Pierre Hadot is best known as a historian of ancient philosophy and for advocating the relevance of ancient thinking for contemporary lives. What is less well known is that he was one of the first French philosophers to take a serious interest in the work of Wittgenstein, publishing between 1959 and 1962 two essays on the Tractatus and two on the Philosophical Investigations, since republished as Wittgenstein et les limites de langage (Paris: J. Vrin, 2010). Only two of these essays (...) are available (and not widely) in English translation. Part of my goal is to argue that they deserve the attention of anglophone readers. My focus here is on Hadot's remarks about the Philosophical Investigations. Hadot argues that this work produces a self‐defeating paradox because it claims that we can speak intelligibly only within a language‐game, but Wittgenstein, like the philosophers he criticises, tries to transcend language‐games in the presentation of his views. Despite this criticism, Hadot is inspired by Wittgenstein's discussion of the multiplicity of language‐games to argue that the texts of ancient philosophy are not part of the same language‐game as those of modern philosophy and must be approached as ‘spiritual exercises’, rather than as bodies of doctrine or theory. Wittgenstein is thus a key inspiration for Hadot's historiographical method. I argue that Hadot is too impressed by a faulty analogy between the Tractatus and the Investigations and that he gives a problematically reductive interpretation of Wittgenstein's talk of language‐games and implausibly attributes to Wittgenstein a reverence for ‘the ordinary’ that supposedly takes the place of his earlier wonder at the existence of the world. Many commentators since Hadot have made similar errors, so his case remains instructive. I conclude by suggesting, nonetheless, that something like Hadot's proposals about historiographical method may be justified by a better reading of the Investigations. (shrink)

In this paper I begin by examining Fogelin’s account of deep disagreement. My contention is that this account is so deeply flawed as to cast doubt on the possibility that such deep disagreements actually happen. Nevertheless, I contend that the notion of deep disagreement itself is a useful theoretical foil for thinking about argumentation. The second part of this paper makes this case by showing how thinking about deep disagreements from the perspective of rhetoric, Walton-style argumentation theory, computation, and normative (...) pragmatics can all yield insights that are useful no matter what one’s orientation within the study of argument. Thus, I conclude that deep disagreement –even if it were to turn out that there are no real-world occurrences of it to which we can point–is useful for theorists of argumentation. In this wise, deep disagreement poses a theoretical challenge for argumentation theory not unlike that posed by radical skepticism for traditional epistemology. (shrink)

Intentaremos reconstruir la controversia acerca de la posibilidad de un lenguaje privado. Analizamos primero las posiciones “epistemológicas” (Malcolm y Fogelin), mostrando sus fallos. Luego analizamos la versión “semántica” (Kenny y Tugendhat) encontrándolas igualmente fallidas. La crítica de Barry Stroud a los argumentos trascendentales como argumentos antiescépticos nos permite discernir el presupuesto común que debilita las posiciones anteriores. Asimismo, la reconstrucción permite apreciar mejor la manera en la que la versión de Kripke evita comprometerse con este presupueto. Argumentamos que esta versión (...) es la única versión consistente del argumento. Esta afirmación obliga afrontar algunas de las objeciones corrientes dirigidas a la propuesta de Kripke: el problema de la objetividad de la regla, ¿puede un individuo estar acertado en contra de la opinión comunitaria consensuada?; y el problema de las relaciones internas entre reglas y casos, presuntamente violentada por el rol que la noción de acuerdo comunitario desempeña en la misma. Sostenemos que nuestra reconstrucción de la controversia permite encontrar razones para mostrar por qué las objeciones mencionadas no se le aplican. -/- This paper tries to reconstruct the controversy on the possibility of private language. First, we analyse “epistemological” trends in the argument (Malcolm, Fogelin) showing their failures. Then, we analyse “semantic” versions (Kenny, Tugendhat) finding they are also failed. Barry Stroud’s criticism of transcendental arguments as refutations of scepticism allows us to discern the common presupposition that weakens the versions of the argument considered. Moreover, this reconstruction allows us to see how Kripke’s deals with the problem of the previous discussion in order to avoid committing himself with this presupposition. We consider Kripke’s version to be the only consistent version of the argument. Such a statement obliges us to consider two of the most important criticisms directed against Kripke’s Wittgenstein: The problem of objectivity of the rule: Can a single individual be right in contradicting communal assent?; and the problem of internal relationships between rules and their applications, allegedly violated because of the role played by communal agreement. We claim that our reconstruction of the controversy provides good reasons to show that the above-mentioned objections don’t apply to Kripke’s Wittgenstein version. (shrink)