Does Language Have an Essence? From Wittgenstein via Rhees to Brandom

Abstract

Ludwig Wittgenstein is widely known to have held the view that language has no essence (Wittgenstein 2009, § 65), i.e. that no particular language game is more constitutive of our ability to speak than others. One of the first critical discussions opposing the stance that Wittgenstein had taken, was delivered by Rush Rhees in his “Wittgenstein’s Builders” (Rhees 1959; Rhees 2006). Rhees warns us against letting the metaphor of language as a game go too far, and thus “seduce” us —which supposedly happened to Wittgenstein. Instead, he argues that apart from different particular functions that language may serve, it has to have something that secures the unity of discourse and that can be called its essence. He sees this crucial element in “discourse” or “conversation”. In his justification of such a view, Rhees advances some hints, though not developed into a thorough elaboration, which may be read in an inferentialist spirit. Displaying such features as semantic holism, propositionalism, essentialism and —as the present paper suggests —a rudimentary version of inferentialism, Rhees’ deliberations tally with Brandom’s philosophical project. Thus, the paper is intended to analyse these features as a background for Brandom’s wider conception