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Language, Rules, and Rule:Austin & Wittgenstein on Understanding and Authority*(Prepared for the University of Chicago Political Theory Workshop, May 12, 2008)

Tanner J. McFadden

University of Chicago

(Draft. Please do not cite without the authors permission.Comments and critiques invited at [email protected])

But as men (for the attaining of peace and conservation of themselves thereby) have madean artificial man, which we call a commonwealth, so also have they made artificial chains,called civil laws, which they themselves by mutual covenants have fastened at one end to thelips of that man or assembly to whom they have given the sovereign power, and at the otherend to their own ears

~Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, XXI.51

A pictureheld us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language andlanguage seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

~Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1152

Law, Hobbes brilliant image suggests, is power in the mode of language. The civil

laws pronounced by the sovereign guide and constrain his3 subjects as decisively as if they

were physical chains: for such a sovereign, clearly, to saysomething is to do something, in

J. L. Austins characteristic phrase;4 to speak is to make law.5 Just as for Austin to marry is

to say a few words, the medium of law makes it a matter of words to grant honor and

reward for some actions while requiring fine, imprisonment, or death for others, to declare

*Thanks to Andrew Dilts, Doug Hanes, Patchen Markell, and Jacob Schiff for helpful conversations about

this paper, and to Dasha Polzik for provocation with regard to Wittgenstein.1

Hereafter cited in the text as L, followed by the Chapter number in roman numeral notation, and the

paragraph number in Arabic notation.2 Hereafter cited in the text as PI, followed by the section number: (PI, 115).3 Throughout, I follow Hobbes consistent use of the masculine to characterize the artificial man of the

sovereign. I do not claim that sovereigns must be men, nor do I argue, as Idit Dobbs-Weinstein has argued

to me in conversations about Hobbes metaphysics, that Hobbes project inLeviathan requires a masculinesovereign.4 Austin,How to do things with Words, 12. Hereafter cited in the text as Austin, followed by the page

number: (Austin, 12).5

Austin repeatedly refers to the law as an example of performative speech inHow to do Things with

Words; see Austin, 4, n. 2; 19; 32;


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war or peace, to grant certain persons entry into, and remove others from, a community.

The making of modern (written, public) law is perhaps the clearest example of a

performative situation in which, as Austin put it, to utter the sentence (in, of course, the

appropriate circumstances) is not to describemy doing of what I should be said in so uttering

to be doing or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it (Austin, 6).

A closer look at Hobbes picture raises an important question, however: if laws are

chains, must they not bind the sovereign just as strongly as his subjects, so that subjects

actions, transmitted back through the chains of law, guide and constrain the sovereign; that

is, what about all those chains pulling the sovereign around by the lips? Hobbes would of

course respond that this question misunderstands sovereignty itself, but it does so by using

Hobbes own imagery to draw attention to a problematic view of language that he shares

with Austins How to do Things with Words. Austins discussion of the performative presents

language as a matter of an individual speakers manipulation of an abstract system of

conventions, separating the concerns of interpersonal communicationand so of how we

use language among othersfrom the essence of language. This picture is not wrong so

much as it is incomplete: language isa system of conventions, and the settled, conventional

nature of meanings and usage is essential to nearly all communication; but these conventions

themselves consist in, and so depend on, tacit agreements shared among the users of a

language, and ones ability to use themto do things with wordsis thus inseparable from

her ability to engage communicatively with others, to reach understanding with them.

Wittgenstein draws attention to the communicative foundations of conventions and

language with his claims that meaning is in use and that it is not possible to obey a rule

privately (PI, 202). He offers a view of language markedly different from the one Ive

linked to both Hobbes and Austin, one in which rules have a complex relationship to


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practices of communicative engagement with others. Articulating that relationship involves

reconsidering the forms of social power embedded in language, and it suggests a compelling

way to think about political rule in democratic contextsor so I will argue in what follows.

I begin with a critical reading of Austin that brings the tension between conventions and

communication into focus; I then turn to the Philosophical Investigations to show how

Wittgenstein moves past that tension, and close by briefly reconsidering Hobbes vision of

rule in light of Wittgensteins critique.

I.

Austins explicit project in How to do Things with Words is to isolate and examine a

certain sense of saying something as doing something. 6 Through the first six lectures, he

elaborates the distinction between constative speechthe making of statements which are

characteristically true or falseand performative speech, the making of utterances that are

the doing of an action, which again would not normally be described as, or as just, saying

something (Austin, 5), and that Austin characterizes as happy or unhappy rather than true

or false. This analysis eventually leads him, in lectures VII-X, to suggest a distinction

between two senses in which making any utterance constitutes doing something: Every

utterance involves 1) a locutionaryact, an act ofsaying somethingmaking noises (or marks)

constituting certain words, within a language and with an intended sense and reference; 2)

an illocutionaryact, an act performed insaying somethingan intervention in the world made

through an utterance, by intending the utterance, as Austin puts it, with a certain force, (asa

question, a description, a commitment, a criticism). He further claims that speech often,

6Lecture XI largely undermines this project, arguing that the distinctions between constative and

performative or between locution and illocution obscure language and so hurt more than they help. I

consider below the relationship between this argument and my critique of Austin.


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though not always, involves 3) a perlocutionaryact, an act performed bysaying something

producing effects in oneself or others through language (providing reassurance, casting into

doubt, insulting).

All of this allows Austin to argue forcefully that any theory of meaning must take

account of the entire speech act, including the speakers intentions and the context of

speech; he thus offers a powerful critique of one kind of philosophical blindness about

language, one which takes constative speech and the practice of making truth-functional

statements as definitive for meaningful speech, and consigns other utterances to one or

another kind of nonsense. But Austins insistence on looking at language in context also

provides the ground for an internal critique, insofar as performative speech is possible only

in a context among others who understand. Because it is action taken specifically through

language, performative speech depends for its significance as action on an audience able to

grasp its meaning as such. Yet Austin distinguishes the performative in a way that largely

ignores this fundamental issue, insulating performative speech from the concerns of

intersubjective communication by defining it in terms of conventions.

Austins use of the idea of conventions to specify the boundaries of the performative

initially seems straightforward. Developing the idea that a performative utterance constitutes

action only when made under appropriate circumstances, Austin links the success or

happiness of performatives to conventions: There must exist an accepted conventional

procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of

certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances (Austin 14). Again, if simply to

say a few words is to count as a distinct action like betting or promising or marrying, it

must be recognizably connected to some change in the world. Conventions provide this

connection, giving criteria for judging whether the action has come off successfully or not,


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whether the utterance counts as an action.7 Austin catalogs the ways that performative

utterances can go wrong in terms of different violations of convention (saying the wrong

thing, saying it at the wrong time or without the necessary accompanying actions, being the

wrong person to say it, & c.) in his doctrine of infelicities (Austin, 14-18), and aligns

performative speech with action more broadly by noting that infelicity is an ill to which all

acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts

(Austin, 19). The concept of a convention plays two crucial roles for Austin here: first, it

identifies the type of world-relation characteristic of performative speecha constitutive

relation sharply distinct from that of constative speech, and common to certain other kinds

of action.8 Second and relatedly, it provides a kind of criterion according to which

performatives are subject to robust evaluation, analogous to the evaluation of statements as

true or false.

With Austins shift from the performative/constative distinction and the locutionary,

illocutionary, and perlocutionary aspects of language, however, the role of conventions

becomes more complex. They remain definitive for illocution, the aspect Austin identifies as

relevant to the performative character of speech: We must notice that the illocutionary act

is a conventional act: an act done as conforming to a convention (Austin, 105). But this

now involves differentiating illocution from perlocution. Austin first identifies illocution

with the force of an utterance, while presenting perlocution as a matter of its effects upon

the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker or of other persons

7 In some casesAustin gives the examples I do (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)as

uttered in the course of the marriage ceremony. I name this ship the Queen Elizabethas uttered when

smashing the bottle against the stem (Austin, 5)the conventional procedure involved in making a

performative happy are quite elaborate and specific, but this need not be so. See Austin, 32ff. and, more

generally, Lectures V & VI.8 See Austin, 47: it is the fact that he is running which makes the statement that he is running true; or

againthe truth of the constative utterance he is running depends on his being running. Whereas in our

case it is the happiness of the performative I apologize which makes it the fact that I am apologizing: and

my success in apologizing depends on the happiness of the performative utterance I apologize.


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(Austin, 101). But illocution too depends on certain kinds of effects, so Austin elaborates by

linking illocutions effects to its conventional character:

the consequential effects here mentioned [in relation to perlocution] do not include a particular kind ofconsequential effects, those achieved, e.g., by way of committing the speaker as in promising, which come

into the illocutionary act. Perhaps restrictions need making, as there is clearly a difference between what we feel tobe the real production of real effects and what we regard as mere conventional consequences (Austin, 102-3, emphasisadded).

What Austin means by the conventionality of illocution and its consequences here is that

they could be made explicit by the performative formula, but [perlocutionary acts] could

not (Austin, 103); illocutionary acts can be performed by sentences with the subject I and

a verb in the first-person present indicative active. The conventions in question here, then,

are not matters of the utterances situation but rules of grammar and usage, the conventions

of language itself. And crucially, Austins recourse to such convention here suggests that

illocution is only or merely a matter of manipulating language itself, while perlocution

depends on the ability of language to reach and influence othersin short, on

communication.

Austin seems to acknowledge this through his discussion of uptake; he notes that

illocutionary actions must necessarily have the effect of achieving understanding on the part

of the relevant audience:9

I cannot be said to have warned an audience unless it hears what I say and takes what I say in a certainsense. An effect must be achieved on the audience if the illocutionary act is to be carried out. How shall we put it here? And how can we limit it? Generally the effect amounts to bringing about theunderstanding of the meaning and of the force of the locution. So the performance of an illocutionary actinvolves the securing ofuptake(Austin, 116-17).

If illocution depends on securing uptake, and this is a matter of getting the force of ones

utterance across to others, of making oneself understood, then the sharp schism in language

between conventions and communication that Ive just described appears to present a straw

man rather than Austin himself. But Austin then returns to conventions to show how the

9Austin identifies taking effect and inviting response as further effects linked to illocution; he

characterizes each of these in clearly (though, in the case of taking effect, implicitly) conventional terms.


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relationship between utterance and effects in the case of illocution differs from that in

perlocution, and this reintroduces the problem. The key difference between illocutionary

effects and those involved in perlocution is, once again, the conventional character of

illocution.

Illocutionary acts are conventional acts: perlocutionary acts are notconventional. Acts ofbothkinds canbe brought off non-verbally; but even then to deserve the name of an illocutionary act, for example, a warning, it must be a conventional non-verbal act: but perlocutionary acts are not conventional, thoughconventional means may be made use of in order to bring off the perlocutionary act. A judge should be ableto decide, by hearing what was said, what locutionary and illocutionary acts were performed, but not what perlocutionary actswere achieved(Austin, 121-2, emphasis added).

As the last sentence suggests, illocutionary actions conventionality secures its implications,

making them clear not only to the third-person judge, but to the speaker as well; provided I

understand grammar and usage, when I engage in illocution I can know what I am doing and

what not, what precisely I commit myself to (where my action stops), and so I can

unproblematically identify which social consequences are ascribable to me, and which not.

And this is because, in illocutionary action, I interact with language only as an abstract

system, a self-contained set of conventions linking my utterance to consequences, which I

can engage and manipulate objectively. Likewise, others interact not with me but with

language, reading my action off the utterance according to the conventions of the system.

Thus, having noted with great sensitivity the layer of linguistic conventions that

mediates peoples relations with the social world of others and expands the possibilities of

human action, Austin drives a wedge between that system and its human context. He

separates our engagement with language itself in illocution from our engagement with others

through language in perlocution, so that language insulates people from one another. But

uptake undermines this very distinction, naming the necessary communicative connection

with another that constitutes every illocutionary act. A judge, or any listener, can only decide

what locutionary and illocutionary actions Ive performed if she can understand the meaning


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and force of what I said, that is, if Ive managed, through the medium of language, to

communicate with her; and while conventions are extraordinarily helpful in reaching that

goal, theyre neither strictly necessary nor sufficient. I may move beyond conventional usage

and nonetheless manage a happy illocutionary act, getting away with10 something through

successful projection;11 or I may execute the an illocutionary act precisely by the book and

nonetheless fail, my attempt scuttled by anothers failure to take me seriously, her refusal of

my utterance, her inability to give credit to what I say.

The crux of the matter here is whether linguistic conventions can guarantee

understanding among persons. Austins view of illocution relies on the assumption that they

can, though he does not make this assumption explicit and says things that make imputing it

to him problematic.12 The trouble with the assumption is that it falsely separates

conventions from the human practices and agreements that underlie, give rise to, and alter

them, accepting them unproblematically as arbiters of the language that I use in illocution

and so the consequences of my actions. And this means separating the question of what I

in fact do or attempt in speaking from that of how others understand and respond to what

I say. But making myself understood just isestablishing certain relations to others, and what

I do in illocution ultimately depends on what, after my best efforts to make myself clear, they

take me to have done, not on the conventions of language that govern my speech. Put

another way, the problem is that Austins reliance on conventions, like, in a certain way, his

general project in How to do Things with Words, emphasizes the action-character of

illocutionary action at the expense of papering over its linguisticcharacter: as a medium of

10 Discussing newly initiated procedures, Austin notes that Getting away with things is essential, despite

the suspicious terminology. (Austin, 30).11

I take the term from Stanley Cavell. See, e.g. The Availability of Wittgensteins Later Philosophy, 52;

and The Claim of Reason, 180ff. andpassim.12

See his discussions of getting away with it and indeterminate conventional procedures, Austin, 30ff.


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communication, language is inherently intersubjective, and the risks of intersubjectivity

inhere in it; speaking at all exposes the speaker to others, and so to ineliminable risks

offense, appropriation, surprise, as well as misunderstanding; illocutionary action, then, as

action in language, cannot escape these risks. Austin insulates the speaker from these risks by

presenting locutionary meaning and illocutionary force as features of a hypostatized language

free from the risks of intersubjectivity, and consigning languages risks and uncertainties to

perlocution.

Austin thus reinscribes Hobbes picture of law and the sovereign within an analysis

of language: As the chains of law both connect the sovereign to his subjects and insulate him

from them, allowing him to act without risks of misunderstanding or vulnerability to their

response, illocution both allows speakers to act in the social world and, as a matter only of

languages conventions independent from its link to others understanding, insulates them

from the risks and uncertainties inherent in that action insofar as it consists in

communicating with others. And just as taking the chains in Hobbes image seriously as

chains suggests a different relationship between sovereign and subjects, taking seriously the

intersubjective understanding required for uptake suggests the incompleteness of Austins

picture of language. In each case, what is elided is the fundamentally relational nature of

languagethat it exists only as a medium among human users, and works not only toward

but through their understanding of one another; and in each case that elision secures one

agents ability to realize its will in the social world by giving that agent a privileged position in

relation to languagethrough illocution in Austins case, and through law in Hobbes.

Hobbes picture of law is, of course, one part of a much larger story about

sovereignty, a conception of political rule that strictly separates ruler from ruled by dividing

agent and patient: The sovereign takes all of the action involved in exercising state power,


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while the consequences of that action belong entirely to the subjects, who encounter the

sovereigns actions as already-completed external constraints.13 Given this, one might think

that, unlike chains, laws can and do form a one-way bond, constraining subjects but not

sovereign, and that Hobbes has simply botched his metaphor. But Hobbes is also portraying

the linguisticcharacter of the sovereigns power, and this makes the issue of the relationship

between conventions and communication raised (though misconceived) by Austin internal

to the structure of rule. If the fact that language too pulls both ways makes chains a more

appropriate figure for language than Hobbes might like, this suggests a rethinking of political

rule as well as of language itself.

II.

If, as Ive so far been arguing, Austins picture of language tends to misrecognize the

communicative relationship between a speaker and her audience as an interaction of the

speaker with objectively known conventions, perhaps Wittgenstein can help us re-imagine

language more clearly. Austin understands conventions as objective facts, and takes the

meaning and illocutionary force of an utterance to be settled by reference to those objective

facts; and this is a form of the particular picture of the essence of human language with

which Wittgenstein opens the Philosophical Investigations: Every word has a meaning. This

meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands (PI 1).

Austin rightly insists, against much philosophy of language that attends only to statements or

constative utterances (and so perhaps against the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, though that is

another paper entirely), that the facts to which utterances refer are often social facts,

conventions that link some utterance to such-and-such consequences; and that in these cases

13Hobbes makes the distinction here through his concepts of representation and authorization; see

Leviathan XVI &passim.


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the object for which the word stands will be a state of affairs in the social world rather than

a physical object. Austin maintains, however, the general notion that meaning depends on

reference, the picture of the essence of language Wittgenstein raises. And if what Austins

use of conventions to define meaning and illocutionary force misses is that illocutionary

action depends on communicative successthat conventions can play a meaning-settling

role only to the extent that they help a speaker bring others to understand her act, and such

success is not a matter of convention, not settleable independent of the relationship between

speaker and auditorthen Wittgenstein, with his insistence that meaning is in use, seems

precisely concerned with the intersubjective nature of conventions themselves.

Whether the word number is necessary in an ostensive definition depends on whether without it theother person takes the definition otherwise than I wish. And that will depend on the circumstances underwhich it is given, and on the person I give it to.

And how he takes the definition is seen in the use that he makes of the word defined. (PI 29)

The locus classicus for Wittgensteins critique of reference is the discussion of rules,

running roughly from 82 to 242.14 In these sections, Wittgenstein constantly objects to the

interlocutors insistence that some feature of ones mindan idea, an intention, a picture

can function as a rule, determining the meaning of ones words. Of the word cube, he

notes that The picture of the cube did indeed suggesta certain use to us, but it was possible

for me to use it differently (PI 139); he refuses the idea that understanding consists in a

superlative fact beyond a words use (PI 192), and denies that a mental state must

underlie it:

...Imagine the case where nothing at all occurred in Bs mind except that he suddenly said Now I knowhow to go on.It would be quite misleading, in thiscase, for instance, to call the words a descriptionof a mental state.One might rather call them a signal; and we judge whether it was rightly employed bywhat he goes on to do. (PI 180)

In his influential reading, Saul Kripke characterizes this as Wittgensteins skeptical paradox:

14Kripke suggests a break between 1-137 and 139-242. We agree, however, that any separation of

Wittgensteins discussions must be rather arbitrary and porous; see Kripke, 78. .


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nothing in my mental history of past behaviornot even what an omniscient God would knowcouldestablish that I meant [some determinate thing by a word]. But then it appears to follow that there wasnofactabout me that constituted my having meant [one thing rather than another]. How could there be, ifnothing in my internal mental history or external behavior will answer the sceptic?...

This, then, is the sceptical paradox. When I respond in one way rather than another to a problemsuch as 68 + 57, I can have no justification for one response rather than another.Indeed, there is nofact about me that distinguishes between my meaning a definite function by plus (which determines myresponse in new cases) and my meaning nothing at all. (Kripke, 21)

and this echoes Wittgensteins own generalization of the problem in 201: This was our

paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because any course of action can

be made out to accord with the rule. As Kripke rightly notes, this critique undermines the

very concepts of rule and meaning as applied to individuals in isolation. If these concepts

are to have any significance, then, they must be explained in social terms; as Wittgenstein

continues, And hence also, obeying a rule is a practice. And to think one is obeying a rule

is not to obey a rule. Hence it is not possible to obey a rule privately: otherwise thinking

one was obeying a rule would be the same thing as obeying it (PI 202).

What does it mean, though, to say that Wittgenstein offers a rearticulation of

meaning and rules on social terms; what role do others play in settling the meaning of a

speakers claims? Kripke argues that a community of others provides words with secure

meanings to which ones utterances can refer; use on his account is the use the community

makes of a word, the way it fits into their shared practicesand this is a matter of fact

independent of the individual that serves as a standard against which her speech can be

evaluated:

Any individual who claims to have mastered [a] conceptwill be judged by the community to have doneso if his particular responses agree with those of the community in enough casesan individual who

passes such tests in enough other cases is admitted as a normal speaker of the language and member of thecommunity. Those who deviate are corrected.One who is an incorrigible deviant in enough respectssimply cannot participate in the life of the community and in communication (Kripke, 91-2).

Wittgenstein does sometimes write as if this is his view. He asks What has the expression

of a rulesay, a sign-postgot to do with my actions? What sort of connexion is there

here?, and continues, Well, perhaps this one: I have been trained to react to this sign in a


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particular way, and now I do so react to it. [A] person goes by a sign-post only in so far as

there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom15 (PI 198).

But Kripkes solution only replaces one (realist, individual) kind of reference with another

(conventionalist, community-based) kind,16 while Wittgenstein has been worried about

reference in general, and here hes opposing training, as a matter of responding to the sign-

post unreflectively and unproblematically, of knowing how, to ways of responding to a rule

that require interpretation or knowing that the rule is applied in one way rather than

another.17

Wittgenstein too thinks that others provide the criteria for the meaning of ones

speech, but that they do so precisely byunderstanding(or misunderstanding, to a greater or

lesser degree) that speech; he takes meaning to be constituted in communication, so that

meaning anything requires bringing others to understand it. Thus, on one hand, the

meaning of what an individual says depends on, indeed is, what she can communicate to a

listener by saying itand this means both that what she means in speaking is not solely,

safely up to her, and that the concept of meaning loses all sense in relation to her alone,

isolated from others. On the other hand, the speakers meaning is not secured by

conventions that function independently of her and dictate the significance of her speech.

Meaning remains suspended in the contingency of the present, dependent on her ability to

reach others through language and communicate with them. This will, of course, often be a

matter of whether, in addressing others, she uses words in ways they themselves would; but

15 See also the passages linking rules with customs, (199) training, (189-90, 198, 206), and

agreement (224, 241)16 This sentence is indebted to Linda Zerilli, who describes Kripke as arguing that Wittgenstein shifts the

question of meaning from the realist requirement that it meet objective truth conditionsto the antirealist

requirement that it meet the justification conditions given by a particular community; see Zerilli,

Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom, 44.17

Wittgenstein contrasts following a rule and interpreting a rule at 201; he discusses related issues at

219, 228, 230-1, 238.


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the crucial question is not whether I use a word or apply a rule in the same way other

members of a community would, but whether those others understand me when I use it.

The agreement between my usage and others is contingent on securing understanding:

It is only in normal cases that the use of a word is clearly prescribed; we know, are in no doubt, what tosay in this or that case. The more abnormal the case, the more doubtful it becomes what we are to say.And if things were quite different from what they actually areif there were for instance no characteristicexpression of pain, of fear, of joy; if rule became exception and exception rule and exception rule; or ifboth became phenomena of roughly equal frequencythis would make our normal language-games losetheir point. (PI 142)

Where Kripke turns to communities to secure meaning, and leaves speakers grasp of

theseand, eventually, their membership in the human communityprovisional,

Wittgenstein insists on the fact that speakers and meaning exist only within human

interaction, and concludes that the content of human rules must be provisional.18

This is most evident in Wittgensteins frequent discussions of teaching as a paradigm

for language. The teacher is an ambiguous figure: on one hand, teachers are authorities

specifically charged with imparting knowledge that they possess to pupils who do not yet

possess it, often as representatives of a community of which the pupil is not yet a full

member; on the other hand, teaching is profoundly interpersonal. To teach is to

communicate knowledge to pupils, and as such is deeply dependent on others. Introducing

the example of one person teaching another mathematical series, Wittgenstein initially seems

to present the teacher as the voice of an authoritative community; he imagines that the

pupil makes mistakes in the order. Or he makes a systematic mistake; for example, he

copies every other number, or he copies the series 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,. like this: 1, 0, 3, 2, 5,

4,.. Here we shall almost be tempted to say that he has understood wrong (PI 143). And

later says suppose that after some efforts on the teachers part he continues the series

correctly, that is, as we do it (PI 145, emphasis added). Even here, however, Wittgenstein

18Thanks to Patchen Markell for help in putting the problem this way.


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often aims at a quite different point. He notes that after initial instructions thepossibility

of getting him to understand (Mglichkeit der Verstndigung) will depend on his going

onindependently;19 and suggests that, if the pupil never shows any understanding of the

numbers order, then communication (Verstndigung) stops at thatpoint (PI 143). The

use of communication in each of these formulations suggests a view of the teacher and

student not as authority and subordinate but as equals, engaged together in an attempt to

come to a shared understanding. And this picture of the communicative situation in turn

suggests that what the teacher means, the meaning of the rule, is just as much up in the air as

is the pupils capacity to understand that rule.

The contingent, intersubjective character of Meaning comes out most explicitly in

186.20 Responding to Wittgensteins insistence in 185 that a pupil who learns the rule

add two from a teacher may understand that rule differently than the teacher in the face of

any explanation, the interlocutor takes him to be dramatizing the epistemic inequality

between the teacher who knows the rules meaning and the student, who must somehow

gain access to that meaning: What you are saying, then, comes to this: a new insight

intuitionis needed at every step to carry out the order +n correctly. But Wittgenstein

rejects this, and problematizes the rule itself instead: To carry it out correctly! How is it

decided what is the right step to take an ay particular stage? At stake here are two views

about where in the process of communication meaning lies: The interlocutor takes meaning

as complete prior to interaction and within the teacher, and communication is the one-way

process of transferring that already-complete meaning to the pupil; Wittgensteins riposte,

19 The translation of Mglichkeit der Verstndigung as possibility of getting him to understand is

uncharacteristically inexact for Anscombe. Either possibility of understanding or possibility of

communication seems a more precise rendering, and the latter provides consistency with the translation of

dann hrt da die Verstndigung auf that followsas well as providing support for my claim about

Wittgensteins emphasis, of course.20

For indicating the importance of section 186, again thanks to Patchen Markell.


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own meaning. Thus he refuses speakers any privileged relation to the meaning of their

words separate from their ability to work it out among others: 21

But do you really explain to the other person what you yourself understand?...Any explanation which Ican give myself I give to him too.He guesses what I intend would mean: various interpretations of my

explanation come to his mind, and he lights on one of them. So in this case he could ask; and I could andshould answer him. (PI 210, compare 208)

Crucially, if Wittgenstein avoids understanding meaning in terms of reference, and

instead situates it within communication, among others, then he opens the space to

understand both language and political rule beyond the aporiae present in Hobbes and

Austin, respectively. Because Kripke takes reference to be essential in any theory of

meaning, he interprets Wittgenstein as concerned about the kindof facts to which language

refers, shifting from internal, mental facts to conventional social facts. But this simply

reinstates the dynamics that appeared so problematic in Austin: meaning remains a matter of

reference to conventions; conventions are thus still definitive for communication, settling

what and how much a speaker can communicate with another person prior to and

independent of her encounter with that other; and the speech of the community is secured

as meaningful, but also insulated from others and from the world, by the assignment of

interactions vulnerability and risk to the (only provisionally included) individual alone. On

the view of Wittgenstein Ive tried to put forward, by contrast, meaning appears as a matter

of shared understanding reflected in practice; conventions arise fromcommunication, while

the communicative possibilities of a human encounter depend on the participants ability to

bring features of themselves and of the world to shared attentionto engender response in

others, and cultivate responsiveness in themselves; and meaning, because it is always both

21See also PI 232 & 237, defining rule in relation to what one can teach another; here Wittgenstein

adopts first the position of the teacher and then that of the student, attempting to read anothers rule off

of his actions.


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open-ended and constituted as shared, necessarily engages speakers and listeners in

relationships of responsiveness and mutual dependence.

Wittgensteins articulation of meaning in terms of communicative interdependence

has a chain of interesting consequences. First, of course, it undermines the picture of a

secure, unencumbered agent Austin presents by suggesting that illocutionary action is neatly

circumscribed by conventions. If Wittgenstein is right that our utterances have meaning at

allincluding Austins meaning and illocutionary force bothonly contingent on others

responding to them, then neither the uptake of an illocution in particular nor its happiness in

general can be separated from the effects on others Austin sought to isolate in perlocution.

To speak, then, is necessarily to expose oneself to the vulnerabilitiesto misunderstanding

and failure, but also to surprise and unexpected successthat come with using a language

that is truly shared with others. Second, if speaking implies interdependence in this way and

political rule occurs in languageas Hobbes insists, and the whole tradition of modern

public law atteststhen Wittgenstein pushes us toward a reconsideration of the structure of

rule. If rules are constituted in communication with others, then there cannot be a clean

division between an unconstrained, acting ruler and subjects who passively absorb the

consequences of her actions. Rather, ruling must consist in a relation of responsiveness

between speaker and audience, each contributing actively to the project of bringing practices

into agreement. Ruling in the sense of occupying a position of political authority or

exercising control over political power, consists in inviting response and initiating

relationships of interdependence, exposing oneself to the agency of others rather than

wielding a transcendent power while remaining insulated from its objects. This is because,

on Wittgensteins viewand here a third consequencethe concept of a rule has two

unique features: a rule is always a relationship, a pattern of response shared, but contingently


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so, by the parties to the rule; and rules are always provisional, more or less indeterminate and

subject to challenge.

There is, of course, no need to turn to Wittgenstein for the claim that rules and the

law are never fully determinate; even the elaborate bureaucratic architecture of the modern

state can only produce a finite number of rules, and applying these to the political space they

are meant to govern inevitably involves ambiguity. Hobbes himself is profoundly aware of

the political importance of language and interpretation, and embeds a response to problems

of interpretation in his concept of sovereignty: the sovereign is, by definition, the final

arbiter of all disputes, and this includes questions of interpretationin the Hobbesian state,

the law and, finally, language say what the sovereign wants them to say. 22 But this only

solves the problem of rules indeterminacy by providing a further, meta-level rule for

interpreting rules. As long as meaning can finally be grounded in some secure, objective

sourceas is still possible for Austin, by way of conventionsthe response works; but

Wittgensteins challenge is rather to the idea that rules have such an objective ground at all,

and his suggestion would be that even the concept of sovereigntyas a rule about how to

allocate authority within a communitywill come to have content only in terms of

agreements shared, because achieved communicatively, and so contingently. And the

sovereigns ability to resort to force here doesnt, for once, seem to help, just because the

disagreement or ambiguity in these cases concerns the limits of the rules meaning, that is,

the point at which it fails to function as a rule because it is not clear how to follow it,

regardless of the force a sovereign might marshal to compel others to follow it.

If I have succeeded in suggesting that deep-seated tendencies to imagine political rule

on hierarchical terms rest in part on even deeper misconceptions about how we function in

22Hobbes,Leviathan, XVIII.9 asserts the sovereigns power over opinions and doctrines; XXVI.20-22

describes the sovereign power to interpret law.


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language, what then? Id like to close by suggesting that this need not simply be an

interesting note on language swept aside by power, the real stuff of political rule. Noting the

interdependence that language builds into political rule will not by itself bring oppressively-

enforced hierarchy to an end. It may, however, bring us to recognize the ways in which even

deeply hierarchic systems of power are parasitic on the kinds of human responsiveness in

which rules and social orders are grounded, and to see democracy as an attempt not to re-

assign the roles of ruler and subject within the hierarchy of the state, but rather to reimagine

rule itself as ourpractice, and our responsibility.


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Works Cited

Austin, J. L. How to do things with Words2nd Edition. Edited by J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbis. Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1962.

Cavell, Stanley. The Availability of Wittgensteins Later Philosophy inMust we Mean What we Say?Pp. 44-72.New York: Charles Scribners & Sons, 1969._____. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan,with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Edited by Edwin Curley.

Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.Kripke, Saul A. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.Pitkin, Hanna. Hobbes Concept of RepresentationI. American Political Science Review. 58, no. 2 (June,

1964): 328-340._____. Hobbes Concept of RepresentationII. American Political Science Review. 58, no. 4 (December,

1964): 902-918.Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations3rd Edition. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Edited by

G.E.M. Anscombe & Rush Rhees. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.Zerilli, Linda M. G. Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

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