Abstract

The immanent critique and meta-critique of this dissertation establish that the later Wittgenstein's methodology, substantive account of linguistic meaning and truth, and philosophical self-understanding generate several fundamental paradoxes. ;The critique examines the skeptical paradox about rule following and the problematics of practice that the paradox generates despite Wittgenstein's claim that the paradox is not genuine. The same skepticism that arises for linguistic rules also arises or praxis itself. Wittgenstein's pluralism and semantic utilitarianism are undermined by the indeterminacy of practices. ;The indeterminacy of practice creates further problems because it conflicts with the verificationism of Wittgenstein's private-language argument. Wittgenstein cannot sustain the vital distinction between the appearance and the reality of norm-informed linguistic practices. Moreover, his verificationism is a covert transcendental deduction of the norm of correctness of a linguistic rule as a meta-norm. The particular practice in which this norm of correctness functions as a criterion for languagehood is an irreducible meta-practice unconditionally binding on all genuine practices. ;Finally, the concept of form of life as a "community of givenness" produces an aporia in Wittgenstein's surview of the interweaving of meaning and action because the transcendental and natural are paradoxically juxtaposed. The surview is intelligible only as a prescriptive, meta-philosophical account. Such meta-level contents clash with the later Wittgenstein's methodological self-understanding, making illusory his "successor discipline" to traditional philosophy