lebenswelt and lebensformen: husserl and wittgenstein on the goal and method of philosophy

HUMAN STUDIES 1,184--200 (1978)

Lebenswelt and Lebensformen: Husserl and Wittgenstein on the Goal

and Method of Philosophy

EARL TAYLOR

Harvard University

It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back.

--WlTTGENSTEIN (On Certainty, par, 471)

In recent discussions of the foundations of the social sciences, little attention has been given to the conception of "grounding" itself. Appeals frequently have been made to philosophy, notably to the phenomenology of Husserl and the analytic philosophy of Wittgenstein. Some approaches, e.g., ethnomethod- elegy, claim both as intellectual progenitors. Problems arise, however, in the attempts to synthesize two such diverse programs. Not the least of these is the difference between the two thinkers' views on language and certainty. On these and other issues, Husserl's goal of "philosophy as rigorous science" and Wittgen- stein's "therapeutic" practice are widely at odds. Here we can only begin the comparison that is a necessary step in evaluating the potential contribution of each approach to the issue of grounding the social sciences.

The essential features of the theory of language that Hussed was to retain throughout his work can be found in the Logical Investigations (Husserl, 1970a)

Reprints of this article may be obtained from the author at Department of Sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

LEBENSWELT AND LEBENSFORMEN 185

(originally published in 1900). 1 There he distinguishes the linguistic expression per se from the conscious act that confers meaning on it by referring to something through it. Ultimately, this distinction is rooted in Husserl's conception of the "intentionality" of consciousness. Because consciousness is always consciousness of something, it is possible to direct reflection either to the objects "intended" in consciousness (the noema) or the acts of "intending" themselves (the noeses). No reference to an object outside consciousness need be made in either case. Rather, the phenomenological epoch6 or reduction suspends all fac- tual issues about the (non)existence of objects in favor of an investigation of the transcendefital conditions of the appearance to consciousness of any experience whatsoever.

The phenomenological epoch~ has been likened to Descartes' method of radical doubt, but there is an essential difference. Whereas Descartes employed a systematic version of mundane doubt as to the existence of objects in the world (arriving finally at the certitude of the ego cogito), Husserl radicalizes the mundane ability to revise anticipations of events in the light of subsequent experience. Both the event as anticipated and as it "really is" (and "was all along") are taken purely as intended, i.e., in terms of the acts of consciousness that confer on the event its different modes of apprehension as anticipated, as directly experienced, as remembered, etc. The goal of Husserl's method is to show how all such modes are founded on the originary mode of apodictic certainty of the thing presented "clearly and distinctly" to consciousness (thus rejoining Descartes at this point). We shall be concerned throughout what follows with this conception of certainty and its effect on Husserl's view of language.

Husserl's early investigations revealed that any object necessarily appears as a figure against the ground of the world. While the given object is intended explicitly in terms of its relevance to practical activities, the world is usually intended implicitly as taken-for-granted. Unexpected exigencies can cause the mundane experiencer to reflect on his plans and even on the world as such, but only for the practically limited purpose of revising his plans and returning to his mundane involvement in the world. Husserl's method attempts to sustain the momentary suspension of practical involvement that is possible within the "natural attitude," and it thereby bears a curious relation to the natural attitude. While originating from within it and preserving it as the object of inquiry, the

1The present analysis was arrived at independently of Derrida's (1973)incisive critique, but is substantially supported by it. In his preface to Derrida, Newton Garver suggests that Wittgenstein's "philosophical development, with respect to the foundations of language, is in many ways parallel to the movement in Continental philosophy from Husserl to Heidegger to Derrida" (xix). This parallel provides for the possibility of extending Wittgenstein's critique of his own earlier view of language to Husserl's view. The interesting similarities between Derrida and Wittgenstein thus revealed cannot be explored here. For a reply to Derrida, see Mohanty (1974).

186 TAYLOR

phenomenological epoche nevertheless represents a break from the natural attitude insofar as the practical "lived" involvement that is the natural attitude is replaced by a theoretical interest in this involvement considered as an "attitide". Indeed, part of the paradox of the epoch6 (which Husserl acknowledged) follows from the fact that to characterize unreflectively lived experience as an "attitude" is to render it a mere thesis which like that concerning the (non)existence of any given object is to be suspended in order to describe the way in which it appears.

It is important to note that Husserl's claims for his method require that the epoch~ be carded out on nothing less than the entire world and "all at once." Mundane doubt derives from the experience of error, illusion, etc., where pre- viously perceived things are seen differently in the light of subsequent experience. It is always possible that any given thing could be other than it appears. The mundane experiencer, however, never doubts the existence of the entire world, but rather in his very doubting necessarily preserves the means, including the certainty of his own existence, whereby the doubt concerning a given object will be resolved. Descartes' method was systematic doubt only in that he reduced his assumptions to a minimum (cogito, ergo sum) and systematically proceeded to" reinstate other things that could not be doubted if doubt itself as an activity of the ego was to be preserved.

In Husserl's (1970b) view, such a piecemeal approach fails to escape the natural attitude by preserving those aspects that are not being doubted at any moment. Thus, the failure of Descartes to suspend the last vestiges of a substantialist subject/object dichotomy inherited from Galilean science led him to posit mind as a thinking substance (res cogitans) set over against the mathematically speci- fiable universe of physical objects (res extensa). Husserl shares with Descartes a conception of a un/-verse, a unified world of possible experience, but charges that rather than returning to the things themselves as experienced, Descartes substituted a theoretical vision, the world as conceived by science. Hussed's program is an attempt to elucidate the ways in which such abstract ideals are founded on a pretheoretical experience of the world, and his method therefore consists of suspending both naive and theoretical preconceptions about out experience of the world. Whereas neither common sense nor science has a "perspective on itself' (Natanson, 1973, p. 61), it is the task of phenomenology to provide such a perspective on - and thereby a grounding for - both common sense and science. Ideally, it provides a perspective on its own methods and goals as well.

It is this reflexive character of phenomenology that provides the occasion for the problems raised in the Crisis (Husserl, 1970b). Although many of these problems derive from a continuous development of Husserl's thought, the notions of the Lebenswel t and the "historical reduction" represent something of a break from the topic and method (respectively) of his earlier work. Husserl's criticism in the Crisis of Kant's failure to return to the pretheoretical life-world is, as Carr (1974) notes, equally a criticism of his own earlier preoccupation with grounding


the various ontologies of the empirical sciences of his day. He now seeks, by means of the newly conceived historical reduction, to avoid Kant's mistake of taking Newton's materialistic ontology as the basis for the explication of the conditions of mundane experience. The question for Husserl is no longer merely how to return to the world of "things themselves," but rather the very nature of such a world experienced prior to (and as the basis of) any abstract conceptualization. He explicitly formulates his program as an ontology of this life- world and adds to his array of methods the necessity of uncovering the very tradition within which transcendental questions themselves are addressed to a given conception of the world.

The new methodological element of the Crisisis what Husserl calls his "critical- historical reflection" on the tradition of Western philosophy. Stressing the analogy to other aspects of Husserl's method, Carr (1974) refers to this as his historical reduction, since it seeks to clear away the prejudices that the philosopher in- herits in appropriating his tradition. Such a tradition is not considered "in itself ' as objective history, but rather as the "total unity of history," our history insofar as we partake of it. Thus, while history is rendered amenable to analysis within Husserrs "subjective" phenomenology, he does not confront this issue as one imposed from without and to which his method must adapt. Rather, his own studies of the constitution of objects for consciousness had pointed to the historicity of consciousness itself. With the Crisis, Husserl begins to fully realize the radical implications of his discovery. The return "zu den Sachen selbst" is now seen to be hampered not merely by the natural prejudices of consciousness but by historically accumulated theoretical prejudices as well. Husserl was aware of many of the difficulties that his new method created for his old conception of phenomenology as a "rigorous science," and he referred to its results as "Dich- tung" - poetic invention. It is not clear whether he realized that his original goal of explicating a unitary life-world may itself have been a reflection of the theoretical conception of the world that he wished to suspend and ultimately "ground."

One of the additional difficulties in interpreting Husserrs late works is, as Cart (1974) has demonstrated, that he uses the crucial term Lebenswelt in several different (and often seemingly contradictory) ways. Generally, he uses the term to refer to both the world of physical objects and that of cultural meanings created by man. He argues that the two levels are analytically distinguishable in that the latter is founded on the (ontologically prior) former, though he sometimes seems to further suggest that there is a "preculturar' world of perception which culture somehow (merely?) overlays. In the Cartesian Meditations, Husse rl (I 960) proceeds from the methodological solipsism of the trancendentally reduced sphere of "ownness" to the life-world and science as more or less equally intersubjective spheres of experience. Only in the Crisis does he suggest that the life-world is ontologicaUy prior and that consequently his method must begin with a descriptive ontology of the life-world. That he has not yet clarified this

188 TAYLOR

new conception, however, is shown by the fact that he equates (or confuses) the cultural and perceptual levels of the life-world in terms of their common nontheoretical status vis-a-vis science. Ironically then, his conception of the life-world remains derivative from the unitary world-view of science (as opposed to it), despite his avowed intention of "grounding" this very conception of science.

In an essay written about the time of the Crisis (published as "The Origin of Geometry," Appendix VI to the English edition of the Crisis), Husserl relies on a conception of language that makes the historical reduction both necessary and problematic. In this view (which will be considered in more detail shortly). Hussefl treats language as a cultural artifact that allows the geometer to com- municate his discoveries but which in no way affects his original perception of the world and the conceptualization of his private discoveries. Because language is necessary as a depository of such discoveries, however, we are vulnerable to the "seduction of language" wherein we forget the origins of its sedimentations. There is a need for the historical reduction as an adjunct to the original conception of the epochS. The difficulty for Hussefl's earlier program arises when he argues that previous sedimentations not only determine our conception of the world but "flow into" our very structures of perception. This argument is most fully developed in the posthumously edited Experience and Judgment (Husserl, 1973), but it bears directly on the issues and ambiguities of the Crisis.

We should note that Carr (1974) warns that Experience and Judgment was largely written by Husserl's student Ludwig Landgrebe from Husserl's notes. Consequently, it is not clear how much of it represents Husserl's own last thoughts and how much it is Landgrebe's reaction to the ambiguities he perceived in the Crisis. The text explicitly makes a distinction between the pregiven (preinter- preted) life-world of both science and commom sense and the "pure" life-world experienced prior to any such conceptualizations. The term Lebenswelt is reserved for this "pure" life-world in Experience and Judgment. Husserl had consistently distinguished between psychology within the natural attitude that locates consciousness "within" the world and phenomenology for which consciousness is the necessary point of access to the "world" seen as the intentional correlate of consciousness. Even in the Crisis, however, he argues that psychology, properly understood and pushed to its limits, can be a way into phenomenology. Exper- ience and Judgment departs from this line, rejecting even a phenomenological psychology insofar as it is based on reflection alone. The objection is that such a psychology returns us merely to the pregiven world that we share with other "men of our time." Reflection alone cannot move behind the historical prejudices that have been inherited to the pretheoretical world that the text terms the life- world proper. The argument, in effect, is that in order to recover "our" life-world we must move behind "our" subjectivity to that of those men (e.g., Galileo) who first founded the traditions that we have inherited. Only in their experience, it would seem, can we discover the life-world prior to theoretical conceptualization. This new vision of the object ofphenomenology seems to undercut Husserl's previous methodology.


The paradox is that Experience and Judgment seems to argue that the historical prejudices encountered by the historical reduction are so deep as to challenge any method that seeks to eliminate them. As Carr (1974) observes, "on the one hand, the reasons for the necessity of the hostorical reduction are even stronger than those offered in the Crisis; on the other hand, Experience and Judgment robs us of the very means of carrying out that reduction" (p.229). The tong section of the Crisis on Galileo's role in founding the modern tradition of science and philosophy is meant to be a model of the historical reduction. Husserl asks us to imagine the world as experienced prior to Galileo's accomplishment, but later work denies that we can do this. Instead, Experience and Judgment hints that a method of "dis- mantling" (Abbau) is necessary, as though the Galilean idealizations could be sub- tracted from our experience of the pregiven world of our tradition to yield the true life-world as a residue. This method of Abbua is not described in any detail, and as Carr (1974) remarks, "this is a far cry from the phenomenological insistence on grasping in original intuition the thing itself" (p. 231).

The paradox may be more apparent than real, however, if we consider care- fully what Husserl has done in his study of Galileo. Far from marking the "fall" from an unadulterated experience of the life-world, Galileo was a revolutionary figure in the history of science and philosophy. That is, he stood between two traditions, having himself inherited and partially transcended the Euclidean tradition of geometry, thereby founding the tradition of modern physical science. Indeed, it is Galileo's crucial role in this change of traditions that makes him exemplary and leads to Husserl's study. Galileo stands as proof that men both always find themselves within a tradition and are capable of at least partially freeing themselves to enter another. This seems more consistent with the establishment of science as described in "The Origin of Geometry" (Husserl, 1970b, Appendix VI). We agree with Carr's conclusion that "'Experience and Judgment's quasi-historical search for some primitive consciousness in direct, culturally unmediated relation to the world will not do" (p. 235). The extrapolation of the historical reduction to a precultural zero-point rests on the assumption that history is the orderly accumulation and sedimentation of successive layers of a monolithic tradition. The very concept of tradition, however, presupposes breaks and discontinuities that bound a given tradition as such. The assumptions of Experience and Judgment are unfounded. The apparent impossibility of carrying out the historical reduction stems from an exaggeration of the role that any one tradition has in shaping the "receptacle" of language which embodies it and thereby determines our perception. As we shall see, this very view of language as a receptacle itself tempts Husserl to overstate his position, thus creating the paradox.

Near the end of the Crisis, Husserl (1970b) writes

The life-world - "the world for us all" - is identical with the world that can be commonly talked about. Every new apperception leads essentially, through appercep- tire transference, to a new typification of the surrounding world and in social inter- course to a naming which immediately flows into the common language. Thus the

190 TAYLOR

world is always such that it can be empirically, generally (intersubjectively) explicated and, at the same time, linguistically explicated. (pp. 209-210)

This may appear at first to be an endorsement o f some form of ordinary language philosophy, but in keeping with his earliest view of language, meaning is be- stowed upon the common language by acts of consciousness in apperceptive transference. This interpretation is borne out in later passages in which Husserl clearly rejects any (merely) linguistic analysis. He argues that a "genuine phenomenological-psychological epochS" is necessary as the first step toward the kind of "inner perception" required by a science of psychology and cautions that

the beginner who is bound to the tradition . . . . starting with the experience of the external attitude (the natural, anthropological subject-object attitude, the psy- chomundana attitude), at first thinks that (the epoche) is a matter of an obvious, simple "purification" of oneself from one's load of realistic presuppositions, whereas the psychic experiential content is essentially already known and even expressible in ordinary language. But this is a fundamental error. If this were correct, one would need only to explicate analytically the experiential concept, derived from common experience, of man as a thinking, feeling, acting subject, a subject experiencing pleasure and pain and the like; but that is only the outside, so to speak, the surface of the psychic, that part o f it which has objectified itself in the external world. (p. 248, emphasis added)

This conception of an essentially "interior" consciousness objectifying itself (via language, among other means) in the (merely) "external" concepts intersubjectively available has fateful consequences for Husserl's goal and method of philosophy.

We may now more fully appreciate the argument made in "The Origin of Geometry." The problem of that essay is stated by Husserl as follows:

How does linguistic embodiment make out the merely intrasubjective structure the objective structure which, e.g., as geometrical concept or state of affairs, is in fact present as understandable by all and is valid, already in its linguistic expression as geometrical speech, as geometrical proposition, for all the future in its geometrical sense? (p. 358)

Husserl (1970b) is concerned to show how the "intrapsychically constituted structure" that the individual geometer formulates is transformed into an "intersubjective being of its own as an ideal object" (p. 359) o f geometry. His solution is that mankind, as a "community o f empathy and language" is capable o f "re- ciprocal linguistic understanding" wherein there is a "self-evident consciousness of the identity of the mental structures in the productions o f both the receiver of the communication and the communicator" (p. 360). Written records extend the scope o f this sharing of mental structures since once these have been com- mitted to written form, "the reader can make it self-evident again, can reactivate the self-evidence" (p. 361). Generally, however, one merely passively and unreflectively appropriates the meanings sedimented in a tradition. This results in the possibility of science and culture and the need for the historical reduction to resist the "seduction" o f language (p. 362). We see then that Husserl's concep-


tion of language captures many essential features of his philosophy. It is largely in terms of this that we shall compare Husserl and Wittgenstein in the following section.

II

While a comparison of Husserl and Wittgenstein reveals many similarities as well as differences, we will be concerned primarily with the problems that Husserl's conceptions of language and certainty create for his program, as seen from the standpoint of Wittgenstein's quite different views. We will argue that Husserl's goal of elucidating the essential structures of a unitary Lebenswelt via the "rigorous science" of phenomenology reflects to a greater degree than he apparently realized the very scientific conception of the world that he sought to ground. Pursuing the consequences of this vision, he tends to absolutize certain of his discoveries (such as the historicity of consciousness). A picture adequate to one aspect of his problem is illegitimately extended; tradition becomes a barrier rather than a means of access to reality. The advantage of using Wittgen- stein's conception of language and philosophy to understand Husserl's views is that Wittgenstein, while respecting the deep-rooted need to employ such universal visions, was acutely aware of the problems that this could create. His goal, like Husserl's, was the explication and clarification of basic philosophical problems. His method, however, while also descriptive, was almost diametrically opposed to Husserl's and more suited to his own task of "dissolving" rather than "solving" philosophical problems.

When Husserl (1970b) states that the central goal of the Crisis is "the correct comprehension of the essence of the life-world and the method of a 'scientific' treatment appropriate to it" (p. 123), he seems to suggest that this "science" will be both like and unlike other sciences. As a "science" of the essence of the life-world, it is continuous with Husserl's vision ofphenomenology as a "rigorous science," where the rigor is assured as much by the ideal of a unitary (transcendental) structure of experience as by the "presuppositionless" method. That is, Husserl is interested in an explication of the essential structures of the life- world (taken as a unified object of inquiry) in principle, as a theoretical task with no necessary "practical" motivation. In contrast, Wittgenstein's (1968) "therapeutic" conception of philosophy stresses the plurality of Lebensformen and Sprachspiele, forms of life and language games which are "meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life" (#23). 2 Even in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus where he posited a unitary "true logical form" for language, Wittgenstein also insisted that everyday language is in order "as it is" and requires analysis only for certain

2Citations employing "# '" refer to numbered paragraphs in the works cited. Elsewhere, the reference is to page numbers,

192 TAYLOR

reasons (e.g., its use in formulating theories in the natural sciences). His later work (Wittgenstein, 1968) rests on the conviction that "philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday" (#38); and that, consequently, philosophical analysis is neither required nor possible "in principle" (as a theoretical pursuit in its own right). Language games and forms of life are to be understood in this context as simplified idealizations tailored to given philosophical problems. They are constructed to remind us o f features of ordinary usage, not to "secure" such practices by revealing their "essence."

Although Husserl (1970b) declares that "the point is not to secure objectivity but to understand it" (p. 189), he rejects the claims to certainty of mere opinion which "has its ground in the pregiven world," requiring instead a method that stands "above" the world in order to render it a "phenomenon" for study (p. 152). In effect, the naive "grounding" of the natural attitude is suspended, only to return as secured by the perspicuity o f the phenomenological method which surveys it from "above." Much of Wittgenstein's later work was intended to show that the certainties o f everyday life and those o f logic and mathematics did not in fact require such "grounding" (whether from "above" or "below"). Thus, in response to the philosopher's conviction that mathematics "must" be based on logic, Wittgenstein (1967) remarks that it is not logic that compels us to accept results of a calculation, but rather that something compels us " to accept such a proposition as in accord with logic" (p. 73). To see what this "something" is for Wittgenstein, we must turn to specific examples of his therapeutic practice.

In one case, Wittgenstein (1967) asks us to consider what might happen if our rulers were made of some elastic material:

So if you had measured the table with the elastic rulers and said it measured five feet by our usual way of measuring, you would be wrong; but if you say that it measured five feet by your way of measuring, that is correct. - "But surely that isn't measuring at all!" - It is similar to our measuring and capable, in certain circumstances, of ful- filling "practical purposes". (A shop-keeper might use it to treat different customers differently.) (p. 4)

The interlocutor's objection is understandable. It is repeated, with a similar reply, in the Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1968).

"So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?" - It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in forms of life. (#241)

What has to be accepted, the given i s . . . forms of life. (p. 226)

Agreement in forms of life (e.g., measurement for "practical purposes") is the basis for (dis)agreements that can intelligibly arise within the context of such shared practices. In the case at hand, "the establishment of a method of measurement is antecedent to the correctness or incorrectness of a statement of length" (Wittgenstein, 1967, p. 45). For the same reason, an "arithmetical proposit)on would not be false but useless, if confusion supervened" (p. 98). In the abseJ~ce


of such confusion, no other "grounding" is necessary. Analysis may be under- taken on the occasion of and in order to dispel confusion, but no grounding in principle is needed, nor could "additional" certainty be secured by such means in those cases where confusion does not arise.

The distinction between Wittgenstein's and Husserl's conceptions of philosophy is nicely embodied in their different uses of geological metaphors. We have seen that the extreme version of HusserI's view of tradition employs the notion that layers of tradition are deposited via a presumed uniform process of sedimentation. Problems arise in the effort to find an equally uniform method to reverse (and thereby "escape") this process. Wittgenstein's (1969) metaphor also makes reference to the influence of tradition on perception, but with an important difference:

The river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself: though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other. (#97)

The riverbed is a metaphor for the form of life that defines the scope of, e.g., doubt or belief appropriate to any given language game. As such, this bedrock is itself "beyond" doubt (see below). It sets the course for our "moves" in a language game as the riverbed determines the course of the river. In both cases, however, the boundaries are indeterminate, though as the example of the elastic ruler illustrates, they can be useful for "practical purposes." Changes occur in both kinds of bedrock, often with unforseen consequences. Su~ h extensions result in everyday usages loosely related in terms of "family resemblances" (as in the case of the term "game") (Wittgenstein, 1968, #67). Lines can be drawn, boundaries made artifically clear for limited purposes, but these definite boundaries are no more generally useful or certain than are the indefinite ones which precede them. As Wittgenstein observes, ' " i n e x a c t ' . . . does not mean 'unusable"' (#88).

Central to the differences between the two conceptions of philosophy is the issue of "certainty" hinted at in the example above. Husserl's return to the "things themselves" has as its ideal the unmediated intuition of "clear and distinct" entities present to consciousness) Wittgenstein's discussion of certainty constitutes a sustained challenge to the notion that the "objects" of experience are or need be "clear and distinct" and present to consciousness in order to "be experienced." In On Certainty, he takes up G.E. Moore's defense of the common- sense certainty expressed by propositions such as "I know that this is my right hand." According to Moore, if we call into question such basic certainties, then nothing can be safe from skepticism. Wittgenstein would hardly disagree that we experience such certainty - and that it is essential to our normal way of life, but he wishes to show that there are good reasons for not considering this to be a

3Derrida's (1973) critique dwells at some length on this conception.

194 TAYLOR

function of what Moore (or anyone else) says he "knows" or "believes." Rather, the certainty that Moore expresses reflects the "grammar" of a language game that simply excludes the intelligibility of doubt in the absence of extraordinary circumstances. Such certainty is not "knowledge" (and, hence, it does not "be- long" to Moore or anyone else), nor would to challenge such certainty be merely "doubt" (as Moore realizes). This certainty constitutes the game within which knowledge and doubt are "moves" (Wittgenstein, 1969):

A doubt about existence only works in a language-game. (#24)

The child learns by believing the adult. Doubt comes after belief. (#160).

Moore does not know what he asserts he knows, but it stands fast for him, as also for me; regarding it as absolutely solid is part of our methods of doubt and certainty, (#lSl)

This is more than a terminological quibble, for if we decide with Moore that his certainty is a form of knowledge, then we have standards of evidence which are applicable. If we can imagine that he fails to meet these standards, then he could be wrong, the subjective feeling of his certainty notwithstanding. The way is indeed open to skepticism. Alternatively, we may demand that certainty be the grounding of all knowledge in the intuition of "'clear and distinct" objects. But in Wittgenstein's (1969) view, "What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing: it is rather held fast by what lies around it" (#144). The interdependent propositions (whether formal or empirical) that constitute the "grammar" of our language games are "fundamental" precisely in the sense that they determine what we accept as evidence and "need not give way before any contrary evidence" (#657). That they so function is the result of our so using them:

"we could doubt every single one of these facts, but we could not doubt themall." Wouldn't it be more correct to say: "we do not doubt them all." Our not doubting them all is simply our manner of judging, and therefore of acting. (~i~232)

Neither Moore's personal conviction nor Husserl's in principle explication of general "essences" can secure any certainty over and above that embodied in our very methods of judging and acting.

For Wittgenstein, "grammar" is as central a concept as "essence" is for Husserl, and their respective roles in the two conceptions of philosophy are in some ways analogous. Indeed, according to Wittgenstein (1968), "'Essence is expressed by grammar" (#371). It is important to see how this relates to his distinction between certainty and knowledge. To begin with, "experience does not direct us to derive anything from experience" (Wittgenstein, 1969, #130), or, as Hacker (1973) explains, "it is grammar which excludes doubt, not experience" (p. 245). Agreement in forms of life is not derived from experience, but rather determines what counts as experience within a given language game. Elucidating the param- eters of a language game reveals its "grammar." Our convictions and doubts form systems that are not themselves the result of our individual experiences. It


is in this sense that grammar expresses "'essence," that is, the presupposed conditions under which anyone whatsoever can lay claim to knowledge, experience doubts, etc., intelligibly. Moore's feeling of certainty is the consequence, not the basis, of the "logic" of doubt and belief that the grammar reveals. The certainty expressed by Moore is a "logical and not a psychological one" (Wittgen- stein, 1969, #447).

Wittgenstein's conception of certainty throws into relief the problems created by Husserl's epoch~ and the claims that he makes for its ability to "ground" naive experience. Although modeled on the distancing from naive experience achieved in mundane doubt, Husserl considers the epoch~ a suspension of both doubt and certainty. That such a suspension can be effected rests on the explicit assumption that both doubt and certainty are (or can be made to be) "theses" positing the world as certain or doubted. Wittgenstein's remarks challenge the intelligibility of this assumption. We have already seen why "a doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt" (Wittgenstein, 1969, #450). This is because

the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn. But it isn't that the situation is like this: We just can't investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If we want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put. My life consists in my being content to accept many things. (#341, 343 -44)

One cannot make certain experiments if there are not some things that one does not doubt. But that does not mean that one takes certain presuppositions on trust. (:/~i/Y337)

Here Wittgenstein is pointing to a crucial a s y m m e t r y between certainty and doubt that Hussert's assumption obscures. Knowing and doubting are moves within the presupposed certainty of a language game which gives them their intelligibility. This certainty itself, however, is neither knowledge nor the absence of doubt. We may "know" how to play chess without constantly thinking about it, but "doubting means thinking" (#480). Husserl is perhaps correct to conceive of doubting as a conscious negative judgment made of an explicit thesis. The difficulty arises from his conception of apodictic certainty as a kind of "clear and distinct" seeing from which empirical doubt, belief, knowledge, etc., are derived as "modes" of this original intuitive givenness. If certainty is the ground rather than the opposite of doubt, then Husserl's bracketing of both is not "neutral" as it would be were they opposing theses.

The asymmetry between certainty and doubt also calls into question the claim that a method surveying the natural attitude "from above" can secure the naive certainty of normal experience. Consider the case of the native speaker who says "This is red" and the linguist who reports that "In language X, object b is called 'red."' As Wittgenstein (1969) observes, "an Englishman who calls this color 'red" is not 'sure it is called red' in English" (#527). The language game of reporting that an object "is called" a certain color in a given language is parasitic on the more basic language game of knowing how to use color names in the language.

196 TAYLOR

A child first learns a person's or thing's name and only later that it "is called" such-and-such. If the prior game can exist perfectly well without the other, then nothing in the way of certainty is secured for the former by an analysis along the lines of the latter. The linguist, of course, has his reasons for so studying the natives' language, and the natives may in turn appropriate his results for practical activities such as developing a written language. In time, the natives may agree that this color "is spelled 'r' 'e' 'd'," having assimilated the written language. But once again, they will not be saying that they are "sure it is spelled 'r' 'e' 'd ' ." The spelling, like the naming before it, will be grounded in the unchallenged certainty of everyday practice for which no further grounding is possible or necessary.

In Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy, an explication of the Lebenswel t such as Husserl proposes is unnecessary except for limited, therapeutic purposes. "Than dange r . . , is one of giving a justification of our procedure where there is no such thing as a justification and we ought simply to have said: that's how we do i t " (1967, p. 98). Language games are to be regarded as "proto-phenomena" (1968, #654) for which certainty is not secured, but rather revealed by analysis: "The question is not one of explaining a language-game by means of our experiences, but of noting a language-game" (1968, #655). A language game "is only possible if one trusts something (I did not say "can trust something") (1969, #509). We can have no further grounds for the very things that are themselves our grounds. A language game "'is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable). It is there - like our life" (1969, #559). Wittgenstein (1969) says that he wants "to conceive it as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified" (#353). As such, nothing I could produce in support of my certainty would add to it: "my having two hands is, in normal circumstances, as certain as anything that I could produce in evidence for it. That is why I am not in a position to take the sight of my hand as evidence for it" (#250). Only if this certainty were m y certainty, something I "know," would it be appropriate for others to consider my evidence for knowing it. This certainty is not my certainty, however. It needs no evidence because it is the ground of what could count as m y evidence. In direct contrast to Husserl's emphasis on "seeing" clearly in direct intuition, Wittgenstein (1969) argues that

giving grounds . . . justifying the evidence, comes to an end; - but the end is not certain propositions' striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game. (:/~204)

Philosophy, language, and certainty are closely related, in strikingly different ways, for both Wittgenstein and Husserl. In the latter's case, certainty is the unmediated intuition of essence that philosophy yields by suspending the natural attitude. Language, like tradition, is a barrier to philosophical inquiry rather than its medium and object. For Wittgenstein, certainty is the ungrounded ground that constitutes every language game, and philosophy "dissolves" its own problems by returning us to the details of everyday practice. Philosophical confusion


arises when we extrapolate "pictures" of our everyday practice beyond the limited areas of their application: "we are inclined to take the measurement of length with a footrule as a model even for the measurement of the distance between two stars" (1967, p. 67). In Husserl's case, the certainty of unmediated intuition is taken to be certainty tout court, and he demands of his method that this type of certainty be the ground and the goal of a "presuppositionless" philosophy. The danger with such a program of the systematic explication of the essential features of a unitary Lebenswel t is that "one will think one is in possession of the complete explanation of the individual cases when one has this general way of talking" (Wittgenstein, 1967, p. 153).

Wittgenstein's (1970) alternative, of course, is to describe our everday usages.

The difficulty.., is not that of finding the solution but rather that of recognizing as the solution something that looks as if it were only a preliminary to it. This is con- nected, I believe, with our wrongly expecting an explanation, whereas the solution of the difficulty is a description, if we give it the right place in our considerations. If we dwell upon it, and do not try to get beyond it. The difficulty here is: to stop. (#413)

Wittgenstein's language games are not first approximations to a reform of language, nor are they meant to inventory all possible forms of experience. Rather, "the work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose" (1968, #127). Solution, or rather, "dissolution," of philosophical problems is like curing a disease: "In philosophizing we may not terminate a disease of thought. It must run its natural course, and slow cure is all important. (That is why mathematicians are such bad philosophers.)" (1970, #382). It is perhaps no accident that Husserl, with his penchant for a rigorous method of solving philosophical problems in terms of the intuition of (formal) essences, was a mathematician. To fully appreciate Wittgenstein's own rigorous method of piecemeal "dissolution" of problems, however, we need to clarify the role of "grammar" in his descriptions.

The problems that confront Husserl in the Crisis stem from the fact that the phenomenotogical epoche was to be carried out as the philosopher's reduction of the world to a sphere of "owrmess" (cf. Husserl, 1960). The "historical reduction" was a response to the threat that the conception of a monolithic tradition posed to Husserl's program. In contrast, Wittgenstein's explication of the grammar of language games is from the beginning addressed to intersubjective conventions rooted in forms of life. To the extent that Hussefl allows such an intersubjective status of language, he reduces it to an external receptacle to be animated by individual acts of meaning-endowment. The direct intuition of objects apart from language is said to yield their essences. For Wittgenstein (1967), however, "it is not the property of an object that it is ever 'essential,' but rather the mark of a concept" (p. 23), and concepts are always grounded in forms of life and expressed by grammar,

Wittgenstein's famous argument against the possibility of a private language is relevant here. The would-be private linguist insists that he can identify a sensation

198 TAYLOR

S and call it "S'" in his language in order to be able to subsequently recognize it as "S." But Wittgenstein points out that if in fact this private language is to be regular in this sense, that is, to be rule.governed, then the private linguist must be capable both of following his own rules correctly and of making mistakes. In normal usage, however, whether or not a person is correctly following a rule depends not on his subjective certainty, but rather on intersubjective standards and his ability to act correctly. Ex hypothesi, the private linguist lacks this intersubjective check: he can never be sure that he is correctly following his own rules, since his memory may deceive him. What the private linguist needs is not the private experience (intuition) o f an object such as a sensation S, but rather the intersubjective concept "S." In fact, it is only because the philosopher already speaks a public language and has the concept "S" that he is tempted to posit a ghostly sensation S as the basis for a private language.

We can imagine at this point that Husserl might object that what he means by essence is something "deeper," more fundamental than mere human convention. Wittgenstein (1967) replies specifically to such an objection that " to the depth that we see in the essence there corresponds the deep need for convention" (p. 23). Husserl also rejects a philosophy that consists merely o f analyzing words, but we cannot charge Wittgenstein with this intention.

One ought to ask, not what images are or what happens when one imagines anything, but how the word "imagination" is used. But that does not mean that I want to talk only about words. For the question as to the nature of the imagination is as much about the word "imagination" as my question is. And I am only saying that this question is not to be decided - neither for the person who does the imagining, nor for anyone else - by pointing; nor yet by a description of any process. The first question also asks for a word to be explained; but it makes us expect a wrong kind of answer. (1968, #370)

Husserl's devaluation o f language as a tool and object o f philosophical inquiry made him susceptible to linguistic confusions o f the kind that, according to Wittgenstein, are the source o f philosophical problems in the first place. Husserl, like Moore, sought an apodictie certainty in unmediated intuition such that one could say with confidence "I can't be making a mistake here." But as we have seen, this subjective feeling o f certainty is irrelevant to the intersubjective constitution o f language games grounded in forms of life that determine the conditions for making such assertions.

"I can't etc." shows my assertion its place in the game. But it relates essentially to me, not to the game in general. If I am wrong in my assertion that doesn't detract from the usefulness of the language game. (1969, #637)

III

We have seen that conceptions o f language, certainty, and the goal and method of philosophy are closely related for both Husserl and Wittgenstein. Husserl treats certainty as a kind o f seeing prior to and outside o f language. If the "European


sciences" are to secure the grounding they require, an equally scientific explication of the essential structures of the unitary Lebenswelt is necessary in principle. The return to "the things themselves" involves a suspension of the historically accumulated prejudices of common sense and science alike. In order to suspend our tradition, however, we must suspend its medium, language. Here Husserl reveals a deep ambivalence. The ideal of science, which Husserl traces as the telos of Western man from the Greeks to the present "crisis," is possible only if language acts as a depository of the findings of individual scientists. At the same time, it is just this power of language that tempts modern science to forget its origins, both in Western history and as the formalization of an ontologically prior "lived" experience of the Lebenswelt. For Husserl (1970), ultimately, the "life" of both language and certainty lies outside them:

the originally intuitive life which creates its originally serf-evident structures through activities on the basis of sense-experience very quickly and in increasing measure falls victim to the seduction of language. (p. 362)

Wittgenstein, too, is aware of the role of language in the creation of philosophical problems. But as in the case of the geological metaphors, the two conceptions of philosophy diverge most sharply where they first appear to converge. Language can "seduce" us only if it stands over against us as something not properly our own and yet as something we desire. For Husserl, of course, this desire is for the Greekideal of knowledge attuned to the cosmos, language offers both the only hope of and the most insidious threat to this goal. For Wittgenstein, the danger is different. Our experience of certainty is the consequence, not the cause, of our language games which are grounded in ungrounded forms of life. The "life" of language and certainty is constituted from within, or rather, our lives consist of this certainty within language (Wittgenstein, 1969, #344). Lan- guage does not "seduce" us into taking this certainty for granted. Rather, as our very medium, it "'bewitches" us, alienates us from ourselves, and sends us off on quixotic attempts to supply external grounds for the very things that are our grounds. If language is a barrier standing between us and a rigorous unmediated intuition of "'the things themselves," then Bacon has taught us that we must dispose of this "idol" and Husserl has shown us how. If, however, we are under the spell not of an alien power but of our own devising, then philosophy must be a form of therapy. Husserl locates the "crisis of European sciences" in the failure to attain a scientific grounding for them. The tradition of Western man is the source of this crisis because it both embodies the telos inherent in the Greek ideal of science and represents a forgetfulness of that ideal. For Wittgenstein, the "crisis" arises when that ideal is extended beyond its legitimate application; language "goes on a holiday." It tempts us to look for "grounds" beyond or behind the very things that are our grounds. Here there can be no question of a science:

We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical prob-

200 TAYLOR

lems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings: in despite o fan urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philo- sophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. (1968, #109)

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T

I wish to express my thanks to Jeff Coulter for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

R E F E R E N C E S

Carr, D. Phenomenology and theproblem of history. Evanston, IlL: Northwestern University Press, 1974.

Derrida, J. Speech and phenomena and other essays on Husserl's theory of signs. Evanston, II1.: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

Garver, N. Preface to Derrida, J. Speech and phenomena and other essays on Husserl's theory of signs. Evanston, IlL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

Hacker, P. M. S. Insight and illusion: Wittgenstein on philosophy and the metaphysics of experience. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

Husserl, E. Cartesian meditations: An introduction to phenomenology. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1960.

Husserl, E. Logieal investigations, 2 vols. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1970. (a)

Hussert, E. The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. Evanston, Ilt.: Northwestern University Press, 1970. (b)

Husserl, E. Experience and]udgment (J. S. Churchill & K. Ameriks, trans.). Evanston, II1.: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

Mohanty, J. N. On Husserl's theory of meaning. The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 1974, 5(3), 229-244.

Natanson, M. Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of infinite tasks. Evanston, I11.: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

Wittgenstein, L. Remarks on the foundation of mathematics. Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, t967.

Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical investigations. New York: Macmillan, 1968. Wittgenstein, L. On certainty. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. Wittgenstein, L. Zettel. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1970.

lebenswelt and lebensformen: husserl and wittgenstein on the goal and method of philosophy

Documents