as solipsism will be seen as, at
the very least, strong contenders in the attempt to express our plight as finite be-
ings exposed to the threat of loneliness.
In order to show this, let us follow Wittgenstein’s advice in proposition
3.1431, and try to get clear about the nature of the propositional sign by imagin-
ing it made up of spatial objects, instead of our (more) familiar written signs. We
can start with Wittgenstein’s own alleged inspiration, the car accident in Paris,
which – following a suggestion from McManus⁶⁰ – can be modeled with kitchen
utensils, like this: folded napkins represent the road, cups represent the cars in-
volved, and a pepper-pot represents the pedestrian who was run over. Any child
with rudimentary language skills will be able to grasp that representation; and
yet, in a certain frame of mind, the process involved might appear very mysteri-
ous. How does one know, for example, that the pepper-pot is supposed to rep-
resent a person, instead of, say, yet another car, or a spaceship, or a volcano?

 Diamond talks about a “wholesale method for criticizing philosophical propositions” (Dia-
mond 2004, 202).
 McManus 2006, 66.
46 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Moreover, how does one know it should be taken as a sign for some particular
object (as a “name”), instead of, say, as a sign for the action of being-run-over-
by-a-car? Finally, and more generally, how can one distinguish legitimate from
illegitimate movements (or moves) inside this representation? Suppose I put
the pepper-pot under a napkin, and ask our proverbial child to describe what
happened. Maybe she will say: “the man is under the road” (if I ask her to ex-
plain, she can say there was an earthquake). But a less “childish” (that is,
less imaginative, more serious) answer may be: that does not make any sense.
These considerations are meant to remind us of how much is already in-
volved in the “simple” act of constructing models of reality, using particular ob-
jects as names of other particular objects. To understand how a name represents
is to understand in what kinds of combinations it can (or cannot) be put. A whole
system of representation needs to be in place and needs to be grasped simulta-
neously to the learning of the particular names. As McManus indicates, it would
be of no use being told that this paper-pot is “Frank” followed by no additional
explanation.⁶¹
This case is meant as an illustration of the general exegetical thesis accord-
ing to which “the picture analogy makes clear that grasping how one particular
name – one particular element of such a picture/model – represents involves
grasping how other names represent, along with the propositions within
which they figure”.⁶² That thesis is, in turn, the key to understanding how the
picture analogy can be used for elucidatory purposes, allowing us to climb an
additional rung in the ladder that is intended to be thrown away when we
come to understand Wittgenstein. It does so precisely by exposing what McMa-
nus dubs “the myth of the independent life of names”⁶³ – a “myth”, N.B., that so
far in our reading of the Tractatus was being accepted (however tacitly) as a truth
about language.⁶⁴ Connected to that myth is the idea of nonsense as being prior
to, independent of, and even conditioning upon, a particular method of projec-
tion (a particular assignment of meaning/use to a set of signs). Both confusions
exert a strong influence upon our thinking when we start from our ordinary, fa-
miliar methods of representation, given that it is difficult to adopt a more detach-
ed perspective in order to become clear about their conditions of possibility. The

 McManus 2006, 66 – 67.

 McManus 2006, 66.
 McManus 2006, 69.
 But were we not supposing that the life of names was imparted by the (metaphysical) subject
who projected them? – Yet can we imagine the act of giving life to names as something other
than a task of connecting “dead signs” with something else (simple objects conceived as compo-
nents of simple states of affairs?) whose “life” was in turn independent of the subject?
 1.8 Throwing the “picture theory of meaning” away 47

advantage of following Wittgenstein’s advice in 3.1431 is precisely to help in a

process of defamiliarization, thus weakening that temptation.
One can say in this vein that the picture analogy shows us why and how the
picture theory presented in the book must be ultimately thrown away. It does so
exactly in the way described by Wittgenstein in the 3.32n’s, namely, as a “sign-
language” which allows us to avoid the conflation of signs/symbols, which in
turn gives rise to the “most fundamental confusions” of which “philosophy is
full”. Again, this is a point which McManus clearly articulates in the conclusion
of his analysis:

Though it has often been remarked that the construction of a new notation does not seem
to be the philosophical method that the Tractatus itself employs, the picture analogy itself
works […] in a remarkably similar way to that in which the envisaged notation ought to
work: it undermines philosophical illusions by “disenchanting” words. By asking us to
think about models that are “made up of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, books) in-
stead of written signs”, Wittgenstein introduces a (short-lived) “notational reform” that
breaks up the familiar sign/symbol associations upon which our philosophical confusions
feed: the “expressions” used no longer even seem to carry their meanings outside the uses
in which they represent in the particular systems of representation in which they figure,
and the temptation to see confusing illusions of meaning in non-representing combinations
– in “illogical combinations” – is dissipated. We no longer seek to understand the differ-
ence between “logical impossibilities” (such as “Seven is darker than your hat”) and sen-
tences with sense (like “My coat is darker than your hat”) as that between “impermissible”
and “permissible” combinations of objects or ideas. (McManus 2006, 72)

An important aspect of what is involved in throwing away the picture theory, in

the way suggested above, has to do with the role of bipolarity as a criterion for
“propositionality” (i. e., for some string of signs to count as a proposition, a sym-
bol capable of truth and falsity). As it shall be clear at this point, I take it that
insofar as bipolarity is offered as an external or wholesale criterion for a string
of signs to symbolize, it constitutes part of the myth of an independent life of
signs, and accordingly must be thrown away with it. In order to see this, let
us pause to think about what exactly could lack bipolarity – and, therefore,
sense – according to the standards presented in the Tractatus: again, is it a string
of signs, or a complex of symbols? Here is Stephen Mulhall’s concise answer to
that question:

No mere string of signs could possibly either possess or lack bipolarity; but if we are in a
position to treat some given string of signs as symbolizing, then we must have parsed it as
symbolizing in a particular way, and hence assigned specific logical roles to its compo-
nents. If so, then the question of whether or not it possesses bipolarity comes too late;
48 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

and if not – if, that is, we haven’t yet settled on a particular parsing of it – then that ques-
tion simply doesn’t arise. (Mulhall 2007a, 6)⁶⁵

Notice the close parallel between Mulhall’s move in the quotation above – aim-
ing to show that there is no bipolarity/sense (since there is no no-bipolarity/non-
sense) prior to and independent of our assignment of a determinate use to our
signs – and the preceding lesson, according to which it is an illusion to think
that our signs have an “independent life” of their own, prior to the applications
to which we put them. The conclusion Mulhall extracts from this analysis serves
to bring home a related point which will be valuable when we go back to our
dialogue with the solipsist. It runs as follows:

[B]efore any general doctrine about non-bipolar propositions can be brought to bear on a
particular candidate, before we are even in a position to think of ourselves as having a can-
didate that might meet this proposed criterion for nonsensicality, we must already have
made clear the particular use we are inclined to make of it such that we want to say of
it that it expresses something non-bipolar (and that it is not a tautology, and so on). In
other words, all the work is being done by that process of clarification of meaning, not
by the attempted application of a general doctrine to whatever is thereby clarified; and
if the proposition-like thing is philosophically problematic, then […] that will come out
in the attempted process of clarification as a kind of failure to mean anything in particular
by it, or a hovering between various ways of meaning something by it, rather than by its
violating logical syntax. (Mulhall 2007a, 6)

 Again, an illustration can help to understand this general point. Although employed for a
slightly different purpose (viz., to show the mistake involved in taking a sentence as intrinsically
nonsensical, i. e., independently of the meaning which is assigned to its components), the fol-
lowing case shall do. Take the sentence “Chairman Mao is rare”, which, according to Mulhall,
was originally presented by Michael Dummett as a piece of “substantial nonsense”, since it
would (supposedly) conjoin a proper name, which can be used only as an argument for first-
level functions, with a second-level function. The problem with Dummett’s rather quick catego-
rization is that: “if it is essential to a symbol’s being a proper name that it [is used as an argu-
ment to first-level functions], then we can treat ‘Chairman Mao’ as a proper name in this context
only if we treat ‘is rare’ as a first-level function rather than a second-level function (say, as mean-
ing ‘tender’ or ‘sensitive’). And by the same token, if it is essential to a symbol’s being a second-
level function that it take first-level functions as arguments, then we can treat ‘is rare’ as a sec-
ond-level function in this context only if we treat ‘Chairman Mao’ as a first-level function rather
than a proper name (perhaps on the model of ‘a brutal politician’). Either way of parsing the
string of signs is perfectly feasible – we need only to determine a suitable meaning for the com-
plementary component in each case; but each way presupposes an interpretation of the string as
a whole which excludes the other. So treating it as substantial nonsense involves hovering be-
tween two feasible but incompatible ways of treating the string, without ever settling on either.”
(Mulhall 2007a, 4; I modified the quotation in order to fix what seems to be a slip in the orig-
inal.)
 1.8 Throwing the “picture theory of meaning” away 49

In other (and more general) words, the lesson here is that contrary to what its
readers might have been provisionally made to assume, the Tractatus ultimately
does not offer a wholesale “theory of meaning”. In particular, as Diamond puts,
there is “no special Tractatus sense of ‘nonsensical,’ only the ordinary idea of
not meaning anything at all”.⁶⁶ Consequently, the only strategy available for a
philosopher (or anyone else, for that matter) to show the confusion and empti-
ness of any purported sentence is the mobilization of (in Mulhall’s phrase) “a
certain kind of practical knowledge, a know-how possessed by anyone capable
of speech”.⁶⁷ And this means that instead of a top-down, dogmatic insistence
that some signs are inherently or intrinsically nonsensical – as the one enacted
by Wittgenstein in his purported criticism of the solipsist – philosophical (logi-
cal) clarity requires a rather more patient and sympathetic stance, a piecemeal
effort to imagine what might be leading an interlocutor to employ certain
signs, which will, in turn, involve imaginatively distinguishing the purported
(yet empty) use from other possible uses which might be legitimate and (recog-
nizably) meaningful. As Diamond concludes:

[P]hilosophical clarification is an activity which we can and, indeed, must attempt to carry
through if we want to criticize a thing that looks like a proposition, and claim that it is non-
sense. It is, essentially, in the failure of the attempt at clarification of the particular proposi-
tion with which we are concerned that we are able to come to recognize that there was noth-
ing there to clarify. There is no philosophical critique of propositions available on the basis
of the Tractatus, separate from the Tractatus conception of clarification of genuine propo-
sitions. (Diamond 2004, 203 – 204; my emphasis)

Clarification without theory: that, I would submit, is the method actually intend-
ed by the Tractatus. ⁶⁸ At the very least, this is how I understand what is actually
happening in the enacted dispute between Wittgenstein and his solipsistic inter-
locutor. With that suggestion in mind, let us go back to that dialogue in order to

 Diamond 2004, 205.

 Mulhall 2007a, 7.
 If only with partial success, as Wittgenstein himself later realized. As a number of “resolute
readers” (such as the ones I already quoted, James Conant, Cora Diamond and Juliet Floyd) have
been arguing, there is no incompatibility between Wittgenstein’s self-understanding at the time
he wrote the Tractatus being that of an anti-metaphysical and anti-theoretical philosopher, and
his having failed to live up to that ideal – hence a “later” Wittgenstein. My present purpose is to
clarify some important early insights which I think deserve to be taken seriously on their own,
notwithstanding Wittgenstein’s development. If anything, I take it that his later engagement
with “the solipsist” (in writings such as Philosophical Remarks and The Blue Book) as well as
with “the private linguist” (in Philosophical Investigations) can be seen as more refined versions
of precisely these early insights. Or so, at any rate, I will argue in subsequent chapters.
50 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

see if we can find a better end for our story – one which could be a little more
satisfying to the solipsist himself, who was so harshly criticized in the previous
round of the argument.

1.9 The “truth in solipsism”: a second pass

As I said above (see section 1.7), the picture presented in TLP 5.6 as an inevitable
conclusion of the book’s argument – the congruence which is there made man-
ifest between the limits of (my) world and the limits of (my) language – is de-
signed to satisfy two deep-rooted philosophical needs: those of overcoming met-
aphysical loneliness, or separateness from reality, and meaninglessness (in the
sense of a lack of fit between one’s language and the facts one wants to repre-
sent). The reason why these needs may seem to be satisfied by the discovery of
the “truth in solipsism” is that “when its implications are followed out strictly”
solipsism results in “pure realism” (the view according to which we experience
reality directly, as opposed to, say, ideas which “stand for” that reality). Having
reached that conclusion, I highlighted a difficulty it engenders, namely that in
order to obtain it Wittgenstein himself had to resort to an ultimately self-subvert-
ing strategy, based on the idea of drawing limits to the expressive capabilities of
our language, and, therefore, to the reality (the set of possible facts) which can
be expressed/thought by means of that language. We arrive at a kind of “realism”
in this way, but only at the expense of making the world itself tailored for our
cognitive capacities, becoming part of the subject’s (private) experience. Now,
contrary to what Wittgenstein wants us to momentarily assume, I argued in
the last section (1.8) that no wholesale theory of meaning can ever allow us to
escape that kind of metaphysical isolation – in other words, no external determi-
nation as to how our words/sentences can or must be used will solve logical dis-
putes about the sense of our purported projections. I then submitted that the way
out of this problem depends on our seeing the “picture theory of meaning” tradi-
tionally ascribed to the Tractatus as itself an illusion, a rung in the ladder which
we were supposed to throw away. The final lesson is that our signs have no life of
their own, apart from the uses to which we put them in particular contexts, and
that the only way to determine whether a (purported) use is legitimate is by mo-
bilizing our practical knowledge or linguistic know-how (more on this in a mo-
ment).
Supposing we are inoculated against the “myth of the independent life of
signs”, what about those deep-rooted philosophical needs I mentioned above?
The answer to this question will help us understand what is the real “truth in
solipsism” – the truth, i. e., which is at the very basis of our search for some
 1.9 The “truth in solipsism”: a second pass 51

kind of philosophical refuge against the threat of loneliness. Notice, first, that a
consequence of there being no external determination to how our words should
be used is that we also lack any kind of external guarantee that we are “mirror-
ing” the world with our language, and, therefore, that we are making our expe-
rience of that world understood (or even understandable) by others, shared. The
only ground we are left with is our contingent agreement itself – the fact that our
words are, more often than not, projected in similar ways. But being contingent,
and, as such, not metaphysically backed up by any kind of a priori theory of
meaning, the possibility will always be open that this agreement should be
lost, for one reason or another – e. g., we can always avoid accepting the
world as it is, or deny that we inhabit the same world (some particular) others
inhabit; we can also close ourselves to others, and them to us. For an enormous
number of reasons – which are themselves not to be reduced to a definite set by
any a priori theory – we and our fellow interlocutors can always start to project
words in strange, unexpected, eccentric ways.⁶⁹ I now want to suggest that the
truth in solipsism has to do precisely with this humbling realization concerning
the fragility of meaning and mutual understanding. Acknowledging our respon-
sibility in this continuous task is part of what it means to accept our finitude,
and it is precisely because of the difficulty involved in that acknowledgment
that some of us might prefer to seek for consolation in a metaphysical story,
with which comes a “theory of meaning”.
In a very different context, Stanley Cavell claims that Wittgenstein portraits
skepticism “as the site in which we abdicate such responsibility as we have over
words, unleashing them from our criteria, as if toward the world – unleashing
our voices from them – coming to feel that our criteria limit rather than consti-
tute our access to the world” (CHU 22). In the same vein, I think we can say that
the portrait of solipsism that Wittgenstein offers in the Tractatus – as well as his
portrait of the “pure realism”, with which the former is said to coincide – is that
of a site where we (self‐)deceive ourselves, by assuming that the meaning of our
words can be at the same time externally determined, as if deriving from the con-
stitution of “reality itself”, and also be fully and directly within our grasp, since
we made that reality a part of our own experience. In this sense, both solipsism
and its flip-side, “pure realism”, can be seen as intellectualized attempts at re-
establishing the link between the subject and the world (and other subjects, to
the extent in which they are supposed to be part of that world), so as to escape

 Although the topics I am here announcing – those of the contingent nature of our linguistic
agreement, and its consequences for our responsibilities to create and sustain a linguistic com-
munity – will be tackled in the next paragraphs, a more detailed treatment can be found in
chapter 4.
52 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

metaphysical loneliness. To free us from this kind of evasive attitude, thus lead-
ing us to accept our finitude and its burdens (in particular, that of making sense
of ourselves, the world and others) is part of what I take to be the “ethical point”
of the Tractatus. ⁷⁰
In an essay to which I am much indebted, Juliet Floyd describes solipsism in
a way which seems very congenial to the view I just presented. “Solipsism”, she
says, “is one of the most persistent refuges of the a priori, a limiting attempt to
impose a limit upon thinking and living”.⁷¹ Notwithstanding my agreement with
that description, I think her account of the impulse which leads to solipsism,
thus understood, is somewhat misleading – hence a comparison can be useful
to clarify and further develop the analysis pursued so far. The following quota-
tion summarizes her view on this point (I enumerate the sentences in order to
assess them below):

[1] The impulse to metaphysical solipsism arises naturally from the surrender of traditional
ideas of necessity and reason, including traditional ideas of logic as a necessary framework
governing thought and reality. [2] If logic and grammar cannot hold forms of thinking and
speaking in place, if analysis cannot uncover definiteness of sense by specifying forms of
objects in the world, and if ethics does not consist of true propositions or principles, then
my consciousness, my experience, may seem to be all that is left in the way of an under-
lying bulwark for thought and reality. [3] The Tractatus depicts this as one route into sol-
ipsism, and [4] then shows how this idea of a mental limit is just another way to see
with a captive eye. [5] Here too is an ethical dimension of his work. (Floyd 1998, 82)

I am in complete agreement with sentences (1), (4) and (5). But what I have been
arguing seems to go in the opposite direction of what is stated in sentence (2):
whereas Floyd there seems to be saying that solipsism is a kind of second
best – in this sense, a “refuge” which is available when you lose your faith in
the idea of an objective connection between language and world to be guaran-
teed by reason, or logic – what I have been trying to show is that, for Wittgen-
stein, solipsism is (at least prima facie) the best philosophical candidate to se-
cure such a direct, objective and impersonal relation between subject (or his/
her language) and the world. (That this is only prima facie true must by now
be clear, hence my agreement with Floyd on (4) and (5).)
It is somewhat puzzling, to my mind, that Floyd should say what she says in
(2), given the overall view presented in her essay. The apparent conflict I see as
internal to her view can be made perspicuous by comparing the quotation above

 I am here alluding to Wittgenstein’s notorious claim, made in a letter to Ludwig von Ficker,
that “the point of the [Tractatus] is ethical” (see Monk 1990, 178).
 Floyd 1998, 82.
 1.9 The “truth in solipsism”: a second pass 53

with another set of remarks presented at the end of her essay, with which I also
entirely agree, and which I take as indeed very helpful to clarify the reading pre-
sented so far. These are the relevant remarks:

[O]ne “deep need” Wittgenstein saw wrongly gratified in idealism and in solipsism was a
wish for total absorption in the world and in life, in the feeling of there being no space,
no gap, between the language I understand, the world I contemplate, and the life which
I live. […] Solipsism is a metaphysical version of loneliness – or, perhaps better, a metaphys-
ical attempt to overcome the possibility of loneliness. If solipsism were true, my all-embrac-
ing experience and my all-embracing world would be one. I would find myself reflected in
all things. (Floyd 1998, 103 – 104)

It is, I think, precisely because of these apparent philosophical merits that solip-
sism ends up being the main focus of Wittgenstein’s reflections at the time he
wrote the Tractatus. But solipsism, to the extent in which it can be taken as a
“metaphysical attempt to overcome the possibility of loneliness”, is precisely
what is untrue – or at any rate this is what I have been trying to show. – But
in saying this, am I not being as dogmatic and unfair to the solipsist as I accused
Wittgenstein (in his dogmatic persona) of being? In what sense is the view just
stated supposed to be more “satisfying to the other person” – i. e., “the solip-
sist”?
To begin with, I am not advancing a view according to which there is “some-
thing” the solipsist cannot say – he has all the room to use his words as he
wants, provided that he tries to make himself understood. (Of course he has
no obligation to do this – after all, it is characteristic of our life with words
that we can simply decide to give up our responsibility to make ourselves under-
stood, whenever we want, provided that we assume the consequences of that de-
cision.) Now, assuming that he wants to make himself understood, the only pos-
sible way of continuing with our dialogue – i. e., after throwing away any
philosophical temptation to appeal to a theory of meaning, such as the Tracta-
tus’ “picture theory” – is as we normally do when we have a disagreement: by
mobilizing our practical mastery, or know-how, of language, seeking to find a
(set of) shared judgment(s) to use as a starting point. In this process, it may
well turn out that the solipsist (this particular, fleshed and blooded, interlocutor
I am now imagining) really had something interesting, important (or rather com-
pletely uninteresting and unimportant) to say. Or it may happen that I simply
find myself unable to understand what he wants to say – what may in turn
make me adopt a whole range of different attitudes, from feeling myself guilty
(unprepared, unsophisticated, stupid, different), to blaming my interlocutor in-
stead, treating him as strange, eccentric, mad, unintelligible, and so on. But no-
tice that even if I adopt one of the latter attitudes, my reason, whether good or
54 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

bad (I can be just tired, say, and try to pass my problem to the other) will not
derive from any metaphysical story/theory of meaning this time – if, N.B., I
am not to fall back to the evasive philosophical attitude described above.
But I would like to go further: it is not that I just want to make room for a
(possibly productive, possibly barren) dialogue with a (possibly real) solipsist
– a room for his words to have legitimate use(s). My sympathy toward the solip-
sist goes further, in the sense that I also find myself, at least in some moods,
thinking that there are many “good reasons” – which might actually amount
to intellectualizations of so many concrete dissatisfactions with the human con-
dition – which can lead one to be tempted to take refuge in some kind of solip-
sistic (theoretical) story, such as that one Wittgenstein presents in the Tractatus.
If I see an error or misunderstanding in the solipsist’s attitude, it is rather a fail-
ure in self-knowledge or self-interpretation. If we inspect closely we may discover
that underlying this intellectualized attitude are the real anxieties, or dissatisfac-
tions, that we (or “the solipsist”) encounter in our life with words and other peo-
ple. This, I submit, might turn out to be the real truth in solipsism – a truth that
has nothing ineffable about itself, but which is difficult to take at face value,
without philosophical (re)interpretation.

1.10 Throwing the ladder away: a second attempt

The epigraph to this chapter has a Wittgenstein older than the author of the Trac-
tatus saying that “[i]n philosophizing we may not cut off a disease of thought. It
must run its natural course, and slow cure is all important” (Z §382; translation
amended). The reading presented thus far has been trying to emphasize the
shortcomings of attempts at cure that do not go slow enough. I take it that the
author of the Tractatus himself was already pointing in that direction by warning
us, in proposition 6.53, that saying to a confused interlocutor that he has not
given meaning to his signs will very often not be “satisfying” to him. It might
take time and much more imaginative effort than philosophers are used to
spend in order to get inside the confused perspective of an interlocutor,⁷² but in-

 Since it is not exactly against a thesis or an opinion that one has to fight when dealing with a
confused interlocutor (like the solipsist of the Tractatus), but rather against a kind of fantasy or
illusion which shapes the (overt) theses and opinions of someone in their grip, the best strategy
is not direct opposition, or contradiction – in fact, that would only generate resistance, and, con-
sequently, reinforce the grip of the underlying illusion. Borrowing from Mulhall’s analysis of a
different case, one may say that what is needed is analogous to what in psychoanalysis would be
called “transference”: “the analyst suffers the analysand’s projection of her fantasies, but does
 1.10 Throwing the ladder away: a second attempt 55

dicating that confusion might well be all there is for a philosopher (as imagined
by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus) to do.⁷³
That said, I want to conclude this chapter by suggesting that even if the
whole enterprise pursued in the Tractatus has to do with thus dissolving philo-
sophical pseudo-problems, there still is room to think of a further therapeutic ef-
fect of the work of logical elucidation, namely that it can help us see (maybe for
the first time, or at least for the first time in full light) the real facts that might be
at the root of those pseudo-problems. One can say, as Wittgenstein himself does,
that after this elucidatory process our pseudo-problems will “disappear”, mean-
ing that our philosophically sublimated “questions” will be shown not to be ques-
tions at all (see 6.52); yet one could also say – as Wittgenstein precisely does
not ⁷⁴ – that, in another important sense, our real problems have only just
begun to show up at this point. And this is my primary reason to think, regarding
the conclusions we reached at the end of the last section, that although they may
correctly convey the Tractatus’s self-understanding of its own elucidatory aims,
they are ultimately incomplete, because they do not go all the way toward the
envisaged change of attitude that the book as a whole – and, in particular, its
self-subversive enactment of a solipsistic position – is encouraging us to take.
In other words, I think we still need to get clear about the full ethical significance
of the sort of elucidation pursued in the Tractatus.
I will start approaching this topic by echoing some of the insights reached in
Michael Kremer’s analysis of the truth in solipsism in a paper to which I am
much indebted.⁷⁵ One of Kremer’s main contentions in this paper is that solip-
sism is, at least in part, true because when it is strictly followed through it not
only should lead one to abandon (what I would qualify as) the philosophical
or theoretical illusion of “drawing limits to language and thought”, but, more
importantly, it should also lead one to explode the “illusion of the godhead of

so precisely in order to put its mechanisms and motivations in question, to work with and upon
the material rather than simply reiterating it” (Mulhall 2001a, 137).
 It took me some effort to understand this, and I thank Jim Conant for finally triggering this
new and unexpected Gestalt switch.
 As Wittgenstein has famously put to his prospective publisher (see fn. 70): “I once wanted to
give a few words in the foreword [of the Tractatus] which now actually are not in it, which, how-
ever, I’ll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work
consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And
precisely this second part is the important one. For the Ethical is delimited from within, as it
were, by my book; and I’m convinced that, strictly speaking, it can ONLY be delimited in this
way. In brief, I think: All of that which many are babbling today, I have defined in my book
by remaining silent about it.” (Quoted in Monk, 1990, 178)
 Kremer 2004.
56 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

the independent ‘I’”⁷⁶ – an illusion which is not only philosophical and theoret-
ical, but also ethical; hence the main lesson extracted by Kremer, according to
which solipsism, if strictly followed through, amounts to “the self-humbling of
pride”.⁷⁷
I take it that such a lesson is closely related to the “vanishing” of the “prob-
lem of life” alluded to by Wittgenstein in 6.521, which, in turn, connects to the
idea of “seeing the world aright” after overcoming the propositions of the Trac-
tatus (throwing away the ladder), thus coming to understand its author. Here is
how I see these connections: to “see the world aright” – to have a clear, realistic
perspective on the world – is to see, among many other things, the facts it pres-
ents to us as absolutely contingent happenings, which, as such, have nothing of
(intrinsically) good or bad, fortunate or regrettable about them. To think (or to
assume) the opposite – e. g., that at least some facts in the world are intrinsically
connected to our (i. e., the metaphysical subject’s) will – is to fall prey of the
most seductive, and hence most dangerous aspect of the solipsistic fantasy.
This is because, as Wittgenstein would later put,⁷⁸ the issue at hand when one
deals with solipsism (as with so many other philosophical fantasies) has more
to do with our will than with our intellect. Hence it should come as no surprise
that even the most engaged intellectual efforts to dissipate it might end up only
deflecting the real difficulty behind the temptation of solipsism. What one needs
in order to be freed from that temptation is precisely not more argument – hence
Wittgenstein’s decision of remaining silent about it; rather, what one needs is to
engage in an active effort to come to terms with – to become conscious of, and
ultimately take control of – one’s own will, so as to become capable of taking a
different stand toward the world.
That, it seems to me, is at least part of what it means to confront (and to ac-
cept) our finitude – in particular, our real separateness from the world and its
happenings. And I take it that this is exactly the kind of practical, existential
change which is envisaged as the terminus of the whole therapeutic process of
“throwing away the ladder”, thus leading one to abandon, maybe against
one’s deepest expectations (philosophical and other) the search for “limits of
sense”, for a “theory of meaning”, or for any (other) kind of metaphysical back-
ing for a direct connection with the (whole) world.
This conclusion is admittedly opaque; for the time being I would like to
avoid one misunderstanding it may generate, which can be formulated by

 Kremer 2004, 66.

 Kremer 2004, 66.
 See, e. g., CV 17.
 1.10 Throwing the ladder away: a second attempt 57

means of the following question: Am I, by calling attention to that kind of sep-

arateness, trying to say, or to imply, that one should, by the Tractatus’s lights,
take a detached perspective with respect to the (whole) world? The (short) answer
to that question is: No. And yet, the very fact that this question may appear so
overwhelming at this juncture (as it does to me, in some moods anyway)
shows something important about the nature of this particular philosophical
temptation. For let us recall Floyd’s words: “one ‘deep need’ Wittgenstein saw
wrongly gratified in […] solipsism was a wish for total absorption in the world
and in life, in the feeling of there being no space, no gap, between the language
I understand, the world I contemplate, and the life which I live”;⁷⁹ now of course,
if that were the kind of “absorption” one had in mind when thinking about a
non-detached relation to the world, there would be no doubt that by affirming
separateness – thereby denying solipsism – one would be forced to accept the
implication referred above. What is the alternative? And what exactly is the prob-
lem with the solipsistic model of attachment to the world?
Starting with the latter question, I take it that one of the main problems with
the solipsistic model – which is also supposed to be one of its main merits, if one
is tempted to accept it – lies in the suppression it would promote of any kind of
(not only epistemic but) existential risks. And yet, to feel threatened – or rather
excited, or soberly unperturbed, or otherwise burdened – in the face of such
risks seems to be a precondition of any realistic, non-detached stance toward
the world;⁸⁰ and this seems to be exactly the opposite of the “pure realism” de-
picted in the Tractatus, promising a relation in which the whole of “reality”
would be “coordinated” – with no rest – with the “self of solipsism” (see TLP
5.64). Consequently, I take it that an alternative, bona fide realistic model for a
(or rather a number of) non-detached relation(s) to the world must involve the
notion of a subject who is open to being challenged in her beliefs, convictions,
or preconceptions – practical as well as theoretical – “in the teeth of the
facts”.⁸¹ As it happens in so many situations of our ordinary lives, separation
can be initially traumatic – it can even be a case for grief or mourning, as Emer-
son, followed by Cavell, would be willing to say⁸² – but precisely because of that
it can also serve as a catalyst for a renewed, more realistic attitude toward life
and toward the world, one in which, in Cavell’s terms, we would not try to “be-

 Floyd 1998, 103 – 104.

 For an interesting and illuminating discussion of this point, see Dreyfus 2009, esp. chapter 2.
 See Diamond 1995, 39.
 Emerson presents that point most notably in his essay “Experience”, which Cavell discusses
in many of his writings, the main context perhaps being the first chapter of CHU. I deal with this
notion of mourning the world in more detail in Techio 2020.
58 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

come near” the world “by grasping it, getting to it, but by letting its distance, its
separateness, impress us” (PDAT 52). Now if I am right in finding a view like that
at work in the Tractatus, then the next step would be to conclude that the silence
recommend in its last proposition should not to be seen (as so many have) as an
invitation to a passive contemplation – of “the mystical”, say – but rather as a
call to stop talking (i. e., theorizing) about what should or must be the case, and to
start acting in this contingent and unpredictable world.

1.11 Concluding methodological remarks: distinguishing cure

and prevention
Faced with the preceding reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s exchange with his sol-
ipsistic interlocutor in the Tractatus, and before transitioning to further itera-
tions of that exchange in later works, some words seem to be in order concerning
the following question, which I think can naturally arise at this point: in what
sense can this exchange count as an instance of the “only strictly correct meth-
od” in philosophy that Wittgenstein himself recommends against someone who
“wanted say something metaphysical” at the end of the book (TLP 6.53)? I think
some clarity about this issue can be attained with the help of Denis McManus’s
proposal of distinguishing two ways of dealing with logical misunderstandings,
namely cure and prevention. McManus emphasizes that “[i]n our existing nota-
tions, one can substitute for one another similar-looking signs that express dif-
ferent symbols, producing strings of signs that have no sense but which look or
sound as if they do”;⁸³ yet that kind of replacement would be impossible within
the Begriffsschrift, and precisely because of that impossibility the project of de-
veloping a Begriffsschrift should be seen as the key measure at preventive med-
icine for early Wittgenstein. However, since our world is already populated by
“the infected” (those who “discuss, and claim an understanding of, the problems
of philosophy”⁸⁴), what we are most in need of is not prevention, but some sort of
remedy, a strategy for philosophical cure. The analogy with psychoanalysis is
once again helpful to understand this point: as I pointed out before, it will
not do as an effective cure just to say to the analysand that she has a particular
problem, whose causes are such-and-such – on the contrary, this could actually
make the situation worse, generating resistance. Instead, what is needed is a dif-
ferent, more engaged and sympathetic, kind of involvement – in McManus’s

 McManus 2006, 130.

 McManus 2006, 130.
 1.11 Concluding methodological remarks: distinguishing cure and prevention 59

words, the psychoanalyst has to be able to maintain a kind of double vision: “as
well as his own diagnostic vision, he needs to be able to make his own the pa-
tient’s distorted vision”; by seeing how things look from the latter’s perspective,
he will (hopefully) be able to find a way to “begin to nudge the patient toward
the point from which he will be able to see what the diagnostic perspective
sees”.⁸⁵ And the same would apply to the philosopher:

To help others out of nonsense, one needs to think through it, to uncover how that vulner-
ability “works”. This requires a certain sympathy with the confusions in question – what
might seem to some Wittgensteinians a perverse or nostalgic love of the problems of phi-
losophy. One needs to be able to see things as the confused see them, but also to be able to
escape that addled perspective. To maintain that double vision is to be able to enter and
then escape – which is to say, truly understand – this “chaos”. If one loses this double vi-
sion, one may either become captured by the confusions – losing one’s appreciation of how
our talk here is mere nonsense – or lose one’s appreciation of their power – losing one’s
grasp of how they can appear utterly real to those in their grip. (McManus 2006, 132)⁸⁶

The reason why I think it is important to go through these brief considerations at

this point is that they will allow us to have a better understanding of the continu-
ities and discontinuities in Wittgenstein’s view concerning the nature of philo-
sophical elucidation as we transition to his later works. As I will argue in the
next chapter, an important change in his thinking – undergone by the time he
resumed philosophical work, around 1929 – was precisely the realization that
even as preventive medicine a Begriffsschrift was not as efficient as he had ini-
tially supposed, after all it could not prevent the kind of nonsense involved in

 McManus 2006, 132.

 One of the interesting results of employing this analogy with psychoanalysis is that, as
McManus points out, it may “help us to see why it is quite natural for the Tractatus to mix non-
sensical elucidations with ‘sensical’ observations, and, thus, why a reading that presents it so
need not be guilty of an ad hoc cherry-picking”: “In conversation with a patient with delusions,
some of the psychoanalyst’s remarks will be elaborations of the patient’s delusions; but others
will be very obviously and straightforwardly ‘sensical’. The psychoanalyst may suggest how
things would look to the patient were certain things to happen: for example, ‘If A was to do
x, you would say it was because A would be seeking to bring about y, wouldn’t you?’ But the
patient does not live on another planet, and in exploring their viewpoint on life, there is no rea-
son why every such elucidatory remark need be expressive of delusion; some will be, and in the
depths of their delusion the patient may react to these suggestions with an ‘Exactly!’ or with a
‘So you see it too!’; but the patient will have understood what the analyst’s point was in making
these suggestions when he also comes to see that they were expressive of delusion. The patient
may then look back over the conversation and recognize that parts – but only parts – of it were
shaped in ways he hadn’t realized at the time by certain distorting confusions, including the an-
alyst’s forays into, and elaborations on, the patient’s delusions.” (McManus 2006, 133 – 134)
60 1 Solipsism and the limits of sense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

(pseudo‐)propositions like “white is darker than black” (i. e., a kind of nonsense
which does not arise simply from confusion regarding logical relations among
non-analyzed – and indeed unanalysable — elementary propositions). As to phil-
osophical cure, although Wittgenstein will continue to maintain the need to en-
gage with the interlocutor as a psychoanalyst engages with a patient, he will also
come to see that the origins of philosophical confusions, including those group-
ed under the heading of “solipsism”, are way more various and more entangled
than he had initially supposed, and, consequently, that the respective therapies
would have to be administered more locally, so much so as to shatter any hope of
solving (even “in essence”) all the problems of philosophy once and for all.
2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical
Remarks
… solipsism teaches us a lesson: It is that thought which is on the way to destroy this error.
For if the world is idea it isn’t any person’s idea. (Solipsism stops short of saying this and
says that it is my idea.) But then how could I say what the world is if the realm of ideas has
no neighbour?

(Ludwig Wittgenstein⁸⁷)

2.1 Introduction

Wittgenstein opens the Philosophical Remarks⁸⁸ with the following pair of en-
tries:

A proposition is completely logically analysed if its grammar is made completely clear: no

matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in.

I do not now have phenomenological language, or “primary language” as I used to call it,
in mind as my goal. I no longer hold it to be necessary. All that is possible and necessary is
to separate what is essential from what is inessential in our language. (PR 51, §1)

These entries express a change of mind in Wittgenstein’s thinking – a change

which, one can speculate, he must have deemed rather important, so as to de-
cide to open his manuscript by avowing it. This avowal raises a number of ques-
tions: When did Wittgenstein have a “phenomenological language” or “primary
language” as his goal? For what purposes did he hold that language to be nec-
essary? When exactly did he change his mind about that, and why? Finally, how
does the alleged change relate to the claim made in the first entry, to the effect
that it does not matter, for purposes of clarification, what “idiom” (Ausdruckswe-

 PO 255.
 It may be worth mentioning at the outset that this “work” is largely an editorial invention
consisting of a selection from a vast, relatively unexplored stratum of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass,
from a period when his views were constantly changing, sometimes radically. According to
Rush Rhees, the original text employed in the edition of the Philosophical Remarks was “a type-
script that G. E. Moore gave […] soon after Wittgenstein’s death: evidently the one which Witt-
genstein left with Bertrand Russell in May, 1930, and which Russell sent to the Council of Trinity
College, Cambridge, with his report in favour of a renewal of Wittgenstein’s research grant. All
the passages in it were written in manuscript volumes between February 2nd, 1929, and the last
week of April, 1930” (PR 347, “Editor’s Note”).

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110702859-005
62 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

ise) is used to express a “completely logically analysed” proposition? Answering

these questions would go a long way towards understanding the changes that
occurred in Wittgenstein’s thinking around the years of 1929 – 30, marking his re-
turn to Cambridge and to philosophical research. Although that aim is beyond
the scope of this chapter I will tackle those questions briefly in the remainder
of this introduction, offering an initial sketch of this transitional moment in Witt-
genstein’s development. This limited result will be useful in subsequent sections,
where we will see Wittgenstein’s new method(s) at work in the service of trying
to unveil some temptations related to solipsism.
I suggest we start approaching these questions by taking a detour, examin-
ing another important record of Wittgenstein’s post-Tractarian reflections, name-
ly the paper “Some Remarks on Logical Form”, written in July, 1929.⁸⁹ In its first
paragraph Wittgenstein defines “syntax” as “the rules which tell us in which
connection only a word give [sic.] sense, thus excluding nonsensical structures”,
and claims that the “syntax of ordinary language […] is not quite adequate for
this purpose”, since “[i]t does not in all cases prevent the construction of non-
sensical pseudopropositions” (SRLF 29).⁹⁰ He then offers as examples of such
pseudopropositions: “red is higher than green” and “the Real, though it is an
in itself, must also be able to become a for myself” (SRLF 29). Given the inade-
quateness of the syntax of ordinary language to prevent such nonsense, Wittgen-
stein argues for the usefulness of employing logical analysis, and, in particular, a
logical symbolism which would reflect syntax (more) perspicuously:

If we try to analyze any given propositions we shall find in general that they are logical
sums, products or other truthfunctions of simpler propositions. But our analysis, if carried
far enough, must come to the point where it reaches propositional forms which are not
themselves composed of simpler propositional forms. We must eventually reach the ulti-
mate connection of the terms, the immediate connection which cannot be broken without
destroying the propositional form as such. The propositions which represent this ultimate
connexion of terms I call, after B. Russell, atomic propositions. They then, are the kernels of
every proposition, they contain the material, and all the rest is only a development of this
material. It is to them we have to look for the subject matter of propositions. It is the task of
the theory of knowledge to find them and to understand their construction out of the words

 The paper was originally invited for the Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind
Association of that year; though published in the proceedings, it was not delivered at the occa-
sion, apparently because of Wittgenstein’s dissatisfactions with it (see PR 349). Notwithstanding
his reasons to dismiss it – or even to consider it “quite worthless” (see PO 28) – that paper
stands as an important record (if only because of the lack of any other) to understand this transi-
tional period in Wittgenstein’s thinking.
 I quote from the reprinted version of the paper in PO, and the page numbers refer to that
collection.
 2.1 Introduction 63

or symbols. This task is very difficult, and philosophy has hardly yet begun to tackle it at
some points. What method have we for tackling it? The idea is to express in an appropriate
symbolism what in ordinary language leads to endless misunderstandings. That is to say,
where ordinary language disguises logical structure, where it allows the formation of pseu-
dopropositions, where it uses one term in an infinity of different meanings, we must replace
it by a symbolism which gives a clear picture of the logical structure, excludes pseudopro-
positions, and uses its terms unambiguously. (SRLF 29 – 30)

Nothing said in the passage above seems to imply any remarkable change in re-
lation to Wittgenstein’s earlier conception of the philosophical task of clarifica-
tion, and, in particular, of the role of a “richtige Begriffsschrift” for that end. How-
ever, a departure seems to be gestured at in the passage which immediately
follows the one above:

Now we can only substitute a clear symbolism for the unprecise one by inspecting the phe-
nomena which we want to describe, thus trying to understand their logical multiplicity.
That is to say, we can only arrive at a correct analysis by, what might be called, the logical
investigation of the phenomena themselves, i. e., in a certain sense a posteriori, and not by
conjecturing about a priori possibilities. One is often tempted to ask from an a priori stand-
point: What, after all, can be the only forms of atomic propositions, and to answer, e. g.,
subject-predicate and relational propositions with two or more terms further, perhaps,
propositions relating predicates and relations to one another, and so on. But this, I believe,
is mere playing with words. An atomic form cannot be foreseen. And it would be surprising
if the actual phenomena had nothing more to teach us about their structure. To such con-
jectures about the structure of atomic propositions, we are led by our ordinary language,
which uses the subject-predicate and the relational form. But in this our language is mis-
leading […] (SRLF 30)

Clearly, the very idea of pursuing a “logical investigation of the phenomena

themselves” – something “in a certain sense a posteriori” – is a novelty with re-
spect to the staunchly aprioristic stance taken in the Tractatus (in fact, it is ar-
guably due to that novelty that Wittgenstein had come to be less dismissive
about the task of the “theory of knowledge” by the time he wrote the paper
under scrutiny). What triggered this change, if only partially, was of course the
so-called “problem of synthetic incompatibilities”.⁹¹ That problem may be illus-
trated with the analysis of propositions stating color-exclusion. Take, e. g., the
proposition “if A is red then A is not green” (where “A” stands for a point in
my visual space); if true, that proposition implies that “A is red and A is
green” must (by necessity) be false; now, if one assumes – as the author of

 This is Russell’s (not Wittgenstein’s) phrase. An informative account of the way this problem
influenced Wittgenstein’s philosophical method was told by Faria 1989.
64 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

the Tractatus did – that all necessity is logical, then, given the necessary false-
hood of the latter proposition, one should conclude that it amounts to a logical
(i. e., purely formal) contradiction; yet that is not the case, as one can clearly see
by paraphrasing that proposition by means of the notational devices laid down
in TLP (the “T-F notation”).
The critical result is that there are logical relations among propositions that
the Tractatus’s “general propositional form” is unable to capture, because they
are not formal relations: nothing that accounts (only) for the behavior of the log-
ical constants will be enough as an account of the relations of (synthetic) exclu-
sion holding between, e. g., two propositions ascribing different colors to a
point.⁹² This result ultimately leads Wittgenstein to abandon the thesis of the log-
ical independence of elementary propositions, thus coming to acknowledge an
important failure of his original, truth-functional analysis of the proposition.
And this is the reason why an “investigation of the phenomena themselves”
seems to be necessary – in particular, it is only upon pursuing such an investi-
gation that one might become able to know what form the “elementary proposi-
tions” actually have. Now, in order to correctly mirror the logical multiplicity of
phenomena, a symbolism more powerful than the Tractatus’s Begriffsschrift is
needed, and this is precisely the role of what Wittgenstein would come to call
a “phenomenological” or “primary” language. Hence, the project of constructing
such a symbolism can be seen as, in an important respect, continuous with the
Tractarian ideal of offering a “logically perspicuous notation”. In fact, Wittgen-
stein’s first attempts to lay bare “the logical structure of phenomena” by
means of an investigation which is “in a sense a posteriori”, yet not exactly or
fully empirical or scientific, can be seen as an effort to rescue what remains of
the Tractarian edifice after one of its foundations – namely, the thesis of the log-
ical independence among elementary propositions – is relinquished.
There is, however, an important discontinuity folded within the continuity
indicated above. As we know, Wittgenstein already held in the Tractatus that or-
dinary language is in “perfect logical order” – hence, that the usefulness of log-
ical analysis and logically perspicuous notation(s) is to bring that (already exist-

 More specifically, what the author of the Philosophical Remarks came to believe was wrong
with the T-F method was precisely that “[t]he methods for ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’ etc., which I represent-
ed by means of the T-F notation, are a part of the grammar of these words, but not the whole”
(PR 111, §83). “Material validities” of inference, in other words, are not just a matter of the mean-
ings of extra-logical vocabulary (“if it’s green all over, then it’s not red”): the very understanding
of logical constants (hence of logical form) stands to be affected by the recognition that “these
remarks [e. g. about color incompatibilities] do not express an experience but are in some sense
tautologies” (SRLF 32).
 2.1 Introduction 65

ing) order to full light, so as to prevent logical and philosophical confusion. And
the same goes for the “phenomenological language”, as Wittgenstein came to
think of it. But the main change leading to the Remarks has to do with the spe-
cific steps involved in this process of logical clarification. For one thing, Wittgen-
stein now distinguishes two kinds of “descriptions of reality”, namely: (i) prop-
ositions (properly so-called), which are the descriptions employed in what he
dubs the “primary system” – the bearers of truth and falsity, which are verified
or falsified by immediate experience – and (ii) hypotheses, which are employed
in the “secondary system”, also dubbed “physics” (corresponding, roughly, to
the ordinary talk about spatio-temporal objects supplemented by scientific lan-
guage) and are not properly speaking descriptions of states of affairs, which
would be either true or false, but rather rules or laws for the formation of gen-
uine propositions. Thus, according to the view which was emerging by the time
Wittgenstein proposed this distinction, hypotheses would relate only indirectly to
the objects of immediate experience, thereby hiding an enormously complex
symbolic structure under their (apparently) simple signs. And since hypotheses,
in the sense just defined, would be the means of description characteristically
employed in ordinary language that fact should account for its “misleading char-
acter”. By the same token, a logically perspicuous notation should be free of hy-
potheses, that being the role of a (phenomenological) language embodying in its
very form (in the structure of its signs) all the otherwise hidden complexity of the
underlying symbols, thus mirroring the complexity of the phenomena represent-
ed by it.
This, as I have been warning, was Wittgenstein’s (emerging) view about the
role of phenomenological language, if only for a short period of time, soon after
having abandoned the (now seen as) oversimplified picture of the relation be-
tween ordinary descriptions and the “immediate objects of experience” present-
ed in the Tractatus. Yet, as the opening entries of the Remarks indicate, at some
point he changed his mind in an even more radical way, giving up the whole idea
that logically perspicuous notations (of any sort) were necessary for the task of
clarification, thus coming to acknowledge, probably for the first time, that the
original Tractarian project of employing a Begriffsschrift in order to avoid philo-
sophical confusions was misguided, and should accordingly be rejected. (Recall
that Wittgenstein was initially willing to amend that project and push it forward,
even in the face of the challenges created by the problem of synthetic incompa-
tibilities.)
This takes us back to the question of what exactly Wittgenstein proposed to
put in place of that discarded Tractarian project. The first element to answer this
question was given in the last sentence of the opening section of the Remarks
quoted above – namely, that “[a]ll that is possible and necessary is to separate
66 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

what is essential from what is inessential in our language”. Wittgenstein elabo-

rates that point, describing the new method envisaged after his radical change of
mind, in the next entries of that opening section, which go as follows:

That is, if we so to speak describe the class of languages which serve their purpose, then in
so doing we have shown what is essential to them and given an immediate representation
of immediate experience.

Each time I say that, instead of such and such a representation, you could also use this
other one, we take a further step towards the goal of grasping the essence of what is rep-
resented.

A recognition of what is essential and what inessential in our language if it is to represent,

a recognition of which parts of our language are wheels turning idly, amounts to the con-
struction of a phenomenological language.⁹³ (PR 51, §1)⁹⁴

As we are now in a position to acknowledge, the remarks above express Wittgen-

stein’s truly new methodology, i. e., the one adopted after his having finally aban-
doned the essentially Tractarian view that “logically perspicuous notations” (in-
cluding the short-lived device of a “phenomenological language”) were
necessary in order to clarify our propositions. Alva Noë (1994) offers an illumi-
nating assessment of that methodological change, which gets summarized in
the following passage:

Philosophy must proceed by careful examination and comparison of different methods of

representation (not only of our ordinary ones). This investigation of notations enables us
to give “an immediate representation of immediate experience.” Whereas before Wittgen-
stein had believed that the surface forms of ordinary language conceal what is essential

 The original wording of the last sentence reads as follows: “[…] kommt auf die Konstruction
einer phäenomenologischen Sprache hinaus”; that could well be translated as “comes down to
the same thing as” (cf. Noë 1994, fn. 59). I will come back to the importance of this point below.
 Wittgenstein makes precisely the same point to Waismann and Schlick, in December of 1929.
Here is the relevant passage where that point is recorded in WWK: “I used to believe that there
was the everyday language that we all usually spoke and a primary language that expressed
what we really knew, namely phenomena. I also spoke of a first system and a second system.
Now I wish to explain why I do not adhere to that conception any more. I think that essentially
we have only one language, and that is our everyday language. We need not invent a new lan-
guage or construct a new symbolism, but our everyday language already is the language, provid-
ed we rid it of the obscurities that lie hidden in it. Our language is completely in order, as long as
we are clear about what it symbolizes. Languages other than the ordinary ones are also valuable
in so far as they show us what they have in common. For certain purposes, e. g. for representing
inferential relations, an artificial symbolism is very useful. Indeed, in the construction of sym-
bolic logic Frege, Peano, and Russell paid attention solely to its application to mathematics and
did not think of the representation of real states of affairs.” (WWK 45 – 46)
 2.1 Introduction 67

to the method of representation, and that consequently it is necessary to construct a nota-

tion which perspicuously mirrors the form of experience, he now casts aside this enterprise
as misguided. Since our ordinary language symbolizes just fine, we need only get clear
about how it symbolizes. This, as stated, is accomplished not by constructing improved no-
tations, nor by simply attending to the way we use our ordinary one. Rather, the correct
method is that of careful comparison of different methods of representation. (Noë 1994,
18 – 19)

Faced with that assessment, one might wonder how exactly would the kind of
comparison indicated in Noë’s last sentence – the consideration of a number
of alternative “methods of representation” – allow us to get clear about the con-
tent of “immediate experience”, and thereby about the essence of what is repre-
sented. Noë starts answering that question claiming that such a comparison
would compel us to “explore fully the question of what it makes sense to say
about whatever the domain in which we are interested”.⁹⁵ As an illustration of
how that method is supposed to work, Noë quotes the following passage from
the Remarks, where Wittgenstein presents his notorious (although often misun-
derstood) proposal of eliminating the first person pronoun, “I”, from our “repre-
sentational techniques”:

One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the
word “I”, particularly when it is used in representing immediate experience, as in “I can see
a red patch.”

It would be instructive to replace this way of speaking by another in which immediate ex-
perience would be represented without using the personal pronoun; for then we’d be able
to see that the previous representation wasn’t essential to the facts. Not that the represen-
tation would be in any sense more correct than the old one, but it would serve to show
clearly what was logically essential in the representation. (PR 88, §57)

I will come back to the details of that specific proposal of representational

change (i. e., the elimination of the “I”) in the next chapter. For the time
being, let us only take notice of two general points that the passage is meant
to illustrate: first, that Wittgenstein does in fact offer a different notation/method
of representation which should enable us to get clear(er) about what is (and what
isn’t) “essential to the facts” under analysis, thus allowing us to “explore fully
the question of what it makes sense to say” in our own, familiar notation (i. e.,
ordinary language); second, that he explicitly acknowledges that the resulting
clarification is not a function of our being offered a method of representation

 Noë 1994, 20.

68 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

which would be “more correct than the old one” – say, by better mirroring the
underlying structure of phenomena.
The moral Noë draws from his analysis of Wittgenstein’s change of mind is
twofold: first, the main reason why a phenomenological language – understood
as the result of an investigation “into the possibilities of phenomena” – seemed
(momentarily) important to him was that it promised to offer a way to “determine
what could sensibly be said, and thus what the rules of syntax of the Begriffss-
chrift should permit”;⁹⁶ yet (second) at some point Wittgenstein came to recog-
nize that “the phenomenological investigation just is a consideration of what
it makes sense to say about phenomena, viz. a grammatical investigation of
the words used to describe immediate experience”.⁹⁷ And that recognition, in
turn, is what (ultimately) would explain the change of mind avowed in the open-
ing section of the Remarks:

For, clearly, on this picture the task of constructing a new notation becomes redundant,
since what is difficult and important is to get clear about what it makes sense to say in
our own familiar language. At first, then, the view that phenomenology is grammar seemed
to Wittgenstein to provide an elucidation of what the inspection of the phenomenon really
amounted to. But with changes in his understanding of the nature of grammar, this iden-
tification leads to his rejection of the need to construct a phenomenological language alto-
gether, and, ultimately, to the rejection even of the possibility of such an accomplishment.
(Noë 1994, 21)

There is, to my mind, much to agree with in Noë’s assessment. Yet I have some
qualms concerning the claim about the redundancy of “constructing a new no-
tation”, given that “what is difficult and important is to get clear about what it
makes sense to say in our own familiar language”. Taken at face value the claim
sounds true enough; however, I think it is misleading, in that it seems to carry
the implication that there was a moment in Wittgenstein’s development (namely,
before his radical change of mind) when constructing new notations was not
seen as (in some sense) “redundant”, or when the “difficult and important”
task was not seen as getting clear about “what it makes sense to say in our
own familiar language”. Let me notice at the outset that it is somewhat puzzling
to find such an implication in Noë’s analysis; after all he was explicit in ac-
knowledging that (i) “the logically clarified notation of TLP recommends itself
not because it has expressive powers above and beyond ordinary language, or
because it is a better logical order, but only because it is less misleading and
can serve as a more faithful guide to underlying structure”, and (ii) that “Witt-

 Noë 1994, 21.

 Noë 1994, 21.
 2.1 Introduction 69

genstein was very clear that the value of a phenomenological language was not
that it enabled us to say something, as it were, unsayable in ordinary lan-
guage”.⁹⁸ Now, don’t (i) and (ii) alone already imply that logically perspicuous
notations are redundant – relative, i. e., to the “expressive powers of” ordinary
language? And yet, if Noë was not committed to the implication I mentioned
– namely that there was a time when Wittgenstein thought that constructing
new notations was not redundant – then what exactly would be the point of say-
ing that new notations have become redundant after his radical change of mind?
I take it that at least part of the reason for Noë’s (tacit) commitment to that
implication lies in some misleading assumptions about the actual use of logical
analysis in the Tractatus itself, particularly in his neglecting of the distinction,
discussed at the end of the previous chapter, between the preventive and curative
tasks that Wittgenstein devised to be accomplished by that book. Bearing that
distinction in mind, one could say of both the Tractarian Begriffsschrift⁹⁹ and
post-Tractarian phenomenological language that, notwithstanding their short-
comings as preventive devices (belatedly acknowledged by Wittgenstein him-
self), they were never meant as the only or even the primary means to cure (to
solve or to dissolve) already existing philosophical confusions. To suppose that
they were is, at least in part, a consequence of embracing the (all but unavoid-
able) view that the only way to attain philosophical clarity is by laying down the
logico-grammatical Law, showing to a misguided interlocutor what it does (and
what it doesn’t) “make sense to say” by pointing out which of her sentences vi-
olate a set of rules for the employment of signs.¹⁰⁰ Now if that assumption is dis-
carded – as I have been trying to show it should¹⁰¹ – one is in a better position to
understand why, for (early and late) Wittgenstein, logically perspicuous nota-

 Noë 1994, 10.

 As opposed to, say, Fregean, Russellian or Ramseyan.
 Precisely that assumption can be seen to be at work in some contexts of Noë’s argument –
e. g., when he illustrates the general claim that “[a] phenomenological language […] aims to be
what Wittgenstein calls a ‘correct’ representation of phenomena” with the case of the (“correct”)
representation of colors, and says that it would amount to “a notation in which only what is pos-
sible is representable and in which the impossible – ‘reddish-green’ or ‘blackish-black’ – are
ruled out by grammatical rules” (Noë 1994, 10; my emphasis).
 The analysis of Wittgenstein’s dialogue with the solipsist in the preceding chapter was
meant to support that general claim with respect to the Tractatus’s case, indicating that the “cor-
rect method in philosophy” stated in 6.53 (“whenever someone else wanted to say something
metaphysical […] demonstrate him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs”)
would not be “satisfying to the other person”, hence that the task of logical elucidation
would require more sophisticated curative strategies, such as the self-subverting one enacted
by the whole book and its process of “throwing away the ladder”.
70 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

tions were neither intrinsically more nor intrinsically less capable of curing phil-
osophical confusions than (the rest of?) ordinary language; and this is exactly
the sense in which one can say that such notations were always seen by him
as “redundant” – by comparison, i. e., with the expressive powers of ordinary
language. But of course that does not make those notations useless, and, what
is more important, it does not prevent Wittgenstein from seeing them as neces-
sary for a particular and restricted aim – namely, the (preventive) task of avoiding
logical confusions.
To sum up, then, my disagreement with Noë, I take it that Wittgenstein’s
avowal of a change of mind in the opening of the Remarks has to be reassessed
in light of the distinction between philosophical cure and prevention, so as to
make clear that it has more to do with the latter than the former. In other
words, what changed was Wittgenstein’s belief in, or perhaps his hope for, the
preventive capabilities of his variously envisaged “logically perspicuous nota-
tions”. By stating, then, at the opening of the Remarks, that he “do[es] not
now have phenomenological language […] in [his] mind as [his] goal”, and
that he “no longer hold[s] it to be necessary” in order to “separate what is essen-
tial from what is inessential” in our (ordinary) language, Wittgenstein is actually
acknowledging, probably for the first time, that ordinary language already con-
tains all the necessary means not only to cure but to prevent “logical misunder-
standings”, and, hence, “philosophical confusions” – provided, i. e., that we try
to “rid it of the obscurities that lie hidden in it”,¹⁰² e. g., by comparing the uses of
the words and sentences which may be causing confusion with new, invented
ones, thus coming to acknowledge when our (familiar) words and sentences be-
come “wheels turning idly”.¹⁰³
This analysis enables us to understand why Wittgenstein decided to open
the Remarks stating that “[a] proposition is completely logically analysed if its
grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or
expressed in”. Bearing in mind that what Wittgenstein hoped to achieve with
his method of (phenomeno‐)logical analysis was primarily prevention instead
of cure of philosophical confusion, I would suggest that the main change record-
ed here lies in Wittgenstein’s recognition that logically perspicuous notations
may be unnecessary even for prevention — although they remain useful means
(among many others) for that task. That is undoubtedly an important change,

 Cf. quotation in fn. 94.

 A method which, as we will see in the next chapter, would eventually develop into the con-
strual of language-games, which might thus be seen as yet another successor (besides the phe-
nomenological language) of the erstwhile “richtige Begriffsschrift”.
 2.1 Introduction 71

which has many ramifications in Wittgenstein’s thinking. One of those ramifica-

tions – which Noë himself notes in his conclusion – is the adoption of new
“leading metaphor” for describing philosophical activity, one which dispenses
with “any sort of [talk about] digging beneath the surface and excavating, or a
breaking down of the symbol”, focusing instead on the “horizontal plane” of
our language.¹⁰⁴ A related change – which I mentioned at the end of the preced-
ing chapter – is Wittgenstein’s realization that the origins of philosophical con-
fusions are way more entangled and difficult to unveil than he initially supposed
– and, consequently, that their disentanglement would have to be pursued in a
much more piecemeal way, thus shattering his (initial) high hopes of definitively
curing them.
The analysis pursued so far should serve as a warning about the difficulties
awaiting any prospective reader of the Remarks, in particular the difficulty of try-
ing to extract a clear and final message from a text that was itself composed
along such a constantly evolving process of thought. And yet, to a lesser or great-
er extent, I think that would apply to virtually any of Wittgenstein’s (post-Tractar-
ian) texts. Faced with that challenge the best one can do in order to take Wittgen-
stein’s remarks seriously is to avoid the tendency of dropping his reflections too
soon, before letting them challenge one’s most ingrained philosophical assump-
tions and prejudices, thus eliciting one’s deeper and most liberating responses.
In what follows I pursue that aim by focusing on some key passages from the
Remarks, particularly its “chapter V”¹⁰⁵ which (similarly to its predecessor sec-
tion 5.6 of the Tractatus), is clearly and centrally devoted to an investigation
of the nature and limits of experience. By means of a close reading of those re-
marks I will try to lay bare their self-subverting character: the fact that they
amount to miniature dialectical exercises – small ladders to be thrown away –
offering specific directions to pass from particular pieces of disguised nonsense
to corresponding pieces of patent nonsense. Yet, in order to follow those direc-
tions one needs to allow oneself to become (simultaneously) tempted by and
suspicious of their (all-too-evident) “metaphysical tone” – a tone which, as we
shall see, is particularly manifest in those (rather abundant) claims purporting
to state what can or cannot be the case, and, still more particularly, those pur-
porting to state what can or cannot be done in language or thought, thus leading
to the view that there are some (determinate) things which are ineffable or un-
thinkable.

 Noë 1994, 31.

 The numbering and grouping of paragraphs under different chapters is Rush Rhees’s edi-
torial decision, not Wittgenstein’s.
72 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

2.2 “The world as idea”: solipsism and the limits of

experience
Chapter V of the Philosophical Remarks opens with the following passage:

That it doesn’t strike us at all when we look around us, move about in space, feel our own
bodies, etc., etc., shows how natural these things are to us. We do not notice that we see
space perspectively or that our visual field is in some sense blurred towards the edges. It
doesn’t strike us and never can strike us because it is the way we perceive. We never
give it a thought and it’s impossible we should, since there is nothing that contrasts
with the form of our world.

What I wanted to say is it’s strange that those who ascribe reality only to things and not to
our ideas [Vorstellungen] move about so unquestioningly in the world as idea [Vorstellungs-
welt] and never long to escape from it. (PR 80, §47)

Remarkably, the passage above purports to criticize the attitude of some philos-
ophers, call them realists, who take the things they perceive as being metaphysi-
cally independent from the way they are perceived, i. e., from facts concerning
and conditioning the “form of our world”. Does that criticism imply that Wittgen-
stein would be willing to support the opposite attitude, call it idealist or solip-
sist? It surely seems so – after all, Wittgenstein explicitly says that the philoso-
pher we are calling realist is moving himself “unquestioningly” and against
his own self-understanding “in the world as idea”; he also claims, apparently
in the same vein, that “there is nothing that contrasts with the form of our
world” (my emphasis) – a view which is reinforced when he concludes, a little
further in PR §47: “That is, what we neither can nor want to go beyond would
not be the world.” The upshot of those remarks seems to be that there is no
world outside or beyond the limits imposed by our form of representing it. But
this is only an apparent result, as it becomes evident when we start asking exact-
ly how would Wittgenstein be entitled to state it, given his former claim that it is
simply impossible to “give a thought” to the conditioned character of our expe-
rience, since there is no contrast available. This shows how complex the dialec-
tical situation presented by Wittgenstein’s remarks can become. In the present
case it can be portrayed as follows: on the one hand, Wittgenstein seems to be
tempting us to assume that there is a perspective from which one might consider
the dispute between the realist and the idealist/solipsist, and then judge that the
former is wrong, since he is not taking into account the conditioned character of
our experience (the fact that it is always perspectival); yet, as if the idea of such a
“view from nowhere” was not puzzling enough, Wittgenstein also seems to be
tempting us to accept, on the other hand, that such a view is itself impossible
– a claim which now seems to be made from no perspective at all.
 2.2 “The world as idea”: solipsism and the limits of experience 73

Confronted with that complicated dialectic, a reader acquainted with Witt-

genstein’s earlier work can be reminded of a Tractarian device apparently intro-
duced in order to relieve us from the same kind of difficulty in which we seem to
be involved now: the distinction between saying and showing. Actually, Wittgen-
stein resorts to a very similar distinction in a number of contexts throughout the
Remarks, one of them being §54, where we read that “What belongs to the es-
sence of the world cannot be expressed by language”, and that “Language
can only say those things that we can also imagine otherwise” (PR 84). A bit fur-
ther Wittgenstein repeats that “what belongs to the essence of the world simply
cannot be said”; to this, he adds the following, more positive consideration:

And philosophy, if it were to say anything, would have to describe the essence of the world.

But the essence of language is a picture of the essence of the world; and philosophy as cus-
todian of grammar can in fact grasp the essence of the world, only not in the propositions
of language, but in rules for this language which exclude nonsensical combinations of
signs. (PR 85, §54)

Notice the smooth transition from the Tractarian view, according to which the
essence of the world is indeed ineffable but would nonetheless be “made man-
ifest” by logic/philosophy, to the newer one, according to which philosophy can
“grasp” the (still ineffable) essence of the world by presenting grammatical
rules, thus enabling one (the philosopher, say) to “exclude nonsensical combina-
tions of signs”, just like the presentation of the “general form of proposition”
would, according to the Tractatus’s official project.¹⁰⁶ Is Wittgenstein, then, re-
suming the Tractarian view that a line can be drawn separating sense from non-
sense, thus enabling one to tell what can or cannot be said, and, consequently,
what can or cannot be the case in the world, i. e., the totality of possible facts, the
very form of the world? Or are we (rather unconsciously) projecting our own phil-
osophical prejudices into the text, prompted by Wittgenstein’s (very self-con-
scious) use of “metaphysical language”?
In the following passage Wittgenstein himself seems to support the latter,
more self-questioning view about the possibility of telling sense from nonsense:

 An anonymous referee from the journal Manuscrito has called my attention to the fact the
best candidate to the role of “showing the essence of reality” in PR is what Wittgenstein calls
(e. g. in PR §54) “the application of language”, and that grammar presupposes that applicability
of language to the world. Granted that thesis, it suffices for my purposes to indicate that gram-
mar (and its rules) can still be seen as an indirect way of grasping the essence of reality, provided
that the signs which comprise language are already connected to it through their application
(i. e. the projection relation).
74 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

If someone said: Very well, how do you know that the whole of reality can be represented
by propositions?, the reply is: I only know that it can be represented by propositions in so
far as it can be represented by propositions, and to draw a line between a part which can
and a part which can’t be so represented is something I can’t do in language. Language
means the totality of propositions. (PR 113, §85)

Does the categorical denial presented above allow us to settle the issue about the
possibility of telling the representable from the non-representable, hence the
thinkable from the unthinkable, sense from nonsense? I do not think so. In
fact, I think we should not accept so easily and uncritically any of Wittgenstein’s
overtly categorical denials of logico-metaphysical possibilities. Concerning the
particular passage under analysis, the reason is not, N.B., that the opposite
claim would be more plausible than its denial. The problem is, rather, that
none of the alternative claims would have a clear sense; after all, what possibility
would Wittgenstein be excluding by (categorically) denying that we can “draw a
line” between what is and what is not representable “in language”? Does that
denial imply that there is (a determinate, particular, specifiable) “something”
that we cannot do, or talk or think about? How could we (possibly) give a deter-
minate sense to such an ineffable and unthinkable “possibility”? And if we can-
not, then what exactly are we saying, or thinking, when we read a “sentence” (a
string of signs) like the one above – namely: “to draw a line between a part
which can and a part which can’t be so represented is something I can’t do in
language”?
By suggesting that we try to answer the questions above I am not implying
that we simply can’t give any sense to either of the alternative “claims”. On the
contrary, I am trying to question precisely that kind of a priori, categorical denial
of linguistic possibilities. What I am implying is, rather, that we should not take
so quickly something that appears to be a (determinate) proposition (in that it is
composed of familiar words, in a grammatically or syntactically correct order) as
in fact being so. Now I take it that Wittgenstein’s text is precisely crafted to make
us aware of that temptation, and ultimately overcome it. It does so by giving
voice to some philosophical “theses” or “problems” so as to make their appa-
rently incompatible demands perspicuous to the attentive reader, thus allowing
one to use one’s own linguistic expertise to unveil the (ultimate) emptiness,
pointlessness, or utter confusion behind the formulation of such “theses” and
“problems”. Yet in order for that aim to be properly achieved (so as to really pre-
vent one from falling back into a particular confusion) Wittgenstein first needs to
tempt the reader to accept those (all-too-convenient) categorical “answers” to
some (all-too-neatly formulated) philosophical “problems”. By self-consciously
employing “propositions” without (as yet) any clear sense, and having us take
 2.2 “The world as idea”: solipsism and the limits of experience 75

such philosophical baits, he is ultimately trying to make us aware (and suspi-

cious) of our own eagerness to accept such categorical, “metaphysical” talk of
(im)possibilities.
Now how far should one go with this self-aware (even self-suspicious) atti-
tude in relation to (one’s reactions to) Wittgenstein’s writings? How would one
know when to stop the (therapeutic) process, taking a particular result as
final, as not further questionable? Where exactly is the limit separating “meta-
physical” (mis)uses of language from ordinary ones? As it happens with many
questions raised by the reading of Wittgenstein’s writings, I think the answers
can only be found in each particular enactment of the therapeutic process itself
– not surprisingly, given my contention that the ultimate aim of the whole self-
subverting process is precisely to allow a reader to find her own way around,
hence her own resolution of her own philosophical confusions, as they come
to be mirrored by Wittgenstein’s text. Of course this puts a heavy burden upon
the reader, who must, in a sense, alternately undertake the roles of analyst
and analysand; yet I think Wittgenstein was indeed such a demanding author.
With these considerations in mind, let us go back to §47, which closes as fol-
lows:

Time and again the attempt is made to use language to limit the world and set it in relief –
but it can’t be done. The self-evidence of the world expresses itself in the very fact that lan-
guage can and does only refer to it.

For since language only derives the way in which it means from its meaning, from the
world, no language is conceivable which does not represent this world. (PR 80, §47)

What is this text stating? Again, a very natural and straightforward answer
would be: a kind of (logico-metaphysical) impossibility – that of drawing the
limits of the world in language. But let us stop for a moment in order to reflect
about what exactly this impossibility would amount to. I think at least two com-
peting and equally plausible interpretations are available, corresponding to two
very different starting points from which that first, natural reading could be pur-
sued, depending on the reader’s philosophical frame of mind. On the one hand –
for a committed realist, say – the message would be that since “language can
and does only refer to [the world]” (and so on), the world must be seen as
more fundamental than our linguistic means of representing it (in the sense
that the former would surpass, be independent from, even indifferent to, the lat-
ter). According to another philosophical frame of mind – that of a linguistic ide-
alist, or even a solipsist – the message would be rather different, viz., that since
“language can and does only refer to [the world]” (and so on), then there must be
an internal relation between language and world, and, consequently, the very
76 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

idea of a world “outside of” or “beyond” our linguistic means of representing it

would be simply nonsensical, hence unthinkable – precisely the message (appa-
rently) stated in the opening remarks of §47.
Confronted with these competing interpretations, which one should we
choose, and on what grounds? I think the strategy of trying to collect more pas-
sages dealing with the same or related issues in order to see which interpretation
fits better the whole set would be hopelessly flawed. (This, by the way, is parti-
ally attested by the unending dispute between “realist” and “anti-realist” read-
ings of virtually any piece of writing by Wittgenstein). In fact, I take it that it
is precisely the ambivalence (or maybe polyvalence) of claims like the ones
above which is of interest, given the therapeutic aims of the whole enterprise.
By thus allowing both (or, more generally, any number of) interpretations to
be equally defensible in principle, Wittgenstein’s text would resonate with sever-
ally-minded readers, eliciting different reactions according to their own philo-
sophical prejudices or inclinations.¹⁰⁷
I will try to clarify these claims by means of another illustration, which will
also throw some light on Wittgenstein’s view about the nature of philosophy as
the “custodian of grammar” and support my contention that he should not be
understood as being prone to either realism or anti-realism. The illustration I
have in mind comes from PR §216, where Wittgenstein purports to criticize the
use of the expression “sense-datum”. “A sense-datum”, he explains and exem-
plifies, “is the appearance of this tree, whether ‘there really is a tree standing
there’ or a dummy, a mirror image, a hallucination, etc.” (PR 270). So far, nothing
to worry about – after all, one is surely allowed to define and employ a technical
phrase in the way one wants, provided that it fulfills any number of practical
functions (such as enabling us to see more clearly a conceptual distinction,
etc.). But confusion arises when one – e. g., a philosopher – forgets her initial,
determinate theoretical purpose in introducing a new description and assumes
that it is intrinsically more adequate than the alternatives, or even “essential”
for representing reality (see PR 270). Now that seems to be precisely the attitude
of the “idealists” mentioned in the remainder of §216:

 One could here be reminded of Kant’s treatment of the Antinomies, and surely there is at
least a family resemblance – with the important difference that, as I have been arguing, in Witt-
genstein’s case there is no privileged theoretical point of view (say, “Transcendental Idealism”)
from which the dispute would be settled, or else shown to be hopeless; rather, the only resource
available to deal with cases like these is our practical mastery of ordinary language, and the aim
of presenting these “antinomic” claims is precisely to allow us to recover that momentarily lost,
repressed, or forgotten mastery, i. e., to recover an awareness of how our words are used in con-
crete contexts, so as to overcome our own philosophical confusions.
 2.2 “The world as idea”: solipsism and the limits of experience 77

Idealists would like to reproach language with presenting what is secondary as primary and
what is primary as secondary. But that is only the case with these inessential valuations
which are independent of cognition (“only” an appearance). Apart from that, ordinary lan-
guage makes no decision as to what is primary or secondary. We have no reason to accept
that the expression “the appearance of a tree” represents something which is secondary in
relation to the expression “tree.” (PR 271, §216)

In case you are wondering where exactly one could find an example of such an
“idealist”, we don’t need to look very far; after all, wasn’t the “reproach” men-
tioned above already enacted in §47, where Wittgenstein himself (?) purported
to criticize those who “ascribe reality only to things and not to our ideas”? –
But if Wittgenstein himself (?) is now criticizing his own previous criticism,
isn’t he contradicting himself at this point? – Well, yes and no; he surely is con-
tradicting a “position” which was illustrated before in (and by) his text; yet, as I
have been arguing, that “position” was not so much defended in that earlier con-
text as it was enacted or given voice to in order to tempt us to (momentarily) ac-
cept it, following its (apparent) consequences, so as to (finally) become aware of
its emptiness or confusion, thus able to “overcome it” and “throw it away”. This,
I repeat, is a very complex dialectical situation; and yet it seems an absolutely
pervasive, structural feature of Wittgenstein’s remarks (which doesn’t mean, of
course, that it is always visible from the mere inspection of their surface). The
moral I want to extract by calling attention to this point is that one should not
think of the personas being given a voice in these and other remarks (including
“the idealist” of §216 and “the realist” of §47) so much as others, but rather as so
many facets of one’s self, as echoes of one’s own inner, perhaps even repressed
philosophical voices, which are unleashed, perhaps for the first time, by Wittgen-
stein’s own use of carefully crafted, tempting (metaphysical) claims.¹⁰⁸
Bearing that lesson in mind, let us see if we are in a better position to under-
stand what exactly would be the problem of adopting the idealist’s reproaching
attitude toward (ordinary) language. In order to start dealing with this issue, let
us first try to get clear about the contrasting case presented in the passage above
– namely, that of the “inessential valuations which are independent of cogni-

 BT §87 is composed of a set of clarifying descriptions of the philosophical task, all of them
(I would submit) capable of offering further support to the description I just articulated. Let me
highlight a couple of passages which may illustrate the point: “The philosopher strives to find
the liberating word, and that is the word that finally permits us to grasp what until then had
constantly and intangibly weighed on our consciousness”; “One of the most important tasks
is to express all false thought processes so true to character that the reader says, ‘Yes, that’s ex-
actly the way I meant it.’ To make a tracing of the physiognomy of every error”; “For only if he
acknowledges it as such, is it the correct expression. (Psychoanalysis).”
78 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

tion”, which, according to Wittgenstein, is the (only?) use of language correctly

described as presenting “what is secondary as primary and what is primary as
secondary”. In order to facilitate the analysis, let us first take note of the German
wording of that description, which reads: “[…] diesen unwesentlichen, und mit der
Erkenntnis nicht zusammenhängenden Wertungen der Fall”. What would be the
reference of the description at hand? The only hint Wittgenstein gives us in
this passage is (what appears to be meant as) an instance: “‘only’ an appearance
[‘nur’ die Erscheinung]”; yet, that doesn’t get us very far. In fact, nothing in the
context surrounding this passage in the Remarks does. I take it that the difficulty
here has editorial causes – I mean, it is caused by Wittgenstein’s arrangement of
his reflections to produce the Remarks. Some years later, when he once again
takes up those reflections for (re)arrangement, the result is much clearer. That
result is recorded in BT §101, which contains the full PR §216, only prefixed by
a couple of reflections which were apparently suppressed in its first iteration.
Among those reflections, we read that “the words ‘seem’ [scheinen], ‘error,’
etc., have a certain emotional emphasis that isn’t essential [nicht wesentlich
ist] to phenomena. This emphasis is somehow connected to the will, and not
merely to knowledge [nicht bloss mit der Erkenntnis zusammen]” (BT 347, §101).
As an illustration of such (cognitively) “inessential”, “emotional” emphases,
which would be embedded in our (philosophical) assessments of reality, Witt-
genstein offers the following: “We say ‘We can only remember something.’ As
if, in some primary sense, memory were a rather weak and uncertain image of
what was originally before us with complete clarity” (BT 347, §101).
Read against the backdrop provided by BT §101, the text of PR §216 seems to
imply not only that it would be right to describe some particular uses of language
– i. e., those expressing “inessential valuations which are independent of cogni-
tion”, and having more to do with the will (e. g., that “we can only remember
something”, and so on) – as presenting “what is secondary as primary and
what is primary as secondary”; it also implies that there is no problem in making
such a “decision as to what is primary or secondary” in those particular cases.
(Hence, to stick to the example of PR §216, that of “the appearance of a tree”,
there would be no problem at all involved in the decision to employ, for a num-
ber of non-cognitive reasons – i. e., those having to do with the will – a phrase
such as “this tree is only an appearance”; perhaps one feels like saying it to one-
self, sotto voce, when faced with some particular tree placed among others in an
artificial “forest” inside a big shopping center.) Yet – and this is the important
point for which the cases analyzed thus far serve as a counterpoint – that is pre-
cisely not the sort of reason that we would expect an idealist to have in mind
when making a “decision as to what is primary or secondary”, and, consequent-
 2.2 “The world as idea”: solipsism and the limits of experience 79

ly, when “reproaching” (ordinary) language for making the wrong – indeed in-
verted – decision about that.
The upshot of these considerations is that the main problem involved in the
idealist’s position lies not so much in her “revisionary” proposal to reverse the
order of what is to be considered primary/secondary, but rather in a misleading
self-interpretation of that proposal, as if the mere use of a new notation would
enable one to take note of something “essential” about “the nature of reality”
– something, i. e., which would be hidden (or even reversed) in our familiar
forms of description. To sum up: by asserting that “ordinary language makes
no decision as to what is primary or secondary”, Wittgenstein is calling our at-
tention to the fact that (as one might put it) our language is ontologically neu-
tral,¹⁰⁹ hence, that it does not privilege either “realism” or “idealism”, as far
as those expressions are supposed to name two (competing) metaphysical stan-
ces towards the “essence of the world”. As Wittgenstein himself asserts back in
chapter V: “[f]rom the very outset ‘Realism,’ ‘Idealism,’ etc., are names which be-
long to metaphysics. That is, they indicate that their adherents believe they can
say something specific about the essence of the world” (PR 86, §55). Yet, nothing
specific is really said by means of their (revisionary) “theses” – let alone some-
thing specific about “the essence of the world” – as we are in a position to ac-
knowledge as soon as we uncover what the utterer of those “theses” may possi-
bly mean by uttering them, what purposes she would be trying to fulfill.
Now let us compare, or confront, the results of this analysis with the meth-
odological claims made in PR §54 – namely, that “what belongs to the essence of
the world simply cannot be said”, yet can be “grasped” (by philosophy) “not in
the propositions of language, but in rules for this language which exclude non-
sensical combinations of signs”. Notice, first, that in the passages analyzed
above, Wittgenstein is open to being read – i. e., has (on purpose) not armed him-
self against being read – as arguing that some combinations of signs, viz., those
sentences employed by philosophers in general, and by realists and idealists in
particular (involving notions such as those of “sense-datum”, “visual image”,
“appearance”) may in fact be excluded in some particular contexts as nonsensi-
cal (i. e., as pointless or empty). But the reason he offers is not, as a de-contex-
tualized reading of those methodological remarks would imply, that those com-
binations are so to speak intrinsically nonsensical – as if they were trying to

 From the fact that our (ordinary) language is ontologically neutral and “makes no decision
as to what is primary or secondary”, it does not follow (as I hope the preceding paragraph makes
clear) that we (language users) are (or have to be) neutral in that sense – on the contrary, we
make those decisions all the time, and lucidity lies not in relinquishing all such decisions,
but in knowing that we are indeed making them, and for what purposes.
80 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

express something that is simply ineffable, i. e., something outside or beyond the
limits of language and sense. Rather, the reason to exclude those signs is, simply,
the realization that when they are employed in some particular philosophical
contexts – like the ones prepared by Wittgenstein’s text, which are reenacted
each time a reader gets seriously engaged with their dialectic – they can be
shown to be at best wheels turning idly, and, at worst, as resulting from philo-
sophical (i. e., logical or grammatical) confusion (e. g., that of privileging a form
of description as if it were saying “something specific about the essence of the
world”).
The main lesson I hope to extract from the analysis of this concrete applica-
tion of the method of “grammatical investigation” in the Remarks is that we
should be careful not to read too much into the idea of philosophy as the “cus-
todian of grammar”, i. e., as an activity which would enable us to “grasp the es-
sence of the world” as reflected in the “rules for excluding nonsensical combi-
nations of signs”.¹¹⁰ To depict philosophy as being capable of some kind of
“extraordinary feat” (viz., circumscribing the limits of sense) is yet another
symptom – perhaps the ultimate symptom – that one has become a victim of
the kind of temptation of evading our finite (and thus conditioned) condition.
The implication, then, is that we should be particularly careful in reading
those apparently dogmatic judgments about the nonsensicality of “the philoso-
pher’s” (metaphysical) claims.¹¹¹ And this connects with another, more general
view which I take to be at work in the context of the Remarks, namely that
there is no external standard for the meaningfulness of our signs – in particular,
no philosophical external standard, no book of rules waiting to be discovered by
means of (phenomeno‐)logical or grammatical analysis. The only way to deter-
mine whether a (particular token of a) proposition really makes sense, and if
so, what is that sense, is to ask what, if any, is its use and point in some concrete
context. As Wittgenstein himself puts it: “If [someone] states that a certain string
of words makes sense to him, and it makes none to me, I can only suppose that
in this context he is using words with a different meaning from the one I give
them, or else is speaking without thinking” (PR §7; see also PR §114). The
whole difficulty of the task lies in trying to get clear about which of the options
is true, in each particular case, with the (ordinary) means at our disposal. With
that conclusion in mind, let us go back to the analysis of chapter V.

 A claim which, N.B., will still be echoed in PI §371.

 In fact, Wittgenstein’s text itself sometimes becomes overtly (self‐)critical about such judg-
ments, suggesting a more balanced view; this clearly applies to some of the opening remarks of
the book (see esp. PR §6 – 9).
 2.3 Time, memory, and sublimation 81

2.3 Time, memory, and sublimation

Having given voice, in the opening passages of chapter V, to the logico-meta-

physical problem of trying to go beyond the limits imposed by the “form of
our world”, thereby prompting the reader to examine its sense (or senseless-
ness), Wittgenstein’s reflections turn to a new set of questions involving a partic-
ular, although ubiquitous, condition of our experience, namely time. Among
those questions we find the following: “If the world of data is timeless, how
can we speak of it at all?” (PR §48); “If memory is no kind of seeing into the
past, how do we know at all that it is to be taken as referring to the past?”
(PR §50); “Can I conceive the time in which the experiences of visual space
occur without experiences of sound?” (PR §50). As with the previous remarks
of chapter V, Wittgenstein’s overt intentions in facing these questions are to un-
veil (at least some of) the logico-grammatical confusions behind the formula-
tions of the “problems” they express – e. g., the “confusion of the time of the
film strip with the time of the picture it projects” (PR §49) – and to offer a per-
spicuous view of the syntactical rules for employing the relevant concepts in
their respective contexts – e. g., “we cannot use […] the syntactical rules that
hold for the names of physical objects, in the world of the image” (PR §49). Not-
withstanding those overt aims, a different, more self-questioning reading of Witt-
genstein’s remarks is also available, suggesting a much more complex and subtle
dialectic going on.
In order to flesh out these claims I would like to focus the analysis on a
rather limited subset of remarks, dealing with what may be called the problem
of the flow of time, and the related problem of the metaphysico-epistemological
status of memory. The following passage, which comprises the first half of PR
§52, will serve as an entry point:

It’s strange that in ordinary life we are not troubled by the feeling that the phenomenon is
slipping away from us, the constant flux of appearance, but only when we philosophize.
This indicates that what is in question here is an idea suggested by a misapplication of
our language.

The feeling we have is that the present disappears into the past without our being able to
prevent it. And here we are obviously using the picture of a film strip remorselessly moving
past us, that we are unable to stop. But it is of course just as clear that the picture is mis-
applied: that we cannot say “Time flows” if by time we mean the possibility of change.
What we are looking at here is really the possibility of motion: and so the logical form
of motion. (PR 83, §52)

The passage above strikes me as remarkable in many ways. For one thing, it is
intriguing that Wittgenstein should introduce the problem of the flow of time
82 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

by relating its appearance to a feeling (of not being able to prevent such flow) as
well as by saying that it arises only “when we philosophize”, hence not “in or-
dinary life”. On the face of those claims, it seems even more remarkable that
he should open the passage claiming that it is strange that “in ordinary life
we are not troubled by [that] feeling”; and yet, it is precisely because such trou-
ble would not arise in ordinary life that Wittgenstein seems so confident (maybe
all-too-confident) in saying that some “misapplication of our language” would
be the cause of the idea of there being such an unstoppable flow. – Now, can
we really take in the claim that “in ordinary life we are not troubled by [that]
feeling”? After all, don’t we commonly say such things as that “time is slipping
away”, and “we are unable to stop it”? And, in employing such sentences, are we
not purporting to express some feelings we are experiencing – say, e. g., disap-
pointment at not being able to achieve some of our goals in (ordinary) life? Or
is it the case that, by employing such sentences, we would be already involved
(however involuntarily) in philosophizing? – But how can we tell the difference?
How can we know when our sentences become “misapplications of language” –
hence, when philosophy starts?
In the second paragraph Wittgenstein adds, again quite characteristically,
that when we are caught by that feeling “we are obviously using the picture of
a film strip remorselessly moving past us [etc.]” (my emphasis). Now even if
one grants that the application of some picture or other would “obviously” be in-
volved when we are caught by the feeling of the “unstoppable flow of time”¹¹²,
what would be the rationale for saying that it is “just as clear that the picture
is misapplied” in the context Wittgenstein describes (that, i. e., of a metaphysical
investigation of time, taken as the “form of motion”, and so on)? For a picture to
be misapplied, there must be something as a legitimate or bona fide application
of it – hence, in the case under analysis, there must be some other context(s),
e. g. ordinary life, where one could describe time-related phenomena by applying
pictures such as that of the film strip. In fact, it is arguable that without resorting
to such pictures our ordinary descriptions would almost certainly become less
clear and perspicuous, or otherwise less powerful than they actually are: to
say, e. g., that “time flows”, or “flies”, or “is passing by”, etc., may be effective
(both economical and clear) ways of expressing lots of things in ordinary life
– from one’s regret for not having taken all the opportunities life has offered
in the past, to impatience with an overly long philosophical disquisition.

 I take it that Wittgenstein doesn’t mean that it is obvious that we should employ that par-
ticular, cinematographic picture – rivers or infinite measuring tapes being unrolled in front of us
would equally do.
 2.3 Time, memory, and sublimation 83

This consideration goes some way toward answering the question of wheth-
er one should conclude, from the mere fact that a person is employing a picture
like the ones under analysis that she would be philosophizing, however involun-
tarily. The answer, as it will become clear, is: No. But that doesn’t answer the fur-
ther question of how to tell ordinary, legitimate applications from philosophical
misapplications of the same pictures. Now Wittgenstein, as I said above, seems
rather confident of having such a criterion at hand – after all, he all-too-quickly
concludes that our “trouble” only arises because of a particular misapplication
of the picture of the film strip in an extra-ordinary (philosophical¹¹³) context –
namely, one in which we would like to speak (“metaphysically”) of time qua
“possibility of change […] and so the logical form of motion”, and say of it
that “is slipping away from us”, and so on. But again, why does he present
this case as a misapplication – as opposed, say, to a legitimate application
like the ones mentioned above? There is, clearly enough, an important difference
in the (purported) applications, in that when the “metaphysical sense” of time is
in view, a sentence like “time is slipping away” would hardly be used to hurry up
someone or to regret something. But what, then, would be its point?
One answer suggested by the text is that there is no point at all in the philos-
opher’s (purported) use of that sentence: if time is taken as a condition of pos-
sibility of change, and, in that sense, as “the form of motion” (which is just a
philosophical jargon for referring to a very ordinary use of our concept of
time, namely, as that dimension in which events, as opposed to things, extend
themselves, and where change and motion can be measured), then there is no
point in saying that “it is slipping away”; for something to slip away it must

 But, what makes a context a philosophical one? Suppose someone – a child, perhaps –
asks: “What happens to things when we are not looking at them?” Is she not “philosophizing”,
in the above sense? And yet, might one not suppose her question being made in an (otherwise?)
very ordinary context? What this shows is – as Cavell once put – that “one does not know, in
advance, where philosophy might begin, when one’s mind may be stopped, to think” (NAT
264); or again that language can “go on holiday” anytime, in no special setting or frame of
mind, that the “metaphysical” is our everyday predicament. There can be a number of causes
inclining one to start questioning the (ordinary) ways of going on applying our words and pic-
tures, or to imagine (even to crave for) different applications, and one cannot know in advance
if those new applications will amount to (recognizably) legitimate extensions of a previous con-
cept/picture, or become (recognizably) misapplications of it. To tell the difference is a burden
that any member of a linguistic community faces from time to time, having as her only resource
(ordinary) linguistic expertise. I take it that when Wittgenstein says that a particular use of a
concept/picture is a (philosophical) misuse he too is deploying just that expertise, thus making
a claim for his judgment to be acknowledged and assented by other language users. There is, in
sum, no “sure-fire”, a priori way to tell the difference between ordinary and philosophical con-
texts.
84 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

be possible for it to be grabbed, maybe to be stopped or accelerated, and so on (a

grammatical triviality); now time as the very dimension where events occur and
change can be measured cannot possibly undergo any such modifications;
hence, one cannot (legitimately or sensibly) apply a picture such as that of a
film strip (or any other moving or modifying thing – i. e., any other event) in
order to describe it. – One might here say: time as a dimension and the events
which occur in it are incommensurable, really incomparable phenomena. –
And finally – if, i. e., one cannot apply any such picture to describe time-as-
the-form-of-motion – the very feeling that we are unable to stop the “flow of
time” should disappear; in other words, if there is no sense in the idea of
such a “flow”, there is equally no sense in the idea of trying (or even willing)
to stop it.
At first sight these considerations offer a sound explanation of the claims
made by Wittgenstein in the passage under analysis. Additionally, they seem
to offer a good illustration of how one can be freed from a “philosophical trou-
ble” by means of getting the application of language – of its words, its sentences,
and, in particular, its pictures – right, which means, at least in part, bringing
some descriptions (e. g., “time is slipping away”) back to the rough ground of or-
dinary life, where they would be employed for a number of different purposes
(e. g., hurrying up people or regretting something)¹¹⁴ instead of becoming very
complex but useless mechanisms, full of wheels turning idly (as one might say
of the Augustinian set of queries about time). We may express that methodolog-
ical lesson employing Wittgenstein’s favorite turn of phrase for making grammat-
ical reminders in this context, saying that one should be careful not to confuse
ordinary, “physical” descriptions with the “phenomenological” ones, i. e., those
which would be fitted to describe the “immediately given”.
Yet – if one was really tempted to take the trouble about the flow of time se-
riously from the beginning – there would seem to be something inherently un-
satisfying about that kind of (dis)solution. Wittgenstein is aware of that apparent
shortcoming, as we can see in the following passage:

If, for instance, you ask, “Does the box still exist when I’m not looking at it?”, the only right
answer would be “Of course, unless someone has taken it away or destroyed it.” Naturally,

 Of course the “rough ground of ordinary life” includes some theoretical purposes as well as
(more) practical ones. Nowadays physicists do not speak of the “flow” of time – physical time is
(as Wittgenstein already knew) space-like. I suppose that theoretical view could be expressed, if
roughly, by a sentence like “time does not flow”; if that were the case, we would have another
instance of purposeful use of a description, as opposed to a “philosophical” one, in the sense
here in view.
 2.3 Time, memory, and sublimation 85

a philosopher would be dissatisfied with this answer, but it would quite rightly reduce his
way of formulating the question ad absurdum. (PR 88, §57)

Notice that the passage above is introduced as an illustration or instantiation of a

philosophical exchange – one which, in fact, is recurrent and characteristic in
Wittgenstein’s writings. Given that illustrative purpose, one might apply a kind
of “universal generalization” to the passage, thus getting a useful model or blue-
print for such exchanges, which would go as follows:

If, for instance, you ask, “x” [a philosophical question], the only right answer would be “y”
[a grammatical reminder¹¹⁵]. Naturally, a philosopher would be dissatisfied with y, but it
would quite rightly reduce his way of formulating x ad absurdum.

Bearing that (generalized) version of the passage in mind, the question I would
like to ask is how we are to understand Wittgenstein’s own assessment, as it gets
expressed in its final sentence, of the results of applying his grammatical method
(an assessment which, it is worth noticing, strikingly reminds one of proposition
6.53 of the Tractatus). There are, I take it, at least two ways of interpreting it. The
first, and probably the more natural rendering, would have it that:
(1) notwithstanding the philosopher’s dissatisfaction with y — a dissatisfaction
which, given the purposes of logical clarification, would be ultimately neg-
ligible – his original “question” (x) was in fact “reduced ad absurdum” (i. e.,
shown to be just a pseudo-question) by means of the use of grammatical re-
minders, and that is the end of the matter. The philosophical, elucidative
task would be over at that point.

Yet a second interpretation is available, according to which

(2) notwithstanding the logical correction of such a reductio — which, from the
perspective of someone genuinely puzzled by the difficulty in view, would be
ultimately negligible (in that it completely misses the point) – the use of
grammatical reminders would leave the philosopher dissatisfied, and

 An anonymous referee to the journal Manuscrito has contended that the answer given in
the original quote – namely “Of course, unless someone has taken it away or destroyed it” –
would be a trivial answer, instead of a grammatical reminder (that is, a reminder as to how a
word or sentence is ordinarily used in particular contexts). My sense is that at least on some oc-
casions — but surely not in all of them – grammatical reminders can be given in the form of
“trivial answers” like the one above. In other words: to be a grammatical reminder is to function
as one – it is not a matter of form, but of role, and that role can only be evaluated or tested on
particular contexts.
86 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

(hence) that cannot be the end of the matter. More is necessary for a success-
ful philosophical therapy.

I find that many readers of Wittgenstein’s writings (myself included, at least in

some moods) are often oblivious to the possibility of the second rendering of
the exchanges between (say) Wittgenstein and his philosophical interlocutor(s),
and accordingly are all too prone – even anxious – to stop their reflection when
they reach a (rather dogmatic) result similar to the one depicted in the first ren-
dering. Why is that? One possible reason is that we (at least in our dogmatic and
self-indulgent moods) would be trying to repress something – a difficulty, say,
that we would rather not face seriously; hence the convenience of accepting
that our “trouble” (e. g., about the unstoppable flow of time, or, as in the original
version of PR §57, the unperceived existence of objects) is mere nonsense after all
– that our “questions” are actually just pseudo-questions.
Bearing that (as yet abstract and speculative) possibility in mind, let us ask
what motives could a philosopher genuinely puzzled by the problem of the flow
of time have to be dissatisfied with the solution offered above. For starters, I take
it that our philosopher would have an immediate reply to the charge that her
(purported) use of a sentence like “time is slipping away” (made in an extra-or-
dinary context) is simply pointless: granted, its point is not exactly ordinary, but
human beings have other purposes and interests in addition to the ordinary
ones. And, however incoherent the attempt may ultimately be, it remains a
fact that reflection about (e. g.) time might inexorably lead one to try to express,
to describe, to call attention to, some extraordinary, peculiar, even astonishing
(metaphysical) features of the phenomenon under analysis – e. g., that the
past, which is no more, keeps becoming distanced from the present, which, in
turn, has no extension, and keeps slipping into a future which is not yet. Faced
with such an impulse, the claim that one is employing a picture which cannot
(should not?) be employed, because it is “incommensurable” with the phenom-
enon one wants to describe, is very dissatisfying indeed, not exactly because it is
wrong or false, but rather because it is beside the point, and leaves the real dif-
ficulty simply untouched, thus amounting to an attempt to change the subject
completely. (Notice that our dissatisfied philosopher need not be characterized
as ignorant of the grammatical rules of ordinary language; she would, as I
said, happily accept the charge of not being able to express her trouble employ-
ing ordinary descriptions – but so much the worse for those descriptions!)
Supposing the reply I just imagined (or another to the same effect) is plau-
sible, how would the exchange continue? For the time being, I will let it stand –
the philosopher having the last word – and turn to the analysis of some subse-
quent remarks which may help us to resume that exchange in a more productive
 2.3 Time, memory, and sublimation 87

way. Accordingly, let us examine the second half of PR §52, in which Wittgenstein
presents a related “trouble” arising in the philosophical investigation of time –
namely, one having to do with the role of memory in our experience of the past:

In this connection it appears to us as if memory were a somewhat secondary sort of expe-

rience, when compared with experience of the present. We say “We can only remember
that.” As though in a primary sense memory were a somewhat faint and uncertain picture
of what we originally had before us in full clarity.

In the language of physical objects, that’s so: I say: “I only have a vague memory of this
house.” (PR 84, §52)

The reason for presenting this new “trouble”, and relating it to the previous one,
should be by now clear – after all, once one is caught by the feeling that the pre-
sent inexorably “disappears into the past” it is only natural to think of the expe-
rience of the past itself (i. e., of the stretch of the “strip of time” which has al-
ready disappeared from view) as it is recorded in our memory, that it becomes
only a “faint and uncertain picture” compared with the original (i. e., the expe-
rience of the present). Now, if read against the backdrop of the previous analysis,
the last sentence of the passage above will have the following implications: (i)
that there is no problem in putting the situation that way – applying that kind
of picture – in “the language of physical objects” (hence, “in ordinary life”);
but (ii) trouble may arise “when we philosophize” about those familiar facts,
and start misapplying that familiar (kind of) picture. Actually the next set of re-
marks (PR §53) can be read as elaborating just those implications. Here is how it
goes:

And why not let matters rest there? For this way of talking surely says everything we want to
say, and everything that can be said. But we wish to say that it can also be put differently;
and that is important.

It is as if the emphasis is placed elsewhere in this other way of speaking: for the words
“seem”, “error”, etc., have a certain emotional overtone which doesn’t belong to the es-
sence of the phenomena. In a way it’s connected with the will and not merely with cogni-
tion.

We talk for instance of an optical illusion and associate this expression with the idea of a
mistake, although of course it isn’t essential that there should be any mistake; and if ap-
pearance were normally more important in our lives than the results of measurement,
then language would also show a different attitude to this phenomenon. (PR 84, §53).
88 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

One can discern in these passages two characteristic voices running through
Wittgenstein’s text, namely the voice of temptation and the voice of correction.¹¹⁶
The specific temptation here illustrated is that of making a leap from ordinary
descriptions (e. g., “We can only remember that”), which can have many clear
and legitimate uses in our common linguistic practices, to some (supposedly)
substantial philosophical conclusions – here: the metaphysico-epistemological
thesis that memory offers just a “faint image” of the reality originally experi-
enced. Once again, what the voice of correction highlights is that this kind of
temptation occurs only when one (“the philosopher”) starts employing some pic-
tures which would be fine in their original context for some supposedly new
(philosophical) purposes; thus, even though our current use of some descrip-
tions may be from the beginning impregnated with certain “emotional over-
tones” – after all, we actually say that memory allows us only to remember
facts, and we actually draw a contrast between that (mnemonic) access to the
world and a more direct one, namely, present experience – the kind of trouble
that the philosopher would like to indicate, concerning the epistemic limitations
of memory, does not arise in the ordinary situations which are the original home
of those descriptions. And this is what is shown by the very possibility of an un-
biased (re)description of the situation, indicating that the “emotional overtones”
associated with normative words like “error”, “mistake”, etc. are not essential to
the phenomena described.¹¹⁷
What about the claim that the wish to “put [things] differently” is “connected
with the will and not merely with cognition”? My sense is that the kind of trouble
illustrated in the passage above arises only when those “emotional overtones” –
which (N.B.) are characteristic of ordinary language, to the extent that language
is to record our (natural and other) reactions to the world, including our experi-

 See the Introduction to this book for more details on this point.
 I owe this point to an anonymous referee of the journal Manuscrito, who also remarked that
one can see in the passage under analysis a straight application of the philosophical method
outlined by Wittgenstein in PR §1 (namely, that of comparing modes of presentation of the im-
mediate experience). Interestingly, in the last paragraph of PR §53 Wittgenstein describes a lan-
guage which would be free of such “emotional overtones” – one which “would not permit any
way of expressing a preference for certain phenomena over others”, and, hence, “would have to
be, so to speak, absolutely impartial” – as “primary”; in so doing, he offers an important (and, to
my mind, much overlooked) key to understand the role of a “phenomenological language” in
freeing us from philosophical confusion: the idea is not to use that (“primary” or “phenomeno-
logical”) language to correct the ordinary one, or even to show that the latter is intrinsically mis-
leading, but rather to use it as an object of comparison, which may show to “the philosopher” (in
us) that some of the features that s/he takes as troublesome in the analysis of the phenomena
are not essential to them, and have to do more with will than cognition in our ordinary life.
 2.3 Time, memory, and sublimation 89

ences of time and its flow – are sublimated by philosophical reflection, so that
instead of facing the real anxieties that are mirrored in those descriptions, atten-
tion gets redirected to some (supposedly) “cognitive” (i. e., logical, metaphysical,
epistemological, etc.) “problems” like the one about the “limitations of memory”
as a guide to reality. Yet memory, as far as the “essence” of this phenomenon is
concerned, is not “a somewhat secondary sort of experience”, nor does it offer “a
somewhat faint and uncertain picture of what we originally had before us”;
those are descriptions we may feel inclined to make (and non-problematically
so) in ordinary life — hence, “in the language of physical objects” – because
of the emotional responses which we (naturally?) connect with, or superimpose
upon, our mnemonic experiences of the past (experiences) – a matter which
clearly has more to do with the will than with cognition.
These considerations finally prompt me to resume the exchange between
Wittgenstein and his interlocutor on the problem of the “flow of time”. I said
above that one reason for our rather quick acceptance of some “reductions ad
absurdum” of philosophical questions enacted in Wittgenstein’s writings
would be our willingness to repress existential difficulties – what the Tractatus
(6.52) called “problems of life” – behind those questions, to avoid facing them
seriously; but, let’s face it: isn’t it the case that, at least for some of us, some
of the time, it is really difficult to accept that the past has gone, inexorably –
and that we cannot change it? ¹¹⁸ By the same token, don’t we sometimes feel bur-
dened when facing the fact that the future is not yet — and, hence, that at least in
part, it is our responsibility to bring it about? Little wonder, given this (doubly)
difficult situation, that we should react toward the present as if it were, on the
one hand, always already becoming past – as if escaping us, becoming un-
changeable, together with our deeds (or lack of them) — and, on the other
hand, as if it were always already pointing toward the future – as if accomplish-
ing it, making it happen, thus reminding us of the burden of having to choose
how to act (and to live) henceforth. But again, there is a clear sense in which
none of those descriptions captures the “essence of time”; rather, they are
ways of expressing our own (all-too-human) reactions toward (our experiences
of) time and its flow, and, ultimately, toward the awareness of our own mortality;
as in the case of memory analyzed above, these are all matters which have more
to do with our will, yet it is all but impossible not to sublimate them in philo-

 Normally, that is a difficulty felt when one realizes that some specific event or deed one
would like to change cannot be changed. As a (rather dramatic) illustration, think of the
quest of Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) to rescue his girlfriend Emma (Sienna Guillory)
from death, in the beginning of Simon Wells’s remake of The Time Machine (2002).
90 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

sophical reflection, where they keep being presented as having to do merely with
cognition.
Going one further step back in our discussion: I asked above whether we
were really supposed to take in Wittgenstein’s claim, in PR §52, that “in ordinary
life we are not troubled by the feeling that [e. g.,] the phenomenon is slipping
away from us […] but only when we philosophize”. Having reached this point
in the analysis, I find I would like to answer that question by saying that it is
only in their sublimated form that the “troubles” which Wittgenstein presents
us do not arise in ordinary life; yet, it is precisely for that reason that the (dis)
solution of the logical confusions behind (the sublimated versions of) those
“troubles” would not solve or dissolve the life problems which get deflected,
or displaced, by them. – Does that make logical clarification any less valuable?
Well, yes and no: what it shows is that – against some self-indulgent expecta-
tions – there is a rationale behind the kind of “dissatisfaction” that Wittgenstein
himself has diagnosed as an inevitable reaction of “the philosopher” faced with
his grammatical reminders; only the real difficulty would end up being once
again deflected if that rationale were presented (as my own dissatisfied philoso-
pher’s reply presented it) in an intellectualized garb, as if the trouble were really
derived from the analysis of the “phenomena”, or their essence, and our lan-
guage should be blamed by not being capable of expressing it. The point I am
trying to make, then, is that any effective and satisfying (to the philosopher,
i. e.) use of clarification – hence, of the grammatical reminders employed to ach-
ieve a perspicuous view of the syntax of ordinary language – would have to be
made in a larger therapeutic context, in which “the philosopher” were not only
intellectually shown to be asking pseudo-questions, but, additionally, were ena-
bled to become aware of the real difficulties which were getting unselfconscious-
ly repressed, deflected or sublimated by her very attempts at expressing them.

2.4 Solipsism of the present moment

To the extent that one is really puzzled by the difficulties examined in the last
section – involving the flow of time and the experience of the past – one
might be tempted to go one step further and hold, in Wittgenstein’s formulation,
that “only the experience of the present moment has reality” (PR 85, §54). Let us
call this thesis “S”, and the position expressed by it “solipsism of the present
moment”.¹¹⁹ Immediately after presenting S, Wittgenstein says that “the first

 This is a phrase employed by Wittgenstein himself in another context – see WLC 25.
 2.4 Solipsism of the present moment 91

reply must be: As opposed to what?” (PR 85, §54). Clearly, that question aims to
bring the prospective solipsist “back to earth”, compelling her to think about the
possible use(s) of S in concrete situations of ordinary life.¹²⁰ Again, that is a very
characteristic textual move which fits the blueprint given above, in that we are
presented, first, with an implicit philosophical question – say, “How would I
know whether anything but the experience of the present moment has reality?”
– and then a reply based on a grammatical reminder – namely, that in any con-
crete situation, to claim that something “has reality” implies distinguishing it
from something else, which has no reality. One might reformulate this grammat-
ical point by saying that in such cases, “real” and its derivatives are relational or
comparative qualifications, hence that they do not have an absolute sense. Yet –
so the reply would continue – what a solipsist would like to express using S de-
pends on assuming the (supposed) absolute sense of those qualifications, and
that explains why the resulting position would be incoherent (“reduced ad ab-
surdum”). After all, if only (my) present experience has reality, and, consequent-
ly, if there is nothing with which I could possibly compare it, how would I be able
to “pick it out” from the rest (?) of experience in order to confer on it some kind
of “privilege”?¹²¹
Wittgenstein takes up that conclusion in the continuation of the text, claim-
ing that:

The proposition that only the present experience has reality appears to contain the last con-
sequence of solipsism. And in a sense that is so; only what it is able to say amounts to just
as little as can be said by solipsism. – For what belongs to the essence of the world simply
cannot be said. And philosophy, if it were to say anything, would have to describe the es-
sence of the world. (PR 85, §54)

Read against the backdrop of the preceding analysis, I take it that what Wittgen-
stein means by saying that solipsism – presented here as an instance of a phil-
osophical position – cannot say what it purports to say by means of S – some-
thing belonging to the essence of the world – is not that there is something which
cannot be said, but rather that the very idea of there being such an “essence” –
some feature of our experience which could be “picked out” and presented as

 I suppose the same would apply to concrete situations of extraordinary life – in times of
crisis, danger, catastrophe, and so on, words such as those comprising S could undoubtedly as-
sume particular (albeit far from ordinary) meanings, and (hence) have many possible opposi-
tions.
 In order to indicate more clearly the incoherence involved in the solipsist’s attempt to ex-
press her “position” Wittgenstein presents (and immediately discards) two candidates for the
role of counterpoint to S – see PR 85, §54.
92 2 Solipsism and method in the Philosophical Remarks

that which alone (or ultimately) “has reality” – is essentially misguided. To go

back to a claim quoted above: “if appearance were normally more important
in our lives than the results of measurement, then language would also show
a different attitude to […] phenomen[a]” (PR 84, §53). Yet, I think that part of
the point Wittgenstein is here trying to make is precisely that there is no such
a thing as a/the “correct” attitude toward phenomena – as some philosophers,
and, in particular, our solipsist, would have it. Language, as he would later say,
is “the expression of our interests” (PI §570). (Now, as things are, it surely is in
our interest to honor some aspects of our experience with qualifications such as
“real”, “genuine”, “legitimate”, thus distinguishing them from aspects which we
prefer to diminish as “unreal”, “illusory”, “mere appearance”, and so on. Only
the impulse to make such distinctions has again more to do with our will —
with our way of reacting to the contents of our experience – than with cognition.)
Would our solipsist be satisfied with such a reductio ad absurdum of her po-
sition? The answer is, of course: “No”. After all, I imagine she (we) could grant
the grammatical point about comparative and absolute senses of the words in-
volved in the formulation of S, and still feel inclined to hold that, notwithstand-
ing the incoherence of such an attempt to express her sense of “losing touch with
reality” (in particular, at least in this context, with the past), there remains a
(possibly ineffable, but nonetheless very real) experience or feeling of being iso-
lated from, or out of attunement with, the world, particularly its (presently) un-
perceived aspects.¹²² In the face of such a condition, both the attempts at escap-
ing our metaphysical loneliness by resorting to a philosophical fantasy (e. g.,
“solipsism of the present moment”, which takes reality as internal to our all-em-

 Similarly, there is such a thing as the experience, or feeling, of being separate and out of
attunement with others, particularly their (externally) unperceived states. Cavell has argued that
behind the (eminently epistemological) quests for justification of our claims to knowledge of the
“external world” and “other minds” stand the prior issues of acceptance (of the world) and ac-
knowledgment (of others). (More on these points in chapters 4 to 6). Supposing, as I am inclined
to do, that his diagnosis is sound, an interesting question arises whether an analogous point
might be made concerning skepticism about the past. Although I will not try to pursue that pos-
sibility further here, I think it would be worth considering a positive answer to that question,
starting with the intuition that behind the (epistemological) troubles concerning “cognition”
of the past, there may be the prior (existential) difficulties of acknowledging and accepting
one’s own past – as part of the task of coming to terms with one’s own mortality and finitude.
(Nietzsche’s notion of amor fati, as well as Heidegger’s attempt to unveil our own condition as
“Beings-toward-Death” – which in turn should enable a more authentic attitude toward life, as
opposed to a mere identification with the impersonal “one” – are instances of the kind of alter-
native, non-sublimated philosophical stances I imagine one might adopt in dealing with these
issues.)
 2.4 Solipsism of the present moment 93

bracing experience) and the dogmatic denials of the legitimacy of our troubles
can be seen as repressions of our own humanity.¹²³
As I read Wittgenstein, his is a text where both kinds of repressions are (al-
ternately) enacted, none of them to be simply taken in as the “final word” on the
subject by his readers; little wonder, then, that one may find commentators will-
ing to ascribe each of those attitudes to him, saying either that Wittgenstein was
tempted by some form of solipsism, or that he refuted it by means of his gram-
matical clarifications.¹²⁴ Yet solipsism – as one among so many instances of our
all-too-human philosophical attempts to evade the problems of life – is neither
refuted nor defended in these texts. What is shown is that, contrary to what one
would initially suppose, there is no such thing as a (meaningful, bona fide) for-
mulation of that “philosophical position” – hence, that resorting to solipsism
(among many other such “positions”) is not really a matter of presenting and de-
fending “theses” or “theories” about the essence of the phenomena; rather, it is
a matter of deflecting attention from the real difficulties faced by creatures en-
dowed with such capacities (and burdens) as we have of taking up our experien-
ces, our condition in the world, and give them sense – or fail to. Yet in order to
accept that diagnosis one has to be prepared to counteract old philosophical
habits, which may be deeply rooted; faced with that challenge, it is all but im-
possible not to fall back, taking those grammatical reminders presented by Witt-
genstein as further paths, or excuses, for evasion, only reinforcing the repression
of the real issues related to our human condition.
Again, it is up to each of us to find a resolution to this situation – to take
Wittgenstein’s reminders as laying down the (grammatical) Law, or as mere
rungs in so many ladders to be thrown away once the whole therapeutic process
is over. Having reached this point in the analysis of the Remarks, my own incli-
nation would be to emphasize that, in writing the reflections we have been read-
ing, Wittgenstein was still moved by the ethical project at work in the Tracta-
tus,¹²⁵ which gets displayed in his reiterated attempts to cure the readers (and
himself) from some of the temptations expressed by solipsism.

 I am here echoing Richard Eldridge’s very apt formulations of these points (see Eldridge
2001, 194).
 See the Introduction to this book for a representative case.
 I am here again alluding, as it should be clear, to Wittgenstein’s claim that “the point of the
[Tractatus] is ethical” (see Monk 1990, 178) – a claim which I tried to illustrate and support with
the reading offered in the preceding chapter.
3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the
first person in The Blue Book
What the solipsist wants is not a notation in which the ego has a monopoly, but one in
which the ego vanishes.

(Ludwig Wittgenstein¹²⁶)

3.1 Introduction

As the preceding chapters indicate, concern with solipsism – with its nature, its
sources and its cure – is central and recurrent in Wittgenstein’s writings. One
constant topic of interest throughout his philosophical development is the con-
nection between solipsism and the puzzles surrounding the grammar of the first
person pronoun.¹²⁷ Eventually he came to believe that the joint treatment of
those issues would be an effective – perhaps the most effective – way of blocking
some of the major sources of philosophical confusion arising in the analysis of
language, especially that portion of language used to express our personal expe-
riences. One of the most sustained and detailed analyses of these issues occurs
in The Blue Book. Among the claims advanced in this analysis we find some of
the most surprisingly counter-intuitive as well as some of the most remarkably
trivial in all of his writings. To the first category belongs the claim that the pro-
noun “I” does not refer to anything – be it a body, a soul or a person.¹²⁸ Regard-
ing the second category, an example is the claim that “In ‘I have pain’, ‘I’ is not a
demonstrative pronoun” (BB 68). As it often happens with Wittgenstein’s re-
marks, understanding the purpose of these claims is a difficult exegetical chal-
lenge. It will be part of my task here to show that an important source of that
difficulty might lie in the reader’s own failure to take notice of the peculiar na-

 WLC 22.

 That topic actually appears in Wittgenstein’s earliest recorded philosophical reflections; al-
ready in 1916, in the course of a continuous stream of remarks dealing with solipsism which
would be later incorporated almost without change in section 5.6 of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein
had written that “The I, the I is what is deeply mysterious!” (NB 80) See Sluga/Stern 1996, 320 for
a helpful analysis of the development of Wittgenstein’s views on the grammar of the first person.
 See e. g. BB 69 – 70: “We feel then that in the cases in which ‘I’ is used as subject, we don’t
use it because we recognize a particular person by his bodily characteristics; and this creates the
illusion that we use this word to refer to something bodiless […]” (my emphasis).

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110702859-006
 3.1 Introduction 95

ture of Wittgenstein’s philosophical prose, and accordingly to engage in the proc-

ess of self-examination and self-criticism that he set up for them.¹²⁹
A striking illustration of the approach I am aiming at is the widespread opin-
ion that Wittgenstein is one of the first philosophers willing to question a central
assumption of the traditional view of subjectivity,¹³⁰ namely that the first person
pronoun has a referential role in “self-ascriptive”¹³¹ statements employing psy-
chological predicates in the present tense of the indicative mood.¹³² Let us call
that view the “non-referential view”. Despite finding prima facie strong textual
support, I take it that the non-referential view unduly simplifies Wittgenstein’s
stance on the issue of the grammar of the first person, leading to a number of
exegetical and philosophical misunderstandings whose culmination is the at-
tempt to extract from his remarks a straightforward refutation of positions

 And, before them, for his students. As is well known, the work published as The Blue Book
is a selection of notes dictated by Wittgenstein to some of his pupils at Cambridge in the inter-
vals of the lectures delivered in the academic year 1933 – 34. Bouwsma (1961) offers a very helpful
account of the context in which those notes originated, as well as an analysis of the methodol-
ogy exemplified by them which I find congenial with my own reading.
 I mean this phrase in a deliberately broad sense, so as to cover both the analysis of tradi-
tional metaphysical questions about “the nature of the self” as the analysis of the grammar of
the pronoun “I” in first person statements. Echoing a claim made by Wittgenstein in The Blue
Book, one might perhaps say that his treatment of the grammar of first person is one of the
“heirs” of what used to be called “philosophy of the subject” (see BB 28).
 That phrase is employed here due to its prominence in the philosophical literature; for the
time being, I will set aside the question about whether it is legitimate to use it in the context of
Wittgenstein’s philosophy – after all, one of his main contentions seems to be precisely that
(presumptive) “self-ascriptive” statements have an expressive function, which is very different
from the role of bona fide, third person statements describing actions, mental states, events
and attitudes of other subjects. I will come back to that issue below.
 In an essay which is seminal for this discussion, Elizabeth Anscombe (1994; originally pub-
lished in 1975) explores some of Wittgenstein’s claims concerning the grammar of the first per-
son (especially those presented in The Blue Book and in Philosophical Investigations §§398 – 411),
and offers a series of connected arguments supporting the claim that “I” is not a referential ex-
pression, or else “Descartes was right about what the referent was” (Descartes’s view being, by
Anscombe’s lights anyway, that the reference of “I” cannot be a person) – which implies that the
following definition is incorrect: “‘I’ is the word that a person uses to talk about herself” (An-
scombe 1994, 142). As one would expect Anscombe’s own stance on the matter is nuanced,
and any attempt to summarize her position under a single banner (such as “non-referentialism”)
runs the risk of failing to take into account the complex dialectic character of her prose. Suffice it
to say that less nuanced accounts were offered subsequently by many other interpreters who
were at least in part reacting to her seminal paper – see, for example, Kenny 1984, Hacker
1990, chapter 4, Malcolm 1995 and Hacker 1997, chapter VIII.
96 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

such as dualism, behaviorism, idealism or solipsism¹³³ – i. e., some of the views

which, precisely in Wittgenstein’s eyes, were to count among the most strongly
tempting ones in philosophy.
By taking Wittgenstein’s grammatical reminders concerning the ordinary use
of the first person pronoun as direct attempts at blocking substantial metaphys-
ical results, the supporters of the non-referential view miss the therapeutic char-
acter of his argumentative strategy. Or so I will argue. That is the main reason
why I think it is (still) crucial to analyze those reminders in their proper contexts,
as parts of a dialectical process of gradual overcoming of some philosophical
temptations – particularly, for our current purposes, the solipsistic one. Accord-
ingly, and with a view to supplying a more detailed picture of his treatment of
the first person pronoun, as well as to laying bare some of the main problems
faced by the non-referential view, the analysis below will follow as closely as
possible the textual development of Wittgenstein’s argumentation in the partic-
ular context provided by The Blue Book. Starting in section 3.2, we will follow
Wittgenstein’s diagnosis of an important source of the solipsistic temptation of
trying to revise ordinary language, proposing new notations devised to satisfy
certain metaphysical cravings – a temptation derived from a confused view of
the nature of our personal experiences, particularly pains. Section 3.3 presents
some further sources of that temptation, as well as Wittgenstein’s main corrective
move, consisting in the assembling of grammatical reminders about the use of
the phrase “the same person” as well as proper names. Section 3.4 deals with
a picture which underlies the solipsistic temptations analyzed up to that
point, namely that of a special object, “the mind”, as being the ultimate referent
of the first person pronoun. Only then, I submit, we will be in a position to cor-
rectly understand Wittgenstein’s reminders about the peculiar grammar of the
word “I”, and the sense in which it might be said that, about the sorts of usages
which are central for the solipsistic argument, that “I” simply does not refer. Sec-
tion 3.5 sums up the results of the analysis.

3.2 “I can’t feel his pain”: a first route to solipsism

Wittgenstein begins to direct our attention to the questions which will lead to the
analysis of solipsism presenting a “temptation” which, according to him, arises

 As I mentioned in the Introduction to this book, Peter Hacker offers a paradigmatic in-
stance of such reading, ascribing a “detailed refutation of solipsism and idealism” to later Witt-
genstein (1997, 81).
 3.2 “I can’t feel his pain”: a first route to solipsism 97

“[w]hen we think about the relation of the objects surrounding us to our person-
al experiences of them” (BB 45); that temptation, he continues, might lead one to
say that “personal experiences are the material of which reality consists”:

When we think in this way we seem to lose our firm hold on the objects surrounding us.
And instead we are left with a lot of separate personal experiences of different individuals.
These personal experiences again seem vague and seem to be in constant flux. Our lan-
guage seems not to have been made to describe them. We are tempted to think that in
order to clear up such matters philosophically our ordinary language is too coarse, that
we need a more subtle one.

We seem to have made a discovery – which I could describe by saying that the ground on
which we stood and which appeared to be firm and reliable was found to be boggy and un-
safe. – That is, this happens when we philosophize; for as soon as we revert to the stand-
point of common sense this general uncertainty disappears. (BB 45)

The central claim of this passage can be construed as a conditional whose ante-
cedent contains (something like) a bound variable: if we assume a certain picture
x of the relation between the “objects surrounding us” and “our personal expe-
riences” – one which implies that our experiences would be “vague” and “in
constant flux” – then our analysis would end up leading to a feeling of loss
from the “firm hold” on those objects. That feeling, I take it, might in turn
prompt a whole range of different attitudes, according to one’s philosophical
frame of mind. Thus, to stick to the extremes of that range, if one has an ideal-
istic or solipsistic bend, the inclination would be to conclude that our personal
experiences simply are the only reality there is, hence that the very attempt to
compare them with something “external” is nonsensical. On the other extreme
– for someone committed to some form of metaphysical realism – that conclu-
sion would be unacceptable, hence the inclination to take a different philosoph-
ical route, a way to secure our connection with “external” reality. What is com-
mon in both cases is of course the desire to escape or circumvent the threat of
metaphysical loneliness, which seems to be always imminent, only waiting for
us to “philosophize”.
As a way to clear up and counteract this philosophical predicament Wittgen-
stein offers “a kind of parable” (BB 45) comparing it with the difficulty generated
when “popular scientists” present their discoveries by claiming that the floor on
which we stand is not solid, contrary to common sense beliefs, since it consists
only of tiny particles in a mostly empty space. Now that claim is very likely to
generate perplexity: on the one hand, as Wittgenstein puts, “of course we
know that the floor is solid, or that, if it isn’t solid, this may be due to the
wood being rotten but not to its being composed of electrons”; and on the
other hand “even if the particles were as big as grains of sand, and as close to-
98 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

gether as these are in a sandheap, the floor would not be solid if it were com-
posed of them in the sense in which a sandheap is composed of grains” (BB
45). This perplexity, Wittgenstein then warns us, seems to be based on a misun-
derstanding created by a misapplication of the picture of the “thinly filled space”
originally meant to “explain the very phenomenon of solidity” (BB 45). The prob-
lem, one might say, arises from the conflation of two kinds of descriptions – two
different language-games – used to talk about the floor, only one of which
(namely, ordinary language) has clear rules for the employment of the concept
of “solidity”. The moral Wittgenstein extracts from this parable is that our orig-
inal puzzle about the nature of personal experiences arises from an analogous
mistake, amounting to a conflation between two different language-games,
only one of which (namely “everyday use”) has clear rules for the employment
of the words “flux”, “vagueness”, and so on – in particular, clear antitheses to
them (see BB 45 – 46). As in the case of the “popular scientists”, the way out
of such perplexity involves getting clear about the grammar of everyday state-
ments in order to avoid such kind of conflation.
In the remainder of the book Wittgenstein will point out a number of further,
interconnected puzzles which arise in the investigation of “personal experi-
ence”, showing, in each case, that if we strictly follow through their implica-
tions, we will end up adopting one of the philosophical attitudes belonging to
the range mentioned above. Also, for each detected puzzle, there will be an at-
tempt to bring us (or, what comes to the same, the philosopher in each of us)
back to the “standpoint of common sense”, thus (supposedly) dissolving the
philosophical motivation to revise ordinary language, replacing a “subtler”
one for it – which is how realists and idealists and solipsists alike would inter-
pret their respective proposals.
Let’s take a closer look at one example – a passage structured in a very char-
acteristic way, enacting a dialectical exchange among Wittgenstein’s interlocuto-
ry voices, identified by bracketed numbers below:

[i] There is a temptation for me to say that only my own experience is real: ‘I know that I
see, hear, feel pains, etc., but not that anyone else does. I can’t know this, because I am I
and they are they.’

[ii] On the other hand I feel ashamed to say to anyone that my experience is the only real
one; and I know that he will reply that he could say exactly the same thing about his ex-
perience. This seems to lead to a silly quibble. [iii] Also I am told: ‘If you pity someone for
having pains, surely you must at least believe that he has pains’. [iv] But how can I even
believe this? How can these words make sense to me? How could I even have come by
the idea of another’s experience if there is no possibility of any evidence for it? (BB 46)
 3.2 “I can’t feel his pain”: a first route to solipsism 99

Here is an initial take on the dialectic of this passage: (i) Wittgenstein expresses
a philosophical – in this case, solipsistic – temptation; (ii) he indicates the para-
doxical situation which would arise if one – here: the philosopher under the
spell of solipsistic inclinations – were to try to express his view to a non-philo-
sophical interlocutor; (iii) he then presents a philosophical – in this case: real-
istic – reply (yet another temptation); finally, (iv) he, on the guise of his solipsist-
ic interlocutory voice, reverts to the initial stance with renewed conviction, given
that the realistic reply did not even seem to make sense to him.
The next passage takes that conversation a little further, adding a new voice
to the exchange:

[v] But wasn’t this a queer question to ask? Can’t I believe that someone else has pains? Is it
not quite easy to believe this? – [vi] Is it an answer to say that things are as they appear to
common sense? – [vii] Again, needless to say, we don’t feel these difficulties in ordinary life.
Nor is it true to say that we feel them when we scrutinize our experiences by introspection,
or make scientific investigations about them. But somehow, when we look at them in a cer-
tain way, our expression is liable to get into a tangle. It seems to us as though we had either
the wrong pieces, or not enough of them, to put together our jigsaw puzzle. But they are all
there, only all mixed up; and there is a further analogy between the jig-saw puzzle and our
case: It’s no use trying to apply force in fitting pieces together. All we should do is to look at
them carefully and arrange them. (BB 46)

Step (v) in this imaginary conversation – amounting rather to a piece of internal

monologue – might be described as a self-questioning moment in the philoso-
pher’s reflection, one which is clearly motivated, as in the case of step (ii)
above, by a confrontation with common sense beliefs (and is precisely not mo-
tivated by a realistic philosopher’s reply (iii)). Step (vi), coming after a pause
for reflection marked by the use of the long dash, seems to be a question directly
addressed to the reader, which is not exactly answered afterwards (more on this
in a moment). Then finally, after another pause, we get to step (vii), whose orig-
inating voice does not seem to be any of the former ones, as if it came from above
or beyond the dispute. (To say that the latter voice was Wittgenstein’s own – or
anyway a more authentic one – would be misleadingly biased; after all, why
should we suppose that the former voices are not, or not as characteristically,
Wittgenstein’s? And if they are not, what is the point of the identification?
That said, I shall continue using the name “Wittgenstein” to refer simply to
the author of the book we are reading – someone who is all and none of the “in-
terlocutors” he creates.¹³⁴)

 Interestingly, on Cavell’s reading none of the voices in Wittgenstein’s writings is to be taken
as expressing the writer’s own real or final views; instead, Cavell construes them as expressing
100 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

What the latter “voice” in the passage recommends, in order to get us out of
the trouble faced by the solipsistic philosopher, is a grammatical rearrangement.
Wittgenstein’s first attempt at rearrangement in this context involves distinguish-
ing two kinds of propositions, or descriptions, namely: (a) the ones referring to
“facts in the material world”, in particular “physical objects” (BB 46), and (b) the
ones “describing personal experiences” which would be “independent of both
physical and physiological facts” (BB 47). The point of presenting such a distinc-
tion is to remind us that, provided that we keep employing each of the descrip-
tions in their normal, everyday contexts – including, N.B., introspection and sci-
entific investigations – no (special) difficulty should arise; the trouble only
shows up in the peculiar context of philosophical investigation about the relation
between the objects referred to by propositions of group (a), and the psycholog-
ical experiences referred to by those of group (b). Now precisely because of the
peculiarity of the context in which that trouble arises, it is of no use, in trying to
(dis)solve it, to offer a list of “common sense beliefs”; from the perspective of the
puzzled philosopher, the very fact that we should actually hold such beliefs is
just part of the (presumptive) problem, not its solution.
In fact, Wittgenstein’s opinion about the philosopher’s doubt – about, i. e.,
the very sense of ascribing “personal experiences” such as pains to other people
– is even more radical: it is not only that recounting common sense beliefs would
not (dis)solve it, but neither would it be (dis)solved by the (dogmatic) replies
coming from a “realist” or “common sense philosopher” – not to be confused
with “the common sense man”, who would be, according to Wittgenstein, “as
far from realism as from idealism” (BB 48). The trouble with the realist is that
he simply skips the (N.B.) real difficulties seen by adversaries such as the solip-
sist. There is, according to Wittgenstein, a “troublesome feature in our grammar
which the realist does not notice”, but the solipsist does (BB 48). Such is the dif-
ference between (at least) two uses of propositions of the form “A has x”, illus-
trated as follows:

“A has a gold tooth” means that the tooth is in A’s mouth. This may account for the fact that
I am not able to see it. Now the case of his toothache, of which I say that I am not able to

opposing trains of argument, which form part of a larger dialectical exchange in which they ul-
timately (and hopefully) cancel each other out. On this reading, the aim of Wittgenstein’s enact-
ed dialogues is not to lead the reader to accept any particular philosophical view, but rather to
help us overcome the temptations originally leading us to seek – even crave – for them. Hence, I
would add, to attain unassertiveness, the state in which one is (at last) able to refuse to take
sides in the philosophical dispute, thus achieving Tractarian Befriedigung (cf. TLP 6.53): the
state described in the Investigations as that in which “the philosophical problems should com-
pletely disappear” (PI §133).
 3.2 “I can’t feel his pain”: a first route to solipsism 101

feel it because it is in his mouth, is not analogous to the case of the gold tooth. It is the
apparent analogy, and again the lack of analogy, between these cases which causes our
trouble. (BB 49)

The lack of analogy between the sentences “A has a gold tooth” and “A has a
toothache” shows itself more clearly when we compare them with two different,
yet related sentences, viz.: (i) “We can’t have (haven’t as a rule) pains in another
person’s tooth” and (ii) “I can’t feel his pain” (BB 49). The latter sentence, Witt-
genstein has it, is meant to express a metaphysical impossibility, which should
not be confused with the (merely) empirical impossibility expressed by the for-
mer one, in which “the word ‘can’t’ is used in the same way as in the proposition
‘An iron nail can’t scratch glass’” (BB 49). In other words, (i) describes only a
contingent fact about the way our pains are experienced, and it is conceivable
that such a description, similarly to the empirical law forbidding nail scratches
in the glass, could be revised if empirical conditions changed; as Wittgenstein
himself puts: “We could write this in the form ‘experience teaches that an iron
nail doesn’t scratch glass’, thus doing away with the ‘can’t’” (BB 49). And in
fact, Wittgenstein strategy in the sequence consists precisely in arguing that
we can easily imagine some such changes, so that at the end of the process
the opposite possibility – namely, having pains in another’s tooth (or body) –
will show itself to be as intelligible as the one from which we started.¹³⁵ The
main point of this imaginative exercise, we must recall, is to indicate the empiri-
cal status of proposition (i), thus allowing us to better understand the solipsist’s
motivation to emphasize – against his realist interlocutor – the special, i. e., met-
aphysical status of the impossibility described by proposition (ii), a status which
(apparently) no possible or imaginable situation would make one feel inclined to
revise. That is precisely what Wittgenstein emphasizes by reminding us that the

 To accomplish such results, Wittgenstein presents a finely detailed analysis of the criteria
for pain location (see BB 49 – 57), which I shall not reconstruct here. As I read it, the main con-
tention of that analysis is the following: generally, when one has a pain in some part of one’s
body, there is a coincidence or correlation among certain sensory experiences, i. e., visual, tac-
tile, kinaesthetic, audible, and so on. So, for example, when a sharp object hurts my arm, I can
(simultaneously) see my arm being pricked, feel the prick, determine (by means of kinaesthetic
awareness) which is the position of my pricked arm, and so on. However, in some special cases
those experiences do not coincide – the most radical case perhaps being that of so-called “phan-
tom pains”, in which one can feel (e. g.) pain in one’s (phantom) leg, thus having all the tactile
and kinaesthetic experiences normally associated with that feeling, but without the correspond-
ing visual data. What cases like these show is that our concept of “pain” (or, to stick to Wittgen-
stein’s specific example, “toothache”) is sufficiently complex and indeterminate so that we can
imagine, with no great difficulties, extended uses, or projections.
102 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

solipsist could say: “I may have toothache in another man’s tooth, but not his
toothache” (BB 53).
The upshot of this analysis is that, against the “commonsense philoso-
pher’s” assumptions, the propositions “A has a gold tooth” and “A has tooth-
ache” are not used analogously. Therefore, up to this point in the exchange,
the achievement of grammatical (re)arrangement has favored the solipsistic in-
terlocutory voice. But this is just the beginning of the path which will eventually
lead to some radical implications of the solipsistic position. The real trouble has
to do with the revisionary attitude that a solipsist might be inclined to take con-
cerning the kind of “metaphysical impossibility” just identified. Given that, in
complete agreement with ordinary language, he perceives that there is a pro-
found difference in the status of the propositions mentioned above, and given
that their (superficial) grammatical form sometimes conceals that difference –
leading to the kind of innocuous and pointless claims made by the “common-
sense philosopher” – the solipsist would like to propose a “new notation”, capa-
ble of presenting in its very form the difference of content between those prop-
ositions – so that, for example, it would only make sense to say of my
experience that it is real.
The ultimate motivation for proposing that (or any other) “new notation” is,
according to Wittgenstein, a sort of “craving of the metaphysician which our or-
dinary language does not fulfil” (BB 55)¹³⁶ – in this case: expressing more con-
spicuously the differences which the solipsist deems relevant. Now, however
multiple the philosophical motivations may be to tempt one to embrace a “sol-
ipsistic notation”, it is important not to confuse that revisionary proposal with
a disagreement about the facts described by each notation (see BB 59). But
the problem is that the solipsist, or the revisionist philosopher in general, “is
not aware that he is objecting to a convention” (BB 57). Wittgenstein clarifies
that claim by means of a new metaphor, comparing the solipsist’s attitude
with that of a person who “sees a way of dividing the country different from
the one used on the ordinary map”:

He feels tempted, say, to use the name “Devonshire” not for the county with its convention-
al boundary, but for a region differently bounded. He could express this by saying: “Isn’t it
absurd to make this a county, to draw the boundaries here?” But what he says is: “The real
Devonshire is this.” We could answer: “What you want is only a new notation, and by a
new notation no facts of geography are changed.” It is true, however, that we may be irre-
sistibly attracted or repelled by a notation. (BB 57)

 See also BB 59.

 3.2 “I can’t feel his pain”: a first route to solipsism 103

As a new cartographic notation does not alter geographical facts, so a new no-
tation to describe personal experiences (such as pain) does not alter any facts
concerning those experiences. Hence, notwithstanding the solipsist’s self-inter-
pretation, his disagreement with the ordinary language speaker “is not founded
on a more subtle knowledge of fact” (BB 59). What then is the true motivation for
his revisionary proposals? That is not a simple question to answer. There is an
enormous variety of apparent analogies and disanalogies, of pictures and asso-
ciations underlying our linguistic practices, and many of them can mislead us –
or “the philosopher” – in the task of getting clear about a determined region of
ordinary language. That makes the investigation of the sources of philosophical
confusion a matter of creativity (for imagining recognizable ways in which one
might feel “irresistibly attracted or repelled by a notation”), together with a care-
ful comparison with our ordinary practices in order to evaluate the point of those
“new notations” (by putting them under stress tests, so to speak). As Wittgen-
stein himself warns:

it is important that you should understand that the idea of an analogy being misleading is
nothing sharply defined. […] It is, in most cases, impossible to show an exact point where
an analogy begins to mislead us. […] The cases in which particularly we wish to say that
someone is misled by a form of expression are those in which we would say: “he wouldn’t
talk as he does if he were aware of this difference in the grammar of such-and-such words,
or if he were aware of this other possibility of expression” and so on. (BB 28)

Read against the backdrop of the preceding analysis, the methodological lesson
presented in this passage might be formulated like this: let us take note of gram-
matical differences; if we do that well, our remaining problems – including our
inclination to misuse analogies, to misapply pictures, and to revise ordinary lan-
guage – will take care of themselves. But there is no simple recipe for that pro-
cedure, no predetermined limit for its terminus, and nothing can guarantee a pri-
ori that it has gone far enough – resulting, e. g., in a definitive cure for the
solipsist’s confusions. In a well-known passage from another context Wittgen-
stein describes his own procedure as that of “erect[ing] signposts” in order to
help people avoid “wrong turnings” in the “immense network” which is our lan-
guage (CV 18). In what follows I will present some additional “signposts” erected
by him in order to prevent the wrong turnings that might lead the solipsist to feel
dissatisfied with ordinary language – and, consequently, to feel inclined to revise
it, proposing notations devised to satisfy his “metaphysical cravings”.
104 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

3.3 When language goes on holiday: some further routes to

solipsism
According to Wittgenstein, “[s]ometimes the most satisfying expression of our
solipsism seems to be this: ‘When anything is seen (really seen), it is always I
who see it’” (BB 61). Wittgenstein’s line of criticism against this rather puzzling
formulation turns to the conditions for the use of the pronoun “I”: “What should
strike us about this expression is the phrase ‘always I’. Always who? – For, queer
enough, I don’t mean: ‘always L. W.’” (BB 61). In reply to that question, Wittgen-
stein reminds us that our use of the phrase “the same person”, as well as our use
of proper names, are “based on the fact that many characteristics which we use
as the criteria for identity coincide in the vast majority of cases” (BB 61).
Amongst such characteristics are, e. g., physical appearance, behavior and mem-
ories. It is because these and other facts concerning people are relatively persis-
tent that we use names to refer to them.¹³⁷ In order to underline this point, Witt-
genstein suggests another conceptual stress test, consisting in a set of three
language-games presenting “different ‘geometries’ we would be inclined to use
if facts were different” (BB 61). Since I believe the cases speak for themselves,
I will only describe them briefly and indicate what seems to their respective
“grammatical upshot”:
– Case 1: imagine that all human bodies look alike, but different sets of psy-
chological characteristics seem to “change their habitation among these
bodies” (BB 61). Grammatical upshot: in such a scenario we would probably
be more inclined to give names to the sets of characteristics themselves
rather than to the bodies that give them expression.¹³⁸
– Case 2: imagine that all human beings have “two characters”, and that their
shape, size and behavior “periodically undergo a complete change” (BB 61).
Upshot: in this scenario we would be inclined to give two names to each in-
dividual, perhaps talking of a pair of persons inhabiting each body.

 Compare PI §415: “What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of
human beings….”
 The “Clone Army” portrayed in the Star Wars franchise offers an interesting further case for
comparison: since there is no difference in physical or psychological characteristics among the
clones, there is no need to use proper names for distinguishing among them – their commanders
live well simply calling them “clones”, “soldiers”, or whatever. That might bring home the point,
explicitly made by Wittgenstein in some contexts, that our concepts – including that of personal
identity – are expressions of our interests, hence, that they can be simply dropped out if those
interests suitably change.
 3.3 When language goes on holiday: some further routes to solipsism 105

– Case 3: imagine that all human beings have two (non-overlapping) sets of
memories, one activated on even days and the other activated on odd
days (as an aid to our imagination Wittgenstein further suggests that we
could think of alternating appearances on odd and even days¹³⁹). Upshot:
to talk of “two persons inhabiting the same body” would be neither right
nor wrong in this case – the ordinary use of the concept of a person depends
on ordinary circumstances, and if these change enough we are free to choose
among different new projections, based on different kinds of analogies with
the old use.

The main purpose of assembling these grammatical reminders concerning differ-

ent uses of the concept of personal identity is to indicate a certain problem with
the solipsist’s thesis: namely the fact that none of the characteristics listed so far
– constancy in physical appearance, behavior or memories – seems to be rele-
vant to determine the kind of identity envisaged when he tries to state his posi-
tion by saying that “When anything is seen (really seen), it is always I who see it”
– after all, I do not always see parts of my body when I see something else, and it
does not matter for determining the content of my visual experience if my mem-
ories and/or behavior are the same as before. In fact, the pronoun “I” seems
completely superfluous and even alien to that formulation.
Given that result, if the solipsist still wants to defend his position, he has to
find a better suited expression for his main thesis. Wittgenstein offers a further
candidate in the following passage:

When I think about it a little longer I see that what I wished to say was: “Always when any-
thing is seen, something is seen.” I.e., that of which I said it continued during all the ex-
periences of seeing was not any particular entity “I,” but the experience of seeing itself. (BB
63)

The passage above presents the motivation which may lead the solipsist to (ul-
timately) exclude “the I”, or the subject of experience completely from consider-
ation, focusing instead on the contents of experience – a move which is reminis-
cent of David Hume’s (so-called) “bundle theory of the self”, as well as of
Lichtenberg’s proposal that we should write “It thinks” (Es denkt) as in “It
rains.” The reasoning behind that reformulation seems to go like this: given
the grammatical (or, if you will, metaphysical) constraints imposed by the solip-
sist for expressing the peculiarity of first person experience, there is no possible
way of doing that while satisfying ordinary conditions for personal identity;

 See BB 62.

106 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

therefore one should either give up the initial task or drop the “I”/self; now,
given who he is, our solipsist would be rather inclined to choose the latter; how-
ever, he still needs to present some element or other which would be shared by
all cases of visual experience, because otherwise there would be no point in
treating them homogeneously as cases of that kind of (peculiar) first person ex-
perience he wants to express; but all that remains to play that role is the expe-
rience itself – to employ Peter Hacker’s apt (and concise) Schopenhauerian for-
mulation: “What is unique is experience; the world is idea.”¹⁴⁰
The problem with that position – as Hume himself perhaps realized¹⁴¹ – is
that it entails an inversion of priorities relative to our actual use of language,
generating a conception which is ultimately unsustainable; after all the region
of our ordinary language used to talk about “personal experiences” seems to
be structured in such a way that the identity of those experiences depends on
the identity of the subjects who “have” them;¹⁴² now, if the subject is to be drop-
ped, what could the alternative criterion for that identity be?
At the end of this analysis our solipsist is depicted as someone who borrows
concepts from their native home, i. e., ordinary language, smuggling some of
their conditions of use yet ultimately making them impossible to satisfy, thus
ending up unable to give any clear sense to the signs he employs in order to
(try to) express his position. The main result of this exchange is to remove a num-
ber of prima facie motivations for our solipsistic interlocutory voice’s proposal of
“new notations”.¹⁴³ Importantly, however, by reaching this conclusion Wittgen-
stein emphasizes once more that there is no problem at all, at least in principle,
with the mere attempt to offer such alternative notations:

There is […] no objection to adopting a symbolism in which [e. g.] a certain person always or
temporarily holds an exceptional place. And therefore, if I utter the sentence “Only I really
see”, it is conceivable that my fellow creatures thereupon will arrange their notation so as
to fall in with me by saying “so-and-so is really seen” instead of “L. W. sees so-and-so”, etc.,
etc. What, however, is wrong, is to think that I can justify this choice of notation. When I
said, from my heart, that only I see, I was also inclined to say that by “I” I didn’t really
mean L. W. […]. I could almost say that by “I” I mean something which just now inhabits
L. W., something which the others can’t see. (I meant my mind, but could only point to it via
my body.) There is nothing wrong in suggesting that the others should give me an excep-

 Hacker 1997, 241.

 See Hume 2000, Appendix i.
 That is precisely the point of Peter Strawson’s argument in chapter 3 of Individuals (see
Strawson 1959, chapter 1). I will come back to this argument in chapter 5.
 A number of further such attempts receive Wittgenstein’s attention in the sequence of the
text (see BB 66 ff.), yet I shall leave them aside, hoping that the preceding reconstruction is rep-
resentative enough.
 3.4 “‘I’ does not refer”: the peculiar grammar of the first person pronoun 107

tional place in their notation; but the justification which I wish to give for it: that this body
is now the seat of that which really lives – is senseless. For admittedly this is not to state
anything which in the ordinary sense is a matter of experience. (And don’t think that it is an
experiential proposition which only I can know because only I am in the position to have
the particular experience.) (BB 66)

Besides recalling that there is no a priori problem involved in the proposal of

new notations, the passage above also presents the general picture which
seems to underlie all the solipsistic maneuvers analyzed up to this point –
that of a special object, “the mind”, as being the real or ultimate referent of
the first person pronoun. In Wittgenstein’s own words: “the idea that the real
I lives in my body is connected with the peculiar grammar of the word ‘I’, and
the misunderstandings this grammar is liable to give rise to” (BB 66). In order
to indicate such misunderstandings he proceeds to a detailed analysis of the
grammar of the first person pronoun, which will be the subject of the next sec-
tion.

3.4 “‘I’ does not refer”: the peculiar grammar of the first
person pronoun
The first step in Wittgenstein’s new attempt at grammatical rearrangement is
calling attention to a distinction which became well known – and, in fact, I
will suggest, got a bit overstressed – in secondary literature, namely between
two uses of the word “I”. The distinction is introduced in the following passage:

There are two different cases in the use of the word “I” (or “my”) which I might call “the use
as object” and “the use as subject”. Examples of the first kind of use are these: “My arm is
broken”, “I have grown six inches”, “I have a bump on my forehead”, “The wind blows my
hair about”. Examples of the second kind are: “I see so-and-so”, “I hear so-and-so”, “I try
to lift my arm”, “I think it will rain”, “I have toothache”. One can point to the difference
between these two categories by saying: The cases of the first category involve the recogni-
tion of a particular person, and there is in these cases the possibility of an error, or as I
should rather put it: The possibility of an error has been provided for. […] It is possible
that, say in an accident, I should feel a pain in my arm, see a broken arm at my side,
and think it is mine, when really it is my neighbour’s. […] On the other hand, there is no
question of recognizing a person when I say I have toothache. To ask “are you sure that
it’s you who have pains?” would be nonsensical. Now, when in this case no error is possi-
ble, it is because the move which we might be inclined to think of as an error, a “bad
move”, is no move of the game at all. (BB 66 – 67)
108 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

For obvious reasons, it is the last use of the word “I” – its “use as subject” –
which will be the focus of Wittgenstein’s analysis in the remainder of the
book. In pursuing that analysis he makes four main claims:
1. “To say ‘I have pain’ is no more a statement about a particular person than
moaning is” (BB 67);
2. “The word ‘I’ does not mean the same as ‘L.W.’, even if I am L.W.” (BB 67);
3. “[The word ‘I’ does not] mean the same as the expression ‘the person who is
now speaking’” (BB 67);
4. “In [propositions such as] ‘I have pain’, ‘I’ is not a demonstrative pronoun”
(BB 68).

The four claims above, as well as the arguments supporting each of them, are
intimately connected in the text. Note that in none of them Wittgenstein offers
a positive characterization of the use of first person pronoun, limiting himself in-
stead to describing analogies and disanalogies between some uses of that pro-
noun and the uses of other words in our language, thus helping us achieve a per-
spicuous view of the grammar of those words in some more or less
interconnected language-games. The central aim of that process is, once again,
to indicate grammatical differences, which in turn can be used to make conspic-
uous the confusions involved in the characterizations offered by his imagined in-
terlocutor, thus hopefully helping to set him free of certain pictures which are
commonly assumed in the philosophical treatment of the first person pronoun.
In this sense, Wittgenstein’s aims are rather modest, and one shall be careful not
to leap too quickly from his essentially negative results to the rather substantial
conclusion that he would be offering an alternative account or definition of the
use of “I” – say, a non-referential one. (I shall return to the point of this warning
below.)
In order to achieve such aims, Wittgenstein’s analysis will again be struc-
tured dialectically, alternately presenting some theses about the use of the pro-
noun “I” that naturally (if tacitly) suggest themselves when we reflect about the
grammar of the statements in which it is employed, and diagnosing the prob-
lems involved in each of those theses.
In justifying claim (1) Wittgenstein indicates some grammatical differences
between propositions ascribing pains in the first and in the third person, as
they are normally employed in ordinary language. According to Wittgenstein,
“[t]he difference between the propositions ‘I have pain’ and ‘he has pain’ is
not that of ‘L. W. has pain’ and ‘Smith has pain’. Rather, it corresponds to the
difference between moaning and saying that someone moans” (BB 68). Some
light can be shed upon the latter claim by reminding ourselves of the role of lan-
guage-games in Wittgenstein analysis – in particular the fact that
 3.4 “‘I’ does not refer”: the peculiar grammar of the first person pronoun 109

[w]hen we look at such simple forms of language the mental mist which seems to enshroud
our ordinary use of language disappears. We see activities, reactions, which are clear-cut
and transparent. On the other hand we recognize in these simple processes forms of lan-
guage not separated by a break from our more complicated ones. We see that we can
build up the complicated forms from the primitive ones by gradually adding new forms.
(BB 17)

Now, by indicating the proximity between propositions expressing pain in the

first person and instinctive pain behavior such as moaning, Wittgenstein is pre-
cisely moving along the lines presented in the passage above, indicating a “prim-
itive form of language” from which we can “build up” our own, more complicat-
ed vocabulary for the expression of pains.¹⁴⁴ In the “primitive” level of reactive
behavior, it is manifest that the expression of pain does not involve recognizing a
person as its condition. The person moaning in pain is (of course!) not stating
something about herself – she is not describing her own state, in the sense in
which another person could do it.¹⁴⁵ Again, in normal conditions, she obviously
does not need to observe her own behavior, or to make any kind of inference, or
to gather any kind of evidence in order to moan: she simply reacts, in an instinc-
tive and natural way, to whatever has hurt her. By the same token, and given that
the more complicated forms of language that we use to express pains can be rec-
ognized as belonging to the same family to which that kind of instinctive behav-
ior belongs, in that they are “not separated by a break”, the conclusion seems to
be that, even in the case of ordinary language (of our actual language-games), ex-
pressions of pain in the first person are not statements about a person; they be-
long in different grammatical shelves.

 One has to be careful not to take that too literally, as if Wittgenstein was proposing (or as-
suming) a genetic or evolutionary account of the development of human language. As a matter
of empirical or scientific fact, it may seem indeed very likely that such an account would prove
true; yet, as I read Wittgenstein, that would be simply beside his (methodological) point, which
is defending the philosophical relevance of paying attention to natural or instinctive human re-
actions, as they show up in real or invented language-games, in order to get clear about our own,
actually more complex and sophisticated linguistic practices; those reactions, to borrow from
Joachim Schulte’s apt formulation, are “the point of intersection of acting and speaking, of con-
duct and use of language” (Schulte 1995, 18). One might say: to indicate such an intersection is to
go as deep as philosophical analysis can get – only that would be misleading, since it suggests a
picture of layers to be dug; what it means is that it would be pointless, from the perspective of
someone seeking grammatical elucidation, to try to get beyond that point by finding some (em-
pirical) justification(s) for our language-games; as Wittgenstein reminds us in On Certainty, “[a]
language-game […] is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable). / It is there –
like our life” (OC §559). (See also RPPI §916 and RPPII §453 – “The primitive language game we
originally learned needs no justification.”)
 See PI §407.
110 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

Now, it is precisely because of that grammatical peculiarity that the analysis

of the “use as subject” of the first person pronoun (in expressive sentences) be-
comes so important in reckoning with the solipsistic temptation. Given that such
use does without the satisfaction of any conditions for the use of names, or for
the recognition of a person as being such-and-such, the solipsist – and not only
him – may feel inclined to imagine a set of somewhat analogous conditions, e. g.,
some kind of introspective access to the content of personal experiences, such as
pain. Wittgenstein presents that point as follows:

We feel then that in the cases in which “I” is used as subject, we don’t use it because we
recognize a particular person by his bodily characteristics; and this creates the illusion that
we use this word to refer to something bodiless, which, however, has its seat in our body. In
fact this seems to be the real ego, the one of which it was said, “Cogito, ergo sum”. (BB 69)

Against the illusion presented above, Wittgenstein attempts to dissipate the

“mental mist” surrounding the use of our actual expressive language-games
by inventing a more primitive form of expressive language-game in which indi-
viduals simply react to pain with natural and instinctive behavior, thus present-
ing us “activities, reactions, which are clear-cut and transparent” and diverting
our (the solipsist’s) attention from the picture of “internal processes”.¹⁴⁶
Of course the strategy illustrated above – that of comparing linguistic ex-
pressions of pain with instinctive behavior, such as moaning – is open to
many criticisms, and it is a source of much controversy even among Wittgen-
stein’s followers, some of whom are willing (while others are not) to grant that
such an analysis would show that the use of “I” is not intended to refer to the
person who says “I am in pain.” Interestingly, Wittgenstein has anticipated
those reactions. Having presented this first defense of claim (1), he immediately
points out, in the voice of an interlocutor, an objection that runs along these
lines: “‘But surely the word “I” in the mouth of a man refers to the man who
says it; it points to himself; and very often a man who says it actually points
to himself with his finger’” (BB 67). As a reply he observes that:

 Of course, one should not expect that such a procedure would at once eliminate the appeal
of the picture under analysis; after all, people can be tempted to apply it even in the case of
moans emitted by non-human animals (which, N.B., have been traditionally used as paradig-
matic examples of creatures guided by instinctive – and, at least by some philosophical lights,
nonexpressive – behavior), by imagining those animals “internally” having the same (or similar)
experiences we humans have. This is again to remind that Wittgenstein’s aims here are rather
modest, in that he is attacking (only) one of the sources of that picture – the one which departs
from the analysis of the first-person pronoun in its use “as subject”.
 3.4 “‘I’ does not refer”: the peculiar grammar of the first person pronoun 111

it was quite superfluous to point to himself. He might just as well only have raised his
hand. It would be wrong to say that when someone points to the sun with his hand, he
is pointing both to the sun and himself because it is he who points; on the other hand,
he may by pointing attract attention both to the sun and to himself. (BB 67)

What is the point of this reply? In order to answer this question we need to first
get clear about the parallel Wittgenstein draws between the case of the subject
employing “I” in the situation presented before by his interlocutor and the sub-
ject who, in the passage above, points to the sun. As I understand that parallel,
its purpose is to show that as the former subject can point to himself when say-
ing “I …”, so can the latter call attention to himself when pointing to the sun –
only that is generally not the case, i. e., that is neither the primary function of the
pronoun “I”, nor of the ostensive gesture of pointing to an object. In fact, one
might say that the primary function of the ostensive gesture is precisely the op-
posite, namely, to call attention to the object; now, if that gesture is to succeed, of
course other persons involved in this piece of communication have to react ap-
propriately, which means, among other things, that they must take the speaker
as the (provisional) center or point of origin of an (ad hoc) indexical system. Con-
sequently, it would be simply wrong, in the vast majority of ordinary cases, to
take the speaker’s ostensive gesture as an attempt to call attention to himself
– e. g., by looking at his hand instead of looking where his hand is pointing
to. Yet none of this prevents that, in some specific (if extraordinary) cases, a
speaker should use the ostensive gesture also to call attention to himself –
e. g., when he points toward the sun, but, given that all his interlocutors are look-
ing at a different direction (i. e., away from where he stands), he has to shout
something (maybe something about the sun), thus calling their attention first
to himself and then to that star.
By the same token, in some specific cases – say, that of a student shouting
“I!” in a classroom, answering a call – a referential analysis would seem correct.
However, as indicated previously, in most cases, particularly in the case of the
subject shouting “I am in pain!”, that analysis would be simply false, in that
there is no need at all for the subject to recognize himself as being such-and-
such a person in order to cry that out. It is worth noting that Wittgenstein
does not need to deny that there are similarities between, say, the self-referential
and the expressive uses of “I”; his aim is simply to indicate one essential differ-
ence between the language-games in which that pronoun occurs, so as to prevent
a hasty assimilation of all sorts of use to the narrow paradigm of reference. Our
112 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

challenge is not to lose track of such differences, as we are prone to when in the
grip of the philosophical “craving for generality”.¹⁴⁷
Now the main problem with the assimilation to the paradigm of reference is
not so much its falsity, but rather the fact that such an assimilation might be the
tip of an iceberg of serious philosophical confusions. When we are dealing with
statements in which “I” is used “as object”, the referential analysis seems to
work seamlessly, in that the subject who utters/thinks such statements intends
to refer to a particular object that we too can perceive, recognize, and so on.
However, if one tries to generalize, applying it to all first person statements, in-
cluding the ones in which the “I” is used “as subject”, one may (correctly) notice
that in such cases the intended object of reference is not necessarily the body of
the subject; hence, the temptation may arise to seek for some other kind of ref-
erent, such as the mind, soul, and so on.¹⁴⁸ It is, therefore, with the ultimate aim
of loosening the grip of that kind of picture upon the reader that Wittgenstein
finds it important to highlight the grammatical differences we have been track-
ing so far.
Having criticized the thesis contained in claim (1) Wittgenstein turns to the
theses contained in claims (2) and (3) – namely, that “I” means the same as
“L. W.”, or as “the person who is now speaking”. Against those assimilations
his main contention will be that the first person pronoun (in its “use as subject”)
and the words “L. W.”, and “the person who is now speaking” are “different in-

 See BB 17. It may help comparing that with Wittgenstein’s claims in the following passage,
where the philosophical “craving for generality” is illustrated by the search of a single definition
for the concept of “number”: “If, e. g., someone tries to explain the concept of number and tells
us that such and such a definition will not do or is clumsy because it only applies to, say, finite
cardinals I should answer that the mere fact that he could have given such a limited definition
makes this definition extremely important to us. (Elegance is not what we are trying for.) For why
should what finite and transfinite numbers have in common be more interesting to us than what
distinguishes them? Or rather, I should not have said ‘why should it be more interesting to us?’ –
it isn’t; and this characterizes our way of thinking.” (BB 18 – 19) Read the passage above replac-
ing the reference to the “I” for the reference to numbers, and – I submit – you shall get the es-
sence of what Wittgenstein has to say about the use of that pronoun: the “referential view” (or
analysis) of the “I” may be “more elegant”, but it is not elegance that we (should) seek; rather,
what we are most in need of, in order to free ourselves from grammatical and philosophical con-
fusions, is a subtler and more nuanced understanding of the various forms and circumstances in
which we employ the first person pronoun in our ordinary language.
 Strawson’s strategy of taking the notion of “person” as primitive (relatively to “body” and
“mind”) is designed to avoid just that kind of move (see Strawson 1959, chapter 3). Yet I would
argue that, provided that one is aware of the variety of different roles that first person statements
play in our language-games, the very motivation for that kind of (a bit strained) solution might
fade away.
 3.4 “‘I’ does not refer”: the peculiar grammar of the first person pronoun 113

struments in our language” (BB 67). Again, that does not mean that the latter
phrases simply cannot be used in similar ways to the first person pronoun in
some contexts: it is conceivable that in special circumstances someone could
shout, e. g., “N. N. is in pain!” (think of a little child still learning how to use
names and pronouns, or a Tarzan-like adult human being) or even “the person
who is now speaking is in pain!” (think of a character in Saramago’s Blindness),
behaving as people normally do when they feel pain; yet, if we were to react to
those utterances similarly to the way we react to people shouting “I am in pain!”
in ordinary circumstances, we would precisely not be understanding them ac-
cording to the paradigm of reference – as if they were intending to refer to a par-
ticular person, speaking about him or her – but rather as if listening to some-
thing akin to a moan. In this sense, the same rule would apply to such a
speaker as the one applying to a person who cries out in pain – namely, that
he or she “doesn’t choose the mouth which says it” (BB 68).¹⁴⁹
As the preceding considerations suggest, I take it that Wittgenstein’s purpose
in presenting claims (2) and (3) is simply to show that, in their primary uses, sen-
tences employing the first person pronoun “as subject” are the ones we (normal-
ly) take, even in the absence of any particular accompanying circumstances, as
genuine expressions of “personal experiences”; in other words, they are (falli-
ble) criteria for such ascriptions.¹⁵⁰ Yet there is no indication that such an anal-
ysis should be extended to the totality of “language-games” for the use of “I”.¹⁵¹

 That remark may sound enigmatic; its point is, I take it, to call our attention once again to
the expressive character of natural human behavior, including linguistic behavior. Intuitively, it
seems clear that if we were to realize from the behavior of a person saying that she is in pain –
regardless of using “I”, “N. N.”, or “the person that is now speaking” as a prefix to her utterance
– a deliberate attempt to “choose the mouth which says it”, that is, some kind of artificiality in
the formulation or even in the tone of her exclamation, we would be rather inclined to distrust
her, to think she is dissimulating. Accordingly, in such a case we would probably not react to
that person’s utterance as we normally do when faced with bona fide pain behavior, i. e., pitying
her, trying to assist her, etc.
 In order to bring that point home, it may help to think about the case of a subject suffering
from retrograde amnesia – someone like Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), the main character of the
film Memento (2000) – who by no means possesses the capacity to use a proper name or a de-
scription to identify him/herself as such-and-such a person, but still can use the first person pro-
noun to express (e. g.) pain, thus enabling other persons to understand his/her situation and
react appropriately.
 It is well known that Wittgenstein recurrently reminds his reader, especially in The Blue
Book, that when faced with questions about whether it makes sense to say that a term “x”
has the meaning y (e. g., whether “I” can be used referentially or not), the only sensible attitude
is to imagine concrete contexts of the proposed or intended use – stress test situations, as I have
been calling them. The suggestion behind that reminder is that there is no intrinsic characteristic
114 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

As I noted, Wittgenstein is not trying to achieve a definition of the use of “I”, in

the sense of a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the use (or the “use
as subject”) of that pronoun. He is, rather, describing some uses which are par-
ticularly relevant for his therapeutic purposes, e. g. loosening the grip of certain
pictures which underlie (and forcefully suggest) narrow views of the grammar of
the first person pronoun, such as assimilation to the paradigm of reference.
Moreover, let me recall that Wittgenstein introduced the distinction between
the two uses of “I” by listing examples: of a set of sentences concerning physical
characteristics of the speaker (the “use as object”), and another set of sentences
concerning his/her psychological characteristics (the “use as subject”). Yet one
might wonder whether that dichotomy was really supposed to exhaust the
uses of “I”, with no space being left for intermediate or composite cases. Is it
not surprising that cases such as that of personal identity and the use of proper
names – “I am such-and-such a person”, “I am N. N.” – both of which had been
mentioned previously in the analysis, should be left out precisely at the juncture
where Wittgenstein lists his examples of the two uses of “I”? Would not those
cases be recalcitrant to the dichotomy “as object”/“as subject”? And if they
are, wouldn’t they provide us with enough reasons to reject Wittgenstein’s
whole analysis?
The answer, I submit, is negative. According to the reading here proposed
the dichotomy he presents is by no means intended to exhaust the description
of the uses of the first person pronoun; it amounts, rather, to a presentation
of two extremities of a range of uses, between which there may lie an indefinite
number of intermediate cases, such as, e. g., that of a student shouting “I!” in
response to the calling of her name in a classroom, or the cases of personal iden-
tity and the use of proper names (“I am such-and-such a person”, “I am N. N.”)
mentioned above. Nowhere Wittgenstein denies the possibility or legitimacy of
such uses: they are simply not relevant for his immediate, therapeutic aims.
Paradigmatic cases of the “use as subject”, on the contrary, are of interest, be-
cause they are responsible for some of the most serious philosophical distortions
in the analysis of the grammar of the first person pronoun, ultimately capable of
leading one to feel inclined toward some form of solipsism; and paradigmatic
cases of the “use as object” are equally of interest, because they provide a
clear counterpoint, and also serve to indicate the fundamental flaw in analyses
which intend to assimilate all the uses of “I” to the referential model.

to the use of words that would hinder (or legitimize) a priori certain uses (or senses). It is only in
view of concrete language-games, inherited or invented, that we can hope to arrive at such con-
clusions.
 3.4 “‘I’ does not refer”: the peculiar grammar of the first person pronoun 115

With these considerations in mind, let us go back to the attempt to elucidate

the differences between pain utterances in first and third person. In the sequence
of the passages we have been analyzing Wittgenstein remarks the following, re-
garding that difference:

All this comes to saying that the person of whom we say “he has pain” is, by the rules of the
game, the person who cries, contorts his face, etc. The place of the pain – as we have said –
may be in another person’s body. If, in saying “I”, I point to my own body, I model the use
of the word “I” on that of the demonstrative “this person” or “he”. […] In “I have pain”, “I”
is not a demonstrative pronoun. (BB 67– 68)

The last sentence above presents our claim (4): that the pronoun “I”, in sentences
such as “I have pain”, does not function as a demonstrative. To understand the
point of that thesis, it will be useful to investigate in more detail what Wittgen-
stein means when he talks about modeling the use of “I” on that of demonstra-
tive expressions. Let’s start thinking about the analogy presented in the sup-
pressed part of the passage just quoted – the case of a mathematical proof
concerning the sum of the internal angles of a triangle. Look at the following di-
agram:

Figure 2

The notion which is relevant to draw the intended analogy with the case of first-
person pronoun is “equality”. According to Wittgenstein, that notion is em-
ployed in one way when we say, regarding the diagram above, that α = α’ and
β = β’, and in another way when we say that γ = γ. Now, to assimilate the pro-
noun “I” to a demonstrative, such as “this person” or “he”, would be “somewhat
analogous” to assimilate these two equalities. The point of the analogy seems to
be as follows: in the case of the equalities α = α’ and β = β’ we actually compare
two things – namely, two angles – and say they are equal; yet in the case of γ = γ,
one might say that we are facing a sort of degenerated equality (i. e., self-identi-
ty), since no two elements are being compared. Something analogous would
apply to the case of someone using “I” while pointing to her own body: in
their primary and strict (i. e., non-anaphoric) uses, indexicals like “he”/“she”
and “this/that person” need to be supplemented with ostensive gestures in
order to be correctly understood; but, as we noticed above, understanding osten-
sive gestures involves, in its turn, looking at the person who makes a (demon-
116 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

strative) statement, taking he or she as the center in an ad hoc coordinate system.

Given such conditions, in the case of a subject employing “I” while pointing to
him/herself, what we have is (at best) a degenerate kind of ostension – one in
which the center points to itself, so to speak. In such a case, it may be correct
to say that the pronoun “I” is being used as a (degenerated) demonstrative,
but only to the extent in which one might say that γ = γ is a (degenerated)
case of equality. There is no problem in principle with that possibility; on the
contrary: as degenerated equality is useful for the construction of a mathemat-
ical proof, so the use of degenerate ostension may be useful (and legitimate)
in some cases. (Think of the following situation: I want to draw the attention
of a friend to myself, in a context where there is too much noise and people talk-
ing everywhere, say at a party; I then shout my friend’s name; she hears my
scream, yet is unable to determine where – hence, whom – it comes from; in
such a case, shouting “I!” – or, more likely, “Hey, it’s me!” – while pointing to
my own body would seem to be the best way of achieving my initial aim.)
Once again the lesson I draw from these considerations is negative: Wittgen-
stein is not defending that “I” is simply not a demonstrative: stones may well
serve as hammers from time to time; words have the uses we put them to in con-
crete situations, for certain specific purposes. Wittgenstein’s suggestion seems to
be rather simpler, even trivial, namely that in some of its primary uses, such as
the one paradigmatically represented by cases in which someone says “I am in
pain”, the first-person pronoun does not, as a matter of (grammatical) fact, func-
tion as a demonstrative. Yet that triviality is not useless; in its original context, it
has a particular (dialectical) purpose, which is that of avoiding the hasty assim-
ilation to a rather narrow grammatical paradigm, motivated by a lack of atten-
tion to grammatical differences, and it is in order to avoid that mistake that it
becomes useful to present cases in which the move would be conspicuously in-
appropriate.
Unsurprisingly, the interlocutory voice expresses dissatisfaction with that
negative result, claiming that “surely the word ‘I’ in ‘I have pain’ serves to distin-
guish me from other people, because it is by the sign ‘I’ that I distinguish saying
that I have pain from saying that one of the others has” (BB 68 – 69). In reply to
that claim Wittgenstein proposes the following (rather remarkable) language-
game:

Imagine a language in which, instead of “I found nobody in the room”, one said “I found
Mr. Nobody in the room”. Imagine the philosophical problems which would arise out of
such a convention. Some philosophers brought up in this language would probably feel
that they didn’t like the similarity of the expressions “Mr. Nobody” and “Mr. Smith”.
When we feel that we wish to abolish the “I” in “I have pain”, one may say that we tend
to make the verbal expression of pain similar to the expression by moaning. – We are in-
 3.5 Teaching differences 117

clined to forget that it is the particular use of a word only which gives the word its meaning.
(BB 69)

It is difficult to understand the point of that analogy unless one reads it against
the broader backdrop of the criticism against solipsism. Read that way, what the
analogy seems to indicate is that in our ordinary language there is a similarity
between the use of “I” in sentences such as “I am in pain” (the “use as subject”),
and the use of “I” in cases in which we actually identify a person, or even a par-
ticular body, in order to make our utterance (the “use as object”); that similarity,
in turn, can either tempt one to assimilate both cases to the latter model and,
accordingly, to seek for a referent for the term “I”, or to simply drop the (suppos-
edly) problematic use of “I”, thus proposing a new notation, in which, e. g., one
would simply say “there is pain”. This would be a revisionist proposal similar to
the one made by the philosopher who grew up in the language presented in the
passage above, who would probably argue that we should simply drop the
phrase “Mr. Nobody” in order not to conflate it with the phrase “Mr. Smith”,
thus (supposedly) escaping the temptation to imagine that there is some hidden
entity in the room when we say “Mr. Nobody is in the room.” Similarly – so
thinks the interlocutor – if we went on saying simply “there is pain” instead
of “I’m in pain”, we would stop thinking that there is some kind of hidden ref-
erent of the pronoun “I”.
And here we arrive at an opposite (but congenial) attitude to the ones pre-
sented earlier. Both the proposal to assimilate all the uses of “I” to grammatical
paradigms primarily applicable to the “use as object” and the proposal to drop
that pronoun from our language – in order to stick to what is supposedly pecu-
liar in our personal experiences, thereby removing the surface similarities with
expressions used to talk about the experiences of other subjects – stem from
the same deep philosophical roots, among which are the craving for a single ex-
planation which would account for all uses of certain concept and the assump-
tion that if there is a noun there must be a referent.

3.5 Teaching differences

The (negative) results of this analysis seem to me quite straightforward: first,

Wittgenstein does not advocate a “non-referential view” of the grammar of the
first person in The Blue Book; to defend that would be like saying that stones
do not serve to nail because they are not hammers (a conclusion which some
philosophers could perhaps draw from their armchairs, while examining the
conditions of possibility of carpentry). Second, Wittgenstein also does not
118 3 Solipsism, privacy, and the grammar of the first person in The Blue Book

argue that the first-person pronoun has two uses — one “as object” and other “as
subject”; those are only two extremities of a range of uses – two rather different
members of a family, if you like¹⁵² – the indication of which was useful for diag-
nosing the congenial errors of several monolithic accounts of the role of that pro-
noun. Between those two extremities there is an enormous variety of other pos-
sible and more or less overlapping uses, whose “identity” depends on the
requirements of the concrete linguistic context in which they are employed,
and, in particular, on our concrete interests and purposes in each case. Finally
(and more positively), the fundamental lesson of this whole analysis is methodo-
logical, namely that one must strive to pay attention to the differences between
the various uses of certain concepts – such as the pronoun “I” – rather than
try to fit them all in a single, narrow bin, whatever that be – e. g., reference, dem-
onstration, description, expression, etc.
That, by the way, is precisely the lesson drawn by Wittgenstein in an earlier
passage of the book, with which I would like to bring this reading to a close:

[S]ome of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up
some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; noth-
ing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The on-
looker who doesn’t know the difficulty of the task might well think in such a case that noth-
ing at all had been achieved. – The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.
E. g., to see that when we have put two books together in their right order we have not there-
by put them in their final places. (BB 44– 45)

Philosophy, or at least the activity carried on in Wittgenstein’s texts, is always

provisional. That should explain, at least in part, why his (post-Tractarian) writ-
ings never end up – and, as far as I know, were never intended to end up – with a
proper, structurally distinguishable conclusion, as if to mark that the “last word”
is only contingently so, and that the invitation is always open to keep the conver-
sation going.

 See BB 17.

4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical
Investigations: Cavell and Kripke on skepticism
about meaning
4.1 Introduction

The majority of readers of the Philosophical Investigations take skepticism about

meaning as one of the central targets of Wittgenstein’s grammatical remarks,
something to be refuted (or perhaps dissolved) by means of a clear grasp of
our ordinary grammatical criteria. Against that prevalent view, Stanley Cavell
was the pioneer among Wittgenstein’s interpreters who was willing to assign a
central and positive role to skepticism in his reading of the Investigations. He
did this by arguing that disappointment with what Wittgenstein calls criteria is
not exactly unjustified since criteria cannot ensure, as it were impersonally,
that agreement and hence meaning will be forthcoming.¹⁵³ Given his view on
the reach of criteria, Cavell is constantly driven to emphasize that Wittgenstein
does not exactly want to deny the possibility of a private language;¹⁵⁴ rather,
what he wants to show is that privacy is a standing human possibility, in that
our criteria, being grounded in our interests and needs, and in our sharing of
a common “natural history” and “form of life”,¹⁵⁵ are always open to the kind
of repudiation indulged in by the skeptic. The implication, contrary to the Witt-
gensteinian orthodoxy, is that recounting our criteria cannot be a way to refute
skepticism; in fact, this can actually reinforce it, by showing how fragile and all-
too-human our grounds for agreement and meaning really are.
Some elements of Cavell’s position will certainly sound familiar to the read-
ers of Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. ¹⁵⁶ In that book,
Kripke not only sees a “skeptical paradox” concerning the conditions of meaning
– or, more generally, the possibility of following rules¹⁵⁷ – as the central problem
of the Investigations, but also claims that Wittgenstein offers a “skeptical solu-

 That reading was initially developed in Cavell’s early essay “The Availability of Wittgen-
stein’s Later Philosophy” (Cavell 1962), which was later included in MWM, and was presented
in its most systematic form in Cavell’s masterpiece, The Claim of Reason, from 1979.
 See, e. g., CR 329 and 344.
 See PI 415 and MWM 52.
 Kripke 1982; hereafter “K”.
 The relevance of that paradox would lie in its absolute generality, which is clearly indicated
in Kripke’s (interim) conclusion that “Wittgenstein’s main problem is that it appears that he has
shown that all language, all concept formation, to be impossible, indeed unintelligible” (K 62).

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110702859-007
120 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

tion” to that paradox. (Kripke describes a “skeptical solution” to a skeptical phil-

osophical problem as one which “begins […] by conceding that the skeptic’s neg-
ative assertions are unanswerable” [K 66]; to that he opposes to a “straight sol-
ution”, which would show that “on closer examination the skepticism proves to
be unwarranted” [K 66].)
In what follows I would like to compare these two readings more closely, ar-
guing that the superficial similarities that were just noted conceal important dis-
agreements. As we will see, unlike Cavell, Kripke not only does not see privacy as
a standing possibility for finite beings like us but shares with the Wittgensteinian
orthodoxy a fundamental assumption concerning the role of grammatical rules
as external impositions conditioning participation in a linguistic community.
Cavell, on the other hand, in his eagerness to avoid that assumption, tends to
downplay the importance of the skeptical temptation concerning the possibility
of multiple interpretations of rules in his own reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s
text. But, as Wittgenstein himself has taught us, in order to expose and overcome
a certain picture it is fundamental to think it through, and for that one needs to
give it full force, following its implicit assumptions to the point of incoherence
and paradox. I suggest that this is precisely the virtue of Kripke’s exposition
of the so-called “skeptical paradox” of meaning. Downplaying either the skepti-
cal temptation or the diagnosis of the confusions underlying it can lead to a one-
sided view of Wittgenstein’s dialectic in the rule-following remarks, and I hope
this comparative assessment might pave the way for a more accurate and
nuanced reconstruction of his text.
Fundamental to my assessment is a point made by James Conant¹⁵⁸ to the
effect that Wittgenstein’s philosophical practice alternately seeks to execute
two complementary tasks, by means of two distinct but connected movements:
a prospective movement, leading from a piece of disguised nonsense to a piece of
undisguised nonsense (see PI 464) and a retrospective movement, which consists
in bringing words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use (see PI 116).
In a nutshell, and inspired by Conant’s diagnosis,¹⁵⁹ I will argue that Kripke’s
reading of the rule-following considerations has the virtue of perspicuously
and compellingly presenting their prospective trajectory towards undisguised

 Conant 2012, 64– 65.

 Given the scope of his text, Conant’s assessment of the relation between these two readings
was by necessity very condensed, as an illustration (among others) of differences in approach
motivated by their respective concerns with one of the two main varieties of skepticism distin-
guished in his paper: Cartesian and Kantian. Although I will not take up that diagnosis explicitly
in what follows, I am happy to acknowledge my debt to it, and I hope my own considerations
can be seen as complementary to it.
 4.1 Introduction 121

nonsense, yet stop short of taking the retrospective route back to the ordinary;
Cavell’s reading on the other hand, though not completely blind to the prospec-
tive movement, tends to underestimate its therapeutic role, thus risking a kind of
methodological short-circuiting that Wittgenstein exhorted us to avoid in his
later philosophy.¹⁶⁰
Besides paving the way for a more complex reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s
text, I hope this assessment of the respective virtues and shortcomings of each of
the readings under consideration will help to delineate an alternative, richer un-
derstanding of human language that is free from the kind of evasion that an im-
personal view of rules implies, and that is also open to acknowledging the seri-
ousness of the threat of privacy, hence the seriousness of skepticism. Such an
understanding will, in turn, enable us to see agreement and meaning as contin-
ual tasks, the avoidance of which is always possible, yet imbued with costs that
are not simply epistemic and theoretical, but rather practical or existential.¹⁶¹
With those aims in mind, this chapter will be structured as follows: in sec-
tion 4.2 I offer a brief reconstruction of Kripke’s skeptical reading of the rule-fol-
lowing considerations, highlighting its prospective character; that reading is then
taken up and critically assessed in sections 4.3 and 4.4, by means of a confron-

 As Wittgenstein once warned his students in Cambridge: “You must not try to avoid a phil-
osophical problem by appealing to common sense; instead, present it as it arises with most
power. You must allow yourself to be dragged into the mire, and then get out of it. Philosophy
can be said to consist of three activities: to see the commonsense answer, to get yourself so deep-
ly into the problem that the commonsense answer is unbearable, and to get from that situation
back to the commonsense answer. But the commonsense answer in itself is no solution; every-
one knows it. One must not in philosophy attempt to short-circuit problems.” (WLC 108 – 109)
 An anonymous referee from the journal Wittgenstein-Studien voiced strong disagreement
with this last claim. Alluding to some well-known passages from On Certainty (OC 257, 261,
369 and 370), the referee argued that “in basic cases, disagreement and doubt are not logically
possible – they smack of the pathological” (my emphasis). I am not sure I agree with the claim I
italicized (in part because there are different construals of “logical impossibility”), though I am
happy to accept the suggestion that follows it. This is not a place to discuss On Certainty in any
detail, but I want at least to indicate that none of the passages referred to explicitly invokes a
“logical impossibility” of disagreement concerning “basic cases”; that, of course, does not
mean they cannot be read that way. However, I would submit, those passages can equally be
read in a way that is more congenial to the understanding of skepticism’s existential costs to
be elaborated in what follows. Granted, the “deviant person” is described by Wittgenstein in
those passages as “a half-wit” (OC 257), their doubt is said to be unreasonable (OC 261) and,
more importantly, to have as an effect dragging us “out the language-game” or doing away
with it (OC 370). Nothing that I say in what follows intends to deny any of those descriptions
– on the contrary, what I say about the practical or existential threat of privacy is precisely
an attempt to flesh them out. But I am afraid if this chapter as a whole does not make good
on that promise, nothing I can say in a shorter space will.
122 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

tation with Cavell’s more retrospective approach; section 4.5 takes a step back,
and exposes a central source of dissatisfaction underlying the skeptical attitude
towards ordinary language that is given voice in Wittgenstein’s remarks, having
to do with our desire for “firmer foundations” for meaning and agreement seem-
ingly found in the “sublime” rules of logic or mathematics; section 4.6 wraps up
the analysis, delineating an alternative to both skeptical despair and dogmatic
avoidance of the real risks involved in the human task of achieving and main-
taining meaning.

4.2 Kripke’s Wittgenstein on rules and private language

Kripke’s presentation of the skeptical paradox starts with a thought-experiment

in which a “bizarre skeptic” questions my right to claim that my past usage of the
word “plus” (and of the symbol “+”) denoted the function plus rather than the
function quus (see K 7– 9).¹⁶² The function quus (symbolized by “⊕”) is defined
as follows:
x ⊕ y = x + y, if x, y < 57
[x ⊕ y] = 5 otherwise

Suppose I am asked to compute the result of 68 + 57 – a computation which, by

stipulation, I face for the first time in my life; suppose further that all the com-
putations I did in the past involved numbers smaller than 57, and, consequently,
whether I knew it or not, they all resulted in answers which simultaneously
agreed with the functions plus and quus. That being the case, there seems to
be no reason to prefer the claim that I have been making additions rather
than (say) quadditions. In Kripke’s own parlance, I cannot “give an account of
what fact it is […] that constitutes my meaning plus, not quus”, and that
“show[s] how I am justified in giving the answer ‘125’ to ‘68 + 57’ [rather than
‘5’]” (K 11). The conclusion, stated in its epistemological guise, is that apparently
I never know – in that I could never justify my belief about – what I mean with
any term I use. Kripke formulates that conclusion in a more radical and paradox-
ical way,¹⁶³ asserting that:

 It is important to emphasize, as Kripke himself does at the outset, that although he is fol-
lowing Wittgenstein in “develop[ing] the problem initially with respect to a mathematical exam-
ple, […] the relevant sceptical problem applies to all meaningful uses of language” (K 7). I will
come back to this point in section 4.5.
 As Conant points out in his analysis, Kripke’s initial, “Cartesian” way of presenting the
problem serves him “only as a provisional expository device”, one that should ultimately lead
 4.2 Kripke’s Wittgenstein on rules and private language 123

There can be no such thing as meaning anything by any word. Each new application we
make is a leap in the dark; any present intention could be interpreted so as to accord
with anything we may choose to do. So there can be neither accord, nor conflict. This is
what Wittgenstein said in [PI] §201. (K 55)

With this reconstruction of Kripke’s skeptical paradox in mind, let us now turn to
his proposed skeptical solution. According to Kripke, Wittgenstein agrees with the
skeptic “that there is no ‘superlative fact’ ([PI] §192) about my mind that consti-
tutes my meaning addition by ‘plus’ and determines in advance what I should
do to accord with this meaning” (K 65; my italics). It seems to me that this
last statement might easily lead to misunderstanding, due to the use of the
phrase “about my mind” to characterize the “superlative fact” that both Wittgen-
stein and the skeptic would reject as a candidate for securing the possibility of
meaning. That is a rather restrictive formulation if compared to descriptions
given elsewhere by Kripke himself – e. g., “fact[s] about my past history – noth-
ing that was ever in my mind, or in my external behavior” (K 13; my italics). Ac-
tually, sometimes Kripke uses an even more general formulation to describe
those “facts” – e. g., when he asserts that “Wittgenstein’s skeptical solution con-
cedes to the sceptic that no ‘truth conditions’ or ‘corresponding facts’ in the
world exist that make a statement like ‘Jones […] means addition by ‘+’ true’”
(K 86).
I propose we take the last, more general formulation as the more fundamen-
tal in Kripke’s argument. An initial justification for this comes from the impor-
tance Kripke confers, in his presentation of the skeptical solution, to the new
“picture of language” that Wittgenstein would have proposed in the Investiga-
tions, one whose innovation lies precisely in the abandonment of the analysis
in terms of truth conditions (supposedly pursued in Tractatus), on behalf of an
analysis in terms of “assertability conditions or justification conditions” – i. e.,
conditions which specify “under what circumstances are we allowed to make
a given assertion”, or, “more generally, of the conditions when a move (a form
of linguistic expression) is to be made in the ‘language-game’” (K 74). What
these considerations show, I take it, is that Kripke’s skeptical solution for the
problem of meaning essentially requires us to abandon an analysis in terms of
“facts in the world” corresponding to our assertions, looking instead “at how
such assertions are used” and “under what circumstances attributions of mean-
ing are made and what role these attributions play in our lives” (K 86).

us into “a skeptical paradox of an altogether different and more fundamental variety” (one that
Conant characterizes as “Kantian” – see Conant 2012, 24, fn. 21).
124 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

Kripke’s analysis of that role is presented in two phases: initially, he exam-

ines the case of an individual taken in isolation and then goes on to investigate
the case of an individual inside a wider linguistic community. The conclusions
obtained in the first phase are precisely the ones that were relevant for present-
ing the skeptical paradox in chapter 2. I enumerate some passages where those
conclusions are most clearly expressed:
1. “one person considered in isolation […] act[s] unhesitatingly but blindly.” (K
87)
2. “It is part of our language game of speaking of rules that a speaker may,
without ultimately giving any justification, follow his own confident inclina-
tion that this […] is the right way to respond.” (K 87– 88)
3. “if we confine ourselves to looking at one person alone, his psychological
states and his external behavior, this is as far as we can go. We can say
that he acts confidently at each application of a rule; that he says – without
further justification – that the way he acts, rather than some quus-like alter-
native, is the way to respond.” (K 88)
4. “All we can say, if we consider a single person in isolation, is that our ordi-
nary practice licenses him to apply the rule in the way it strikes him.” (K 88)
5. “if one person is considered in isolation, the notion of a rule as guiding the
person who adopts it can have no substantive content.” (K 89)

On at least one occasion Kripke himself identifies the conclusions above with the
previous results of the skeptical argument of chapter 2, in particular with its sys-
tematic attempt to show that no fact can justify a subject in saying that he is fol-
lowing one rule rather than another. That identification occurs in the claim that
“the whole point of the skeptical argument was that there can be no facts about
him [i. e., the subject who, in chapter 3, has been repeatedly described as taken in
isolation] in virtue of which he accords with his intentions or not” (K 88).
The second phase of Kripke’s analysis is introduced with the following con-
sideration:

The situation is very different if we widen our gaze from consideration of the rule follower
alone and allow ourselves to consider him as interacting with a wider community. Others
will then have justification conditions for attributing correct or incorrect rule following to
the subject, and these will not be simply that the subject’s own authority is unconditionally
to be accepted. (K 89)

Having presented these general remarks, Kripke offers an example aiming to

clarify them – that of “a small child learning addition” (K 89). His first comment
on that example is that “[i]t is obvious that his teacher will not accept just any
response from the child. On the contrary, the child must fulfill various conditions
 4.2 Kripke’s Wittgenstein on rules and private language 125

if the teacher is to ascribe to him mastery of the concept of addition” (K 89);

Kripke then goes on listing some of those conditions, yet I shall put them
aside, since I am more interested in something he says soon afterwards, when
contemplating the results one might extract from the analysis of that particular
example for the conditions of attributions of meaning in general:

Now, what do I mean when I say that the teacher judges that, for certain cases, the pupil
must give the “right” answer? I mean that the teacher judges that the child has given the
same answer that he himself would give. Similarly, when I said that the teacher, in order to
judge that the child is adding, must judge that […] he is applying the “right” procedure even
if he comes out with a mistaken result, I mean that he judges that the child is applying the
procedure he himself is inclined to apply.

Something similar is true for adults. If someone whom I judge to have been computing a
normal addition function (that is, someone whom I judge to give, when he adds, the
same answer I would give), suddenly gives answers according to procedures that differ bi-
zarrely from my own, then I will judge that something must have happened to him, and that
he is no longer following the rule he previously followed. If this happens to him generally,
and his responses seem to me to display little discernible pattern, I will judge him probably
to have gone insane. (K 90).

Generalizing the analysis of the conditions for the “attribution of meaning” ex-
pressed in the passages above, we obtain the following result: my statement that
a subject S means x rather than y by using the term “x” (e. g., plus rather than
quus by using the term “plus”) is assertable if and only if the use S is inclined
to do of the term “x” agrees with the use that I have been inclined to do of
that term up to now (see K 90 – 91). Notice, however, that my license to make
such an “attribution of meaning” expires if S starts using “x” in a deviant way
– case in which I should conclude that S does not mean x by “x” (see K
91– 93). That result can be schematized as follows:¹⁶⁴

Attributing meaning x to S’s use of “x” ↔ Checking whether S is inclined to use “x” as I
have been inclined to use it up to now

It is important to notice, concerning the scheme above, that even in those cases
where I am able to check whether S’s procedures when using “x” have system-

 Notice that the scheme to follow does not present, strictly speaking, a bi-conditional – i. e.,
a relation of logical (or semantic) equivalence, expressing the truth conditions of the propositions
involved. Precisely in order to avoid such a misunderstanding I decided not to present the relata
in propositional terms, but rather in terms of descriptions of actions – “moves” in a language-
game.
126 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

atically matched mine, there is an important respect in which I do not have any
ground (of the sort that an “anti-skeptic” would like to obtain) to eliminate the
possibility of a (still) undetected disagreement – i. e., the possibility that, in all
the cases observed up to now, S was following yet another rule (say, z) that acci-
dentally has generated the same (behavioristic) results rule x has generated in
my own case. Now, since that skeptical possibility (of an undetected, and,
what is more important, a potentially undetectable disagreement) would, in
Kripke’s own view, be unavoidable, I take it that, in that sense, his solution to
the skeptical paradox is still skeptical, in that it does not aim at refuting skepti-
cism about normativity once and for all – what does not prevent us from making
“attributions of meaning” which simply register our (hopefully) shared inclina-
tions.
Notice also, and finally, that if the role that those attributions have in our
lives is picked out correctly by the scheme above, then clearly there is no
place for such attributions except in a community, i. e., in a context in which in-
dividuals are able to compare their respective inclinations (to use some terms),
thus becoming able to mutually correct each other¹⁶⁵ – that being the reason
why Kripke finds himself to be justified in claiming that the skeptical solution
encompasses Wittgenstein’s famous argument against the possibility of a private
language, in that it “does not allow us to speak of a single individual, considered
by himself and in isolation, as ever meaning anything” (K 68 – 69).

4.3 Kripke’s Wittgenstein vs. Cavell’s Wittgenstein on rules

and private language
Cavell’s essay “The Argument of the Ordinary: Scenes of Instruction in Wittgen-
stein and in Kripke”¹⁶⁶ offers a direct confrontation with Kripke’s skeptical read-
ing of the Investigations. Against Kripke’s reconstruction, Cavell will argue that
apart from a peculiar appeal to rules which Wittgenstein himself repudiates

 As Espen Hammer clarifies in his summary of Kripke’s “skeptical solution”: “Kripke does
not claim that we continually check the assertibility of our own and each other’s utterances: pre-
dominantly, we rely on practical capacities that have been internalized through training. His
point is rather that without the possibility of mutual control, we would never know in cases
of doubt what the right use of a concept might be. For an individual regarded in social isolation,
however, no such possible check on right and wrong uses of expressions would exist; thus, in
such a case assertibility conditions and therefore also meaning and language would collapse.”
(Hammer 2002, 25)
 In CHU.
4.3 Kripke’s Wittgenstein vs. Cavell’s Wittgenstein on rules and private language 127

there would be no skeptical crisis of meaning of the kind Kripke develops (see
CHU 24). According to Cavell, a telling indication that Kripke is committed to
a mistaken view of the nature of rules lies in his initial requirement that the sub-
ject, when challenged by a skeptic, should (at least in principle) be able to justify
a particular interpretation of a rule – i. e., to resume the notation used in the pre-
ceding section, the subject should be able to present the fact justifying (or con-
sisting in that) a linguistic statement of a rule (“x”) denotes one rule (x) rather
than another (y). Yet, Cavell claims, Wittgenstein himself does not assign such
a heavy weight to the role of rules – let alone to the (skeptical) possibility of
“multiple interpretations” of rules – in his original argument.¹⁶⁷
In order to start comparing Kripke’s and Cavell’s respective takes on Wittgen-
stein’s rule-following considerations, let us recall Wittgenstein’s own formula-
tion of his “paradox” in PI §201, as well as the “answer” immediately alluded
to in the same passage (I enumerate each of those distinct moments below for
further analysis):

[i] This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every
course of action can be brought into accord with the rule. [ii] The answer was: if every
course of action can be brought into accord with the rule, then it can also be brought
into conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here. (PI §201; my
italics)

Commenting on the answer indicated in (ii), Cavell asserts the following:

 One terminological clarification seems in order here, before proceeding to the comparative
analysis of Kripke’s and Cavell’s readings. It has to do with the use of the word “rule” (and kin-
dred ones), in their respective texts. Starting with the publication of Cavell 1962, and continuing
in MWM, CR and beyond, Cavell has systematically avoided using that term, preferring instead
“criteria”. The reason for that seems to be that in Cavell’s mind the word “rule” is already “met-
aphysical” beyond repair; in fact, as we shall see, Cavell repeatedly uses the picture of a “book of
rules” as a target of his criticisms, and this suggests that the paradigms of “rules” he has in
mind are written or at any rate explicit formulations that codify what one ought to do. Yet (as
Kripke was better at acknowledging) by “following a rule” Wittgenstein is concerned not in
the first instance with what can be formulated explicitly, but simply with our going on in the
same way in light of our understanding of something – e. g., a signpost (see PI §85). In this
sense of “following rules”, pace Cavell, one might say that Wittgenstein does assign a heavy
weight to this phenomenon, namely by treating it as what first needs to be understood in this
area of philosophy. And that understanding is precisely what one would expect from the appli-
cation of both the prospective and the retrospective steps of Wittgenstein’s philosophical prac-
tice, the second of which should be precisely aimed at bringing words – e. g., this particular
word, “rule” – back from it’s metaphysical to its ordinary use.
128 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

This [answer] seems to me equally readable as suggesting not that this paradox is “central”
[as Kripke would have it (JT)] but that it is no sooner named than its significance is under-
mined. Wittgenstein’s tone is: What our so-called paradox came to was no more than this
so-called answer can completely tame. The facts about possible interpretations of a rule are
not sufficient to cause skepticism (though they may play into a skeptical hand, one that has
already portrayed rules and their role in language in a particular way). The Wittgensteinian
issue is, as elsewhere, why we imagine otherwise. (CHU 68)

Setting aside for the moment the suggestion that the paradox in question can be
seen as either central or easily tamable, depending on one’s understanding of the
dialectic surrounding PI §201 – a point to which I will come back – the first ques-
tion I want to raise concerns Cavell’s claim that “facts about possible interpreta-
tions of a rule are not sufficient to cause skepticism”. How should we understand
that claim? I believe it is in the answer to this question that we can get clear
about the main differences and respective virtues and vices of Cavell’s and
Kripke’s readings. In order to start answering that question, let us recall that
the basic tenet of Wittgenstein’s considerations at this juncture is that taking
the interpretation of rules to be the ground of agreement creates an infinite re-
gress. Let us also briefly rehearse the steps leading to that regress: the starting
point is the assumption that acting according to a rule (rather than another¹⁶⁸)
implies interpreting it in a particular way. We look at different possible interpre-
tations, each compatible with a piece of behavior (say adding or quadding) and
there is a problem about telling one from the other; how can we be sure which
one is really guiding the person’s behavior? We then look at our candidate
grounds for telling (dispositions, different introspective mental items, objects in
a Platonic realm, etc.) and realize that this only pushes the problem one step fur-
ther, so that, again, multiple interpretations can be made out in accordance with
each proposed ground, no one being final. In Kripke’s favorite turn of phrase,
“there is no fact of the matter” about which interpretation is correct – any fact
one can come up with can itself become the target of the skeptical challenge.
Now, although both Cavell and Kripke are of course aware of the regress just
stated, it seems to me that each of them underplays important aspects of the di-
alectic surrounding it in the text. Briefly, I take it that the argument just re-
hearsed would be recognized by the author of the Investigations as one that cor-
rectly presents his (still confused) interlocutor’s frame of mind. Yet, precisely
because of its conclusion (because, i. e., it creates an infinite regress), Wittgen-

 The “rather than another” qualification is not relevant, as both Cavell and Kripke acknowl-
edge – the main point has to do with acting in accordance with rules simpliciter, with the very
possibility of rule-governed behavior.
4.3 Kripke’s Wittgenstein vs. Cavell’s Wittgenstein on rules and private language 129

stein will later use the understanding of the nature of rules by which that argu-
ment is prefixed to present a new argument which, simplifying for the purpose of
perspicuity, perhaps can be stated in the form of modus tollens, as follows:
(1) To act according to a rule (rather than another) implies interpreting it in a
particular way;
(2) Interpretation requires a ground;
(3) Any ground we can offer is compatible with multiple interpretations (OR:
there is no “fact of the matter” grounding a particular interpretation of a
rule as final);
(4) (1) & (2) & (3) → infinite regress;
(5) Therefore, the initial assumption (1) is false.

The problem with Cavell’s reading, as I see it, is that he is too eager to arrive at
(5), at the expense of not giving the deserved weight to the skeptical phase in
Wittgenstein’s dialectic; Kripke’s reading, on the other hand, is very good at mo-
tivating steps 1– 4 above, yet he (to my mind mistakenly) refrains from drawing
the conclusion (5). For according to him premise (1) is not to be taken as an as-
sumption introduced in order to construct a modus tollens, but rather as a truth
concerning the nature of rules – that being the reason why he will be driven to
defend another argument, which has something like the following form:

(1) To act according to a rule (rather than another) implies interpreting it in a

particular way;
(2) Interpretation requires a ground;
(3) Any ground we can offer is compatible with multiple interpretations (OR:
there is no “fact of the matter” grounding a particular interpretation of a
rule as final);
(4’) Therefore, in order to act according to a rule (rather than another), one shall
eventually give up interpreting it at all, following instead one’s inclination –
in other words, one shall eventually act blindly [skeptical conclusion].

We should now ask why it is so natural to read PI §201 (and adjacent passages)
as Kripke does, taking the possibility of “multiple interpretations” of rules as a
basis to draw a skeptical conclusion like (4’). Briefly, I think Kripke’s portrayal of
agreement – as if it were always a matter of a community deciding to accept or
reject a “beginner” – betrays a commitment to the ideal of an external or imper-
sonal ground for judging the extent of that agreement. Although Kripke emphati-
cally denies that such a ground would consist in a set of truth conditions (hence,
in a set of “facts in the world” corresponding to normative propositions), his ar-
gument does rely on another set of factors, namely the ones concerning assert-
130 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

ability conditions, and, to that extent, the pre-existent “conventions” of a linguis-

tic community (i. e., the set of rules expressing the shared inclinations of the
members of that community to act under certain circumstances, which in turn
allows them to mutually correct each other concerning the “moves” taken in par-
ticular language-games).
As I understand him, Cavell would not want to deny that the kind of situa-
tion portrayed by Kripke is possible – in effect, I believe he could easily grant
that sometimes the problem of agreement will take place precisely along those
lines, and, consequently, might be “solved” as Kripke proposes. However, he
would want to add that such a portrayal falls short of presenting the most com-
mon – let alone the main or the only – kind of risk involved in our ordinary lin-
guistic exchanges. Aiming at counteracting Kripke’s reductionist approach, it is
important to pay attention to another aspect of the problem, indicating the costs
involved in the abandonment of the kind of agreement (“Übereinstimmung”, see
PI §§201, 224, 241– 242) that is already in place when someone has inherited a
language. In The Claim of Reason Cavell describes that kind of agreement by
means of the following comparisons:

The idea of agreement here is not that of coming to or arriving at an agreement on a given
occasion, but of being in agreement throughout, being in harmony, like pitches or tones, or
clocks, or weighing scales, or columns of figures. That a group of human beings stimmen in
their language überein says, so to speak, that they are mutually voiced with respect to it,
mutually attuned top to bottom. (CR 32)

Cavell’s main point here is that, more often than not, there is no need to come to
agreement (partaking in any kind of previous “discussion”) about the use of our
words, or about the judgments we make using them; instead we will simply find
ourselves “in agreement” (or out of it) in a way which is closer to what happens
with certain natural and cultural reactions. Thus, for example, “[w]e may laugh
and cry at the same things, or not; some experience may throw us out of, or into,
agreement here, but the idea of achieving agreement in our senses of comedy or
tragedy seems out of place” (CHU 94).¹⁶⁹ More specifically, this would suggest “a

 Note that the very example Cavell uses in this context – “our senses of comedy or tragedy”
– already indicates that his appeal to our “natural reactions” should be understood broadly, so
as to include the most sophisticated reactions that are developed with cultivation. Cavell clarifies
that point in another context, accusing the “over-conventionalized interpretations of Wittgen-
stein’s notion of life forms” of wishing “to deny human beings their natural history, in its per-
petual intersection with human cultivation (a vision linking Wittgenstein with Freud)” (WE 14).
(One might feel inclined to say that those “natural reactions” would be better described as be-
longing to our second nature – yet are we sure of what we mean by human being’s first nature?
4.3 Kripke’s Wittgenstein vs. Cavell’s Wittgenstein on rules and private language 131

contractualizing or conventionalizing” reading of Wittgenstein’s idea of agree-

ment, hence a rejection of it (see CHU 94). Since at this basic level agreement
in judgments reflects attunement in our natural reactions – in our form of life
– Cavell draws the conclusion that “nothing is deeper than the fact, or the ex-
tent, of agreement itself” (CR 32).
Now, is not this conclusion rather similar to Kripke’s “skeptical solution”?
For if nothing is more fundamental than the fact of agreement itself, does that
not imply that agreement is, after all, (ultimately) ungrounded – hence, that
at some point we really have to act blindly, as Kripke’s skeptic would have it?
We do have cause to feel like we are “acting blindly” sometimes. Suppose I
felt strongly inclined to call those two big cardboard boxes that used to lie one
upon the other in the middle of my living room a table – after all, I did place a lot
of things on it, and I even had dinner on it from time to time. Yet, I can think of
many friends finding the very idea of calling (let alone using!) such a thing (as) a
“table” funny or eccentric or simply outraging. Faced with that disagreement, I
might feel tempted to conclude that there is nothing about the world (or its facts)
that determines what concept or rule one must apply here – hence, that nothing I
can point to can possibly put an end to the disagreement; and that feeling can,
in turn, lead me to conclude that sometimes I have to (ultimately) act blindly,
merely following my inclinations.¹⁷⁰ Of course, disagreements can get much

“What”, asks Pascal in his Pensées, “are our natural principles but habitual principles?”; and he
adds, a little later: “Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is
habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a
second nature.” (Pascal 1966, 61)) Peg O’Connor (2008) offers an insightful treatment of the kind
of intersection mentioned in Cavell’s last quote (and one which seems consistent with Pascal’s
suspicions). That treatment is condensed in her useful notions of “felted world” and “felted con-
textualism”, which can (hopefully) get an initial purchase from the following pair of passages:
“The deep agreement of community in the sense of natural history is not untethered and free-
floating. It is very much a product and a producer of our world, in all its givenness and contin-
gency. Our natural history is part of, responsive to, shaped by, and shaper of the physical world
we inhabit. The actions, practices, rules, regularities, reactions, and givens of nature overlap,
crisscross, and tangle with one another. This is the felted world.” (O’Connor 2008, 85) “[F]
elted contextualism does not presume a world/language divide, but rather maintains that prac-
tices have a depth that goes all the way down into what most people simply call the natural
world. My position is that our world is not one part natural and one part social, but rather is
a shared world where these are intermingled and tangled, resulting in ways of acting and con-
ventions that are inescapably bound together.” (O’Connor 2008, 102)
 An anonymous referee from Wittgenstein-Studien suggested that I should distinguish basic
cases of language use from non-basic ones. According to the referee, “calling two cardboard
boxes a table is not blind – it’s derivative, in some reflected way (however minimal) of our de-
fault or basic use of ‘table’, which is blind (at least as fluent users of English)”. In the same vein,
132 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

more serious. For example, people do sometimes feel outraged regarding com-
mon practices – including linguistic ones – from other cultures, or even from
one’s own. Think about how inclinations may differ with respect to the practice
of eating meat, and, consequently, of applying the concept “food” and adjacent
ones to (some) animals. At such crossroads, one might well feel tempted to con-
clude that the cause of one’s inability to find a final and universal justification for
one’s actions is something about the world, or about the human condition as
such – something that perhaps theology or metaphysics or anthropology or biol-
ogy should explain. The question is how to tell when such a conclusion is war-
ranted, and when an attempt to evade one’s own responsibility. That no general
answer to this question is to be found in Wittgenstein’s text is part of what Cav-
ell, against someone like Kripke, is trying to highlight – which means challeng-
ing the necessity and generality of Kripke’s “skeptical solution”. True, there
might be nothing about the world and its facts that alone could elicit our agree-
ment in these cases; yet that does not imply that agreement is (necessarily) un-
grounded – it only implies that we (each of us) must strive to provide such a
ground, in each particular context, by trying to find or create or nurture condi-
tions for attunement; it implies, in other words, that the burden of discovering
and maintaining meaning and agreement is upon our capacities to invest our in-
terest on the world and on others – to single out some facts or aspects as impor-
tant and worthy of sharing, for particular purposes. Now, when no universally
accepted parameters are available for one to lean on – say those offered by the-
ology, metaphysics or ideology – the task of finding and maintaining agreement
might understandably feel difficult, even hopeless; accordingly, one might (again
understandably) feel tempted to avoid the issue, either by accepting some form
of relativism or skepticism, or by assuming some form of (theological or meta-
physical or logical or grammatical) dogmatism.
Returning now to my assessment of the two readings under scrutiny in this
section, although Kripke’s has the merit of reminding us that linguistic agree-

“[a] child acquiring English may think about whether ‘table’ is the right word to use in basic
cases, but not an adult fluent in the language. There is no room for justification or grounding
(and thus for skepticism) in such cases.” Once again, I beg to differ. As the remarks in the re-
mainder of the paragraph are meant to start suggesting, and as I hope will become more evident
as we progress, my sense is that no such clear cut and fixed distinction between “standard” and
“deviant” language uses is available, no matter how “basic” (whatever that means) the concepts
involved. Moreover (and this goes back to my reply in footnote 161), it is precisely my intent in
what follows to agree with Cavell that our criteria are constantly open to skeptical repudiation, if
at high practical or existential costs. Finally, the very idea of distinguishing “basic” concepts or
uses is to my mind reminiscent of a Strawsonian reading of Wittgenstein that I associate mainly
with Peter Hacker and (unfavorably) contrast with Cavell’s reading in Techio 2019.
4.3 Kripke’s Wittgenstein vs. Cavell’s Wittgenstein on rules and private language 133

ment cannot be grounded on any set of “objective” facts about the world (and/or
about ourselves), its failure is to stop at that realization, assuming that the skep-
tic should have the last word, instead of looking at the other side of the coin –
namely, the discovery that the burden of linguistic agreement is (at least partial-
ly) mine, i. e., is upon each of us, and, to that extent, has at least one irreducibly
personal aspect.¹⁷¹ This, I take it, is the aspect of Wittgenstein’s text to which
Cavell’s reading is more attuned to. In other words, returning to a point made
in the introduction to this chapter, I take it that Kripke’s reconstruction of the
“skeptical paradox” puts us in a better position to understand the prospective as-
pect of Wittgenstein’s dialectic, while Cavell is better at motivating Wittgenstein’s
retrospective attempt to bring us (and our words) back to the ordinary, to the
rough ground of our finite condition. From this perspective, Kripke’s “skeptical
solution” might be seen as one of those understandable (if somewhat desperate)
reactions to the discovery that there is no external, impersonal ground to our
agreement; while Cavell’s refusal to simply side with the skeptic¹⁷² shows his in-
terest in making room for our permanent and personal responsibility in keeping
our words and the world aligned.

 Of course there is a number of (contingent and changeable) constraints over what each of
us can personally do in order to discover and maintain agreement in any particular context –
including, e. g., attention to empirical regularities (to the way the world and humans behave),
to social practices, to the traditions and customs of a community, and so on. Yet the reason
why I have been emphasizing – and will continue to emphasize – our personal role in that
task is precisely my wish to counteract a rather strong temptation to evade that responsibility.
I grant that this biased strategy can lead to some (different) misunderstandings; yet the difficulty
of combining all the important aspects of a philosophical subject under a single analysis in-
creasingly convinces me of the correction of Strawson’s claim that “truth in philosophy […] is
so complex and many-sided, so multi-faced, that any individual philosopher’s work, if it is to
have any unity and coherence, must at best emphasize some aspects of the truth, to the neglect
of others which may strike another philosopher with greater force” (Strawson 1985, viii).
 In trying to explain what is the difference between his own stance concerning the “absence
of foundation” for our human agreement and Kripke’s skeptical position, Cavell says the follow-
ing: “One reason I resist a skeptical moral here is perhaps that I do not know, as it were, whether
or how meaning something requires there to be a fact about me that constitutes meaning it:
What is not there when there is not this fact? In terms more or less from The Claim of Reason,
I might express my resistance this way: Kripke takes the discovery of the absence of his fact
[e. g., as to whether I mean plus rather than quus] to be itself a fact, to have (eventually) that
stability. Whereas I take this ‘absence of the fact’ not as a (skeptical) discovery but as the skep-
tic’s requirement.” (CHU 76 – 77)
134 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

4.4 Kripke’s Wittgenstein vs. Cavell’s Wittgenstein on

inheriting language: two readings of the “scene of
instruction”

Kripke’s commitment to that impersonal picture is even more conspicuous in his

interpretation of what we may call the “scene of instruction” in PI §217. As we
saw, Kripke construes the teacher’s role in judging a child’s answer as a matter
of determining whether she “has given the same answer that he himself would
give”, or whether she “is applying the procedure he himself is inclined to apply”
(K 90). In examining that view, Cavell accuses Kripke of perverting Wittgenstein’s
appeal to the teacher’s “inclinations” in §217. To show that, Cavell starts by com-
paring Wittgenstein’s original formulation – describing what happens when the
teacher “reaches bedrock” – with the paraphrase he ascribes to Kripke. The for-
mulations are, respectively, the following (I emphasize their differences):

[Wittgenstein’s original formulation:] Once I have exhausted the justifications, I have

reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is simply what
I do.” (PI §217; my italics)

[Cavell’s paraphrase of Kripke’s formulation:] Once I have exhausted the justifications, I

have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am licensed to say: “This is simply
what I am inclined to do.” (CHU 70)

The difference between the formulations above is subtle but full of implications.
Cavell notices, first, that “[w]hat I am inclined to say is precisely not something I
necessarily go on to say: I may be inclined to say yes to an invitation, but there
are considerations against it, and I hesitate to give an answer on the spot” (CHU
71). Thus, there might be some hesitation or openness in the behavior of Wittgen-
stein’s teacher that Kripke’s paraphrase completely fails to register. Yet that hes-
itation is crucial to understand the teacher’s role in the scene of instruction –
particularly the moment when his instruction comes to an impasse. Here is Cav-
ell’s assessment:

I conceive that the good teacher will not say, “This is simply what I do” as a threat to dis-
continue his or her instruction, as if to say: “I am right; do it my way or leave my sight”. The
teacher’s expression of inclination in what is to be said shows readiness – (unconditional)
willingness – to continue presenting himself as an example, as the representative of the
community into which the child is being, let me say, invited and initiated. (CHU 72)

Kripke conceives his teacher as a kind of judge of her linguistic community’s

practices, and, consistently, identifies “normality” (and, therefore, normativity)
with blind obedience on the part of the beginner in that community. Cavell, on
 Kripke’s Wittgenstein vs. Cavell’s Wittgenstein on inheriting language 135

the other hand, emphasizes the teacher’s hesitation and openness: in a moment
of impasse, she does not take the (possibly easier) path of evading her responsi-
bility in the pursuit of instruction (as Kripke’s rather authoritarian teacher does),
but instead finds herself facing her own limitations, accepting and even sharing
them with the child, by presenting herself as (after all) only another human
being striving to bequeath (what she takes as) the normal practices of the com-
munity in which the child is being initiated. Interpreted along the lines suggest-
ed by Cavell, the scene of instruction illustrates the human quest for finding or
creating (genuine) attunement between individuals – a quest that is open to all
sorts of difficulties and failures, and which would never be satisfied by enforcing
blind obedience or conformity.
The main lesson here is again that we do not need to assume that the only
way out of the “skeptical paradox” of meaning would be finding an impersonal
foundation for agreement. Instead of despairing of the lack of that sort of foun-
dation, as Kripke’s skeptic does, one can accept that for finite beings like us
there is no metaphysical or epistemological “shortcut” to each other’s thoughts,
meanings, intentions, and inclinations, making it our constant responsibility to
discover and maintain some shared ground – something that might well feel like
a burden sometimes. Cavell expresses that feeling by claiming that “placing con-
fidence in the other – waiting – means letting my confidence be challenged, any-
way become hesitant in, thoughtful about, expressing itself” (CHU 76). It is that
kind of challenge that we try to avoid, or to deflect, by subscribing to an imper-
sonal picture of meaning, on the pretext of ensuring an “external”, and, conse-
quently, (more) “objective” foundation for our agreement.
Now, if agreement is to be construed as a constant, risky task for finite be-
ings, how exactly can we manage to find it and maintain it? This question has
been central in Cavell’s work, at least from the time of his first engagement
with Wittgenstein’s philosophy. In the chapter we have been analyzing Cavell
goes on to quote a well-known passage of his own “early philosophical self”
(see CHU 82), in which he summarizes his view about the role of Wittgensteinian
criteria, and in particular their role in registering agreement. The passage goes as
follows:

We learn and teach words in certain contexts, and then we are expected, and expect others,
to be able to project them into further contexts. Nothing insures that this projection will
take place (in particular, not the grasping of universals nor the grasping of books of
rules), just as nothing insures that we will make, and understand, the same projections.
That on the whole we do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, modes
of response, senses of humor and of significance and of fulfilment, of what is outrageous,
of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an
assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation – all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein
136 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

calls “forms of life.” Human speech and activity, sanity and community, rest upon nothing
more, but nothing less, than this. It is a vision as simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as
it is (and because it is) terrifying. (MWM 52)

Do we doubt that it may be terrifying to discover that there is nothing beyond our
own sense of what is interesting, humorous, significant, outrageous, etc.,
grounding human speech and activity, sanity and community? And again,
how exactly does this conclusion differ from Kripke’s appeal to our shared incli-
nations?
Commenting on the passage just quoted, motivated by the confrontation
with Kripke, Cavell adds that “if I am inclined to present myself as such a ground
(or thin reed) – when, that is, I am inclined to say ‘This is simply what I do’ – I
had better be prepared to say more about my representativeness for this role”
(CHU 82). Take the challenge of teaching a pupil to add again as a test case:
in concrete situations, we may or may not be inclined to act as the teacher of
PI §217, presenting ourselves as examples of our linguistic (say scientific or math-
ematical) community; if we do, and if our sense of what is similar to what is not
in tune with the pupil’s (we think 1002 is “similar” to the steps taken so far in the
series n + 2, not 1004; he disagrees), we can then react in several different ways,
ranging from simply giving up the conversation (by treating the pupil as a “lun-
atic”¹⁷³), or presenting other candidates to ground our judgment (a “book of
rules”, the “community’s conventions”, a set of “objective facts”, etc.), up to pre-
senting ourselves as (omniscient?) judges, demanding nothing less than “blind
obedience”. None of those reactions is intrinsically better, more appropriate,
or more correct – it all depends on the particular context in which we find our-
selves.¹⁷⁴ There is no way to decide a priori which reaction should be adopted in
each case; yet, pace Kripke, one can perhaps say a priori that none of those re-
actions will suit all contexts.
The important thing to notice here is that in a case of impasse – when we
feel we are losing our attunement, or discover that there is not (enough) attune-
ment to begin with – there seems to be no “firmer ground” for us to lean on; and
that can make us anxious, not only for showing that our mutual understanding
has limits, but because we feel that we must draw those limits when we hit the
“bedrock” of our differences (see CR 115). Faced with that realization, we might

 See BB 93.

 Even the Swiftian attitude suggested by Wittgenstein in The Brown Book (i.e., to treat the
pupil presenting a “deviant behaviour” when adding as a “lunatic”, excluding him of certain ac-
tivities) might, in some contexts, be justified. In his analysis of that passage in The Claim of Rea-
son, Cavell elaborates precisely on what such a context could be (see CR 112).
 4.5 Skepticism and our aspiration for the sublime 137

understandably prefer to avoid the real issue, projecting our own predicament
upon the world or upon the other or upon language, implying that there is noth-
ing for us (for me) to do about it, other than blindly following our (my) inclina-
tions.

4.5 Skepticism and our aspiration for the sublime

As I have been arguing, Kripke’s “skeptical solution” emblematizes one way of

evading responsibility in the face of recalcitrant disagreement. I now wish to ex-
plore another such route, embodied in the philosophical willingness to condemn
ordinary language for falling short of the “sublime” standard supposedly provid-
ed by the rules of logic or mathematics (see PI §89). Commenting on the passages
surrounding PI §89 and the way they relate to the rule-following considerations,
Cavell writes:

The idea of ordinary language as lacking something in its rules is bound up with – is no
more nor less necessary than – this aspiration [for the sublime]. This is the place at
which Wittgenstein characterizes logic (and I assume the rule for addition is included
here) as “normative,” as something to which we compare the use of the words ([PI] §81)
– to the discredit of words; he takes this further a few sections later in posing the question,
“In what sense is logic something sublime?” ([PI] §89). In this role of the normative, the
mathematical is not a special case of a problem that arises for the ordinary; without the
mathematical this problem of the ordinary would not arise. (CHU 92)

How are we to understand that last claim – viz., that “without the mathematical
this problem of the ordinary would not arise”? As a kind of preparation for tak-
ing in Cavell’s answer to that question, let us pause to reflect about a related
“sublimating temptation” expressed in the rule-following sections by the picture
of “rails invisibly laid to infinity” (PI §218). This picture is introduced in the mid-
dle of Wittgenstein’s considerations about what could count as a “final interpre-
tation” of a rule – the stamp of a “particular meaning” in face of which we would
“no longer have any choice” except obeying it “blindly” (PI §219). Notice that de-
spite the absolute generality of the requirement for a “final interpretation” pre-
sented in these remarks (applying to rules as such), the picture chosen for ex-
pressing it symbolically (see PI §§220 – 222) is carefully designed to satisfy a
craving that is (more?) natural specifically in a mathematical context, namely
that a rule shall “bring on its face” the indication of all the steps required for
its complete projection.
The fascination of this “symbolical” or “mythological” understanding of
rules helps explain why it is so common to conflate and treat as homogeneous
138 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

concepts as distinct as mathematical and non-mathematical ones. Cavell takes

up this point in the following passage:

I suppose that something that makes a mathematical rule mathematical – anyway that
makes adding adding – is that what counts as an instance of it […] is, intuitively, settled
in advance, that it tells what its first instance is, and what the interval is to successive in-
stances, and what the order of instances is. The rule for addition extends to all its possible
applications. (As does the rule for quadition – otherwise […] it would not be known to us as
a mathematical function.) But our ordinary concepts – for instance that of a table – are not
thus mathematical in their application: we do not know, intuitively, […] a right first in-
stance, or the correct order of instances, or the set interval of their succession. And some-
times we will not know whether to say that an instance counts as falling under a concept,
or to say that it does not count […] (CHU 89 – 90)

As we saw in section 4.2, Kripke originally sets up his skeptical paradox using a
mathematical concept – namely, addition; and so does Wittgenstein. And we
readily assume that whatever holds of that concept will also hold, mutatis muta-
ndis, of the totality of our conceptual repertoire. However, as Stephen Mulhall
suggests when commenting the passage above, the very fact that we should as-
sume that this kind of skeptical problem could be “equally well (if less smoothly)
developed from nonmathematical examples” may be a sign of a failure in appre-
ciating the specificity of mathematical concepts, due precisely to our inclination
to “treat[…] mathematical concepts as normative for the nonmathematical”.¹⁷⁵
One might think that, exegetically speaking, this maneuver is legitimate, or
even required – after all, it is Wittgenstein himself who is using mathematical
rules as paradigms for rules as such in this context. However, if we recall that
this move is being presented as part of a prospective strategy that aims at leading
us from disguised to undisguised nonsense, then we should expect that Wittgen-
stein would have done that purposefully, so as to tempt the reader to indulge in
her own aspiration for the sublime model of mathematics.¹⁷⁶ And this, in turn,
should lead us to ask why it is so natural, almost irresistible, to fall for that
temptation (something that applies not only to Kripke, but also to the vast ma-
jority of readers of the Investigations), and why it is important for Wittgenstein to
expose (and ultimately counteract) our willingness for doing so.
Cavell starts answering these questions in the following passage, which will
take us back to the anxiety I was describing at the end of the preceding section:

 Mulhall 2003, 103 – 104.

 Additional considerations supporting this suggestion are given in Mulhall 2001, 87 ff.
 4.5 Skepticism and our aspiration for the sublime 139

We understandably do not like our concepts to be based on what matters to us […]; it makes
our language seem unstable and the instability seems to mean what I have expressed as my
being responsible for whatever stability our criteria may have, and I do not want this re-
sponsibility; it mars my wish for sublimity. (CHU 92)

The notion of stability alluded to in this passage is crucial here. Among the nu-
merous sources of one’s dissatisfaction with criteria is the assumption that only
“firm foundations” can provide the desired stability for our language. In a rather
different context,¹⁷⁷ the Wittgensteinian philosopher Peg O’Connor proposes an
alternative to that assumption which is as simple in its formulation as it is fruit-
ful in its consequences – namely, to try and change the dominant metaphor¹⁷⁸ for
dealing with normativity, so that instead of seeking to locate (and/or replace) its
foundations, one should try to understand (and/or change) the conditions ena-
bling stability to be created and maintained among numerous aspects of our
practices (linguistic and otherwise).¹⁷⁹ Stability, as O’Connor defines it, “is a mat-
ter of balanced relationships among a whole set of factors, and [it] comes with a
constant recognition of limitations and location”.¹⁸⁰ That notion has its original
home in architecture, which has among its aims to combine heterogeneous ele-
ments so as to achieve a balance between immobility and flexibility: “Concrete
can only bend so much, steel can only hold so much weight, glass can only take
so much pressure”; by combining those materials and properties, an architect
can create a structure which stands up due to both balance and tension: “just
consider the importance of movement in a tall building or bridge”.¹⁸¹ Now, ac-
cording to O’Connor, something analogous holds of normativity in general –
be it ethical or linguistic. The following passage – which takes up a metaphor
from Wittgenstein’s “Lecture on Ethics” – summarizes her view on this point:

In seeking meaning and value, we humans hurl ourselves against the bars of our cage, seek-
ing transcendent meaning and value and objective absolutes beyond the bounds of our fin-
itude and limitations. Instead, I argue that our moral frameworks and language-games pro-

 O’Connor 2008.

 We are, of course, speaking metaphorically, perhaps “mythologically” here (as was Witt-
genstein in PI §218); the usefulness of this kind of description can only be measured against
its therapeutic results, as ways of detecting “the decisive movement in the conjuring trick”
that we normally take as “quite innocent” (PI §308).
 O’Connor’s book focuses on our moral practices, and the change she is primarily concerned
to defend is in metaethics; yet, as herself indicates in many contexts, the general strategy she
proposes can be applied to different philosophical corners – in particular, to the study of the
sources of normativity as such.
 O’Connor 2008, 14.
 O’Connor 2008, 14.
140 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

vide everything we need just because – and not despite the fact that – they are all perva-
sive, inescapable, and ineliminable. They are embedded, connected, and overlapping with
other frameworks that are part of the felted stability but yet are flexible and dynamic.
(O’Connor 2008, 141)

The proposal I want to make in bringing this section to a close is that it may be
useful to combine Cavell’s insights about the sources of dissatisfaction with or-
dinary language and its criteria with O’Connor’s call for us to come back to the
“rough ground” of our moral frameworks and language-games, thus reminding
us of their embeddedness and flexibility, hence of the kind of stability they allow
– namely, a stability which is non-sublimated and non-foundational.¹⁸² The re-
sult of this combination is a middle ground between utter skeptical despair,
on the one hand, and dogmatic (“metaphysical”) appeals to absolute meanings
and values, on the other, thus making room for a more accurate assessment of
our human predicament, and of the responsibilities each of us has to take up
in order to create and maintain real (non-transcendent) meaning and agreement
in our judgments and forms of life.

4.6 Meaning and its risks

Important as it is to expose the human wish for a sublime kind of normativity,

and to replace the dominant metaphors for understanding its conditions – in-
stead of contracts, books of rules, blind conformity or any other fixed founda-
tions, to turn our attention to attunement and stability – I take it that this is
only the beginning of wisdom in this area. The remaining (and more difficult)
task is to genuinely come to terms with the “terrifying” realization that our con-
cepts might be based on what matters to us. As Cavell has argued, to my mind
convincingly, no easy way out of this difficulty is forthcoming in Wittgenstein’s
Investigations – in particular, no final refutation of skepticism or proof of the im-
possibility of privacy is to be found there. Pace Kripke and the Wittgensteinian
orthodoxy, our criteria are simply not designed to “answer the skeptic” so as
to ensure meaning and agreement in our uses of words. (A fortiori, they are
not designed to offer a “skeptical solution” to that kind of skepticism either.)

 I find a lesson along those lines getting perspicuously formulated in the following passage
by Mulhall: “Philosophy’s impulse to regard logic as normative for the normativity of words is
emblematic of a broader human impulse to regard such normativity solely as something to
which we must impersonally and inflexibly respond rather than as something for which we
are also individually and unforeseeably responsible.” (Mulhall 2003, 105)
 4.6 Meaning and its risks 141

Rather, their role is simply to record similarities and dissimilarities that matter to
us, to the extent in which there is an “us”, i. e., to the extent in which we share
those “routes of interest and feeling, modes of response, senses of humor and
of significance and of fulfilment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to
what else”, and so on – in sum, “all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls
‘forms of life’” (CHU 81). But the only way to measure the extent of our attune-
ment in those responses is to put it to test, staking one’s claims in search of ac-
knowledgment, and thus exposing oneself precisely to the kind of repudiation
whose standing possibility so impresses the skeptic. Kripke’s “skeptical solu-
tion” tries precisely to avoid this kind of exposure, at the cost of assuming a
problematic picture of normativity, in which the burden of linguistic correction
lies upon some kind of “external” factor, thus implying a systematic weakening
or even suppression of the individual’s responsibility in finding and maintaining
linguistic agreement. One way to express what I take to be problematic in that
picture is to say that it portrays the issue of agreement upside-down – or, at
best, from a rather limited perspective – as if the only (or main) risk involved
in our communicative exchanges were the possibility of repudiation, on the
part of “the community” or “the world”,¹⁸³ of what I mean with what I say,
and never the contrary, i. e., the possibility of discovering that what matters to
me is not what matters to others, that I am out of attunement with their practi-
ces, their values and ultimately their world, so that I may feel forced to withdraw
from it, with all the existential costs that this response may bring.¹⁸⁴

 The idea of a repudiation (of what we say) on the part of the world might cause some es-
trangement; yet that formulation correctly picks out the consequence of the reversal of the bur-
den for linguistic correction that I have described – particularly in those cases in which a kind of
metaphysical realistic assumption is made regarding the formation of concepts. An obvious ex-
ample is Plato’s thesis, presented in Phaedrus 265e, that we should “cut up each kind according
to its species along its natural joints, and to try not to splinter any part, as a bad butcher might
do” – otherwise we would end up with concepts that, in one way or another, the world should
repudiate. McManus (2003) presents some instances of concepts that would be thus “repudiated
by the world”, including (i) concepts historically proved empty (e. g., Phlogiston), (ii) “unprojec-
tible” predicates (e. g., grue), and (iii) contra natura taxonomies (e. g., Borges’ Chinese encyclo-
pedia). (Thanks to Paulo Faria for indicating those examples, and helping with the reference to
Plato.)
 In The Lives of Animals, J. M. Coetzee presents a concrete (fictional) example of that kind of
estrangement, caused by his central character’s (Elizabeth Costello) growing difficulty in accept-
ing and continuing living in a world where human beings seem to be “participants in a crime of
stupefying proportions” (Coetzee 1999, 69). Cora Diamond meditates on that and other interest-
ing literary examples of “losses of attunement” in Diamond 2006.
142 4 The threat of privacy in the Philosophical Investigations

The upshot of these considerations is that applying concepts – hence: giving

meaning to what we say, and reaching mutual understanding – are often “risky
activities”,¹⁸⁵ but the risks involved here are neither simply unavoidable nor sim-
ply avoidable – as the skeptic and the dogmatist would assume, respectively, in
their eagerness to evade the issue. Those risks are just as avoidable or unavoid-
able as the ordinary difficulties presented in any relationship among finite
human beings, and thus come with the same existential costs, and negotiating
them is a responsibility each of us inherits by entering and becoming a represen-
tative of a linguistic community, and a form of life.

 I borrow that notion of a “risky activity” from Faria 2006, 119.
5 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on
skepticism about other minds
… not to believe there is such a thing as the human soul is not to know what the human
body is …

(Stanley Cavell¹⁸⁶)

5.1 Introduction

One central concern of Wittgenstein’s later work is to elucidate the grammar of

psychological predicates. That task is carried out in the Philosophical Investiga-
tions in close connection with the examination of questions traditionally associ-
ated with the problem of other minds, such as these: What are the conditions for
ascribing mental states to others, and to myself? Can I really know that others
have minds? Can I know that I have one? What is the relation between minds
and bodies? In exploring these questions Wittgenstein presents a series of re-
marks whose content have led many readers to burden him with some kind of
externalist account of the mind, or at the very least to propose externalist ac-
counts inspired by them.¹⁸⁷ The following are among the most discussed and
also most representative such remarks: “only of a living human being and
what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensa-
tions; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious” (PI §281);
“An ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria” (PI §580); “The human
body is the best picture of the human soul” (PI II §iv, 19).
Earlier proposals for how to understand the point of these and kindred re-
marks had a reductionist or eliminativist bent:¹⁸⁸ the suggestion was that we
should replace, in the philosophical analysis of psychological predicates, any
reference to presumptively troublesome inner entities (private mental contents
or experiences, souls, etc.) for a reference to ontologically more well-behaved
ones (such as, say, overt behavior, the movements of our bodies in space). Al-
though this sort of proposal has fallen out of fashion, at least from an exegetical

 CR 400.
 I mean this in a very broad sense, so as to cover different attempts of including in the anal-
ysis of the content of (presumably) “inner” mental states some features of the subject’s larger,
“external” environment, such as her behavior, her community’s standards, the constitution of
the objects with which she relates, and so on.
 I am thinking particularly of Ryle 1949.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110702859-008
144 5 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other minds

point of view, it is useful to compare it to a much more widespread interpreta-

tion, according to which the cumulative effect of Wittgenstein’s remarks would
be to remind the reader that, contrary to what she might be tempted to think
when guided by certain (distorted) pictures of the relationship between
“inner” and “outer”, our ordinary practices of ascribing mental states to others
are actually based on external criteria. From this perspective, the work of eluci-
dation should focus exclusively on the deleterious influence of those pictures,
leaving intact the very category of the mental or the inner: the way out of phil-
osophical confusion is not to eliminate or reduce that category to any other, but
rather to understand its distinctive grammar, thus learning to avoid the false
analogies that it naturally gives rise to. And this result, in turn, could serve as
evidence for a kind of grammatical refutation of skepticism concerning other
minds, which would ultimately be shown to be based on a confusing picture
of the inner as hidden and inaccessible. The motto of this received view could
be that “nothing is hidden” (PI §435).¹⁸⁹
The main goal of this chapter is to pave the way for an alternative view of
Wittgenstein’s remarks concerning the grammar of psychological predicates,
one which is inspired by Stanley Cavell’s seminal interpretation of the Investiga-
tions. I will do that first by offering a close reading of a number of key passages
in sections 5.2 and 5.3, aimed at highlighting some under-appreciated connec-
tions between what Wittgenstein has to say about human behavior and the
human soul in (what was once called) Part I of the Investigations and his later
treatment of those topics in the discussion about aspect-seeing in (what was

 The expression “the received view” is used by J. Temkin, who concisely characterizes its
main contention in the idea that “Wittgenstein has solved, or at least provided the conceptual
machinery required to solve, the epistemological problem of other minds. He has done this,
the received view continues, with his concept of criteria” (Temkin 1990, 561). One of the first
and most influential exponents of this view is Norman Malcolm (see esp. Malcolm 1954, 1958
and 1995), but perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say, again with Temkin, that it is “almost uni-
versally held by those writing on Wittgenstein and the problem of other minds” (Temkin 1990,
561). In particular, I think it is fair to ascribe it to Peter Hacker, whose interpretation is well syn-
thesized in the claim that criteria are “logically good evidence, which is, in certain circumstan-
ces, defeasible. But if not defeated, the criteria confer certainty” (Hacker 1997, 38). So, for exam-
ple, “to see another writhing and groaning after being injured is to know ‘directly’ that he is in
pain – it is not an inference from the fact that he has a prescription for analgesics” (Hacker 1997,
41); or again: “when one observes someone writhing in agony, one does not infer that he is in
pain from his movements – one sees that he is suffering. Pain-behaviour is a criterion of being in
pain, as joyous behaviour is a criterion of being joyful.” (Hacker 1997, 43).
 5.2 The problem of other minds in PI I 145

once called) Part II.¹⁹⁰ The remainder of the chapter is more polemical in nature,
and offers two additional lines of argument: Section 5.4 supports the claim that
Cavell (and Cavell’s Wittgenstein) would be willing to run with the idea of con-
tinuous aspect perception in the context of discussing the problem of other
minds. Section 5.5 contends that Peter Strawson’s argument against skepticism
about other minds, although correct in emphasizing the role played by a “non-
detached” attitude toward others in his account of the conditions for achieving
a “non-solipsistic consciousness” of the world, can be criticized from the Cavel-
lian-Wittgensteinian position established before for not taking seriously enough
the possibility of avoiding the acknowledgment of the humanity of others, and,
as a consequence, of our own.¹⁹¹ I will assess this claim in the conclusion of the
chapter, arguing that Strawson’s own detached perspective is what ultimately
prevents him to engage with the real, existential issue posed by skepticism
about other minds, namely the fact that it is up to us (as a challenge which
may be resolutely faced as much as quietly denied) to acknowledge the human-
ity of others. I close the chapter by suggesting that in order to avoid that kind of
evasion we need a methodology even more sensitive to the practices in which
our conceptual structure is immersed, in particular, to the real burdens put
upon its practitioners given their finite condition.

5.2 The problem of other minds in PI I

At the beginning of PI §283 Wittgenstein raises a question which seems to under-

lie quite a big deal of what goes on under the label of “philosophy of mind”,
namely: “What gives us so much as the idea that beings, things, can feel?” As
it often happens with Wittgenstein’s writings – or so I have been arguing – I be-
lieve that question was carefully crafted in order to elicit certain sorts of philo-
sophical responses from the readers; in this particular instance, the intended re-
sponses would range from a sense of astonishment to a kind of anxiety or
restlessness. The first response would come from the realization of a remarkable
although normally unnoticed feature of our linguistic practices, namely that we

 For the sake of brevity, I will still employ the old division as well as the usual abbreviations
“PI I” and “PI II” to refer to what were once called the “parts” of the book. The editorial prob-
lems of dividing the work that way are explained in Hacker and Schulte’s preface to the new
edition (see PI ix–xi), which drops those titles.
 A stance that is epitomized in Strawson’s claim that our attitudes of involvement and par-
ticipation would not be suppressed “even if some general truth were a theoretical ground for it”
(Strawson 2008, 12).
146 5 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other minds

do ascribe feelings (or, more generally, psychological predicates) to mere things,

i. e., mere bunches of matter, which as such are not intrinsically different from
other such bunches – stones, plants, tables, computers, etc.¹⁹² As to the second
response – i. e., anxiety or restlessness – perhaps the best way to express it is by
means of some further questions that PI §283 may naturally elicit, such as these:
If this is how our ascriptions of psychological predicates work, how could they
possibly be justified? On which grounds? Are we not being victims of a systematic
and universal illusion – call it animism – when we ascribe psychological pred-
icates to mere things? Should we not give up those psychological descriptions in
favor of some more objective or scientific – say physicalist – ones?
These are only a few examples of the kinds of skeptical doubts which one
would naturally face when trying to understand the logic of our psychological
ascriptions from a particular perspective (more on this in a moment). Having
prompted those doubts by means of his initial question in PI §283, Wittgenstein
immediately offers a pair of hypothetical answers, as if to be tested:

Is it that my education has led me to it [i. e., “the idea that beings, things, can feel”] by
drawing my attention to feelings in myself, and now I transfer the idea to objects outside
myself? That I recognize that there is something there (in me) which I can call “pain” with-
out getting into conflict with other people’s usage? (PI §283)

What we have in this passage is the raw material for what is known in philoso-
phy as “the argument from analogy” for the ascription of “inner” (psychological)
states to “external objects” (such as other persons). A very common charge
raised against this argument is that it is question-begging, in that the correlation
between mind and behavior that it assumes is precisely what needs to be proved.
However common, that is not a charge Wittgenstein himself will consider in this
context. Instead, what he seems to be aiming at is an idea – or, more precisely, a
picture ¹⁹³ – which not only underpins the whole argument, but also (and more
importantly) prompts the initial question which puts it in motion, namely the
picture of the privacy of the mental, which is indeed a central target of this region
of the Investigations. (Wittgenstein hinted at it at least as early as in PI §246,

 There are, of course, lots of extrinsic differences among living and non-living things, such
as the degree of organizational complexity and behavior, and we shall soon explore those differ-
ences at some length. Right now I will only advance that far from quenching our astonishment,
those differences are rather apt to increase it – after all, how could such subtleties possibly ac-
count for a (presumptively) absolute metaphysical difference between living and non-living be-
ings?
 See esp. PI §115 and its surroundings and PI II §xi for the precise, quasi-technical use of this
term.
 5.2 The problem of other minds in PI I 147

which reads: “In what sense are my sensations private? – Well, only I can know
whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it.”)
As I said, this picture is apt to present itself very naturally when we think
about the difficulties we often face in understanding what happens to others
around us, be it because they are unable to express their true feelings, or be-
cause they intentionally hide them from us. Moreover, each of us has probably
experienced that same (in)capacity in one’s own case. Fixation on those (real,
N.B.) difficulties can make it seem as if all well-succeeded interpersonal commu-
nication were a matter of mere chance, as if there was a metaphysical and epis-
temological gulf between myself and my own (private) experiences, on the one
hand, and other (so-called) “people” and their (so-called) “experiences”, on
the other.¹⁹⁴
For some philosophical sensibilities that possibility would be relatively easy
to dismiss: the fact that our communication works (most of the time, anyway)
would be more than enough for practical purposes. Yet Wittgenstein characteris-
tically does not take such an easy way out of a philosophical difficulty. What he
does instead is to press it further, drawing attention to some possible consequen-
ces of the picture under analysis which would affect much more directly our re-
lations with others, if only we gave it the attention it deserves. One such conse-
quence is brought to the fore again through a pair of those carefully crafted
questions: “Are we perhaps over-hasty in our assumption that the smile of a
baby is not pretence? – And on what experience is our assumption based?”
(PI §249). Given the lack of an unassailable ground implied by the latter ques-
tion, the insistence on the need to make assumptions – i. e., to infer from one’s
own case how things really are with others (see the argument above) – would
ultimately lead to doubt whether (other) people really have minds at all: “If I
say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word
‘pain’ means – must I not say that of other people too? And how can I generalize
the one case so irresponsibly?” (PI §293). The lesson here seems to be: I cannot
(or should not) generalize it so irresponsibly. This, I would submit, is the core of
the problem of other minds.

 That is precisely the sort of description a solipsist would use to formulate his position. As
we saw previously, Wittgenstein himself has put variations of that description in a solipsist’s
mouth in the Tractatus, in the Philosophical Remarks and in The Blue Book.
148 5 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other minds

5.3 Outward criteria, and their limits

Does Wittgenstein have an answer to this problem, and, if so, what is it? I assume
most readers of the Investigations would want to answer “yes” to the first part of
my question; as to its second part I take it that the traditional answer would go
roughly as follows: (i) as it happens with most, if not all of the issues dealt with
by philosophers, skepticism about other minds is just another instance of a pseu-
do-problem, a “disease of the intellect”¹⁹⁵ which Wittgenstein wants to cure by
means of grammatical or logical elucidation; (ii) the general strategy he employs
to that end is basically that of turning our attention away from a set of pictures
underlying the formulation of those (so-called) questions, ultimately showing
their emptiness or senselessness; finally, (iii) in the particular case under anal-
ysis, that result would be achieved by a battery of methodological devices de-
signed to emphasize the internal or criterial relation between overt behavior
and the sensations or states of mind it expresses.¹⁹⁶
A very clear example of that strategy is apparently offered just after the pas-
sage analyzed above (“What gives us so much as the idea …”), where Wittgen-
stein claims that:

I do not transfer my idea to stones, plants, and so on.

Couldn’t I imagine having frightful pains and, while they were going on, turning to stone.
Indeed, how do I know, if I shut my eyes, whether I have not turned into a stone? – And if
that has happened, in what sense will the stone have pains? In what sense will they be as-
cribable to the stone? Why indeed should the pain have a bearer at all?!

And can one say of the stone that it has a soul [Seele], and that is what has the pain? What
has a soul [Seele], or pain, to do with a stone?¹⁹⁷

 See Hacker 1986, 215.

 This is not the only kind of therapeutic device he employs to that end. Another well-known
strategy is the deconstruction of the model of sensations as private entities (see esp. PI §§293 –
294 – the passages presenting the thought-experiment of the “beetle in the box”); the point of
that strategy, as the traditional reading would have it, is quite simple: if sensations are con-
strued as private somethings, i. e., as entities which are accessible only by the ones who have
them, they become as useless in our language-game(s) as the (supposed) “thing” named by
the word “beetle” in the case imagined by Wittgenstein. That is precisely the situation of the de-
fender of the “argument from analogy” who accepts the picture of privacy, including the model
of sensations as private entities, but insists on doing that “irresponsible generalization”, ascrib-
ing sensations thus construed to other persons.
 I have here decided to keep Anscombe’s original choice of the word “soul” to translate
“Seele”, instead of Hacker and Schulte’s “mind”. The latter justify their change in the Preface
to the new edition of PI, claiming that in §283 “what is at issue is mind, not soul, and the prob-
lems of mind and body, not of the soul and the body” (PI xiv). I simply do not share their sense
 5.3 Outward criteria, and their limits 149

Only of what behaves like a human being can one say that it has pains. (PI §283)

To most readers convinced of the general view I presented above the moral of
this passage has seemed very clear: the reason why we do not transfer our
idea to stones, plants, etc. is that these things do not behave like a human
being. Behaving like a human being, therefore, is a necessary condition for the
ascription of pain – or, more generally, “souls” – to things. But is it also a suffi-
cient condition? If it were, then we would be automatically justified, even com-
pelled, to ascribe sensations or souls to beings such as androids or replicants.¹⁹⁸
– Well, are we not?
Apparently the Wittgensteinian answer would be: yes, we are. Take, for ex-
ample, the following passage:

Look at a stone and imagine it having sensations. – One says to oneself: How could one so
much as get the idea of ascribing a sensation to a thing? One might as well ascribe it to a
number! – And now look at a wriggling fly, and at once these difficulties vanish, and pain
seems able to get a foothold here, where before everything was, so to speak, too smooth for
it. (PI §284)

The final part of this passage seems to license a reasoning along the following
lines: well, if one can ascribe sensations such as pains even to flies, what
about beings as complex as androids or replicants? Do we have any reason to
deny that those beings have souls which would not amount to a reason to
deny the same of our paradigmatic cases, i. e., (other) human beings?
These considerations call attention to an important feature of our practices
for ascribing souls to things: even in hypothetical scenarios where the behavioral
criteria indicated above are fully met (think again of Blade Runner), one can still
avoid treating the things which display that behavior as human. In fact – and
this is the most important point – apparently one can even avoid treating
other human beings as humans, if only at a great practical cost. This is what I
gather from passages such as the following:

But can’t I imagine that the people around me are automata, lack consciousness, even
though they behave in the same way as usual? – If I imagine it now – alone in my room

of obviousness about this point; in fact, I take it that this might be yet another symptom of a
reading which does not pay due attention to the connections between Wittgenstein’s treatment
of the conditions to ascribe psychological predicates in this context and in “Part II” (a point to
which we will come back in section 5.4).
 A replicant is a (fictional) bioengineered being created in the universe of the movie Blade
Runner (Rydley Scott, 1982).
150 5 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other minds

– I see people with fixed looks (as in a trance) going about their business – the idea is per-
haps a little uncanny. But just try to hang on to this idea in the midst of your ordinary in-
tercourse with others – in the street, say! Say to yourself, for example: “The children over
there are mere automata; all their liveliness is mere automatism.” And you will either find
these words becoming quite empty; or you will produce in yourself some kind of uncanny
feeling, or something of the sort.

Seeing a living human being as an automaton is analogous to seeing one figure as a limit-
ing case or variant of another; the cross-pieces of a window as a swastika, for example. (PI
§420)

In analyzing this passage I would like to emphasize three points: (i) it offers an
explicit parallel between the experience of seeing aspects in figures and the ex-
perience of seeing aspects of living beings (i. e., seeing them as automatons/as
humans); (ii) it also indicates that the change in our perception depends on a
larger context (the change is easier “alone in my room”, but more difficult “in
the street”, in the midst of my “ordinary intercourse” with others); (iii) finally,
it shows that this change comes, if at all, only at a great cost – that of risking
emptiness, or the production of “uncanny feelings”.
I will have more to say about points (i) and (ii) below. Right now I would like
to highlight a connection between the point (iii) and a rather more familiar Witt-
gensteinian contention – namely, that our perception of living beings as
“ensouled” is a matter of attitude, not of opinion or belief. That contention is ex-
pressed in passages such as the following (among many others):

[1] Our attitude to what is alive and to what is dead is not the same. All our reactions are
different. (PI §284)

[2] “I can only believe that someone else is in pain, but I know it if I am.” […] Just try – in a
real case – to doubt someone else’s fear or pain. (PI §303)

[3] “I believe that he is suffering.” – Do I also believe that he isn’t an automaton? […] Sup-
pose I say of a friend: “He isn’t an automaton”. – What information is conveyed by this, and
to whom would it be information? To a human being who meets him in ordinary circum-
stances? What information could it give him? (At the very most, that this man always be-
haves like a human being, and not occasionally like a machine.)

“I believe that he is not an automaton”, just like that, so far makes no sense.

My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a
soul. (PI II §iv)¹⁹⁹

 §§20 – 22 in Hacker and Schulte’s edition. Appearances notwithstanding, I do not think
Wittgenstein’s purpose in these and related passages is to draw a quasi-technical distinction be-
tween “attitude” on the one hand, and “belief” or “opinion” on the other (see Winch 1980 – 81).
What Wittgenstein is willing to criticize is a certain understanding of the (supposed) “belief” or
 5.3 Outward criteria, and their limits 151

The emphasis conveyed by these passages on our attitudes or reactions (as op-
posed to opinions or beliefs) brings to the fore a central aspect of Cavell’s think-
ing about the problem of other minds – namely, that it should not be reduced to
a matter of (mere) knowledge, but that it is rather a matter of acknowledgment.
Cavell introduces the latter concept as follows: “your suffering makes a claim
upon me. It is not enough that I know (am certain) that you suffer – I must do
or reveal something (whatever can be done). In a word, I must acknowledge it,
otherwise I do not know what ‘(your or his) being in pain’ means. Is.” (MWM
263)²⁰⁰ Whence the view that “the alternative to my acknowledgment of the
other is not my ignorance of him but my avoidance of him, call it my denial
of him” (CR 389). These formulations are meant to emphasize that we – that
is, each of us – have an active role and an irreducible (although all-too-easily
evadable) responsibility in adopting a certain attitude in the face of others.
This, I take it, is an important first step toward explaining why, even when all
the behavioral criteria for the ascription of “humanity” are met, one can still
avoid adopting that “attitude towards a soul” of which Wittgenstein speaks,
treating those living beings instead as mere automata. Cavell calls that possibil-

“opinion” – namely one that would cover both the acts of (i) taking certain beings as human and
(ii) believing that a particular human being is (e. g.) suffering. To take (or to avoid taking) a being
as one that has a “soul” is much more fundamental, in the sense that it is a condition of pos-
sibility so that, on particular occasions in a language-game, one can be certain or in doubt about
whether another human being is suffering or not. In other words: if, at any particular time, one
has good reasons to question whether another being is human or an automaton, then, on that
particular occasion, it would not make sense to argue over whether, say, the other is really suf-
fering or is faking it, because we would simply lack the background against which that kind of
“empirical” doubt could arise. Descartes, in a famous passage of Meditations, argues that it is
strictly incorrect to say that we see men through the window, because what we do is in fact a
judgment – we judge, that is, that those spectra we see through the window are real men. I
think that statement perfectly exemplifies the kind of opinion against which Wittgenstein is ar-
guing in passages such as PI II §iv. To respond to other beings as beings endowed with “souls”,
and not as “mere automatons”, is not to make a kind of inference from observation of something
more “basic” or “immediate” (such as the perception of the behavior of certain “spectra or ficti-
tious men who move only by springs”). The logical priority is being inverted on the Cartesian
analysis. – Only against the background of certain attitudes toward the world and toward others
can (empirical) doubt or certainty arise.
 As Mulhall clarifies: “acknowledgement is not something other than knowledge but an in-
flection of it – a way of emphasizing the fact that another’s pain makes a claim upon me” (Mul-
hall 1996, 47).
152 5 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other minds

ity “soul-blindness”.²⁰¹ In the next section I will try to clarify that possibility by
presenting a more detailed comparison with the case of aspect perception.

5.4 Aspect perception and the problem of other minds

In part IV of The Claim of Reason Cavell sums up his reading of PI II §xi as fol-
lows:

To know another mind is to interpret a physiognomy, and the message of this region of the
Investigations is that this is not a matter of “mere knowing”. I have to read the physiogno-
my, and see the creature according to my reading, and treat it according to my seeing. The
human body is the best picture of the human soul – not, I feel like adding, primarily be-
cause it represents the soul but because it expresses it. The body is the field of expression
of the soul. (CR 356)

Now, if knowing other minds involves interpreting – or better: reading²⁰² – a

physiognomy, and thus seeing a human body in a certain way, then of course
it must be possible not to do so. That attestation might lead one to conclude
that there is, after all, a perfect parallel between the experience of seeing aspects
in ambiguous pictures and the experience of seeing aspects in human (or, more
generally, animated) bodies, in that in both cases one can fail to see the “thing”
in question as x (as a rabbit, as an animated/ensouled/human being, etc.). An
important concern of Cavell in the final part of The Claim of Reason (and also

 See CR 378 ff. Cavell intends that notion to be parallel to Wittgenstein’s notions of “aspect-”
and “meaning-blindness”. The first is introduced in PI II §xi as follows: “Could there be human
beings lacking the ability to see something as something – and what would that be like? What
sort of consequences would it have? – Would this defect be comparable to colour-blindness, or
to not having absolute pitch? – We will call it ‘aspect-blindness’” (PI II §xi, 257). Roughly: an
aspect-blind person is one who cannot experience the switch between two or more aspects of
an ambiguous picture; similarly, a meaning-blind person is one who would be unable to expe-
rience the switch between two or more meanings of a word, such as the German “Bank” (PI II
§xi, 262– 263).
 Mulhall has criticized Cavell’s use of the word “interpreting” in this context on the grounds
of its misleading connotations – as if aspects were less immediately presented to us than the
objects perceived (see Mulhall 1990, 79 ff.). Espen Hammer defends Cavell against that criticism,
to my mind convincingly, by indicating that the latter’s usage of the notion of “interpretation”
must be itself interpreted in a different light, given Cavell’s explicitly stated view that “my rela-
tion to the other’s soul is as immediate as to an object of sight” (CR 368) (see Hammer 2002,
70 – 72).
 5.4 Aspect perception and the problem of other minds 153

in more recent writings²⁰³) is to explore the limits of that parallel, thus aiming at
identifying the real difficulty underlying the “problem of other minds” (the real
obstacle to our acknowledgment of others).
I suggested above that it is natural, or, in any case, not wholly unnatural for
us to express a discomfort with (what we take as) the limits of our knowledge of
other minds as if it were a result of their being hidden, inaccessible by our naked
eye. In PI II §xi Wittgenstein characterizes that feeling – “I can’t know what is
going on in him” – as “above all, a picture”, which is further identified as
“the convincing expression of a conviction”. Taking that description as his start-
ing point, Cavell invites us to develop Wittgenstein’s thinking a step further, by
asking what exactly is the conviction at stake – “[w]hat does the picture of inter-
nality, or of unreachable hiddenness, express?” (CR 368). His own answer is “[t]
hat the body is a veil, or a blind, a dead end. […] The myth of the body as a veil
expresses our sense that there is something we cannot see, not merely something
we cannot know” (CR 368).
Implicit in Cavell’s analysis at this point²⁰⁴ is the suggestion that the human
body can actually be seen as a veil by other human beings in particular contexts
– that this is a real, however uncommon and uncanny possibility in our lived ex-
perience, and not merely a “philosophical invention” devised to put forward
skeptical arguments. Yet by entering that suggestion Cavell does not mean to
imply that when one raises skeptical doubts concerning the existence of other
minds one is (or should be) actually seeing others as automatons. But calling at-
tention to this fact will not impress our skeptical philosopher, who is already im-
pressed by the sheer possibility of that kind of aspect-change, which in her view
brings to the fore the fragility or groundlessness of her ordinary attitude toward
the other, thus understandably prompting anxiety.²⁰⁵ It was just that kind of

 See his essays “Companionable Thinking”, in Cavell et al. 2008, and “The Touch of Words”
in Day/Krebs 2010.
 Explicit elsewhere – e. g., in his reading of Othello at the end of CR.
 As Cavell says in another connection, “[t]he anxiety lies not just in the fact that my under-
standing has limits, but that I must draw them, on apparently no more ground than my own” (CR
115). To have to draw those limits in the case of our relation to one another is what Cavell calls
our “exposure” – “To accept my exposure in the case of others seems to imply an acceptance of
the possibility that my knowledge of others may be overthrown, even that it ought to be.” (CR
439; see also CR 432 and 435) A further projection of that useful concept has been provided
by Cora Diamond, thus extending its application to the case of our relationship with non-
human animals: “Our ‘exposure’ in the case of animals lies in there being nothing but our
own responsibility, our own making the best of it. We are not, here too, in what we might
take to be the ‘ideal’ position. We want to be able to see that, given what animals are, and
given also our properties, what we are like (given our ‘marks and features’ and theirs), there
154 5 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other minds

anxiety that Wittgenstein was tempting the reader to experiment in PI §283, and
he did that precisely by facilitating or precipitating a series of aspect-changes –
“what I perceive in the lighting up of an aspect is not a property of the object, but
an internal relation between it and other objects” (PI II §xi) – first by comparing
animated beings with inanimate ones (stones, plants), and then back again (re-
call that “wriggling fly” of PI §284).
But can we really take in the suggestion that human beings are somewhat
analogous to ambiguous pictures? Cavell himself reminds us in this connection
of Wittgenstein’s claim that “[o]ne doesn’t ‘take’ what one knows as the cutlery
at a meal for cutlery” (PI II §xi, 123), and asks accordingly whether it would not
go “against the Wittgensteinian grain to say, for example, that I see a person as
angry who just is obviously angry, with no two ways about it?” (CR 370). The ob-
jection raised by this question brings to the fore the need to distinguish more
precisely between two different manifestations of the phenomenon of aspect per-
ception which interest Wittgenstein in PI II §xi, namely the dawning of aspects
and continuous aspect perception. As Mulhall explains the difference:

The former is a very specific visual experience with characteristic forms of verbal expres-
sion (or Äusserungen); the latter is an attitude whose presence is sometimes revealed in
an individual’s susceptibility to aspect-dawning experiences, but which also finds expres-
sion in a variety of other fine shades of verbal and non-verbal behavior. This attitude is cer-
tainly not a continuous sequence of aspect-dawning experiences – not a continuous trying
or aiming at something; and neither is it a matter of taking something to be the thing it is –
a turn of phrase which implies the availability of an alternative way of taking it, which is
precisely what the attitude of continuous seeing as is defined as excluding. (Mulhall 2001b,
264– 265)

In sum: continuous aspect perception is “a further species of our ‘regarding-as’

response to pictures”²⁰⁶ – one might say it is our default response ²⁰⁷ to them; the

are general principles that establish the moral significance of their suffering compared to ours,
of their needs compared to ours, and we could then see what treatment of them was and what
was not morally justified. We would be given the presence or absence of moral community (or
thus-and-such degree or kind of moral community) with animals. But we are exposed – that
is, we are thrown into finding something we can live with, and it may at best be a kind of bit-
ter-tasting compromise. There is here only what we make of our exposure, and it leaves us end-
less room for double-dealing and deceit.” (Cavell et al. 2008, 72) The reason for calling attention
to this passage here is to register another discussion which I believe could be clarified by means
of an exploration of its connections with Wittgenstein’s treatment of aspect-seeing. But that dis-
cussion will have to be left for another opportunity.
 Mulhall 2010, 265.
 5.4 Aspect perception and the problem of other minds 155

experience of aspect-dawning, on the contrary, is an exception which proves the

rule.
With that distinction in mind, we can formulate more precisely the analogy
between the possibility of aspect-change involved in our experience of other (liv-
ing) bodies and the experience of seeing aspects more generally. Clearly, we (that
is, most of us, most of the time) do not ordinarily take what we know as human
beings for human beings, as it would happen in an experience of aspect-dawn-
ing. (Human beings are not, in this sense, analogous to ambiguous pictures.²⁰⁸)
Yet, as PI §420 illustrates, in very special circumstances we can stop (avoid, fail)
to see human beings as human, and this would be analogous to the similarly un-
canny experience of making familiar words lose their meanings after much rep-
etition.²⁰⁹ What that (exceptional) possibility of aspect-change shows, therefore,
is that we continuously see human beings as human, and in this sense one can
say (as Wittgenstein did in PI §420) that “[s]eeing a living human being as an
automaton is analogous to seeing one figure as a limiting case or variant of an-
other”.

 Mulhall says that “our general relation to pictures is one of continuous aspect perception”
(Mulhall 2010, 265), meaning (I take it) that this is the kind of relation that we normally (i. e.,
except in extraordinary contexts – such as those of aspect-dawning) take toward them. One of
the main tenets of Mulhall’s analysis is to show that the paradoxicality involved in the experi-
ence of aspect-dawning stems precisely from that general tendency: we take it entirely for grant-
ed that pictures depict something or someone, and relate to them as we do to the thing/person
depicted, “to the point at which we naturally transfer responses appropriate to what is depicted
to their depictions” (Mulhall 2010, 265); thus: “when it suddenly dawns on us that this particular
picture-rabbit is also a picture-duck, when we express our experience quite as if it registers the
picture-rabbit’s actually becoming a picture-duck, our sense that everything about it has
changed (despite our knowledge that nothing has changed) can be seen as an unusually ex-
treme expression of our general tendency to regard a picture of a rabbit as being as different
from a picture of a duck as a rabbit is from a duck.” (Mulhall 2010, 265)
 In this sense, too, one might say with Gould that: “It makes no sense for me to think of
myself as deciding – in each case of a possible ‘other’, as the other presents itself to my capacity
for apprehension – whether or not the other’s words (and gestures and actions) are ‘expressive’
of something, call it a mind or a soul.” (Gould 2010, 74) And yet, as I shall soon try to show (ap-
parently contra Gould), that does not imply that soul-blindness is not a real possibility for beings
like us.
 What Wittgenstein seems to be aiming at by reminding us of that possibility is just how
remarkable is the fact that words (normally) have meanings, as it were on their own faces;
that seems to be the effect of the language-game of PI §1, where some (extra) degree of mecha-
nization is employed in the description precisely in order to remind us of what is going on in our
ordinary life with words. (I am here echoing a point made by Steven Affeldt in his contribution to
Day/Krebs 2010.)
156 5 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other minds

Given these preliminaries, let us finally turn to the question of what can be
the obstacle preventing one to see the human body as a “picture of the human
soul”. As Cavell was possibly the first to state clearly, what prevents one of see-
ing a given aspect in an ambiguous figure is precisely another aspect of it. Now I
think that point, together with Wittgenstein’s claim that “what I perceive in the
lighting up of an aspect is not a property of the object, but an internal relation
between it and other objects” (PI II §xi, 247), might help us get a clearer under-
standing of the issues under analysis. One implication I would like to emphasize
is that changing the background against which one looks at something (a pic-
ture, a living body) can help one to see a previously hidden aspect of it, precisely
by helping one to draw different connections between it and other objects. At
least figuratively, that is precisely what Wittgenstein tries to do when dealing
with philosophical pictures, such as that of the body as a veil. This is what hap-
pens when he, in Cavell’s words, reinterprets or replaces that “myth”, keeping
some fragments of the original picture – namely, the idea that the soul is some-
thing that can, at least in principle, be seen – while attempting to shift the loca-
tion of the “block” to our vision. The expected result is to show that the body
does not hide the mind, but rather expresses or depicts it. It is in the (human)
body that the (human) ensouled aspect can be seen, if only one draws the
right connections. By the same token:

The block to my vision of the other is not the other’s body but my incapacity or unwilling-
ness to interpret or to judge it accurately, to draw the right connections. The suggestion is: I
suffer a kind of blindness, but I avoid the issue by projecting this darkness upon the other.
The mythology according to which the body is a picture implies that the soul may be hid-
den not because the body essentially conceals it but because it essentially reveals it. The
soul may be invisible to us the way something absolutely present may be invisible to us.
[…] We may say that the rabbit-aspect is hidden from us when we fail to see it. But what
hides it is then obviously not the picture (that reveals it), but our (prior) way of taking
it, namely in its duck-aspect. What hides one aspect is another aspect, something at the
same level. So we might say: What hides the mind is not the body but the mind itself –
his his, or mine his, and contrariwise. (CR 368 – 369)

Recall once again that passage about seeing others as automatons (PI §420).
There Wittgenstein distinguishes two contexts: in the first we are invited to imag-
ine ourselves “alone in our rooms”, and in the second “in the midst of our ordi-
nary intercourse with others”. Now suppose we agree with Wittgenstein’s judg-
ment to the effect that in the latter context it would be much more difficult to
imagine others as automatons. Why would that be so? Is it not the reason that
in the second context the ensouled (animated) aspect of the bodies we perceive
would be, so to speak, on display in such a (live) situation? Notice, however, that
even under such circumstances the possibility of seeing others as automatons re-
 5.5 Soul-blindness (or: “living our skepticism”) 157

mains open; what that indicates is that whether or not an aspect will be hidden
depends not only on the context or background against which the perceived ob-
ject stands, but also on something about the person who is looking at it – it has
to do with the connections she draws, or fails to draw. Now, when the skeptic
about other minds presents her problem as one of knowledge – as if what we
needed was more evidence of some kind, something that (per impossibile)
would allow us to go beyond the other’s (mere) body, or maybe through it,
thus reaching a “naked soul” – what she is tacitly repressing or avoiding is pre-
cisely the burden of trying to draw those connections. A metaphysical puzzle
thus arises from the sublimation of a practical or existential difficulty.²¹⁰

5.5 Soul-blindness (or: “living our skepticism”)

I hope the preceding considerations are enough to suggest that discrete occur-
rences of soul-blindness are real (if uncommon and uncanny) possibilities for
beings like us. A further question which can be raised in this connection is
whether one can make sense of the possibility of systematic soul-blindness. I
take it that Cavell’s answer to that question would also be positive, much against
the grain of analytical dogmatism, including orthodox Wittgensteinianism; only
the cost of that attitude would be even higher: instead of uncanny feelings, the
result would be the brutalization of individuals suffering from that kind of blind-
ness, which is precisely the stuff of tragedy.²¹¹
In order to underlie the radicalism of Cavell’s proposal I would like to bring
this chapter to a close comparing it briefly with the influential (and, I take it, rep-
resentative) account offered by Peter Strawson in his essay “Freedom and Re-
sentment”.²¹² The argument presented in that essay is framed by the dispute be-
tween Determinists and Libertarians on the issue of free-will. It might,
accordingly, seem very distant from the topics examined thus far. But in order
to see the connections which are relevant for our purposes I propose to set
the “frame” of the argument aside, looking directly at the center of the picture.

 “In making the knowledge of others a metaphysical difficulty, philosophers deny how real
the practical difficulty is of coming to know another person, and how little we can reveal of our-
selves to another’s gaze, or bear of it. Doubtless such denials are part of the motive which sus-
tains metaphysical difficulties.” (CR 90)
 A striking illustration that comes to mind is the way John Merrick (John Hurt) is treated in
the movie The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980) by some of the main characters, particularly by
the manager of a Victorian freak show called Bytes (Freddie Jones).
 Strawson 2008.
158 5 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other minds

What we then find is an investigation of the conditions of human action ground-

ed on the analysis of some particular instances of interpersonal relations and at-
titudes – most notably those of gratitude, resentment, and forgiveness. One of
the central features Strawson highlights about those attitudes is that they are
apt to be radically modified according to the way the actions which bring
them about are qualified. The following case illustrates this point:

If someone treads on my hand accidentally, while trying to help me, the pain may be no less
acute than if he treads on it in contemptuous disregard of my existence or with a malevo-
lent wish to injure me. But I shall generally feel in the second case a kind and degree of
resentment that I shall not feel in the first. If someone’s actions help me to some benefit
I desire, then I am benefited in any case; but if he intended them so to benefit me because
of his general goodwill toward me, I shall reasonably feel a gratitude which I should not
feel at all if the benefit was an incidental consequence, unintended or even regretted by
him, of some plan of action with a different aim. (Strawson 2008, 6)

Modifications like these can be brought about in a large number of common sit-
uations in our human relationships; but there are also some less common situa-
tions in which our ordinary reactions would not only be modified but rather al-
together suppressed. This would happen, for instance, in those occasions in
which we would be willing to describe an agent who performed an action that
harmed us by using phrases such as: “He wasn’t himself”, “He has been
under very great strain recently”, “He’s only a child”, “He’s a hopeless schizo-
phrenic”, “His mind has been systematically perverted”, “That’s purely compul-
sive behavior on his part”, etc.²¹³ By drawing our attention to the sort of excuses
expressed by those phrases, Strawson wants to make us aware of situations in
which someone’s actions would invite us “to suspend our ordinary reactive atti-
tudes toward the agent”, seeing him “in a different light from the light in which
we should normally view one who has acted as he has acted”.²¹⁴
With a view to simplify the analysis of such cases, Strawson presents (what
he himself describes as) “crude dichotomies”²¹⁵ separating the kinds of attitudes
that we can have in relation to other human beings. For our present purposes the
most important such dichotomy is that which distinguishes “the attitude (or
range of attitudes) of involvement or participation in a human relationship”,
on the one hand, and the “objective” or “detached” attitude (or range of atti-

 Strawson 2008, 8.

 Strawson 2008, 9.
 Strawson 2008, 9.
 5.5 Soul-blindness (or: “living our skepticism”) 159

tudes), on the other hand.²¹⁶ About the latter sort of attitude Strawson has the
following to say:

To adopt the objective attitude to another human being is to see him, perhaps, as an object
of social policy; as a subject for what, in a wide range of sense, might be called treatment;
as something certainly to be taken account, perhaps precautionary account, of; to be man-
aged or handled or cured or trained; perhaps simply to be avoided […]. (Strawson 2008, 9)

Usually, there is no problem about adopting such an attitude – on the contrary,

as Strawson himself acknowledges, we can sometimes use it “as a resource”,
e. g., “as a refuge […] from the strains of involvement; or as an aid to policy;
or simply out of intellectual curiosity”.²¹⁷ A problem would appear, however, if
that attitude took complete precedence over that of involvement or participation
in human relationships – if, i. e., we systematically stopped seeing others (and
ourselves) as persons, as human beings, and started seeing them (ourselves) as
mere “objects of social policy”, or “mechanisms”. The problem posed by such
an extreme change is, in short, that it would require a radical change in our nor-
mal interpersonal relationships, and with them our very human nature; and the
price of such change, as Strawson has it in another context, “would be higher
than we are willing, or able, to pay”.²¹⁸
I take it that Cavell would sharply disagree with that view, insisting that
where knowledge of “other minds” is concerned, I cannot but “live my skepti-
cism” (CR 437), in that I simply cannot wait for (absolute) certainty or (complete)
justification in order to act,²¹⁹ and I equally cannot allow myself to become “ac-
commodated” with my doubts since “the surmise that I have not acknowledged
about others, hence about myself, the thing there is to acknowledge, that each of
us is human, is not, first of all, the recognition of a universal human condition,
but first of all a surmise about myself” (CR 438). As a consequence, becoming

 See Strawson 2008, 9.

 Strawson 2008, 10.
 Strawson 1985, 34. Strawson also describes this change in “Freedom and Resentment” as
one which “does not seem to be something of which human beings would be capable, even if
some general truth were a theoretical ground for it” (Strawson 2008, 12). The main candidate
to such a ground examined (and dismissed) by Strawson in this paper is, of course, the “theo-
retical conviction of the truth of determinism” (Strawson 2008, 14).
 In fact, to wait for that kind of justification is one of the possible causes of tragedy; that is
precisely Othello’s problem: no “evidence” of Desdemona’s faithfulness is really lacking, yet ac-
knowledgment is not forthcoming; that is the horror of his situation. This is what Ted Cohen
calls “the true currency of skepticism” (Cohen 1993, 394). Thanks to Paulo Faria for reminding
me of that paper.
160 5 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other minds

“accommodated” or “permitting myself distraction” from my limitations con-

cerning acknowledgment would amount to compromising my own integrity as
a human being (see CR 438).
But what precisely is the alternative (to accommodation, i. e.) concerning
doubts about “other minds”? What does it mean to “live my skepticism” in
this case? It means, first and foremost, to recognize – and, if one is to avoid trag-
edy, to accept – one’s real separateness from others – the fact, i. e., that there is
no “metaphysical shortcut” to other’s minds, or souls, or “inner lives” – thus re-
alizing that it is always up to me to acknowledge the humanity in the other, and
(thus) in myself. Of course acknowledgment might not be forthcoming, and that
might incline one to think (or to fantasize) that this is because “the inner” is met-
aphysically and/or epistemologically hidden, perhaps hidden by the other’s
body, by the human body as such. As I hope the considerations above shall suf-
fice to suggest, Cavell would not exactly deny that in those cases the inner is hid-
den – surely Desdemona’s faithfulness is hidden from Othello, in a limited but
very real sense; yet, as we saw, he would (following Wittgenstein) disagree as
to the source of one’s blindness, placing it on the side of the perceiver, internal-
izing it, making it one’s own responsibility.
Part of what I am trying to get at here is that, pace Strawson – for whom “in
order for self-conscious thought and experience to be possible, we must take it,
or believe, that we have knowledge of external physical objects or other
minds”²²⁰ – it is not, or not simply, knowledge or (ordinary) belief or (natural)
inclination that really matters wherever the “ascription” of “human status” is
concerned. Recall Cavell’s saying: “the alternative to my acknowledgement of
the other is not my ignorance of him but my avoidance of him, call it my denial
of him” (CR 389). What might be lacking when acknowledgment is not forthcom-
ing is attunement – and again this is not, or not simply, a matter of belief or nat-
ural inclination, but rather something that, as Anthony Rudd has put it, “may
depend on one’s willingness to be attuned; or to acknowledge one’s attunement
or to acknowledge the other”.²²¹ – One might say: where acknowledgment (or its
denial) is concerned, knowledge or belief come always too late – notwithstand-
ing our self-indulgent rationalizations to the contrary.
Let me try to be clear about one point: I think we should grant Strawson that
there would be something rather unwelcome or even untenable involved in the
generalized adoption of an “objective” or “detached” attitude toward others –
many of us would certainly prefer not to live in a world where that attitude be-

 Strawson 1985, 21.

 Rudd 2003, 155.
 5.5 Soul-blindness (or: “living our skepticism”) 161

came standard; yet that is very different from saying that such a change would
be “practically impossible”, or unnatural, or inhuman. – And let us not go astray
about the latter qualification: granted, we often do describe attitudes that we
would rather not see other human beings taking as “inhuman”; yet, as Cavell
correctly reminds us, “only a human being can behave inhumanly” (CR 438).
In other words, we cannot but acknowledge that such (outrageous) acts and at-
titudes are as human as any other – if, i. e., we are sincere in our assessment, and
do not try to repress our knowledge about which possibilities are open to beings
like us.²²²
Having called attention to these shortcomings in Strawson’s position, I think
we are better positioned to evaluate what I take to be wrong with the kind of re-
sponse to skepticism that his work illustrates – i. e., one of quick dismissal, and
refusal to pay attention to what Cavell would call its truth.²²³ Sticking with the
case of skepticism about other minds: does not the fact that it is possible to aban-
don completely the non-detached attitude toward (some) others show that the
ground for acknowledgment is as weak or as strong as our capacities to take
or relinquish interest on others and on ourselves, on that which is shared by
us – hence that it is only human after all? And does not that realization show
that some instability, hence some doubt, hence the possibility of skepticism,
are so to speak internal or intrinsic to our finite epistemic condition? Yet, if
our attitudes – both detached and non-detached – toward others are not ground-
ed in anything beyond ourselves, then the burden and the responsibility for cre-
ating and maintaining interpersonal relationships, hence a community, lies at
least partially on me, on each of us. And that kind of burden can understandably
make one anxious, and that anxiety might well incline one to avoid the real

 Again, this is a point that Cavell himself made clear in a passage where he comments on
the nature of slavery and Nazism: “The anxiety in the image of slavery – not confined to it, but
most openly dramatized by it – is that it really is a way in which certain human beings can treat
certain others whom they know, or all but know, to be human beings. Rather than admit this we
say that the ones do not regard the others as human beings at all. (To understand Nazism, what-
ever that will mean, will be to understand it as a human possibility; monstrous, unforgivable,
but not therefore the conduct of monsters. Monsters are not unforgivable, and not forgivable.
We do not bear the right internal relation to them for forgiveness to apply.) To admit that the
slaveowner regards the slave as a kind of human being bases slavery on nothing more than
some indefinite claim of difference, some inexpressible ground of exclusion of others from ex-
istence in our realm of justice. It is too close to something we might at any time discover.” (CR
377– 378)
 Epitomized in the claim that “the human creature’s basis in the world as a whole, its rela-
tion to the world as such, is not that of knowing, anyway not what we think of as knowing” (CR
241). More on this point in the next chapter.
162 5 Seeing souls: Wittgenstein and Cavell on skepticism about other minds

issue, by denying or repressing it – as Strawson the “Humean naturalist” seems

inclined to do – or else by sublimating or rationalizing it – preferring, as Cavell
would say, to transfigure “a metaphysical finitude into an intellectual lack”
(MWM 263), which is precisely what I take (some versions of) skepticism as
doing. (And yet notice that, as I see this dispute, a skeptic would have a clear
advantage against her dismissive opponents, in that the former would at least
recognize that there is a real difficulty, and one that simply cannot be solved
by acquiring more knowledge – since there is no reason to suppose that we
know something that the skeptic ignores – let alone by simply adducing our or-
dinary beliefs, or natural facts about us, or by describing our conceptual
scheme.)
The upshot is that, contrary to what Strawson (as well as many Wittgenstei-
nians) seems to suggest, personhood and humanity are not just predicates that
one “ascribes” or refrains to “ascribe” to others based on the evidence at one’s
disposal, but rather something that one acknowledges or refuses to acknowl-
edge. ²²⁴ Human souls are there to be seen – all it takes is to keep our eyes
(and minds) open to them. Yet, the very fact that we can fail to do so shows
something important about our condition – something we should not try to re-
press in our philosophizing, nor elsewhere.

 And as Mulhall says, the humanity “of all human beings is in the hands of their fellows;
their accession to human status involves their being acknowledged as human by others. They
can fulfil all the criteria, but they cannot force an acknowledgement from those around
them”. (I quote from a paper originally published on the Internet: “Picturing the Human
(Body and Soul): A Reading of Blade Runner”. Online at http://brmovie.com/Analysis/Pictur
ing_the_Human.htm, accessed 03/03/2020. The paper undergone important changes and was
published as a section of the book On Film (Mulhall 2002). The revised version of the passage
quoted above is on p. 35 of that book.) The film Bicentennial Man (1999), which is based on a
novella of the same name by Isaac Asimov, provides another good case (besides Blade Runner)
to reflect on these issues. Its robot (?) protagonist adapts it(?)self to various criteria to become a
person – including the criterion of being mortal – and yet that right is denied him. Why is that
so? I do not have a short answer to that question, but I hope the preceding considerations may
offer a good starting for reflecting on it.
6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell
6.1 Introduction

Investigating the nature of human knowledge has been an important task of phi-
losophy since its very beginning. But it was only with the advent of modernity –
say around the time of Galileo and Descartes²²⁵ – that epistemology became an
autonomous philosophical discipline, ultimately earning the status of a First Phi-
losophy responsible for the evaluation of all other areas of human inquiry. A dis-
tinctive concern of this new discipline is to provide a theory of the conditions of
knowledge capable of meeting or circumventing the challenges posed by philo-
sophical skepticism, particularly about the existence of the external world, thus
clearing the path for the development of science and offering secure foundations
for its whole edifice. For many contemporary sensibilities, both the foundational
claims of modern epistemology and its fixation with skepticism might seem ex-
cessive, even “scandalous”²²⁶ – or at best parts of an “intellectual game designed
to introduce technical problems”.²²⁷ That is not an opinion shared by the two
philosophers who will be the heroes of this chapter, Stanley Cavell and Barry
Stroud. Among the many characteristics shared by their philosophical outlooks,
both authors have been engaged in the task of counteracting the more or less
widespread disdain of skepticism exhibited in contemporary philosophy, trying
instead to convince us of its seriousness or significance, or even its truth. This, as
we will see, does not mean that they are willing to accept the skeptical conclu-
sions, at least not in the way both the skeptic and her traditional critics interpret
them – which means that an important part of their task is to provide a reassess-
ment of the whole debate. The crux of disagreement has to do with what both

 “Modernity” is here used as a shorthand to describe a rather wide set of historical factors –
ranging from 15th-century’s Renaissance Humanism, going through the Protestant Reformation,
the rediscovery of Pyrrhonian skepticism and the “discovery of the New World” in the 16th cen-
tury, culminating with the scientific revolution in the 17th century – all of which concurred to
undermine traditional beliefs previously supported by the narrowing of the cultural horizon
and religious authority in Europe.
 Alluding to Kant’s famous statement that it would be a “scandal” for philosophy not to
have a definitive proof of “the existence of things outside us” (Kant 1998, Bxi, 121), Heidegger
declared that what is really outrageous is “that such proofs are expected and attempted again
and again” (Heidegger 2010, §6, 197). As it happens with most analytic philosophers who use
Heidegger’s passage, P. F. Strawson quotes it with approval but out of context, interpreting it
as congenial to his own “naturalistic refusal” of the skeptical challenge (see Strawson 1985, 24).
 Mulhall 1996, 89.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110702859-009
164 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

Cavell and Stroud see as attempts to short-circuit the diagnosis of the real prob-
lems underlying skepticism, thus allowing its critics to extract (negative) conclu-
sions prematurely, therefore missing the chance of learning what skepticism, if
correctly understood, has to teach about our condition.
In proposing a methodology which is more open to hear what the skeptic
has at heart to say Cavell and Stroud exhibit another shared feature, namely
their professed inheritance from (late) Wittgenstein and from Thompson
Clarke.²²⁸ From the former they learned to see ordinary language as being capa-
ble both of generating and of curing the metaphysical impulse (or of its skeptical
counterpart) in philosophy – a lesson encapsulated in the methodological advice
“to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use” (PI §116).
From the latter they learned that the procedures of traditional epistemology (in-
cluding paradigmatic skeptical arguments such as the ones stated in Descartes’s
first Meditation) are continuous with those that characterize ordinary epistemic
inquiries, hence that it will not do as an effective criticism simply to try showing
to the skeptic, say, that she has changed the meanings of the words employed in
her statements (words such as “know”, “see”, “directly”, “object”, etc.). In Cav-
ell’s own words, the lesson is that everything that could be said “in defense of
the appeal to ordinary language could also be said in defense, rather than in
criticism, of the claims of traditional philosophy” (MWM xii–xiii).
Finally, and as a kind of extrapolation from the similarities indicated above,
I would risk claiming that both Cavell and Stroud want to make room for a new
kind of epistemology, less concerned with establishing certainties and founda-
tions, or even with providing a general theory of the conditions of knowledge
able to meet skeptical challenges,²²⁹ instead focusing on understanding the
real limits that define finite cognition – limits that we cannot fail to know,
and yet try with all our intellectual might to avoid acknowledging. Hence the
need for careful (Wittgensteinian) grammatical reminders, accompanied by an
openness to the all-too-human disappointments which any person seriously en-
gaged in an epistemological investigation will have to face.
Given those affinities, what about the differences? As I will argue in the next
section, Stroud suspects that Cavell’s own engagement with skepticism failed to
live up to the methodological requirements just mentioned, leading him to offer
a diagnosis (particularly in Part II of The Claim of Reason) which amounts to yet
another attempt to short-circuit the skeptical stance, not taking it seriously

 See Stroud 1984, xiv and CR xvi.

 As Stroud himself has indicated, he and Cavell are among the “very few who acknowledge
[…] that the worst thing to do with the traditional question about our knowledge of the world is
to try to answer it. If you get that far, it’s already too late” (Stroud 2000, 56).
 6.1 Introduction 165

enough. There are two main lines of criticism supporting Stroud’s suspicion
which I intend to assess in some detail in what follows:
– First line of criticism: Cavell wants to show that some of the skeptic’s
“claims” are nonsensical, or at the very least that the skeptic cannot
mean what she wants them to mean; but in order to achieve that verdict Cav-
ell must be assuming some kind of theory or story about the conditions of
making claims. However, he fails to present such a story in any clear way
and, what is more important, even if he could offer it one could still try to
restate the skeptical challenges in terms of any number of alternative prop-
ositional attitudes (other than claiming), such as surmising, for example.
Hence the skeptic would have an easy way out of that difficulty.
– Second line of criticism: Cavell seems willing to present an alternative view of
our relation with the world (as well as with other minds) which he thinks (or
rather assumes) is immune to skeptical threats, since it is not a cognitive re-
lation of the kind that could possibly be doubted. Cavell dubs that kind of
relation “acceptance” or “acknowledgment”, but other than naming it, he
again fails to offer a fully developed account of its nature, in particular he
fails to demonstrate its fundamental difference from knowing. And in the
absence of such an account one can very well wonder whether that relation
could not be equally available to skeptical criticism.

In the remainder of this chapter I will reconstruct those lines of criticism in more
detail, arguing that both are ultimately misdirected, and predicated upon narrow
(if natural) construals of two distinctive Cavellian strategies. First (section 6.2),
his use of “nonsense” as a term of philosophical criticism: basically, in Cavell’s
view, to think that one can only call something “nonsense” if one has a back-
ground story (a theory of sense or meaning) is already to give the traditional
epistemologist what she most desires. Second (section 6.3), concerning Cavell’s
appeal to acknowledgment and acceptance, I shall argue that Stroud has not
fully taken into account Cavell’s point about skepticism being not exactly a cog-
nitive problem in need of a theoretical solution, but rather an intellectualization
of our disappointment with our finite condition and its consequences for the way
we relate to others and to the world. In other words, I take it that for Cavell phil-
osophical skepticism (as traditionally construed at least since Descartes) is a
symptom of a more fundamental malady which, if I am not mistaken, he does
not think is amenable to be cured by means of philosophical argument, but
can at least be shown in its real, non-intellectualized form by a philosophy suf-
ficiently open to its truth, that being part of what the notions of acknowledgment
and acceptance are intended to indicate, or remind.
166 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

6.2 Cavell and Stroud on skepticism and meaning

Cavell (1979) and Stroud (1984) both offer detailed assessments of global forms
of skepticism about the external world taking Descartes’s argument in the first
meditation as a paradigmatic case. As is well known, the first step in that argu-
ment is the observation that some false opinions are commonly accepted as true,
indicating that our subjective conviction is at best an unreliable arbiter in cogni-
tive matters. Based on that consideration Descartes establishes a kind of skepti-
cal test designed to tell dubitable from indubitable knowledge, with the ultimate
aim of using the latter as the basis for rebuilding our entire cognitive edifice. This
initial move is the aspect of Descartes’s procedure that most interests both Cavell
and Stroud in their reconstructions. Leaving aside some details, we can summa-
rize the main stages of that procedure as follows:
1) Descartes construes a scenario in which a generic object (more on this notion
shortly) presents itself to the senses of a subject S in normal epistemic con-
ditions, so that we would ordinarily think that S is entitled to believe in the
existence of that object; this type of scenario is described by Cavell as a “best
case” of knowledge,²³⁰ while Stroud’s preferred terminology is “representa-
tive case”;²³¹
2) Descartes then argues that if one can raise a reasonable doubt ²³² about such
a best or representative case, it follows that the validity of our knowledge of
the external world as a whole does not have a safe ground;
3) Finally, Descartes offers a skeptical hypothesis such that, if one cannot show
its falsity or outrageousness, provides a reasonable doubt concerning the
knowledge we claim to have in a best or representative case.

The use of the expression “generic object” (as opposed to “specific object”) in
step (1) is Cavell’s, but I take it that Stroud would be in agreement with the un-
derlying distinction Cavell wants to draw using those expressions. The reason
why the starting point of the argument must be the presentation of a generic ob-

 See CR 145.

 See Stroud 1984, 10.
 About the reasonableness of the grounds for doubt, compare Cavell and Stroud: “the rea-
sonableness of the philosopher’s considerations was a function of their being just those ordina-
ry and everyday considerations that any person who can talk and can know anything at all will
recognize as relevant to the claim (‘belief’) under scrutiny.” (CR 131) “The question before us is to
what extent Descartes’s investigation of his knowledge that he is sitting by the fire with a piece
of paper in his hand follows these recognized everyday procedures for assessing claims to
know.” (Stroud 1984, 26).
 6.2 Cavell and Stroud on skepticism and meaning 167

ject (e. g., a generic bird that can stand for any bird, or a generic table that can
stand for any table) is that the failure to identify a specific object (e. g., this par-
ticular Goldfinch I see in my garden or this particular piece of Louis XIV furniture
in my room) would only have implications for assessing (i) S’s competence (her
vision acuity, her knowledge of birds and furniture, etc.), and (ii) the nature of
her epistemic circumstances (lighting conditions, distance from the object,
etc.), but would not illuminate (iii) knowledge as a whole, i. e., the very project
of getting knowledge. As Stroud puts the point: “[Descartes] starts his investiga-
tion […] in what would seem to be the most favourable conditions for the reliable
operation of the senses as a source of knowledge”,²³³ or again: “[w]hat is true of
a representative case, if it is truly representative and does not depend on special
peculiarities of its own, can legitimately support a general conclusion”.²³⁴
In his assessment of the procedure just reconstructed, Cavell identifies three
formal components which would constitute the conditions for a Cartesian-like
skeptical argument:
a) Submitting a cognitive claim about a generic object (any bird or table – but
not this Goldfinch or this piece of Louis XIV furniture);
b) Requiring a ground for that claim (“But how do you know?” – “Because I
see” or “Through the senses”);
c) Providing a reason or ground for doubting the claim (“But you might be
dreaming”) which shows that S does not have good reasons to think he
knows anything (and not this bird or that table).

Epistemologists interested in pointing out the failure of the skeptical argument

have traditionally attacked (c), and in fewer cases (b). Cavell and Stroud, on
the other hand, are both more interested in assessing (a) – the very notion of cog-
nitive claims involving generic objects. If that kind of claim can be made, they
both argue, then skeptical doubts will seem both relevant and fatal, and no (Aus-
tinian) appeal to what we ordinarily say will be able to bar the radical skeptical
conclusion;²³⁵ their disagreement, as we will see, has to do with the obtaining of

 Stroud 1984, 9.

 Stroud 1984, 10. It is precisely because Austin proceeds by appealing to the conditions of
identification of specific objects in his analysis (e. g. in Austin 1961) that both Cavell and Stroud
see a methodological limitation in his philosophy – one which would render it ineffective
against a Cartesian-like skeptical argument.
 Cavell is quite explicit about this at many points in part II of The Claim of Reason; here is a
representative statement: “What ‘best case’ turns out to mean can be expressed in a major
premiss: If I know anything, I know this. Then it turns out that, as a matter of eternal fact,
we do not know this. As a minor premiss, that discovery precipitates the right devastation.
168 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

its antecedent. Cavell’s argument to deny it amounts to the presentation of a di-

lemma to the skeptic: although only generic objects allow skepticism to be gen-
eralized (i. e., applied to the whole of our cognitive claims, and thus to the very
existence of the external world), no (clear or full) meaning can be provided for
claims that purport to refer to generic objects. Even if those claims contain words
which are perfectly meaningful and grammatically well-ordered, they ultimately
show themselves to be empty or devoid of a clear point, and hence incoherent or
imaginary, used “outside [their] ordinary language game”.²³⁶
It is important to emphasize that Cavell’s diagnosis does not rest on a dog-
matic appeal to “what we ordinarily say”; it is true (as Descartes himself noticed,
followed by Hume) that the skeptical conclusions bring little or no conviction in
our everyday lives; yet, given the absence of universal rules that would ensure
certain word projections and prevent others,²³⁷ determining what is a legitimate
linguistic move becomes a matter of investigating what a competent user of a
language would be inclined to take as such. Now, if we grant that point, what
reason would we have to think that the skeptic is not a competent user of lan-
guage, or that she has less legitimacy in these matters than her critic? From Cav-
ell’s point of view, a different, more subtle approach is needed in order to indi-
cate the real problem with the skeptical conclusion. His suggestion is that
instead of focusing on the lack of (complete) naturalness of the skeptic’s claims,
we should ask whether her words really can mean what she thinks, wishes, or
believes they mean.²³⁸

To draw the conclusion then requires no proneness to argument, merely the capability of it.”
(CR 145) As to Stroud I am here grounding my hypothesis in claims such as this: “[Descartes]
considers his knowledge of the world around him in general by considering the particular
case of his sitting by the fire with a piece of paper in his hand. That single case is chosen to
serve as a representative of all of our knowledge of the world. It could sustain a quite general
conclusion about all of our knowledge of the world only if it were a perfectly normal case, without
special features.” (Stroud 1984, 54; my italics)
 As Cavell explains: “What is left out of an expression if it is used ‘outside its ordinary lan-
guage game’ is not necessarily what the words mean (they may mean what they always did, what
a good dictionary says they mean), but what we mean in using them when and where we do. The
point of saying them is lost. […] What we lose is not the meaning of our words – hence, defini-
tions to secure or explain their meaning will not replace our loss. What we lose is a full realiza-
tion of what we are saying; we no longer know what we mean.” (CR 207)
 The argument for this conclusion was provided in its most sustained form in part I of The
Claim of Reason. I offered a critical reconstruction of that argument in chapter 4, while also mar-
shaling more recent texts from Cavell and his controversy with Kripke 1982.
 Here it is worth noting the connection, indicated by Cavell himself, with the kind of terms
of criticism with which we are constantly confronted in Wittgenstein’s writings: “I have related
the initiating experience of the philosopher, and his ensuing progress, to Wittgenstein’s notion
 6.2 Cavell and Stroud on skepticism and meaning 169

Let’s see how this applies to a concrete case. Suppose our skeptical episte-
mologist argues to the effect that we can never see the whole object in front of us,
say this whole vase, since all we can “directly see” is that part which is facing us
(or which appears to us), roughly its front half, and seeing this is compatible
with its lacking a back half, or an interior – it could be merely a façade, for ex-
ample. From considerations like these our epistemologist might conclude that
we can never see objects “as they are in themselves”, since to perceive them
as such would imply perceiving all their parts. – Now what exactly would be
the problem with that line of argument? It is true, of course, that the formulation
used in the conclusion projects the verb “to see” in a way that seems to be in
conflict with our everyday uses of that verb, and this in turn seems to make
that projection unacceptable – we feel it must be somehow mistaken. And yet,
it is not obvious that it would be (always) false (let alone senseless) to claim
that we do not see the whole object, if only because, under suitable circumstan-
ces, very similar formulations would make perfect sense – e. g., “You can’t see
the back half, so you don’t know it’s red all over”, said in a context where it
is of practical importance to make sure we know whether the object is red all
over.²³⁹ Or again, think about what would happen if I were to be challenged
by a friend who loves to play practical jokes, and who I know in the past has
replaced an object for a façade in order to have fun at the expense of his inter-
locutor, to answer how does the back half of this vase looks like; in that case it
would be natural to reply that I do not know, because I do not see that part right
now.
I hope this brief illustration is sufficient to show that the real problem with
the epistemologist’s projection can only be seen through a more sophisticated
analysis – one that does not simply state that “The skeptic uses a form of
words that makes perfect sense in certain contexts and then applies it to a
case in which it makes no sense”; as Cavell reminds us:

That these words are not ordinarily used in such contexts doesn’t mean they can’t naturally
be given application in them. (Using language depends on this ability to give application in
new contexts.) Whether his words mean what they say here, or only produce in him the im-

of ‘speaking outside language games’ (or […] that, in philosophizing, ‘language goes on holiday’
([PI] §38), that it is ‘like an engine idling’ ([PI] §132) […]), suggesting that what happens to the
philosopher’s concepts is that they are deprived of their ordinary criteria of employment
(which does not mean that his words are deprived of meaning – one could say that such
words have nothing but their meanings) and, collecting no new ones, leave his concepts without
relation to the world (which does not mean that what he says is false), or in terms I used earlier,
remove them from their position among our system of concepts.” (CR 226)
 See MWM 250.
170 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

pression of a meaning, depends on whether they have been given application. And it
doesn’t seem obvious that an object can’t (and even oughtn’t to) be taken to be something
whose front ineluctably conceals its back. This is, of course, not all the skeptic wants. He
wants us to see the rightness, the inevitability of his application; and given that, his con-
clusion comes fast. But it is no argument against his application to say that if he is allowed
it an unwelcome conclusion follows. (MWM 250 – 251)

A more satisfying diagnosis of what is problematic with the skeptic’s preferred

way of formulating his “discovery” would have to make an effort to understand
the real motivation behind that formulation, refraining from dogmatic appeals to
“what we ordinarily say” while trying to challenge the sense of “inevitability” of
that discovery. Here is a very brief outline of such a diagnosis: ordinarily, when
we say that we can see only a part of an object, there is an implication that we
cannot see it as a whole on this particular instance (since the part we cannot see
might be hidden, etc.) But that is precisely not the conclusion drawn by our epis-
temologist – what he wants to say is (more or less) that (the whole of) a generic
object might be simply excluded from our vision in all cases, “as a matter of eter-
nal fact”, to go back to Cavell’s suggestive formulation.²⁴⁰ What is the rationale
underlying that claim? Cavell suggests it is a particular picture, one in which our
position vis-à-vis all objects would be geometrically fixed, “rooted”, as if we were
the planet from which (at best) only the visible part of the surface of the moon
could be seen at any particular time (see CR 202). Put like that, the picture
should seem obviously wrong, in that in any concrete situation our position
would not be thus fixed; and it suffices to imagine ourselves moving around
the object for the feeling that there are “parts” of it that we cannot see to inevi-
tably and immediately cease to exert fascination upon us.
Assuming that a diagnosis along those lines is correct, the important ques-
tion to raise here is how could such a flagrantly misguided picture underlie so
much of our epistemological investigations at least since modernity, and what
would be the consequences of its rebuke. Answering those questions has been
a central aim of Cavell’s work, and I will only be able to highlight some aspects
of that answer here. For starters it is important to notice how the preceding anal-
ysis can help explain the instability of the skeptical conclusion – the fact that it
evaporates as soon as the philosopher’s imaginary context is replaced by a fuller
and more realistic one, which takes into account other important features of our
actual interaction with objects. At least part of the motivation that leads the
skeptic to distort that interaction is the “Cartesian” tendency to separate the
senses from the body, or to repress the internal relation between perceiving

 See fn. 235 above.

 6.2 Cavell and Stroud on skepticism and meaning 171

and acting, favoring instead a fictional “set-up which positions us before objects
in a manner analogous to cameras or microscopes”.²⁴¹ (It is in this sense that one
can say, as Cavell does, that the skeptic has invented something about our cog-
nitive situation, instead of having discovered something about it – which is what
he imagines to have done.)
This diagnosis also allows us to go back and clarify Cavell’s dilemma, which
can now be recast it in the following, more general terms: either the skeptic em-
ploys a model that distorts our interaction with objects, thereby preventing any
claim to be made about something in our world (but what other world is there?),
or his model fits our actual situation, but then it fails to produce a general con-
clusion, applicable to the totality of knowledge. Cavell is well aware that none of
this amounts to a refutation of skepticism – on the contrary, what this diagnosis
shows is that the skeptic is (at least partially) right, namely to the extent in
which he insists against the dogmatist that our ordinary criteria (e. g., for the
use of the verb “to see”) do not provide the kind of certainty sought by tradition-
al epistemologists. In fact, as I will try to show in the next section, instead of
trying to refute skepticism, Cavell’s goal is rather to make explicit the existential
costs involved in the standing human possibility of repudiating our criteria – ul-
timately, the radical privacy it would imply.
Nothing I have said so far would be exactly news to Stroud,²⁴² although I
think I have been emphasizing important aspects of Cavell’s argument that do
not receive their due attention in Stroud’s reconstruction. As it often happens,
I take it that this modification of emphasis makes all the difference when it
comes to an assessment of the upshot of Cavell’s argument. In his own assess-
ment, Stroud confesses a disappointment, claiming that the argument is anti-cli-
matic.²⁴³ But what did he miss exactly? One thing he seems to miss, as I ex-

 See Hammer 2002, 53.

 Here is Stroud’s summary of Cavell’s criticism: “Cavell contributes the idea that, in the con-
crete case that the philosopher offers as the ‘best’ kind of case by which the adequacy of the
sensory basis of our knowledge can be tested, no actual claim is being made. ‘The philosopher’s
context is non-claim’, Cavell says; ‘no concrete claim is ever entered as part of the traditional
investigation’ ([CR] p. 217). The philosopher imagines a claim to have been made in a context
he specifies (e. g. sitting by the fire with a piece of paper in his hand) and he then goes on to
examine the grounds for that imagined claim in that context. But that is not to imagine a
real situation in which a real knowledge-claim is made. Since the examples considered and sub-
jected to assessment as best cases of knowledge are not really examples in which a claim is
made, there is nothing for the philosopher’s bases to be the bases of. So the philosopher has
not discovered anything when he thinks he has discovered that sense-experience is an inade-
quate basis for knowledge as a whole.” (Stroud 2000, 59)
 See Stroud 2000, 59.
172 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

pressed above, is a general theory of the conditions for claiming something. In-
stead of a detailed theory, all that Cavell offers according to Stroud is “the gen-
eral point, insisted on again and again by Austin and ordinary language philos-
ophers, that saying something, stating something, asking something, claiming
something, and so on, all have their conditions”,²⁴⁴ yet Cavell never identifies
those conditions in a systematic and detailed way.²⁴⁵ Besides, even if he could
provide such a story, one could still argue that claiming is too strong a require-
ment, in that all the Cartesian skeptic really needs is to believe, surmise, assume,
think or have any other “attitude” relative to a state of affairs such that he could
later assess or review its reliability.²⁴⁶
Both objections, in my view, miss the target, and are based on misconstruals
of Cavell’s philosophical enterprise. Concerning the latter, I do not think any-
thing of importance depends on the supposedly stronger requirement for claims
instead of any other attitudes. As I understand it, Cavell’s interest is much more
general, and has to do with the Wittgensteinian question of whether or not a par-
ticular move in our language-games (be it a claim, a surmise, a thought, or any
other propositional attitude) has a point, or else becomes an “idle gear”. I will
illustrate this point briefly by taking Moore’s well-know “practical example” of
showing an envelope to his audience as a test case,²⁴⁷ and then I will come
back to the first, more general objection.
In his Some Main Problems of Philosophy, Moore investigates what we should
say when we see a specific, concrete material object, such as the envelope he is
holding, in good light, before his audience; his initial proposal is that in such

 See Stroud 2000, 60.

 Or again: “But is it true that ‘no concrete claim is ever entered’ in, say, Descartes’s assess-
ment of his knowledge? The thing to do would be to look carefully at Descartes’s reflections and
see whether there is a claim to know something there or not. The quite general fact that assert-
ing, remarking, claiming, offering a basis for a claim, and so on, all have their own special con-
ditions is not enough to establish the point. We would have to know what the conditions of
claiming something are, and why they must be fulfilled in order for a claim to be made, before
going on to show that not all those conditions could be present in the kind of examples the phi-
losopher considers. And an account of claiming alone, as opposed to judging or believing or as-
serting or assuming, and so on, would not be enough. It would have to be shown that the con-
ditions of none of the ways of saying something or thinking something that could serve the
philosopher’s purposes could be fulfilled in the kind of example he must rely on. But what
are all the ways of saying something or thinking something that could serve the philosopher’s
purposes? That is what a diagnosis along these lines would have to concentrate on – what
the philosopher aspires to, and why he cannot reach it.” (Stroud 1984, 261– 262)
 See Stroud 1984, 263 and 2000, 61.
 See Moore 1953, 29. This case is analyzed by both Cavell (CR 219) and Stroud (2000, 62– 63).
 6.2 Cavell and Stroud on skepticism and meaning 173

cases “[w]e should certainly say (if you have looked at it) that we all saw that
envelope”.²⁴⁸ In examining such a seemingly trivial (and trivially true) assertion,
Cavell compares it to Descartes’s equally (and equally deceptive) “simple re-
quest”, at the beginning of the Meditations, for his reader to imagine herself seat-
ed by the fire, attired in a dressing gown, having a paper in her hands, etc., and
concludes that both Moore and Descartes fall short of presenting bona fide
claims to knowledge, given that the scenarios they and other traditional episte-
mologists ask us to imagine are actually “non-claim contexts” (CR 218). In sup-
port of that view Cavell reminds us that “to ask us to imagine a situation in
which we are seated before the fire is not to ask us to imagine that we have
claimed (to know or believe) that we are seated before the fire” (CR 217– 218),
or again, in the case of Moore, “‘should say’ here only means: there are occa-
sions on which we would in fact say this, claim it. But this is not one of
them” (CR 219); actually, as Cavell indicates, taken literally Moore’s suggestion
that we should certainly claim, if we looked at the envelope, that we all saw it
is simply mad: “it suggests that whenever any of us sees anything we claim to
see it, e. g., that flower, its shadow, this sheet of paper, the piano as I look up,
etc. – everything catches our attention, every moment” (CR 219; my italics).
In his assessment of Cavell’s criticism, Stroud protests against him that
Moore is not making the “mad” suggestion that in a case like that we would
all claim to be seeing an envelope; according to Stroud Moore’s purpose is
only to make explicit the “uncontroversial fact that [this] is a case of everyone’s
seeing the envelope”, or again that “Moore was simply getting his audience to
see the envelope, and to agree that it is a case of seeing an envelope.”²⁴⁹
Hence his criticism:

If the case does not have to be imagined from the outset as one in which a claim is made or
is in the offing, then I do not see how Cavell’s point that the philosopher’s context is “non-
claim” can itself stop the philosophical investigation from getting off the ground. His point
in the case of knowledge is that since no concrete claim is entered in the philosophical
case, it is not really a case of knowing. But would he say the same thing about this case
of seeing? Is it at all plausible to say that since no concrete claim is entered, it is not really
a case of seeing? I think we are all strongly inclined to say, as I am, that if that’s not seeing
an envelope then I don’t know what is, and if I want to understand seeing, that is just the
sort of thing I want to understand. (Stroud 2000, 63)

 Moore 1953, 30.

 Stroud 2000, 63.
174 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

In this context Stroud is making a Clarkian point about “twin-sentences”,²⁵⁰

namely that it is quite possible to assert perfectly legitimately and unproblemati-
cally in everyday situations sentences that “sound like” the general propositions
philosophers are concerned to assert or to deny in their (extra-ordinary) treat-
ment.²⁵¹ Now, given that (i) those are sentences that can be legitimately made/
claimed in (some) ordinary situations, and (ii) they are general, Cavell’s thesis
that the philosopher’s context is non-claim must be wrong, according to Stroud.
That does not mean, as Stroud himself emphasizes, that Cavell’s diagnosis fails,
but it would imply that a further step is necessary, showing that even if a “mun-
dane assertion of philosophical-sounding general remarks” is legitimate “what
was true of that claim in that context could not possibly be taken as a conclusion
that is representative of our knowledge as a whole in the way the philosopher
intends”.²⁵²
I think Cavell would not need to accept this challenge; the crucial question
here is whether Moore is really making a “mundane assertion of philosophical-
sounding general remarks” when he, in that particular context, utters (or writes,
or thinks, or surmises) those particular words about seeing the envelope in his
hands. Cavell’s effort is to show, at the very least, that it is not clear that this
is the case (or, in Clarke’s terms, that it is not clear whether Moore is using
his words as “plain” or as “philosophical common-sense”;²⁵³ if the latter, Cavell
might be right; if the former, then a fuller story has to be told, justifying the use
by Moore of those words in that situation, and it will not do as such a story sim-
ply to say: “I am here doing philosophy”,²⁵⁴ since what is at stake is precisely the
legitimacy of a particular way of “doing philosophy”²⁵⁵).
Now since Stroud has obviously read Cavell’s analysis of Moore’s case very
carefully, and yet was not convinced by his assessment of the situation, I propose
we turn our attention to another, analogous case, also designed by Cavell to help
us see what the commitments are that serious speech exacts upon us – call it the

 See Clarke 1972, 756.

 See Stroud 2000, 64.
 Stroud 2000, 66.
 Clarke 1972, 759.
 I am here thinking of Wittgenstein’s anecdote in On Certainty: “I am sitting with a philos-
opher in the garden; he says again and again ‘I know that that’s a tree’, pointing to a tree that is
near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: ‘This fellow isn’t insane. We are only
doing philosophy.’” (OC §467)
 I myself would side with Clarke, for whom Moore is an inveterate “philosopher’s plain man:
he drags us down from our ivory towers, we reflective, ethereal beings, back to our earthly
selves, and confronts us with the plainness of what we do believe as plain men” (Clarke 1972,
758).
 6.2 Cavell and Stroud on skepticism and meaning 175

parable of the green jar. The parable begins with Cavell asking precisely “when
are we ‘knowing something’?”; it then goes on like this:

Do I know (now) (am I, as it were knowing) that there is a green jar of pencils on the desk
(though I am not now looking at it)? If I do know now, did I not know before I asked the
question? I had not, before then, said that or thought it; but that is perhaps not relevant. If
someone had asked me whether the jar was on the desk I could have said Yes without look-
ing. So I did know. But what does it mean to say “I did know”? Of course no one will say
that I did not know (that I wasn’t knowing). On the other hand, no one would have said of
me, seeing me sitting at my desk with the green jar out of my range of vision, “He knows
there is a green jar of pencils on the desk”, nor would anyone say of me now, “He (you)
knew there was a green jar …”, apart from some special reason which makes that description
of my “knowledge” relevant to something I did or said or am doing or saying (e. g., I told
someone that I never keep pencils on my desk; I knew that Mrs. Greenjar was coming to
tea and that she takes it as a personal affront if there is a green jar visible in the room …).

Perhaps one feels: “What difference does it make that no one would have said, without a
special reason for saying it, that you knew the green jar was on the desk? You did know it;
it’s true to say that you knew it. Are you suggesting that one sometimes cannot say what is
true?” What I am suggesting is that “Because it is true” is not a reason or basis for saying
anything, it does not constitute the point of your saying something; and I am suggesting
that there must, in grammar, be reasons for what you say, or be point in your saying of
something, if what you say is to be comprehensible. We can understand what the words
mean apart from understanding why you say them; but apart from understanding the
point of your saying them we cannot understand what you mean. (CR 205 – 206)

Since the last part of this passage has been often misunderstood,²⁵⁶ and since it
is quoted by Stroud in a somewhat decontextualized way, I would like to start my
analysis by making some general points of clarification. First, what I take Cavell
to be saying when he distinguishes the meaning of “words themselves” and the
point of saying them is, basically, that “words themselves” have meaning (the
meaning a good dictionary gives) to the extent that we can imagine any number
of situations or contexts in which those words with those meanings could be put
into use by particular speakers, for particular purposes. Meaning in that (diction-
ary) sense is therefore an abstraction, but meaning in a more robust sense is the
use made in concrete situations. (I take this to be one of the main lessons Cavell
inherited from both Wittgenstein and from Clarke.) Hence, and this is my second
clarification, one should be careful not to take Cavell to be claiming (as some
commentators did) that there are (determinate, specifiable) things we are not al-
lowed to say, although we know exactly what the words employed in the purport-
ed claim mean. No such separation between semantics and pragmatics is forth-

 About the misunderstanding, see Conant 2005.

176 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

coming in Cavell’s (and, I take it, Wittgenstein’s) work. On the contrary, the prob-
lem with the interlocutor’s suggestion that Cavell “knows there is a green jar in
front of him” is precisely that we don’t know what is meant/said there (in partic-
ular what the word “know” is supposed to mean there). To grasp the grammar of
his words is precisely to grasp the point of his saying them here and now, to grasp
their role or contribution given the set of commitments and interests that consti-
tutes our shared form of life. Hence Cavell’s siding with Wittgenstein’s way of ap-
pealing to “what we ordinarily say”, and not with Moore’s (or Austin’s).²⁵⁷
The tempting picture to be counteracted here is one in which our language
or grammar could accomplish (shared) meaning without our contribution. The
problem of the interlocutor in the parable above is precisely this kind of evasion:
he wants his words to have a meaning independently of what he means by them
in that particular context. His failure has less to do with “breaking grammatical
rules” or deviating from the “dictionary meaning” of the words he employs; the
problem is that those words, as uttered in that imaginary context, are completely
severed from the practices and forms of life that could give them any purchase,
and thus lack any clear purpose.
Having that in mind, let us go back to Moore’s envelope one last time, as
well as to Stroud’s objection that any attitude weaker than claiming would suf-
fice for a (Cartesian) skeptic. Here is Cavell’s preemptive defense:

“But”, someone will still feel, “all these statements are true, and it is outrageous to say that
they ‘cannot’ be said. Surely you can simply remark something without that being some-
thing the person may not have known.” This just means: for an utterance to be a “remark”
(for it to remark something) is an alternative way of its achieving competence as an asser-
tion (alternative to its being intended to tell someone something). And to remark something
equally has its conditions. Of course you may “simply remark” or note or register the pres-

 “[…] the emphasis [in Wittgenstein’s work] is less on the ordinariness of an expression
(which seems mostly to mean, from Moore to Austin, an expression not used solely by philos-
ophers) than on the fact that they are said (or, of course, written) by human beings, to human
beings, in definite contexts, in a language they share: hence the obsession with the use of ex-
pressions. ‘The meaning is the use’ calls attention to the fact that what an expression means
is a function of what it is used to mean or to say on specific occasions by human beings.
That such an obvious fact should assume the importance it does is itself surprising. And to
trace the intellectual history of philosophy’s concentration on the meaning of particular
words and sentences, in isolation from a systematic attention to their concrete uses would be
a worthwhile undertaking. It is a concentration one of whose consequences is the traditional
search for the meaning of a word in various realms of objects, another of which is the idea of
perfect understanding as being achievable only through the construction of a perfect language.
A fitting title for this history would be: Philosophy and the Rejection of the Human.” (CR 206 –
207)
 6.2 Cavell and Stroud on skepticism and meaning 177

ence of something, or that something is so. But that does not mean that just anything, just
any time, can (grammatically, comprehensibly) be remarked […]. That in certain contexts
“anything and everything” can be remarked or contemplated […] may be true (though we
might try imagining what it would be like to remark the relation of two grains of sand
on a beach, or to contemplate a crumpled handkerchief, or to become absorbed in a pin
– I don’t say you can’t). My point is only that where some special context is required, it
must be supplied, imagined. (CR 210 – 211)

The same goes for surmising, thinking, assuming, believing …, all of which have
their conditions of (full) intelligibility. So, going back to the green jar and the en-
velope cases, no matter what attitude one is dealing with, the right question to
ask is whether we can supply or imagine special contexts in which their linguis-
tic expression would have a point. Cavell is of course not arguing we cannot do
so.²⁵⁸ The problem is to think we do not even need to try – a thought connected
with the (Clarkian) picture of “the philosopher as Recording Angel, outside the
world, neither affecting it nor affected by it, taking stock” (CR 210 – 211).
I hope these considerations are sufficient to show that nothing in Cavell’s
argument relies in any fundamental way on his emphasis on the conditions
for claiming, as opposed to any other number of propositional attitudes. His is
a vision about the conditions of making sense, or making legitimate moves in
our language-games, and it stands or falls according to how accurate one
takes that vision to be.
Let us now go back to Stroud’s first, more general objection, which had to do
with the alleged absence of a theory of the conditions of claiming. Given what I
just said, I hope I am entitled to the suggestion that it would be fairer to revise it,
targeting not that specific absence but rather the absence of a theory for the con-
ditions of making sense. Thus revised, I take it that what the objection would say
is true: no such theory is forthcoming in Cavell’s work. Only that will not seem
problematic for someone convinced of the fecundity of philosophical procedures
which are not parasitic on anything like a theory of meaning, but rather on the

 “[…] of course it needn’t at all be odd to say, ‘He knows there is a green jar on the desk.’ It
may, e. g., be a way of saying ‘That’s all he knows’ (I haven’t told him about Mrs. Greenjar’s sen-
sitivity; or, he’s too stupid, or callous, to care about the implications of his actions). And here
‘know’ contrasts with something he does not know or realize, as it does normally. Or it might
be an exasperated way of saying ‘He ought to know better’ (than to put a green jar in the
same room with my pet bull). And here ‘know’ contrasts with something he might be expected
to know or remember. To take a statement to be competently made is to provide for it a context
(‘fix reality’ if necessary) in which it would make good sense (not be ‘odd’) to say it. The philos-
opher’s progress then appears to be this: first to deprive a statement of such a context, then to
fix reality, or construct a theory, which provides this sense another way.” (CR 211– 212)
178 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

authority that any competent user of ordinary language can claim to possess (a
point that is connected to the “Wittgensteinian vision of language” that Cavell
articulates in the first part of The Claim of Reason). About this kind of authority,
this is what Cavell has to say:

The philosopher appealing to everyday language turns to the reader not to convince him
without proof but to get him to prove something, test something, against himself. He is say-
ing: Look and find out whether you can see what I see, wish to say what I wish to say. Of
course he often seems to answer or beg his own question by posing it in plural form: “We
say …; We want to say …; We can imagine …; […] We are dissatisfied ….” But this plural is
still first person: it does not, to use Kant’s word, “postulate” that “we”, you and I and he,
say and want and imagine and feel and suffer together. If we do not, then the philosopher’s
remarks are irrelevant to us. Of course he doesn’t think they are irrelevant, but the impli-
cation is that philosophy, like art, is, and should be, powerless to prove its relevance; and
that says something about the kind of relevance it wishes to have. All the philosopher, this
kind of philosopher, can do is to express, as fully as he can, his world, and attract our un-
divided attention to our own. (MWM 96)

Now I see no better way of defending those procedures than showing their re-
sults when applied to particular cases, which in turn might hopefully serve as
models to be applied to further cases, but not because of a supporting general
theory. The application is precisely not wholesale but retail, piecemeal. Hence
my emphasis on the details of his analysis of one particular case of skeptical ar-
gument, having to do with our supposed incapacity to see “the whole object”.
Nothing in that diagnosis (for example, the indication of a picture of objects
as moons and subjects as fixed geometrical points, the separation of action
and perception, etc.) can be directly applied to Descartes claim that “I am here
seated by the fire …”, but noticing that such a claim sounds a lot like Moore’s
“I have an envelope in my hand”, which in turn sounds a lot like the “I know
there is a green jar on the table” might as well suffice to encourage further inves-
tigation. Or so I hope.

6.3 Cavell and Stroud on the truth in skepticism

Around this juncture we need to turn to one of the most difficult and controver-
sial but also more fundamental aspects of Cavell’s philosophy: his view about
the truth in skepticism. Stroud summarizes that view (quoting a passage from
CR 241) as follows:

For Cavell, what we learn from a demonstration of the traditional sceptical philosopher’s
failure to give sense, or the right kind of sense, to his words, is that “the human creature’s
 6.3 Cavell and Stroud on the truth in skepticism 179

basis in the world as a whole, its relation to the world as such, is not that of knowing, any-
way not what we think of as knowing.” (Stroud 2000, 66)

Having summarized that view, Stroud’s first concern is to identify the Cavellian
alternative for a human creature’s “relation to the world as such”: if knowing is
not the ground for that relation, what is it? Stroud points out that The Claim of
Reason does not answer that question directly, but that in an earlier essay (“The
Avoidance of Love”, reprinted in MWM), Cavell names that relation accept-
ance. ²⁵⁹ From then on Stroud presents a series of questions designed to problem-
atize this notion, pressing Cavell to give a more detailed characterization of that
relation. The following passage is illustrative in this connection:

First, I do not see how any such “thesis” or “moral” can avoid being “sceptical” in just that
sense of the term in which Cavell rightly applied it to all those views which make good
sense only on the basis of ideas that are invented and sustained by scepticism itself.
What is “the world as a whole” or “the world as such”, and what is a creature’s “basis”
in that world, or its “relation” to it? And why is there thought to be only one such “relation”,
or anyway one basic “relation”? These ideas can perhaps be given content with the help of
Descartes’s First Meditation or some other traditional investigation of our relation to what
comes to be called “the world around us.” But if I agree that that investigation cannot get
off the ground, and for the reasons that Cavell has in mind, then I am no longer sure that I
can fill those ideas with the sense they must have if the “moral” Cavell wants to draw from
scepticism is to be intelligible. So one question I would ask Cavell is: why is his “moral” not
still “sceptical” in that sense? (Stroud 2000, 67– 68)

What Stroud is asking in this passage, in short, is whether one can give a non-
skeptical meaning to the central notions involved in Cavell’s alternative story
about our relation to the world and others – that is, a meaning that does not
lead one to indulge in the traditional (skeptical) craving for a general, wholesale
and infallible justification for our claims to know those “things”. To my mind this
is a formidable challenge, and it is my hope that in trying to meet it, taking my
bearings from other parts of Cavell’s work, we may arrive at a better understand-
ing of what exactly is the truth in skepticism.
Stroud’s own assessment of Cavell’s stance is of course negative – it “re-
mains too close to traditional philosophy” and hence it should be discarded
by Cavell’s own lights, after all:

[i]t implies that, although the traditional philosopher was wrong, he was not very far
wrong. He had the right conception of “us”, and of “the world as a whole”, and of there
being one, or one basic, “relation” between them, but he happened to pick on the wrong

 See Stroud 2000, 67.

180 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

“relation.” He thought it was knowledge, but it isn’t – it is “acceptance.” And he thought we

knew other minds in general; but we don’t, we “acknowledge” them. But it appears that the
traditional philosopher was right about everything else. (Stroud 2000, 68)

In order to begin counteracting that assessment, I would like to call attention to

two fundamental disanalogies between what Stroud calls “the traditional pic-
ture” regarding the central notions under analysis and Cavell’s picture, which
I will then clarify in what follows:
– First, acceptance (of the world) and acknowledgment (of other minds)
should not be construed as merely epistemic relations. This becomes clear
when we realize that although their respective “failures” (namely, the fail-
ures to accept the world or to acknowledge other minds) might result in
an absence of knowledge of those “objects”, they amount first and foremost
to existential or practical stances one might take toward them.
– Second, “the world” referred to by Cavell when formulating his alternative
view is also not to be construed as something like a (Cartesian) “Big Object”
to be accessed in some way by a (Cartesian) “Subject”; when Cavell says, in
an earlier context of The Claim of Reason, that the skeptical conclusion that
“we do not know with certainty of the existence of the external world (or of
other minds)” is true and undeniable (see CR 45), it is worth recalling that
what is true and undeniable is precisely that our relationship with the
world as a whole and with others in general should not be interpreted as
the possession of certainty about those “entities”. If we are to take Cavell’s
aim of presenting a fundamentally different picture of our relation to the
world seriously, then we should expect our understanding of the relata
themselves to be transformed. This is the most Heideggerian strand in The
Claim of Reason, and I take it that it has not impressed Stroud sufficiently
as such.²⁶⁰

That said, I take it that Stroud’s question – as to whether one can offer a more
positive account of the nature of our relationship to “the world as a whole” – is
quite fair. At the very least it expresses a concern that I myself cannot help rais-
ing when reflecting about these matters. I will start moving in the direction of
offering such an account by drawing a parallel exploring Cavell’s respective di-

 Interestingly, Stroud acknowledges the bond with Heidegger in a footnote added in 1999 to
the version of “Reasonable Claims” reprinted in Stroud 2000, 67, fn. 41; yet that recognition does
not seem to be taken to heart in the content of his critical analysis, which remains, as far as I can
see, fundamentally unchanged.
 6.3 Cavell and Stroud on the truth in skepticism 181

agnoses of skepticism about the external world and skepticism about other
minds side by side.
Notice, first, that both skeptical problems have been traditionally presented
as concerning the justification for certain cognitive claims or beliefs – in the for-
mer case, those referring to external objects, in the latter the mental contents of
other persons. In both cases Cavell’s diagnostic procedure amounts to showing
that there is confusion in the very formulation of these “problems”. The diagno-
sis and subsequent reinterpretation he proposes calls our attention to the prac-
tical or existential difficulties, albeit repressed or sublimated, underlying the the-
oretical puzzles with which epistemology has been traditionally concerned.
Taking skepticism about other minds as a starting point,²⁶¹ Cavell’s main move
is to show that underlying the formulation of that problem is a distorted concep-
tion of the concepts of “inner” and “outer”, on the one hand, and of human be-
havior, on the other. According to that distorted picture, the “outer” would be
identified with (mere) behavior, i. e., with (mere) mechanical movement of our
bodies, which would thus be placed in the category of physical or material
things; the “inner”, on the other hand, would be characterized as private and
hidden, or, at best, as indirectly observable, something, therefore, that would
be beyond, behind or inside our bodies. Given that picture, the problem of
other minds can be easily identified, as it has traditionally been, with the (meta-
physical and epistemological) difficulty to get into the mind of others, hence
going beyond what the perception of their bodies and their behavior make (di-
rectly) available.
Following Wittgenstein’s footsteps, Cavell radically challenges that picture of
the relationship between the “inner”/“outer” and human behavior. For starters,
the “ontological cut” proposed by these authors is not between body and mind,
but between living (animated) bodies and non-living (inanimate) ones. As a re-
sult, the vision of the relationship between body (the “outer”) and mind (the
“inner”) also undergoes a fundamental change: animated bodies are not to be
seen as something that stands between me and the minds of others, but rather
as that which gives expression to those minds. (Analogously, meaningful words
do not stand between me and their meaning – meaning just is what gets ex-
pressed by words used by competent speakers in suitable contexts.) The problem
of other minds is not exactly solved (or even dissolved) in this way, but only re-
interpreted: instead of a theoretical (metaphysical and/or epistemological) prob-
lem, it is now seen as a difficulty that is essentially practical: what can hide the

 What follows is a condensed version of the analysis presented in more detail in chapter 5.
182 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

mind of the other is not her body as such, but my attitude towards it, my refusal
to let its expressivity impress me, make a claim upon me. In Cavell’s own words:

The block to my vision of the other is not the other’s body but my incapacity or unwilling-
ness to interpret or to judge it accurately, to draw the right connections. The suggestion is: I
suffer a kind of blindness, but I avoid the issue by projecting this darkness upon the other.
(CR 368)

This consideration raises the question of what exactly could motivate someone
to “avoid the issue” – the responsibility of interpreting human behavior accu-
rately, acknowledging its meaning and significance – preferring instead to intel-
lectualize it, as if it were a (mere) problem of knowledge. As Cavell argued in his
insightful reading of Shakespeare’s King Lear (referred to by Stroud), one possi-
ble motivation is that “recognizing a person depends upon allowing oneself to
be recognized by him” (MWM 279); in other words, acknowledgment implicates
oneself, even exposes oneself – so, for example,

your suffering makes a claim upon me. It is not enough that I know (am certain) that you
suffer – I must do or reveal something (whatever can be done). In a word, I must acknowl-
edge it, otherwise I do not know what “(your or his) being in pain” means. Is. (MWM 263)

Of course sympathy is not the only way of acknowledging suffering – indiffer-

ence and sadistic pleasure are equally possible, among many other (all-too-
human) responses. But the point is, whatever the response, it will implicate
and expose oneself (one’s values, one’s character, one’s identity) to the gaze
of the other, and that might (understandably) make one anxious. In order to
avoid that burden one can always close oneself to the claims of others, and
an effective, “wholesale” way of doing that is to reinterpret the entire situation
in theoretical terms, transforming concrete, singular, practical difficulties of ac-
knowledgment into one (Big) problem of knowledge. (Another, less theoretical
and more tragic way of avoiding those difficulties by reinterpreting them in epis-
temological terms was shared, according to Cavell, by Lear, Othello, Macbeth
and Hamlet, “one crazed by knowledge he can neither test nor reject, one haunt-
ed by knowledge whose authority he cannot impeach, one cursed by knowledge
he cannot share” (MWM 325).)
Let us now compare this diagnosis with Cavell’s analysis of the distorted pic-
ture of our relationship with objects that lies at the basis of skepticism about the
external world (see section 6.2 above). There too an attempt was made to con-
vince us of the need to overcome a picture underlying traditional epistemology,
including skepticism’s own self-interpretation, according to which our primary
contact with the world would be that of a motionless spectator passively looking
 6.3 Cavell and Stroud on the truth in skepticism 183

at (surfaces or parts of) objects; the alternative is to remind us that we are em-
bodied minds (or animated bodies) who can (must?) seize the world practically as
a world of things that are useful and accessible for human projects (“ready-to-
hand”, to use a Heideggerian phrase). Hence the need for a completely rede-
signed picture not only of our own nature – as embodied perceivers and agents
instead of “Cartesian minds” – but also of “the world”, which becomes the name
for the set of aspects of our experience that are highlighted by a particular sort of
interaction, given particular purposes and interests. In this sense one could per-
haps say that the (lived, real) world also makes claims upon ourselves, and it is
our responsibility to interpret those claims accurately, imbuing the things with
which we interact with adequate human value – i. e., whatever value is due to
them given their role in our shared practices, in our form(s) of life. But again,
analogously to the case of other minds, community (finding that we share a
set of values and practices) is not always forthcoming: I might always discover
that I am different, hence that my world is different (in this or that particular as-
pect), and that also can make me anxious, so much so that I might prefer to
avoid the issue by projecting my confusion and disappointment upon the
world, or upon the human capacity to know the world (as such).
Perhaps one simple illustration might help understand this general point.
We sometimes talk of “the world of ”, where “ ” can be replaced by the
name of a particular set of human practices, such as the world of academia,
the world of fashion, the world of politics, the world of business, etc. Take the
former as a test case: living in the world of academia (feeling at home within
it) involves being able to interact in different ways with different people (stu-
dents, faculty, staff …), as well as being capable of using different “tools of
the trade” (books, blackboards, chalk, projectors …). Now think of what refusing
or avoiding such a world would look like: clearly it would not amount merely to
getting outside a place (although it might include something like that) but rather
to a rebuke or renouncement of a set of practices and commitments which previ-
ously gave meaning and purpose to our actions, perhaps in favor of another one.
If “world” is understood along these lines (roughly as a horizon of meaning),
then “denying its existence” (which is the intellectualized understanding of its
abandonment, better suiting the skeptic’s own self-interpretation), although al-
ways possible, will imply adopting a particular attitude towards one’s own expe-
rience, practices, commitments and fellow human beings, an attitude which ul-
timately may isolate oneself from the world and others. But again, this isolation,
which is something one is at least partially responsible to create, is always apt to
be intellectualized, becoming a “discovery” about the existence of a (metaphys-
ical and epistemological) gap between oneself and the “external world”. This
184 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

does not mean the gap itself is an illusion – it might be very real; only this in-
tellectualized understanding will deflect its real causes.
Given the considerations above I hope it will become clear that, contrary to
what Stroud seems to suggest, acknowledgment and acceptance are not to be
seen as alternative relations to the world and to others, but rather as inflections
of a relation (call it “at–homeness”) that might in many occasions be experienced
as one of knowledge (or its absence, say ignorance).²⁶² The advantage of reinter-
preting our stance toward the world and others as Cavell does is to show that
“what stands in the way of further knowledge is knowledge itself, as it stands,
as it conceives of itself”.²⁶³ In other words, it is by adopting a cognitive stance
in which I relate to the world and to others as if they were mere sources of evi-
dence, which as such might or might not give me certainty, that I isolate myself,
avoiding my own responsibility in establishing other sorts of relationships.
Knowledge of the external world and of other minds can in this way be prevent-
ed, only not by ignorance, but by “a refusal of knowledge, a denial, or a repres-
sion of knowledge, say even a killing of it”.²⁶⁴ What I deny or repress this way is
something I cannot (simply) fail to know, namely that my very being in the world
and among other people comes with responsibilities for how to respond to the
claims they make upon me. Trying to avoid that responsibility, as Cavell never
tires of reminding us, is part of what it means being a human being, and to pre-
serve the truth in skepticism is to prevent that realization from getting repressed
or displaced. Skepticism is thus seen as “the central secular place, in which the
human wish to deny the condition of human existence is expressed; and so long

 This is a point Cavell explicitly presents in the Introduction to IQO, in what impresses me as
an almost direct response to Stroud’s criticisms.
 “But I do not propose the idea of acknowledging as an alternative to knowing but rather as
an interpretation of it, as I take the word ‘acknowledge’, containing ‘knowledge’, itself to suggest
(or perhaps it suggests that knowing is an interpretation of acknowledging). In an essay on the
tragedy of King Lear I say, ‘For the point of forgoing knowledge is, of course, to know’ (‘The
Avoidance of Love’, p. 325), as if what stands in the way of further knowledge is knowledge it-
self, as it stands, as it conceives of itself; something not unfamiliar in the history of knowledge
as expressed in the history of science. Otherwise the concept of acknowledgment would not have
its role in the progress of tragedy.” (IQO 8)
 “In incorporating, or inflecting, the concept of knowledge, the concept of acknowledgment
is meant, in my use, to declare that what there is to be known philosophically remains unknown
not through ignorance (for we cannot just not know what there is to be known philosophically,
for example, that there is a world and I and others in it) but through a refusal of knowledge, a
denial, or a repression of knowledge, say even a killing of it. The beginning of skepticism is the
insinuation of absence, of a line, or limitation, hence the creation of want, or desire; the crea-
tion, as I have put it, of the interpretation of metaphysical finitude as intellectual lack. (So
speaks serpentine infinity.)” (IQO 51)
 6.4 Coda 185

as the denial is essential to what we think of as the human, skepticism cannot,

or must not, be denied” (IQO 5).
The intended upshot of these considerations is that it would be mistaken to
interpret the thesis of the “truth of skepticism” (the view that the presence of the
world for us is not a function of knowledge, but of acceptance) as an (alternative)
solution to the “skeptical problem”. If that were the case, Stroud would be right
in pointing out that such a thesis would simply beg the real question. What Cav-
ell wants to show instead is “not only that there is no such a solution, [but] that
to think otherwise is skepticism’s own self-interpretation” (CHU 35). As Espen
Hammer clarifies:

What the skeptic seeks is a relation to the world for which the individual is no longer ac-
countable – an absolute presence beyond the vicissitudes of having to establish a connec-
tion between what I say and the object before me. So to think there is a solution to skep-
ticism is to give in to it – accept the skeptic’s vision of our predicament. (Hammer 2002, 57)

Does that mean skepticism is simply “irrefutable”? I assume Cavell’s considered

view on the matter is that there might be provisional and topical ways to over-
come skepticism, only those will not occur within (what we presently think of
as) philosophy.²⁶⁵

6.4 Coda

In the Preface of The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Stroud points out

different senses of the word “significance” in his book’s title, one of which would
be to indicate something about our nature:

We can also speak of the significance of something in the sense of what it signifies or what
it indicates or what it shows. In that way too, perhaps above all, I am interested in the sig-
nificance of philosophical scepticism. Even if the thesis means nothing, or not what it
seems to mean, can the study of scepticism about the world around us nevertheless reveal
something deep or important about human knowledge or human nature or the urge to un-
derstand them philosophically? I am pretty sure that the answer is “Yes”, but I do not get as
far as I would like towards showing why that is so. (Stroud 1984, ix)

 Things would be different if philosophy could itself become literature and still know itself –
or so Cavell suggests in the final paragraph of The Claim of Reason (CR 496).
186 6 Taking skepticism seriously: Stroud and Cavell

It is my hope that the comparison pursued in this chapter, between the two phi-
losophers who have done most to show skepticism’s seriousness in our time, can
make a small contribution to that end.
7 Skepticism, perfectionism, and the limits of
morality
7.1 Introduction

In this final chapter we will explore some skeptical difficulties concerning the
very possibility of sharing moral standards, and of reaching agreement in
moral evaluations and arguments. The immediate provocation for this chapter
was a shocking claim made by Cavell when commenting on a sequence from
the movie Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. ²⁶⁶ The protagonist of this movie is Longfellow
Deeds (Gary Cooper), a simple countryside man who made a living by writing
poems for postcards until he unexpectedly inherited a fortune from a millionaire
uncle and moved to his mansion in New York. Deed’s story draws a lot of atten-
tion from the local press, which ends up nicknaming him “Cinderella Man”. In
the sequence that interests me Deeds goes out to dinner at a restaurant which
advertises that there you can “eat with the literati”. Inside the restaurant we
find a group of poets and writers who had read about Deeds, and that when in-
formed of his presence invite him to join them. Knowing that Deeds writes
poems, the intellectuals begin to ask questions about his writing methods in a
condescending and mocking tone. After a while Deeds realizes their true inten-
tions, and leaves the table shouting: “I guess I found out that all famous people
aren’t big people.” Two writers protest trying to prevent his departure, causing
Deeds to knock them both down by punching them.
With that sequence in mind, the first question I want to raise and address in
what follows is this: morally speaking, how are we supposed to assess Deeds’s
reaction? There seems to be no doubt that the writers acted wrongly, thus deserv-
ing some kind of rebuke; but what about the specific rebuke offered by Deeds,
namely knocking them down? Was it appropriate? In an abstract and decontex-
tualized analysis of the episode, it is likely that many of us would feel inclined to
condemn Deeds’s attitude; but if I may speak for those of us who recall the de-
tails surrounding this sequence, I think it will be all but inevitable to conclude
that at the very least Deeds was right and justified in expressing his indignation,
in one way or another. ²⁶⁷ Of course punching someone is a rather radical way to
do that, but then again we must remember that this was not Deeds’s first reac-

 Frank Capra, USA/Columbia, 1936.

 I describe here an impression shared by many other viewers who saw the film with me in
class.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110702859-010
188 7 Skepticism, perfectionism, and the limits of morality

tion, in that it was called for only after his ineffective attempt at verbally express-
ing indignation. But even leaving aside, at least for the moment, the question
concerning what are acceptable degrees of reaction, the more general point I
would like to explore in what follows is this: are there situations in our moral
discussions in which the morally and rationally proper attitude is to show indig-
nation (say), as opposed to continuing the dialogue?
One of the reasons why this question interests me is that it can help us ar-
ticulate some reminders about the nature and purpose of a moral discussion,
hence about the very nature of our practical rationality. Many philosophers
seem committed to a conception of moral reasoning that takes as its end rational
agreement among agents. Such a conception, taken literally, excludes (almost by
definition) the kind of outcome presented above from the scope of morality; from
that perspective, expressing indignation would just amount to an irrational way
of trying to get rid of the burdens put upon the agent’s shoulders in the context
of a moral argument. As we will see, however, the requirement of rational agree-
ment seems to be part of an unrealistic picture of our moral practices – a picture
which, if strictly thought through, would lead to skepticism concerning their very
possibility.
In a passage that alludes to the sequence I just described Cavell takes the
opposite stance, arguing that “to discover our community a few will have to
be punched out, made speechless in their efforts to usurp or devalue the speech
of others” (CW 207). In the remainder of this chapter I would like to explore some
of the main motivations behind that shocking claim, trying to clarify and defend,
if in a limited way, Cavell’s alternative conception of morality, which gets articu-
lated in some of his later works under the heading of “Emersonian perfection-
ism”.

7.2 What is the point of a moral argument?

In Part III of The Claim of Reason Cavell starts an investigation of the nature of
moral arguments by citing and commenting on the following passage from Pla-
to’s Euthyphro:

Socrates: But what kind of disagreement, my friend, causes hatred and anger? Let us look
at the matter thus. If you and I were to disagree as to whether one number were more than
another, would that make us angry and enemies? Should we not settle such a dispute at
once by counting?

Euthyphro: Of course.
 7.2 What is the point of a moral argument? 189

Socrates: And if we were to disagree as to the relative size of two things, we should measure
them and put an end to the disagreement at once, should we not?

Euthyphro: Yes.

[…]

Socrates: Then what is the question which would make us angry and enemies if we dis-
agreed about it, and could not come to a settlement? […] Is it not the question of the
just and unjust, of the honorable and the dishonorable, of the good and the bad? Is it
not questions about these matters which make you and me and everyone else quarrel,
when we do quarrel, if we differ about them and can reach no satisfactory agreement?
(apud CR 253)

In this excerpt of the dialogue Socrates points to a difference between mathemat-

ical and scientific discussions, on the one hand, and moral discussions on the
other. The crux of the difference has to do with the conditions for reaching agree-
ment in each case. Thus, if I and my interlocutor were in the midst of a dispute
concerning a certain magnitude, for example, and if we were both competent in
the practices of counting and measuring, we could overcome a disagreement
fairly easily. In most cases, however, disagreement about the best course of ac-
tion to be taken does not seem so simple to overcome. What is the reason for
this difference? Is it due to some peculiar difficulty in becoming morally compe-
tent? But exactly what kind of competence would that be? Would it be similar to
expertise in mathematics or in some empirical science, and if so, in what re-
spects? In particular, would it be a matter of acquiring more knowledge – say
knowledge of moral principles, rules or facts, or again about the meaning of
moral notions?
These issues have divided philosophers throughout history. Socrates himself
(at any rate, Plato’s Socrates) notoriously argued that knowledge is indeed the
basis of virtue, which implies that, at least in an ideal situation (in which two
agents were in the same cognitive level regarding the conditions for acting
well), rational disagreement would simply not be possible. Closer to our day
G. E. Moore may be cited as another example of moral cognitivist, and for
very similar reasons: according to his “intuitionist” position moral judgments
about “the good” (or any other moral notion) should, at least in principle,
agree as much as empirical judgments concerning the size of two objects.²⁶⁸
On the other side of this dispute are the non-cognitivist positions, such as
those advocated by the leading exponents of logical positivism in the early

 See Moore 1960.

190 7 Skepticism, perfectionism, and the limits of morality

20th century. A. J. Ayer can be taken as a representative. In Language, Truth and

Logic, Ayer argued that:

[…] ethical philosophy consists simply in saying that ethical concepts are pseudo-concepts
and therefore unanalysable. […] There cannot be such a thing as ethical science, if by eth-
ical science one means the elaboration of a “true” system of morals. For we have seen that,
as ethical judgments are mere expressions of feeling, there can be no way of determining
the validity of any ethical system. And, indeed, no sense in asking whether any such system
is true. (Ayer 1936, 168)

The dispute between cognitivism and non-cognitivism in ethics and metaethics

leads to what Stanley Bates has usefully characterized as an antinomy: cogniti-
vism implies a requirement for agreement among agents that seems absolutely
unrealistic; yet non-cognitivism seems completely inconsistent with our moral
practices. As Bates summarizes: “if the emotive theory were correct, then a per-
son’s use of ethical language would be either an act of bad faith or of alienation,
depending on whether he or she did believe that theory or did not.”²⁶⁹
As we know, the standard “solution” to antinomies amounts to showing that
there is a problematic assumption shared by both sides of the dispute, and this is
precisely the strategy adopted by Cavell in this particular case. The assumption
in question, although not always explicitly formulated in these terms, is that
“logic and, more particularly, science, provide the models for the rationality of
argument” (CR 260 – 261); or, in other words, the problematic assumption is
that a moral argument could only be considered rational if it had a structure sim-
ilar or analogous to deductive reasoning, “leading from premisses all parties ac-
cept, in steps all can follow, to an agreement upon a conclusion which all must
accept” (CR 254). Cognitivists like Moore (and before him Plato) make that as-
sumption and desperately try to show that moral reasoning can meet those re-
quirements, if at the cost of having to postulate a special, intuitive moral faculty;
non-cognitivists such as Ayer, on the other hand, also tacitly make that assump-
tion, but because they perceive that ordinary moral arguments fall short of the
standards of rationality employed in the context of scientific disputes, they
end up simply excluding morality from the realm of rational assessment, relegat-
ing it to the mere “expression of feelings”.
In agreement with Ayer and other non-cognitivists, Cavell thinks it is unre-
alistic to expect that moral arguments should lead to conclusions that everyone
must accept; but failure in reaching agreement about those conclusions does not
need to be taken as an index of a general failure of (practical) rationality, any

 Bates 2003, 22– 23.

 7.2 What is the point of a moral argument? 191

more than a failure in ordinary epistemic claims to know would show that
knowledge as such is impossible (a point established in parts I and II of CR,
and explored in the preceding chapters). Although the hope of reaching agree-
ment is an essential motivation in moral discussions – otherwise we would
not be taking seriously the views of our interlocutor – Cavell defends the legiti-
macy and value of rational disagreement about a course of action. This is possi-
ble because, in his view, what distinguishes rationality from irrationality in any
domain is not adherence to a specific set of procedures of justification (for exam-
ple, induction or deduction or whatever procedures are considered correct in
logic, mathematics and other sciences), but rather a commitment to follow the
standards considered appropriate in their respective domains, seeking to provide
support and justification for what we say or for how we act on the basis of that
commitment.
One of the distinctive features of scientific rationality is precisely the expect-
ation that competent users of its patterns of argument must agree in their conclu-
sions; in other words, the agreement itself is, in these cases, an index of compe-
tence, and hence of rationality. But there are other types of rationality, such as
those enacted in aesthetic and in moral discussions. In general, it can be said
that a discussion is rational to the extent that the judgments made by the inter-
locutors involved in it are supported by reasons (a grammatical triviality); but
nothing, short of a tacit commitment to an intellectualist or scientificist concep-
tion of rationality forces us to think that the ability to provide reasons should be
reduced to the ability to apply general principles to particular cases, or with the
ability to extract general rules from the experience of multiple instances. Kant
himself, who is usually considered a paradigmatic exponent of this intellectual-
ist conception of practical rationality, had already noticed the peculiarity of aes-
thetic judgments, whose operation does not follow inductive or deductive logic;
yet Kant by no means excluded those judgments from the scope of rationality, or
put into question their claim of objectivity or even universality.²⁷⁰ The kind of
competence that matters in the case of aesthetic judgments is a subject’s highly
developed ability to detect what we may call aesthetic saliences, i. e., objective
aspects or features of the phenomena that are grounding one’s experience,
but that may nonetheless go unnoticed for someone with a sensibility less at-
tuned to such aspects of reality. Cavell summarizes this point by saying that
“[t]he problem of the critic, as of the artist, is not to discount his subjectivity
but to include it; not to overcome it in agreement but to master it in exemplary
ways” (MWM 94). In this sense an aesthetic judgment can be seen as a critic’s

 See Kant 2007, especially §§7– 8 and §19.

192 7 Skepticism, perfectionism, and the limits of morality

invitation for others to share her experience of (e. g.) a work of art, and it is for
this reason that Cavell argues that:

It is essential to making an aesthetic judgment that at some point we be prepared to say in

its support: don’t you see, don’t you hear, don’t you dig? The best critic will know the best
points. Because if you do not see something, without explanation, then there is nothing fur-
ther to discuss. (MWM 93)

That last sentence is critical for my purposes; as Wittgenstein asserted in a dif-

ferent context “[e]xplanations come to an end somewhere” (PI §1), and knowing
when and how to stop in a specific context is also an important indication of a
subject’s competence in a particular domain of discussion.²⁷¹ I want to argue
that something similar applies to moral arguments, that being the reason why
they may end up abruptly, without this being a sign of irrationality. But in
order to arrive at this conclusion I first need to emphasize this important differ-
ence between the kinds of agreement expected in the respective fields of aesthet-
ics and of science: in the latter case agreement is ensured precisely by the exclu-
sion of subjectivity, while in the former agreement depends essentially on a
controlled or exemplar use of it. It is because of this difference that aesthetic
and moral arguments, unlike scientific ones, will allow their participants to un-
veil, for themselves and for others, intimate aspects of themselves, by articulat-
ing and making intelligible the positions they are adopting and by which they
are taking responsibility. Herein lies the interest, but also the risk which is pecu-
liar to aesthetic and moral discussions: they provide an important opportunity
for participants to develop their individuality and their identity, stimulating an
increase in self-knowledge as well as the construction or discovery of a commu-
nity; but agreement in those matters is not always forthcoming,²⁷² failure is al-
ways possible and it might result in the subject’s discovery of her own confusion
and opacity, which can in turn lead to rejection and ultimately to isolation.
Leaving aside the parallel with aesthetics for a moment, let us try to get
clearer about what kind of reasons are morally relevant, that is, what kinds of
considerations are legitimate and called for according to the standards of prac-
tical rationality. Cavell gives us a clue to answer that question in a passage in
which he criticizes Charles Stevenson’s metaethical position, precisely because
it does not provide a satisfying criterion for moral legitimacy, as it assumes
that the use of any statement is legitimate to the extent that it may change the

 It might go without saying, but clearly competence in mathematics and in other sciences
shares the same feature.
 As is agreement about the meaning of our words (see chapter 4).
 7.2 What is the point of a moral argument? 193

interlocutor’s attitudes in a moral discussion. The main problem with this posi-
tion, according to Cavell, is that its adoption involves treating the interlocutor
as a mere object to be manipulated, rather than as a person, “a creature with
commitments and cares” (CR 283). As Stephen Mulhall further clarifies:

for Cavell, a person’s commitments are not more or less external to her wants, positions, or
modes of conduct, but are rather implications of what she does and who she is. If, for ex-
ample, someone makes a promise then she is committed to performing a course of action;
should she fail to perform that action, then, in order to retain credibility as a moral agent,
she must explain why the circumstances in which she found herself justified her failure to
honour that commitment, why she could not have given advance warning to those relying
upon her promise, and so on. (Mulhall 1994, 37)

As an agent cannot simply fail to take seriously her own previous commitments,
on pain of being exiled from the moral realm, neither can a person be considered
morally responsible who seeks to criticize the behavior of another agent without
taking into account (or at least without making an effort to try to understand) the
commitments and concerns of that agent. In other words, competent moral eval-
uations should not focus excessively, let alone exclusively, on the set of actions
and choices of an agent at a given time, but should be made against the back-
ground of her previous cares and commitments. The mistake to be avoided is tak-
ing the identity of a moral being as a mere sum of (right or wrong) discrete ac-
tions or choices, and the alternative is to focus on their narrative identity, which,
although subject to continual change, is usually far from being completely un-
stable.
If the description of the logic of moral reasoning presented thus far is on the
right track, then we can conclude that competency in moral arguments should
involve an appeal to at least two kinds of reasons, which Cavell dubs, respective-
ly, “basis of care” and “grounds of commitment”: the first “provides whatever
sense there will be in your confronting someone with what he ‘ought’ to do”,
while the second “grounds what you say ‘must’ be done in that person’s commit-
ments, both his explicit undertakings and the implications of what he does and
where he is, for which he is responsible” (CR 325). An important implication of
this analysis is that if an interlocutor challenges a certain behavior of mine by
appealing to the sort of reasons we have just described – taking into account
my cares and commitments – then I cannot simply ignore her challenge on
pain of manifesting moral incompetence and, to that extent, irrationality in a
moral context. But that does not mean that a (competent) moral challenge
will always demand my acceptance of it; I can recognize the relevance of the
“basis of care” and of the “grounds of commitment” presented by my interlocu-
tor without agreeing with the weight or importance she gives to them.
194 7 Skepticism, perfectionism, and the limits of morality

These considerations allow us to see another important difference between

moral and scientific discussions: the latter seek to determine whether a certain
cognitive claim is to be accepted based on the evidence presented by someone,
as well as on her general competence in the field; but in the case of a moral dis-
cussion, what is really at stake is to determine whether we can understand and
respect (but not necessarily agree with) positions or attitudes assumed by others.
Instead of a claim’s adequacy to certain universal and impersonally established
principles, moral reasoning is constructed in terms of responsiveness between
agents, and puts to the test the quality and, ultimately, the very possibility of cre-
ating or maintaining a relationship based on shared cares and commitments.
This difference is presented by Cavell as follows:

Questioning a claim to knowledge takes the form of asking “How do you know?” or “Why
do you believe that?”, and assessing the claim is, we could say, a matter of assessing wheth-
er your position […] [is] adequate to the claim. Questioning a claim to moral rightness […]
takes the form of asking “Why are you doing that?”, “How can you do that?”, “What are
you doing?”, “Have you really considered what you’re saying?”, “Do you know what this
means?”; and assessing the claim is […] to determine what your position is, and to chal-
lenge the position itself […]. The point of the assessment is not to determine whether it is
adequate […] [but] to determine […] what position you are taking responsibility for – and
whether it is one I can respect. What is at stake in such discussions is not, or not exactly,
whether you know our world, but whether, or to what extent, we are to live in the same
moral universe. What is at stake […] is not the validity of morality as a whole, but the nature
or quality of our relationship to one another. (CR 268)

The ability to maintain a moral relationship depends essentially on the cares and
commitments at stake – and one will be willing to require or to tolerate more or
less from one’s interlocutors according to the weight one ascribes to those fac-
tors. Let us see how this works by analyzing a concrete case of moral discussion
imagined by Cavell (see CR 266):

A: I’ve Decided against offering him the job.

B: But he’s counting on it. You most explicitly promised it to him.

A: I know, but it has suddenly become very inconvenient to have him around, and there is
someone else really better qualified anyway.

B: If you do this to him, I’ll never speak to you again.

A: Don’t make such an issue out of it. I’ll see that he gets a job, and I’ll give him some
money to see him through.

B: Goodbye.
 7.3 Perfectionism and the limits of morality 195

In this little dialogue B criticizes A’s intention of breaking a promise made to a

third party. Note that B is not evaluating whether A’s attitude is right or wrong,
good or bad as such (it is not a matter of determining, for example, whether it
expresses a “universally valid principle”, such as “one shall keep one’s prom-
ises, no matter what”); what is at stake is whether A really is in a position to as-
sume that attitude responsibly, in this particular context, given her own previous
commitments. In summary, B is accusing A of being a hypocrite, and given that
in her reply A does nothing more than to confirm that accusation, B ends up con-
cluding that they live in a different moral universe, and that she may have been
wrong in her assessment of A’s character up to now. It is in this sense that one
can say (as does Mulhall) that “moral discussion is an arena for the revelation of
one self to another”.²⁷³

7.3 Perfectionism and the limits of morality

In the dialogue just analyzed we were presented with a momentary disagreement

between agents that could, at least in principle, find new grounds to carry on the
discussion (one should not overlook the importance of time and patience in
mundane affairs). But there are cases where a conflict could end up putting mor-
ality as a whole into question, and that, according to Cavell, simply indicates
that morality should be seen as limited in its potential, leaving room for ideas
like the “salvation of the self through the repudiation of morality” (CR 269) –
a claim which, as we shall see, already points to the theme of “moral perfection-
ism” which will be explored more systematically in Cavell’s later work. Here is a
crucial passage from The Claim of Reason that offers further support to that sug-
gestion:

Morality must leave itself open to repudiation; it provides one possibility of settling con-
flict, a way of encompassing conflict which allows the continuance of personal relation-
ships against the hard and apparently inevitable fact of misunderstanding, mutually in-
compatible wishes, commitments, loyalties, interests and needs […]. Other ways of
settling or encompassing conflict are provided by politics, religion, love and forgiveness,
rebellion, and withdrawal. Morality is a valuable way because the others are so often inac-
cessible or brutal; but it is not everything; it provides a door through which someone, alien-
ated or in danger of alienation from another through his action, can return by the offering
and the acceptance of explanation, excuses and justifications, or by the respect one human
being will show another who sees and can accept the responsibility for a position which he

 Mulhall 1994, 41.

196 7 Skepticism, perfectionism, and the limits of morality

himself would not adopt. We do not have to agree with one another in order to live in the
same moral world, but we do have to know and respect one another’s differences. (CR 269)

Recall that, according to our previous analysis, the hallmark of moral reasoning
is that it must meet the requirement of intelligibility²⁷⁴ (as opposed to the re-
quirement of agreement, say). But, as Cavell suggests in another context, this
still leaves many questions unanswered, such as, for example:

whether there are limits to the obligation to be intelligible, whether everyone isn’t entitled
to a certain obscurity or sense of confusion, and at some times more than others. Maybe
there isn’t always something to say; and there is the question of what one is to do about
persisting disagreement, how far you must go in trying to resolve it […] (CW 25)

Let’s stop and meditate about this last question for a while: how far are we ac-
tually willing to go on a moral discussion characterized by persisting disagree-
ment? Indefinitely? Speaking for myself and based on my own past experiences,
I would not think so. And what does this show? That I am not perfect and, par-
ticularly, that I am not completely rational? But again, why exactly would it al-
ways be irrational to give up a discussion if I am convinced (rationally, let me
add) that it will not lead anywhere, that the possibility of providing additional
reasons has run out (at least momentarily)? – Returning to the case of Mr.
Deeds, described in the beginning of this chapter: would he have been wiser if
he had tried to rationally persuade those literati that, say, they should not go
around making fun of people? Or would that just seem pathetic?²⁷⁵
Commenting on these issues in more general terms, Cavell claims the follow-
ing:

[…] hatred and anger are not essentially irrational, but may clearly be called for. To live a
moral life should not require that we become Socrateses or Buddhas or Christs, all but un-
provokable. But we are asked to make even justified anger and hatred intelligible, and to be
responsible for their expression in our lives, and sometimes, not always and everywhere, to
put them aside. (CW 25 – 26)

I want to emphasize three points from this passage: first, it suggests that it is
possible to distinguish between justified and unjustified anger and hatred,

 An indication of the centrality of this feature, Cavell argues, is the fact that it permeates the
most different traditional conceptions of morality – for example, the utilitarian “calculation of
consequences” and the Kantian “interpretation of motives and principles” (see CW 25).
 Here I would like to urge the reader to consider another injunction made by Wittgenstein
for different purposes: “Do not think, but look!” (PI §66).
 7.3 Perfectionism and the limits of morality 197

and, second, it also states that even in the cases where those feelings (and their
consequences) are justified, we are still required to make them intelligible and
(to that extent) take responsibility for them. Clearly we should not here be think-
ing of cases in which, say, an agent regrets an assault of anger immediately after
the fact; the interesting case would be one in which, all things considered, the
agent would remain convinced, at least partially, that her attitude was appropri-
ate to the situation (think of B after saying goodbye to her friend A in our little
dialogue above). I say “partially” because in real life (but also in good literature
and in good movies) things are not so simple, and it is often difficult to be clear
about our own motivations. That’s why – and here’s the third point I want to em-
phasize – Cavell closes the passage calling attention to the fact that, at least on
some occasions, the demand for intelligibility will make us reconsider the situa-
tion, “putting aside” our first reaction.
Consider again the abrupt conclusion of the discussion between Deeds and
the literati, due to the former’s feeling of indignation. In that case, to whom ex-
actly would Deeds owe justifications and explanations? It does not seem plausi-
ble to think that he owes them to the literati themselves – at least not immedi-
ately. That discussion is momentarily closed, and the best one can hope for is
that, after both parties had time to coolly reconsider their attitudes and motiva-
tions, against the background of their own cares and commitments, a plea for
excuses can be made, allowing them to resume their relationship.²⁷⁶ But what
are the conditions for such a reconsideration in the first person? If the agent
is confused, would it really be possible for her to find intelligibility on her
own, providing reasons and explanations to herself? It is because of this difficul-
ty that many philosophers have emphasized the role of the figure of a friend in
the pursuit of intelligibility and moral education. But in no other moral perspec-
tive does that role receive as much attention as in perfectionism, as understood
by Cavell.
Cavell describes perfectionism as “a dimension or tradition of the moral life
that spans the course of Western thought and concerns what used to be called
the state of one’s soul, a dimension that places tremendous burdens on personal
relationships and on the possibility or necessity of the transforming of oneself
and of one’s society” (CHU 2). This dimension is expressed in a rather diverse
set of texts, including canons of the Western philosophical tradition (by authors

 I register for possible future treatment that the dynamics of the attempts at reconciliation
and the importance of maintaining a moral community are themes dear to Cavell. The key con-
cept employed in the analysis of this dynamic, inherited from J. L. Austin, is that of “elabora-
tives” – “those excuses, explanations, justifications […] which make up the bulk of moral de-
fense” (CR 296, see also MWM 26 – 30 and CR 324– 325).
198 7 Skepticism, perfectionism, and the limits of morality

such as Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche and Rawls), literature (by
Shakespeare, Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw) and also “texts by writers not
usually considered by professional philosophers to be moral thinkers” (particu-
larly by Emerson and Freud, see CW ix).²⁷⁷ Such texts are seen as variations on
the theme of “human nature as divided or double”, hanging between the accept-
ance of the present state of the world as the stage of our activities and prospects
and the desire for its reform or transfiguration (see CW 1– 2).
It is important to distinguish the kind of perfectionism that interests Cavell
from a version he sometimes calls religious perfectionism, i. e., one which would
be committed to the idea of a final or ultimate human perfection. In my experi-
ence when trying to introduce Cavell’s views on perfectionism it has been com-
mon to notice an aversion caused by the use of that very term, precisely because
of this connotation of “ultimate perfection” that it more or less inevitably carries.
Add to this a certain (superficial) reading of Nietzsche and Emerson as elitist and
undemocratic philosophers and the stage is set for this position not to be taken
seriously by more than a few interlocutors. It is not my intention here to try to
undo these misunderstandings.²⁷⁸ Instead, I will only indicate that an alternative
reading is possible; Cavell himself denounces an elitist perfectionism, centrally
concerned with individual cultivation, as “debased” (CW 18). In its place he pro-
poses a collective, democratic and continual search for what Emerson describes
as “an unattained but attainable self”:²⁷⁹ “a self that is always and never ours –
a step that turns us not from bad to good, or wrong to right, but from confusion
and constriction toward self-knowledge and sociability” (CW 13). In addressing
these issues Cavell proposes a very instructive contrast with Plato:

Plato’s idea of a path to one goal (the one sought by the sage) does not exactly fit Emerson’s
idea of how to live. In both, the idea of philosophy as a way of life plays a role in assessing
your life now, but Emerson is less interested in holding up the life of the sage as a model for
ours than in reminding us that the power of questioning our lives, in, say, our judgment of
what we call their necessities, and their rights and goods, is within the scope of every
human being (of those, at any rate, free to talk about their lives and to modify them).
(CW 13)

 Not to mention films “from the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood talkie” (CW ix). More
about the relationship between cinema and perfectionism in the final remarks of this chapter.
 James Conant sought to do this with respect to Nietzsche’s text in Conant 2000b, and Cavell
has been trying to do the same in relation to Nietzsche and Emerson in several of his later works,
particularly CHU.
 The sentence comes from the essay “History” (Essays, First Series [1841]), available online
at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2944/2944-h/2944-h.htm, accessed 06/06/2020.
 7.3 Perfectionism and the limits of morality 199

What would Emerson suggest, then, in place of Plato’s sage? The answer to this
question brings us back to a point raised earlier, namely the role of the friend,
that exemplar or model of an “unattained but attainable self”. If I’m confused
and have trouble making my own actions and attitudes transparent and under-
standable, it is difficult to take the next step toward that ideal, the “further self”,
so I may need some kind of external attraction. A friend may provide such an
attraction, as she can reveal our own flaws – make ourselves confront our con-
fusion – in a way that will generate minimal resistance, given her specific moral
stance in relation to our cares and commitments. (The friend does not confront
me providing impersonal reasons, but from a position which she occupies in re-
lation to those cares and commitments.) Now if some willingness to understand
and to be understood is necessary in a moral argument, then it is easy to see how
a context of friendship and mutual respect is particularly suitable for that pur-
pose. It is especially in this kind of context that we can move forward in our
moral education – an education which, according to Cavell, is not primarily in-
tended “to provide an increase of learning but a transformation of existence”
(CW 325).²⁸⁰
But to say that a context of friendship is particularly suited to advance our
moral education is not to say that we can only move forward in such contexts.
As a friend warned, “enemies and strangers can also teach us something
about the morality of our conduct. We learn definitive lessons listening to
what we do not want to, from those we barely know”.²⁸¹ Indeed; however, it
seems to me that this will only be possible in those cases in which even enemies
or strangers share at least some of our own commitments and cares.²⁸² The only
scenario which is being excluded as conducive to moral argument is one in
which the interlocutors, to use Cavell’s apt words, live in completely distinct
moral worlds.
Having this in mind, consider one last time what happened between Deeds
and the literati: the latter have not shown any genuine interest in Deeds’s cares
and commitments, treating them from the beginning as pointless or laughable
(remember how they laughed at the fact that Deeds was a postcard poet, for ex-

 The passage continues addressing the importance of “marriage”: “those who cannot in-
spire one another to such an education are not married; they do not have the right interest
for one another.” Unfortunately, this is an issue that I could not address in this chapter. I tackle
it in part in Techio 2020.
 I am indebted to Eduardo Vicentini de Medeiros for this consideration, made in an e-mail
exchange.
 Recall the great (albeit limited) mutual respect that arch-enemies invariably show in fic-
tion.
200 7 Skepticism, perfectionism, and the limits of morality

ample).²⁸³ But Deeds came from an opposite perspective, of admiration and re-
spect, hence his painful frustration upon realizing what was truly going on.
He was humiliated and found himself isolated, and so decided to do the same
with the literati, restoring the terms of their relationship. By doing so, I believe
he provided a great opportunity for the literati to rethink their attitudes and
learn from their mistakes. He himself learned an important lesson: “all famous
people aren’t big people.” Confrontational moments like this are in fact crucial in
our moral education. But, as I hope I have indicated, this finding does not seem
to contradict the Cavellian point about the importance of conversation for mutu-
al revelation of moral agents – on the contrary, I believe it is reinforced.

7.4 Final remarks

Throughout this chapter I kept returning to a single scene from a Hollywood

comedy of the 1930s. This procedure is familiar to Cavell’s readers, especially
to readers of those of his works explicitly concerned with the subject of perfec-
tionism. The conviction behind this procedure is that the themes, motifs and con-
cerns expressed in some films – particularly those which Cavell groups under the
genres of “remarriage comedies” and “melodramas of the unknown woman” –
justify their inclusion in that same tradition of Western thought that “concerns
what used to be called the state of one’s soul”.²⁸⁴ Because these films are them-
selves “perfectionist studies” in which the protagonists engage in a journey to-
ward a “further self”, marked by countless conversations with friends²⁸⁵ – figures
that “may occur as the goal of the journey but also as its instigation and accom-
paniment” (CW 27)²⁸⁶ – they serve, according to Cavell, as:

a small laboratory for studying moral conversation not as the attempt to persuade someone
to a course of action, or as the evaluation of a social institution, but of something I think
sometimes as prior and preparatory to these familiar goals of moral reasoning, sometimes
as subsequent and supplementary, namely the responsiveness to and examination of one
soul by another. It is prior because it provides us with studies of the standing a moral agent
claims in confronting another with his/her judgment; it is subsequent because it provides

 Thanks to Nykolas Friedrich Correia Motta for calling my attention to this point.
 Passage quoted in full above.
 Cavell describes them as “films whose conversations are among the glories of world cine-
ma” (PDAT 338).
 Still on this point: “The presence of friendship in the films we will consider (including the
sometimes drastic lack of this relation in the melodramas) is of the most specific importance in
establishing them as perfectionist narratives.” (CW 27)
 7.4 Final remarks 201

the space for evaluating the moral framework within which you are reasoning. […] Perfec-
tionism may be said to concentrate itself on the demand to make ourselves, and to become,
intelligible to one another. And I suppose no outlook would count as moral which did not
make place for such a demand. (Cavell 2005a, 339)

The films with which Cavell is concerned portray the protagonists’s effort (but
not necessarily their success) to become better people, choosing a better way
of life.²⁸⁷ By insisting on the relevance of including these films in the set of
texts that explore perfectionist themes Cavell does not want to give the impres-
sion that “philosophy left to itself requires compensation by the revelations with-
in the medium of film” (CW 5 – 6), but, on the contrary, he wants to indicate that
these films can be thought of as

differently configuring intellectual and emotional avenues that philosophy is already in ex-
ploration of, but which, perhaps, it has cause sometimes to turn from prematurely, partic-
ularly in its forms since its professionalization, or academization […]. The implied claim is
that film, the latest of the great arts, shows philosophy to be the often invisible accompani-
ment of the ordinary lives that film is so apt to capture (even, perhaps particularly, when the
lives depicted are historical or elevated or comic or hunted or haunted). (CW 5 – 6)

With these two ideas – namely, that we should resist the temptation of abandon-
ing prematurely the complexities of our ordinary lives, and that films are partic-
ularly suitable for capturing those complexities – I think we have reached an ap-
propriate point to stop, for now.²⁸⁸

 In the specific case of “remarriage comedies” this quest is presented as an alternative to the
threat of “moral cynicism”: “the temptation to give up on a life more coherent and admirable
than seems affordable after the compromises of adulthood come to obscure the promise and
the dreams of youth. The fact that the principal pair in these comedies is somewhat older
than the young pairs of classic comedy provides a context in which certain ways of fulfilling ear-
lier dreams have collapsed and a new regime must be formed to which consent can now, on re-
flection, be won, or wagered.” (CW 23 – 24)
 I further develop these two ideas in Techio 2018 and Techio 2020.
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Index of subjects

acknowledgment 11, 92, 145, 151, 159 – finitude

161, 182 – acceptance of 6, 52, 56, 135, 142
acknowledgment (and acceptance) 6, 165, – disappointment with 2, 4 f., 80, 89, 93,
180, 184 132
aesthetic judgments 191 forms of life 7, 10, 119, 136, 140 f., 176
androids 149 friendship 199
argument from analogy 146
aspect-blindness 152 general form of propositions 23 f., 64
aspect-change 153, 155 generic object 166 f., 170
aspect-seeing 15, 144, 150, 152, 154 God 44
attitude – death of 5
– involved vs. detached 158
– vs. opinion or belief 150 Hamlet 182
attunement 11, 130, 133, 136, 140
Äusserungen 154 “I” used as object 112, 114, 117
automata 150 f., 153, 156 “I” used as subject 110
“I” used as subject 110, 113 f., 117
bedrock 134, 136 idealism 72, 75 – 77, 79, 96 f., 100
Begriffsschrift 58 f., 63 – 65, 68 – 70 – German 3
behaviorism 96, 143 indexicals 115
Big Typescript 78 ineffability 14, 25, 36 f., 42, 54, 71, 73 f.,
bipolarity 35, 48 79 f., 92
Blade Runner 149, 162
King Lear 182, 184
criteria 10, 113, 119, 135, 171
– for pain location 101 language-games 108 f., 111, 116, 168
– outward 143, 148 Lecture on Ethics 139
logical syntax 13, 24, 30, 62
deflection 2, 184 loneliness 5 f., 40, 43, 50, 53
dialectical reading 71, 77, 96, 98, 116
– vs. substantial reading 12 Macbeth 182
dualism 96 Memento 113
memory 81, 87 – 89
elementary propositions 23, 27 f., 34, 60, minds (grammar of) ; See souls (grammar of)
62, 64 moral cognitivism 190
eliminativism 143 moral education 199
Emersonian perfectionism 188 moral intuitionism 189
Euthyphro 188 moral perfectionism 195, 197
existential difficulties 2 f., 10, 89, 181 mortality 5, 89, 92
exposure 153 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town 17, 187
mystical 24 f., 27, 58
felted contextualism 131
film (and philosophy) 201 Nazism 161

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 Index of subjects 209

non-claim context 173 sign/symbol 30, 43 f., 47, 73

non-referential view 95 f., 117 skeptical paradox of meaning 122, 127
number (grammar of) 112 skeptical solution to the paradox of meaning
123, 126, 131
On Certainty 109, 121, 174 skepticism 2, 11, 16, 146, 160, 167, 170
Othello 153, 159 f., 182 – truth in 10, 16, 161, 163, 178 f., 184 f.
slavery 161
pains (grammar of) 101, 109 f., 117, 146, solipsism 2 f., 5, 7 f., 35, 51, 62, 72, 91,
148 93 f., 96, 99
perfectionism 17 – of the present moment 90, 92
personal identity (grammar of) 104 f. – self of 40, 57
phenomenological language 61, 65 f., – truth in 9 f., 33, 35 f., 40, 42, 50, 54 f.
68 – 70, 88 solipsistic notation 102, 106
Philosophical Investigations 9, 14, 49, 95, soul-blindness 152, 155 – 157, 182
100, 119, 140, 143 f., 148 souls (grammar of) 148 – 150, 152, 156,
Philosophical Remarks 65, 68, 70 f., 73, 183
78, 80, 93 Star Wars 104
Philosophical Remarks 8 f., 13, 49, 61, 64, sublimation 90, 137 f.
72, 147
picture theory of meaning 47, 50, 53 T-F notation 64
practical rationality 17, 188, 191 f. The Blue Book 8 f., 14, 49, 94 – 96, 113,
privacy 9 – 11, 34, 42, 119 – 121, 140, 146, 117, 147
148, 171 The Brown Book 136
private language 8 – 10, 119, 126 The Claim of Reason 119, 130, 133, 136,
problem of other minds 15, 143 – 145, 147, 152, 164, 167 f., 178 – 180, 185, 188, 195
151, 153, 181 The Elephant Man 157
problem of the external world 163, 180, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism
182 185
projection (method of) 29 – 32, 43, 46 The Time Machine 89
psychological predicates 95, 143 f., 146 therapy 9 f., 54, 75, 86
time (grammar of) 4, 81 f., 84
realism 6, 40, 51, 57, 76, 79, 97, 100 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 9, 12 – 13,
remarriage comedies 200 18, 20, 37, 49, 54 f., 64, 71, 73, 85, 93,
replicants 149 100
resentment 158 tragedy 159 f.
resolute reading (of the Tractatus) 7, 49
rule-following; See skeptical paradox of Übereinstimmung 130
meaning
voice of correctness 12, 88, 100
scene of instruction 134 f. voice of temptation 12, 77, 88, 96, 98
sense-datum 76, 79
Index of names

Affeldt, S. 155 King Lear 182, 184

Anscombe, G. E. M. 95 Kremer, M. 55
Austin, J. L. 167, 172, 197 Kripke, S. 11, 14, 119 f., 122 – 124, 126, 128,
Ayer, A. J. 190 130, 132, 134, 136, 138, 140

Bates, S. 190 Locke, J. 3

Berkeley, G. 3
Bouwsma, O. K. 95 Macbeth 182
Malcolm, N. 95, 144
Cavell, S. 2, 6, 10 – 12, 14, 16, 20, 51, 57, McManus, D. 45, 47, 58, 141
83, 99, 119 f., 126 – 128, 130, 132, 134, Moore, G. E. 172, 174, 189
137 f., 140, 144, 151 f., 156 f., 159, 161, Mounce, H. O. 36
163 f., 166, 170, 173 – 175, 177, 182, 184, Mulhall, S. 27, 47, 49, 54, 138, 140, 151 f.,
187 f., 191, 194 f., 197, 200 154 f., 162 f., 193
Clarke, T. 164, 174 f., 177
Coetzee, J. M. 141 Nietzsche, F. 92, 198
Cohen, T. 159 Noë, A. 66, 68 f., 71
Conant, J. 7, 19, 120, 123, 198
O’Connor, P. 131, 139
Descartes, R. 3, 95, 151, 163 – 168, 172 f., Othello 153, 159 f., 182
178 f.
Diamond, C. 7, 29, 45, 49, 141, 153 Pascal, B. 131
Dreyfus, H. 57 Plato 141

Eldridge, R. 93 Rhees, R. 32, 61, 71

Emerson, R. W. 20, 57, 198 f. Rudd, A. 160
Ryle, G. 143
Faria, P. F. E. 63, 142
Floyd, J. 26, 40, 52 Schulte, J. 109
Freud, S. 1, 130, 198 Shakespeare 182, 198
Socrates 188 f.
Goldfarb, W. 26 Strawson, P. F. 4, 11, 15, 106, 112, 133,
Gould, T. 155 145, 157 – 163
Stroud, B. 16, 163 f., 166, 171, 174 f., 179,
Hacker, P. M. S. 7 f., 15, 31, 36, 39, 95, 185
106, 132, 144, 148
Hamlet 182 Temkin, J. 144
Hammer, E. 126, 152, 185 Thornton, S. P. 2
Heidegger, M. 92, 163, 180, 183
Hume, D. 3, 39, 105 f., 162, 168 Winch, P. 150
Wittgenstein, L. 2, 6, 8 – 10, 18, 22, 25 f.,
Kant, I. 3, 76, 163, 178, 191 41, 43, 54 – 56, 61 f., 68, 70, 72 – 75, 77,
Kenny, A. 95 79, 81, 86, 89, 93 f., 99, 103, 108, 114,
Kierkegaard, S. 1 116 – 119, 138, 143, 147 f., 153, 164, 176

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