Language and the possibility of inter-community understanding

Global Society

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 79-99

  Farrands, Christopher ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0008424823     PISSN: 13600826     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13600820050001130     Document Type: Article

References (125)

1. An earlier version of this paper was given to the 1997 Annual IPSA meeting, Seoul, South Korea, August 1997. I would like to thank colleagues who contributed comments to the panel discussion, and also to acknowledge the valuable support and advice of a number of friends and colleagues in preparing this paper, in particular Stephen Chan, Steve Smith, Dr O.R. Jones, Bob Marsland, Christopher May, Eleonore Kofman, Sara Law, Val Shepherd and Regina Watkin-Kolb, as well as Jarrod Wiener and two anonymous referees for Global Society. However, the argument remains the author's sole responsibility.
2. In particular, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967 [1953]), hereafter PI;
3. and On Certainty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), hereafter OC. Wherever Wittgenstein's own work is quoted, the convention in citing his work is followed here in citing the numbered paragraph and the page of the English (e) or German (no suffix to page number) text, as for example PI #43, p. 20e; OC #344, p. 44.
4. Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958).
5. Much of the best recent scholarship on this and related questions is to be found in H. Sluga and D.G. Stern (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),
6. which also has an excellent recent bibliography; and A. Phillips Griffiths (ed.), Wittgenstein Centenary Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
7. Also important is David Stern, "Recent Work on Wittgenstein", Synthese, Vol. 98 (1994), pp. 415-458;
8. and David Stern, Wittgenstein on Mind and Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), hereafter Stern (1995).
9. Mervyn Frost, "A Turn Not Taken: Ethics in IR at the Millennium", Review of International Studies, Vol. 24 (December 1998 special issue), pp. 119-132;
10. Chris Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
11. This summarises a range of argument very briefly in order to get to the point of main focus for this paper. For this debate see Brown and Frost, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches ( op. cit.,
12. and the special issue of Millennium: Journal of International Studies on ethics in international relations, Vol. 27, No. 3 (1998).
13. Jan Jindy Petman, Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics (London: Routledge, 1996).
14. V. Jabri, "Restyling the Subject of Responsibility in International Relations";
15. and J. Charvet, "The Possibility of a Cosmopolitan Ethical Order based on the Idea of Universal Human Rights", both in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 (1998), at pp. 591-612 and pp. 523-542, respectively;
16. and Stephen Chan, Towards a Multicultural Roshamon Paradigm in International Relations (Tampere: Tampere Peace Research Institute, 1996).
17. Patricia Stein Wrightson and Christopher Farrands, "The Ambiguous Revival of 'Community' in IR: Religion, the Sacred and Niebuhr on the Limits of Rationality", Unpublished paper presented to the 1998 APSA conference, Boston, August 1998.
18. David Campbell, "Why Fight? Humanitarianism, Principles and Post-structuralism", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 (1998), pp. 497-521.
19. J. Derrida, Politics of Friendship, George Collins (trans.) (London: Verso, 1997);
20. Christopher Farrands and Patricia Stein Wrightson, "Levinas, Buber and the Possibility of Inter-community Relations: Versions of the Ethical International", Unpublished paper presented to the International Studies Association Annual Convention, Washington, DC, February 1999.
21. S. Smith, K. Booth and M. Zalewski (eds.)/ International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) explores the scope of post-positivism in international relations.
22. Wittgenstein points to the inadequacy of intuition as a basis for knowledge claims in PI #186, p. 75e and #213, p. 84e.
23. An excellent discussion of the relevance and problems of using Gadamer's hermeneutics in international relations is in Annick Wibben, Narrating "Experience": Raymond Aron and Feminist Scholars Revis(it)ed - A Subversive Conversation (Tampere: University of Tampere, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Research Reports No. 7, 1998);
24. H.-G. Gadamer, Philosophical Hermenuetics, D.R. Linge (trans.) (Berkeley: University of Berkeley Press, 1976).
25. See John Searle's The Construction of Social Reality which is discussed briefly later in this paper.
26. Ruggie makes some use of Searle in Constructing the Global Polity (London: Routledge, 1998);
27. also V. Kubalkova, N.G. Onuf and P. Kavert (eds.), International Relations in a Constructed World (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1998).
28. Stern, 1995, (eds.), International Relations in a Constructed World ( op. cit.
29. Donald Davidson, Inquiry into Truth ana Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984),
30. and "A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge", in B. Lepose (ed.), Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 307-319.
31. Searle, Truth and Interpretation:Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson ( op. cit.
32. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 2nd English edn, D.E. Pears and B.F. McGuinness (trans.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961).
33. See PI #39-40, pp. 19-20e and #51, p. 25e.
34. Renford Bamborough, "How to Read Wittgenstein", in G. Vesey (ed.), Understanding Wittgenstein: Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures, Vol. 7, 1972-3 (London: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 119-120.
35. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks, Rush Rhees (ed.), R. Hargreaves and R. White (trans.), 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975).
36. Op. cit., footnote 2.
37. Op. cit., footnote 2.
38. L. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, P. Winch (ed. and trans.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980).
39. Pablo Neruda, "La Palabra" [The Word], in Selected Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), pp. 201-203.
40. OC #105, p. 16e, #348, p. 44e, #432, p. 56e.
41. OC #61, p. 10e; PI #139, p. 54e.
42. PI #267-280, pp. 94-97e.
43. OC #298, p. 38e. The conception of community which international relations can develop from Wittgenstein's work is a subject for another discussion, but relates especially to the debate around A. Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community (Cambridge: Polity, 1998).
44. Wu Chen-Eng, Monkey (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), p. 15.
45. PI #19-23, pp. 8-12e, #241, p. 88e; Naomi Scheman, "Forms of Life: Mapping the Rough Ground", in Sluga and Stern, Monkey ( op. cit., pp. 383-410.
46. PI #59-83, pp. 29-39e.
47. That this is not only an Anglo-Saxon or even a European linguistic debate is demonstrated in the writings on conventionalism in the 12th century Arabist Ar-Razi, see Kees Versteegh, Landmarks of Linguistic Thought, Vol. 3 (London: Routledge, 1997), ch. 10.
48. Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics, 1, p. 74, cited and discussed in Stern, 1995, p. 116; OC #44-50, p. 8e, #113-115, p. 17e.127-139.
49. S. Gerrard, "A Philosophy of Mathematics between Two Camps", in Sluga and Stern, Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics op. cit., pp. 171-197.
50. R. Gaita, "Language and Conversation", in Phillips Griffiths, Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics op. cit., pp. 101-116.
51. Winch, Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics op. cit., pp. 121-128; PI #47, pp. 21-22e.
52. Winch, Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics op. cit.;
53. and L. Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, Rush Rhees (ed.) (Nottingham: Brynmill, and Atlantic Heights, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979) discuss this.
54. But the best discussion of the significance of their argument is in the collection of papers edited by M. Hollis and S. Lukes, Rationality and Relativism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982).
55. Winch, Rationality and Relativism ( op. cit., passim but esp. pp. 121-136; PI #194-195, pp. 78-79e;
56. see also R. Twigg, "Wittgenstein and the Social Sciences", in Phillips Griffiths, Rationality and Relativism ( op. cit., pp. 209-222.
57. Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), esp. ch. 4 and pp. 82-84.
58. Winch, Explaining and Understanding International Relations ( op. cit., ch. 5;
59. Twigg, Explaining and Understanding International Relations ( op. cit., pp. 215-216;
60. Wibben, Explaining and Understanding International Relations ( op. cit., pp. 31-34.
61. For example, Gaita in Phillips Griffiths Explaining and Understanding International Relations ( op. cit., pp. 112-113;
62. Scheman, Explaining and Understanding International Relations ( op. cit., p. 386 refers to "manichean readings" of PI, which in the context seems to mean primarily Winch;
63. Stern, 1995 Explaining and Understanding International Relations ( op. cit.;
64. Jenny Teichman takes a quite distinctive but similar position without referring to Winch: "Wittgenstein on Persons and Human Beings", in Vesey, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (op. cit., pp. 132-148.
65. The argument that an undesirable form of cultural relativism follows from Winch but not necessarily from Wittgenstein is in C. Taylor, "Rationality", in Hollis and Lukes, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (op. cit., pp. 87-105.
66. On Wittgenstein's life, there is a large volume of literature, but see especially A. Janik and S. Toulmin, Wittgenstein's Vienna (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974)
67. for the context; and Antony Kenny, Wittgenstein (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) for the development of his philosophy.
68. Culture and Value, pp. 12e, 20e;
69. Oscar Hanfling, "I Heard a Plaintive Melody", in Phillips Griffiths, Culture and Value, op. cit., footnote 4, pp. 117-134.
70. Winch, Culture and Value, op. cit., pp. 40-42, 52-62;
71. Scheman, Culture and Value, op. cit., footnote 28, is good on the ambiguities of Wittgenstein's account of "forms of life" which admits a number of different readings apart from that in Winch.
72. Reading OC alongside PI clarifies this: OC #97-100, p. 15e and Stern's reading of this, which I follow: Culture and Value, op. cit. (1995), pp. 114-116, 160-167.
73. Adam Watson, Diplomacy, the Dialogue between States (London: Eyre Methuen, 1982).
74. South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. The TRC Web site is at www.truth.org.za; the final report is no longer at this site, but can be found at www.polity.org.za/gov-docs/commission/1998/trc/index.htm. The specific reference is to Vol. 4, ch. 10 of the final report; the example was also discussed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Friday 12 February 1999.
75. Searle, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. The TRC Web site is at op. cit., pp. 66-68, 133-134.
76. This is best addressed in the different papers in M. Hollis and S. Lukes, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. The TRC Web site is at op. cit.;
77. many of the possibilities - and difficulties - of transcultural exchange are most usefully discussed by Charles Taylor, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. The TRC Web site is at op. cit., pp. 86-105.
78. Emmanuel Levinas, A L'Heure des nations (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1988), eh. 3.
79. Bernal Diaz, The Conquest of New Spain, J.M. Cohen (trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), esp., but not only, p. 26 (naming of Yucatan) and pp. 119-125 (disagreements over religious issues and the "marriage" of Indian women hostages "given" by Cortes to some of his men).
80. Marco Polo, The Travels, Ronald Latham (ed. and trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958), pp. 28, 105-112, 238-240.
81. Chris Farrands with Michael Talalay, Technology, Globalization and Power (London: Routledge, 1999, forthcoming).
82. John Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture (Cambridge: Polity, 1999) develops this argument particularly effectively.
83. The phrase is John Maynard Keynes', complaining about the search for purity in economic theory through the use of mathematics by those who would not recognise how diversely economies might actually operate.
84. Davidson, 1986, Globalization and Culture op. cit.
85. On Wittgenstein's Humean scepticism, see David Pears, Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1967), pp. 26-29, 194;
86. Stern, Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition of Philosophy ( op. cit., p. 190; OC, as a whole, but especially the first third, engages directly with Hume.
87. Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers Vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 122-129, 331-338.
88. Davidson (1986), Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers Vol. 3 op. cit.
89. Searle, by contrast, wants to see language use as more settled and precise, and here Davidson provides convincing grounds to prefer his and Wittgenstein's account to Searle. See Searle, Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers Vol. 3 op. cit., ch. 9;
90. Davidson (1984), Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers Vol. 3 op. cit.
91. PI #65-70, pp. 31-33, 499-500, p. 138e; OC #554, p. 73e.
92. Among the most important points where this case is made clearly are in PI #41, p. 20e, #354-356, pp. 112-113e; and OC #139-144, p. 21e and #378-392, pp. 49-50e.
93. David Bloor, "The Question of Linguistic Idealism Revisited", in Sluga and Stern, Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers Vol. 3 op. cit., footnote 4, pp. 354-382.
94. Cf. G.E.M. Anscombe, "The Question of Linguistic Idealism", in her From Parmenides to Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), pp. 112-133.
95. Searle, ", in her From Parmenides to Wittgenstein (op. cit., pp. 59-78.
96. Robert Jackson, "International Community beyond the Cold War", in G.M. Lyons and M. Mastanduno (eds.), Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. 59-86.
97. Hedley Bull, "The Grotian Conception of International Society", in H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966, pp. 51-73).
98. K. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
99. Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community (Cambridge: Polity, 1998).
100. Stephen Gill, American Power and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
101. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992).
102. Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995);
103. on Leibniz's obsession with this question see his essay "Préface de la science générale", Paris, 1677, reprinted and translated in D. Garb er and R. Ariew (eds.), Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays (New York: Hackett, 1991).
104. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, op. cit., p. 52e;
105. and Winch, Culture and Value, op. cit., pp. 33-39.
106. H. Bull and A. Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
107. Martin Buber, I and Thou, W. Kaufmann (trans., paperback edn) (New York: Macmillan, 1974);
108. Farrands and Wrightson, I and Thou, op. cit., footnote 11.
109. Walt Whitman, The Portable Walt Whitman, Mark Van Doren (ed.) (New York: Viking Press, 1945), p. 192.
110. Wittgenstein as a certain kind of constructivist: see OC #519, 524, 554-555, 601 at pp. 68-79e. Searle accepts this view of Wittgenstein's work: Walt Whitman, The Portable Walt Whitman, op. cit., p. 196.
111. "When language games change, then there is a change in concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change", OC #65, p. 10e.
112. This claim is one of the more distinctive arguments of recent Wittgenstein scholarship; it is not original to this article, but can be found in J. Shotter, "Wittgenstein and Psychology", in Philipps Griffiths (ed.), The Portable Walt Whitman op. cit., pp. 193-208
113. and in Bloor's and Scheman's contributions to Sluga and Stern, The Portable Walt Whitman op. cit.,
114. as well as Taylor, The Portable Walt Whitman op. cit., in Hollis and Lukes cited in footnote 45 above.
115. Gavan Duffy, Brian Frederking and Seth Tucker, "Language Games: Dialogic Analysis of INF Negotiations", International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 2 (June 1998), pp. 271-294.
116. The main example is, of course, Kant: see the discussion in Howard Williams, Kant's Political Philosophy (New York: St Martins Press, 1986);
117. and also I. Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 26-28, 37-41, J. Meicklejohn (trans.) (London: Dent, Everyman series, 1934).
118. Hollis and Lukes, The Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit.;
119. Rorty The Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit.
120. Primo Levi, Moments of Reprieve (London: Sphere, 1987).
121. Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (New York: Viking, 1993).
122. C. Anderson (ed.), The Domestic Politics of German Unification (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993);
123. Charlie Jeffrey (ed.), Recasting German Federalism: The Legacies of Unification (London: Pinter, 1999).
124. Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu'etre, ou au-dela de l'essence (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974).
125. Martin Hollis, "The Last Post?", in S. Smith, K. Booth and M. Zalewski (eds.), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 306-308.