Having Social Practices in Mind
Wittgenstein’s Anthropological Pragmatism in Perspective
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13001906 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Francesco Callegaro (École des Hautes Études Commerciales, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2012-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2036-4091 • E-ISSN: 2036-4091 |
| Publisher | Associazione Pragma (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.4000/ejpap.730 |
| OpenAlex | W2366539339 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 7 |
This paper clarifies why and how Wittgenstein’s animating idea of social practices should be considered as expressing a fundamental pragmatist commitment.To this end, I do not take the retrospective perspective, which traces “pragmatism” back to the criteria of use fixed by the inventor of the word, C. S. Peirce, but rather replace Wittgenstein in the context of contemporary debates. I focus in particular on R. Brandom’s attempt to understand Wittgenstein’s second philosophy as belonging to an intellectual tradition from which his own rationalist pragmatism derives. A confrontation follows between Brandom and Wittgenstein, whose aim is to highlight the specific tactics of Wittgenstein’s pragmatism as a refusal of Brandom’s idealist rationalism. First, I present and defend R. Brandom’s reading of Wittgenstein’s argument on rule-following as a decisive clarification of the general idea of social practices. Second, I criticize Brandom’s narrow Kantian framework, explaining why it prevents us from understanding Wittgenstein’s conception of rules and concepts, and, therefore, of the very normativity of concepts. In light of the distinction between two kinds of conceptual norms, empirical and grammatical, I finally show, through a reading of On certainty, that the function assigned by Wittgenstein to social practices is to account for the conditions of possibility of conceptual contentfullness as expressed in rational activity
Argument (complex analysis · Certainty · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Linguistics · Pragmatism · Reading (process · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Philosophy · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications
| Citations per year | 0.15 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2013 - 2013 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |