Wittgenstein and the Social Sciences. Robert Vinten

⁴⁵Robinson, Wittgenstein and Political Theory, 2009.

⁴⁶Ibid., pp. 25, 178.

⁴⁷Ibid., p. 13.

⁴⁸Ibid., p. 26.

⁴⁹Ibid., p. 29.

⁵⁰Ibid., p. 29.

⁵¹Ibid., p. 39.

⁵²Ibid., p. 2.

⁵³Ibid., p. 17

⁵⁴Ibid., p. 37. Similarly, on p. 48 Robinson talks about ‘the demise of the pretense of a God’s-eye point of view in Wittgenstein’s world’ and on p. 160 he says that ‘Wittgenstein and, more famously, Beckett, work from a street-level where no God’s-eye point of view is possible, though we may find ourselves waiting for it’.

⁵⁵Ibid., p. 160.

⁵⁶Ibid., p. 171.

⁵⁷Ibid., pp. 49–50.

⁵⁸Ibid., p. 50.

⁵⁹Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §109.

⁶⁰Robinson, Wittgenstein and Political Theory, p. 26.

⁶¹Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §103.

⁶²Ibid., §109.

⁶³Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.111. In remark 4.1121 Wittgenstein also says that psychology is no closer to philosophy than any other natural science.

⁶⁴Ibid., 4.112.

⁶⁵Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown Books, p. 18.

⁶⁶Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §109.

⁶⁷Ibid., PPF xii.

⁶⁸I should acknowledge here that there is some foundation in Wittgenstein’s work for understanding his philosophy as being therapeutic and that Wittgenstein is sometimes interpreted in this light. For example, in The Big Typescript Wittgenstein describes his philosophical approach as analogous to psychoanalysis (433e) and in Philosophical Investigations, §133, Wittgenstein compares philosophical methods to therapies. However, I think too much can be made of the comparison with psychoanalysis or with therapy. Peter Hacker makes this case well in his response to Gordon Baker’s late interpretation of Wittgenstein (see ‘Gordon Baker’s Late Interpretation of Wittgenstein’, in Guy Kahane, Edward Kanterian, and Oskari Kuusela (eds), Wittgenstein and His Interpreters, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).

⁶⁹Ibid., §109.

⁷⁰P. M. S. Hacker gives an excellent account of the nature of philosophy and contrasts it with other disciplines in his ‘Philosophy: Contribution Not to Human Knowledge but to Human Understanding’, which has been published in a collection of his essays – Wittgenstein: Comparisons & Context, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

⁷¹Such as S. Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, Oxford: Clarendon, 1979; and S. Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

⁷²I will discuss Pitkin’s work in my chapter on justice. Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice.

⁷³J. W. Danford, Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy: A Reexamination of the Foundations of Social Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

⁷⁴Crary and Read, The New Wittgenstein.

⁷⁵Temelini also categorizes other contributors to Heyes’s volume The Grammar of Politics as democratic/liberal Wittgensteinians. Heyes, The Grammar of Politics.

⁷⁶See, e.g. G. Pohlhaus and J. Wright, ‘Using Wittgenstein Critically: A Political Approach to Philosophy’, Political Theory, vol. 30, no. 6, 2002, pp. 800–27.

⁷⁷See P. O’Connor, Oppression and Responsibility: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Social Practices and Moral Theory, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, as well as her book Morality and Our Complicated Form of Life, which is discussed above.

⁷⁸See, e.g. A. Tanesini, Wittgenstein: A Feminist Interpretation, Cambridge: Polity, 2004.

⁷⁹Juliette Harkin and Rupert Read argue that it is a mistake to categorize Winch in this way in their review of Temelini’s book. See J. Harkin and R. Read, ‘Book Review – Michael Temelini: Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics’, Review of Politics, vol. 78, no. 2, 2016, p. 331.

⁸⁰Temelini says of therapeutic/sceptical readings that ‘the politics that necessarily derives from this is conservative, negative, or contingent’ (Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics, p. 95).

⁸¹Ibid.,