Wittgenstein’s Limits of Language and Normative Theories of Assertion: Some Comparisons

Leila Haaparanta

doi:10.5281/zenodo.5648472

Leila Haaparanta University of Helsinki, Finland

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5648472

Keywords: Language, Assertion, Ethics, Normativity, Action

Abstract

In his classic work on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1960) Erik Stenius described Wittgenstein’s study as a critique of pure language, thus pointing to a connection between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and Kant’s critique of pure reason. Besides similarities, there also seems be important differences between the two philosophers. In Kant’s critique, one discerns a subject who does something, namely, constructs the world of experience, while Wittgenstein draws a picture in which neither an agent nor an act is visible. Like Kant and Wittgenstein, contemporary normative theories of assertion are also interested in limits, although in limits set to assertions. They appear to pay special attention to the one who asserts and to the act of asserting. This paper is an effort to search for the traces of normative theories of assertion in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus by focusing on the one who uses language and on the limits of that use. It is shown that both in Wittgenstein and in normative theories of assertion, there is an important ethical dimension, which, however, plays different roles in the two approaches. It is argued that despite the differences in the ways of construing the limits of language, Tractatus and normative theories of assertion share similar ethical concerns.

Author Biography

Leila Haaparanta, University of Helsinki, Finland

leila haaparanta is Professor of Philosophy (Emerita) at the University of Tampere and Docent of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. She has published widely on the history of logic, early twentieth century analytic philosophy and phenomenology, epistemology, philosophy of mind and language, philosophy of religion, and pragmatism. She is the author of Frege’s Doctrine of Being (Acta Philosophica Fennica, 1985), and the editor of Mind, Meaning and Mathematics (Kluwer, 1994), The Development of Modern Logic (Oxford, 2009), and Rearticulations of Reason (Acta Philosophica Fennica, 2010). Her co–edited works include Frege Synthesized (with Jaakko Hintikka, Reidel, 1986), Analytic Philosophy in Finland (with Ilkka Niiniluoto, Rodopi, 2003), and Categories of Being: Essays on Metaphysics and Logic (with Heikki J. Koskinen, Oxford, 2012). Currently she focuses on epistemology, especially epistemology of testimony, theories of judgment and assertion, including suspension of judgment, and early twentieth century philosophy.

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Wittgenstein’s Limits of Language and Normative Theories of Assertion: Some Comparisons

Abstract

Author Biography

References

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