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our knowledge but rather it is aimed at increasing our understanding.⁷⁰

      0.2.3Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics

      Michael Temelini’s book Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics is divided into two halves. In the first half of the book (the first three of six chapters) Temelini discusses interpretations of Wittgenstein’s philosophy that stress the role of authority, training, therapy, and forms of scepticism in Wittgenstein’s later work. He presents these various interpretations of Wittgenstein under the heading ‘therapeutic scepticism’. In the second half of the book Temelini presents interpretations of Wittgenstein which stress making comparisons, dialogue, and understanding. He gathers these interpretations under the heading of the ‘comparative dialogical’ reading of Wittgenstein and he defends this kind of interpretation as being preferable to therapeutic-sceptical ones.

In the chapters on the ‘therapeutic-sceptical’ reading Temelini discusses the work of a great variety of thinkers who have interpreted Wittgenstein’s work in a variety of ways and who have been inspired by his philosophical remarks. He discusses the work of people who have interpreted Wittgenstein as a conservative, including J. C. Nyiri and Ernest Gellner. He also examines the work of Stanley Cavell,⁷¹ as well as philosophers whose work has been influenced by Cavell, such as Hanna Pitkin,⁷² John Danford,⁷³ and, more recently, the New Wittgensteinians.⁷⁴ Also discussed under the heading of ‘therapeutic scepticism’ are ‘Democratic/Liberal’ Wittgensteinians such as Cressida Heyes,⁷⁵ Gaile Pohlhaus, and John Wright,⁷⁶ as well as feminist Wittgensteinians, such as Peg O’Connor⁷⁷ and Alessandra Tanesini.⁷⁸ Peter Winch is also considered by Temelini to have interpreted Wittgenstein along ‘therapeutic/sceptical’ lines.⁷⁹ Temelini recognizes that these thinkers vary a great deal in terms of their interpretations of Wittgenstein and in terms of their ideological commitments. However, he thinks that all of these interpretations fail to give dialogue sufficient weight, unlike the ‘comparative dialogical’ interpretations (from Charles Taylor, Quentin Skinner, and James Tully), which he discusses in the later chapters. Temelini also thinks that the ‘therapeutic-sceptical’ interpretations lead to conservative, negative, or contingent⁸⁰ conclusions, whereas the ‘comparative dialogical’ interpretations present Wittgenstein’s work as having positive, progressive implications. Temelini favours the latter position.

However, Temelini is willing to grant that some of the therapeutic-sceptical interpreters of Wittgenstein do have progressive politics. His problem with these interpreters is either that they see the progressive politics as something that has to be tagged on to Wittgenstein’s politically neutral philosophy (O’Connor) or their progressive conclusions are rooted in ‘various kinds of scepticism or non-realism that are essentially taken for granted as essential to Wittgenstein’s method’⁸¹ (Cerbone, Eldridge, Janik, Zerilli, Pohlhaus, and Wright). The problem in those cases, according to Temelini, is not the progressive conclusions but in the fact that those conclusions are drawn from an interpretation of Wittgenstein as some kind of sceptic or non-realist.

There are several problems with Temelini’s account. In the first place, although Temelini recognizes that there is some variety among the philosophers he gathers under the heading of ‘therapeutic scepticism’ he does have a tendency to tar them all with the same brush and misrepresent their views. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of them would have no objection to the idea that dialogue can result in mutual understanding and that it should be valued in both political theory and in the practice of politics. Indeed, Juliette Harkin and Rupert Read, in their review of Temelini’s book, make this point with regard to the New Wittgensteinians: their ‘approach to philosophical praxis is precisely that which Temelini seeks to elevate in his study […] [t]‌he import of listening and the practicing of interpretative charity are the central commitments of the New Wittgensteinian’s approach’.⁸²

Harkin and Read also complain that Temelini misrepresents Winch as a relativist and Cavell as a dogmatic sceptic,⁸³ and I agree with them in their criticisms of Temelini. I would add that Temelini also misrepresents Winch as conservative, claiming that Winch’s position on forms of life is that ‘we must accept authority.’⁸⁴ But this is a peculiar interpretation of Winch’s discussion of authority. Winch does think that people might have ingrained habits of obedience such that they do not question authority but he also claims that these habits can be challenged and are in fact challenged: ‘If these habits are to be challenged, as of course they sometimes are, a basis will still have to be found for the challenge in the life of the community.’⁸⁵ At no point does Winch claim that habits of obedience or the authority of the state should not be challenged.

What Winch does is give an account of authority which conflicts with traditional accounts in philosophy. Winch looks at remarks from Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in order to give a rich account of practical rationality in opposition to the accounts of practical rationality found in the works of philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes (and also, later, John Rawls). Hobbes’s account makes it difficult to see why someone would consent to be subject to another’s authority⁸⁶ whereas Wittgenstein’s helps us to understand this (to make sense of it). One thing to notice here is that Winch is not saying that anyone should be subject to another person’s authority. What he did was to describe the conditions under which we can come to understand why somebody consents to another’s authority – which he thinks traditional theories had made obscure.

Temelini also misrepresents my own views in his discussion of ‘therapeutic scepticism.’ In the work of mine that he cites, ‘Leave Everything as It Is: A Critique of Marxist Interpretations of Wittgenstein,’ I neither emphasize the notion of therapy in Wittgenstein (I do not present a therapeutic reading of Wittgenstein) and nor do I subscribe to a form of philosophical scepticism. My work is mentioned briefly in the second chapter of Temelini’s book under the heading of ‘strong contextualism’ and Temelini argues that the thinkers discussed under that heading either think that we are ‘thoroughly determined by conventions’ or that we are ‘at the mercy of autonomous, radically contingent, and historically variable conventions operating largely out of our control.’⁸⁷ I do not in fact believe either of these things and the passage that he quotes from my work in order to justify making his claims does not justify him in making the claim that I am a ‘strong contextualist’. What I said in my paper ‘Leave Everything as It Is’, which Temelini cites, was that Wittgenstein and Marx were both ‘sensitive to the importance of (social) context’.⁸⁸ However, it does not follow from this that I believe that ‘individuals […] are thoroughly determined by conventions’ or that individuals are ‘at the mercy of autonomous, radically contingent, and historically variable conventions operating largely out of our control’, as Temelini

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