Kant and Wittgenstein: Philosophy, necessity and representation

International Journal of Philosophical Studies

Volumn 5, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 285-305

  Glock, Hans Johann ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Correspondence theory of truth; Kant; Representation; Synthetic a priori; The nature of philosophy; Wittgenstein

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049229454     PISSN: 09672559     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09672559708570857     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Comparisons from a Wittgensteinian perspective include A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971; 1st edn 1936), pp. 46-7;
2. E. Stenius, Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960), pp. 214-21;
3. S. Cavell, 'The Availability of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy', in G. Pitcher (ed.) Wittgenstein: the 'Philosophical Investigations' (New York: Doubleday, 1966);
4. D. Pears, Wittgenstein (London: Fontana, 1971), pp. 11-3, 25-36, 54-45, 85-7, 183;
5. P.M.S. Hacker, Insight and Illusion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), chs I, III, IV.2, V, VII.4 and VIII.
6. Comparisons from a Kantian direction include J. Bennett, Kant's Analytic (Cambridge: CUP, 1966), §§36, 51
7. and P.F. Strawson 'Imagination and Perception', in R. Walker (ed.), Kant on Pure Reason (Oxford: OUP, 1982).
8. P.M.S. Hacker, Insight and Illusion (2nd edn) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. ix, 213-14;
9. W. Röd, 'Enthält Wittgensteins Tractatus Transzendental- philosophische Ideen?
10. and R. Haller, 'Was Wittgenstein a Neo-Kantian?', in his Questions on Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 1988).
11. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford: OUP, 1983), app. 1.
12. See my 'Cambridge, Jena or Vienna: the Roots of the Tractatus', Ratio (New Series) (1992) V: pp. 1-23.
13. It was Kant the epistemologist who offended the metaphysically minded German Idealists, and attracted the scientifically minded neo-Kantians. The same view is evident among analytic philosophers. Russell regarded it as one of Kant's main achievements to have 'made evident the philosophical importance of the theory of knowledge', Problems of Philosophy (Oxford: OUP, 1980; 1st edn 1912) p. 46. And from Strawson onwards, Kant has been seen as providing transcendental arguments against the sceptic.
14. The first to deny that the Critique is primarily a work in epistemology was Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1971), p. 21.
15. The denial is substantiated by D.P. Dryer Kant's Solution to the Problem of Verification in Metaphysics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966).
16. See my A Wittgenstein Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 292.
17. I use the following abbreviations for Wittgenstein's work: NB: Notebooks 1914-16, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, rev. edn 1979);
18. TLP: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Peras and B.F. McGuinness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961);
19. WVC: Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, ed. B.F. McGuinness (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979);
20. LWL: Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1930-32, ed. Desmond Lee (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980);
21. AWL: Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-35, ed. A. Ambrose (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979);
22. PR: Philosophical Remarks, ed. R. Rhees, trans. R. Hargreaves and R. White (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975);
23. PG: Philosophical Grammar, ed. R. Rhees, trans. A.J.P. Kenny (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974);
24. BB: The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958);
25. RFM: Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, ed. G.H. von Wright, R. Rhees, G.E.M. Anscombe, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, rev. edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978);
26. PI: Philosophical Investigations, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe amd R. Rhees (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958; 1st edn 1953);
27. Z: Zettel, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967);
28. CV: Culture and Value, ed. G.H. von Wright in collaboration with H. Nyman, trans. P. Winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980).
29. This is ignored by those who understand 'transcendental' as referring straightforwardly to necessary preconditions of the possibility of experience, e.g. Cavell, Culture and Value, op. cit. note 1, pp. 175-6;
30. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), p. 18.
31. However, the Tractatus features an obscure residual mentalism, in that it uses the term 'thought' not just for meaningful propositional signs, but also for a psychic fact which is isomorphic with the propositional sign and accompanies the utterance or understanding of the latter. See my A Wittgenstein Dictionary, op. cit. note 8, 'thought/thinking'.
32. This claim was first made by R. Ferber, 'Der Grundgedanke des Tractatus als Metamorphose des obersten Grundsatzes der reinen Vernunft', Kant-Studien (1984) 75: 467.
33. But apart from detecting the isomorphism thesis in passages of the Tractatus which are totally unrelated to it (esp. 4.0312), he fails to see that the isomorphism is supposed to explain necessary propositions about objects. That the later Wittgenstein tries to provide such an explanation was first noted by H. Schwyzer, 'Thought and Reality: The Metaphysics of Kant and Wittgenstein', Philosophical Quarterly (1973) 21: pp. 193-206.
34. See R. Aschenberg, Sprachanalyse und Transzendentalphilosophie (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982), pp. 45-6, 263-4;
35. Pears, op. cit. note 1, pp. 37-8.
36. I disregard the fact that in the controversy with Eberhard, Kant seems to argue for the incompatible claim that even transcendental principles can be proven by reference to pure intuition. See R. Aschenberg, op. cit. note 18, pp. 257-72.