Introduction

There is a substantial literature on the question of whether Wittgenstein was a conservative philosopher but much less has been written on the question of whether Wittgenstein was a liberal philosopher despite the fact that, as Robert Greenleaf Brice has recently argued, there are hints of liberalism in Wittgenstein's writings. Brice ultimately argues that the case for Wittgenstein being a liberal is no stronger than the case for him being a conservative. In both cases the evidence is a long way from conclusive. However, other philosophers have been less circumspect. In his essay ‘Wittgenstein and the Conversation of Justice’, Richard Eldridge argues that ‘a kind of substantive or weak perfectionist liberalism’ follows from ‘the condition of the human person that is enacted in Philosophical Investigations’. Richard Rorty puts a pragmatist spin on Wittgenstein's work and suggests that liberalism is a mode of thought with greater utility than others – one which allows us to cope better. And Alice Crary, while critical of Rorty, suggests that the lessons learned from her own interpretation of Wittgenstein are ‘reflected in forms of social life that embody the ideals of liberal democracy’.

In this chapter I will agree with Brice that there is neither a particularly strong case in favour of Wittgenstein being a liberal and nor is there a particularly strong case to be made in favour of liberalism using Wittgenstein’s philosophical writings. In the course of coming to those conclusions I will first examine the variety of positions going by the name of liberalism. I will then go on to look at the case that Brice pieces together in support of the claim that Wittgenstein was a liberal in Exploring Certainty. Following that, I will go on to argue that Eldridge, Rorty, and Crary fail to demonstrate that there are liberal tendencies in Wittgensteinian philosophy. While agreeing with much of what Crary says in her arguments against Rorty I will argue that no broad ideological conclusions follow from Wittgenstein's philosophical remarks.

Liberalism

The most obvious thing to say about liberalism is that liberals seek after liberty or freedom. However, there are different accounts of what liberty and freedom amount to and of what it is that should be free.

Introduction

Action is significant in Wittgenstein's later work and Wittgenstein's work is significant in terms of the development of the philosophy of action. In the very first of the numbered remarks in his Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein highlights the way a shopkeeper acts in delivering goods to a customer as a way of contrasting his understanding of language with the ‘Augustinian’ picture of language. In discussing one sense of the expression ‘language game’ Wittgenstein describes a language game as consisting of ‘language and the activities into which it is woven’. In other remarks Wittgenstein discusses the relationships between action and ostensive definition,the action of a machine (in connection with his discussion of rule following/ the relationship between a rule and action in accordance with it), action and reasons, action/ behaviour and language, acting and thinking, acting on orders, and action and the will.

In his book The Idea of a Social Science Peter Winch developed Wittgenstein’s ideas about action, behaviour, language, and rules into a critique of the idea that the disciplines known as the social sciences are scientific in the manner of the natural sciences. Action appears in The Idea of a Social Science as a way of distinguishing natural sciences, which feature causal explanations prominently, from social sciences, which focus upon human actions and feature explanations in terms of reasons and motives more conspicuously. Winch distinguishes actions from habitual behaviour and distinguishes actions in terms of motives from causal explanations. Wittgenstein was notoriously opposed to scientism, that is, the attempt to bring the methods of science to bear in areas where they are not appropriate, especially in philosophy. Winch, following Wittgenstein, detailed ways in which social investigations differ from investigations in the natural sciences.

Phil Hutchinson, Rupert Read, and Wes Sharrock have recently defended Winch's account of differences between natural sciences and social disciplines. In their book There is No Such Thing as a Social Science they come to the conclusion that calling social disciplines ‘sciences’ is likely to lead to confusion.

Lucretius’ choice of addressee has engaged a number of critical responses, both historicizing and literary-critical. This chapter assesses what is distinctive about Lucretius’ approach to C. Memmius (taken to be the praetor of 58 BC and unsuccessful consular candidate of 53 BC) through comparison with the theory and practice of Epicureanism in contemporary sources, chiefly Philodemus. In the context of Memmius’ disgrace and exile to Athens, Lucretius’ invectives against ambition and similar vices take on an especially mordant character – a frank criticism that contrasts with Philodemus’ more deferential treatment of C. Calpurnius Piso, especially in On the Good King According to Homer. This difference suggests that Lucretius chose Memmius as his addressee for the very reason that this corrupt and failed Roman politician was far from being a promising disciple and badly in need of Epicurean teaching.

This opening chapter surveys the broad range of critical responses to the difficulties presented by DRN 1.44–9 (on the immortality and tranquility of the gods) from Renaissance accounts to the most recent discussions of the problem. The status of the passage as a locus nondum sanatus and its high-profile appearance in the poem’s proem render these verses the most difficult passage for the Lucretian editor. The present discussion weighs complex theories about the verses’ purpose against text-critical theories about the work’s composition and transmission.

Plato’s writings play a crucial role in bootstrapping the discourses that came to be called metaphysics, which see their task as exploring distinctions between seeming and being, reality and appearance, and what we can sense and what lies beyond our senses. Central to them is the notion of ‘theory’, which, as Andrea Nightingale has argued, Plato develops out of the social institution of theōria: a representative of the city attends a Panhellenic festival, observes what happens, and reports back on what he has seen. This model structures the story (in Republic) of the prisoner leaving the cave, ascending to the light, and reporting back to those he left behind – a structure that Lucretius reprises in the ‘theoretical’ journey of Epicurus across the universe in DRN 1. Plato’s stories are subject to a process of reception Hans Blumenberg has described as ‘re-occupation’ so as to express metaphysical positions that are at odds with Plato’s. This essay explores Lucretius’ re-occupation of a number of Platonic motifs (the cave, the pitfall of Thales in Theaetetus, the representation of Socrates as a thinking subject) to highlight the role that these motifs have played (and continue to play) in the metaphysical tradition.

The Introduction offers a brief overview of historical responses and scholarly approaches to the DRN as context for the chapters of the present volume. Five categories of Lucretian criticism (corresponding to the sections of the volume) are then singled out for special attention: textual criticism; constructs of the author and the reader; metapoetic and ‘atomological’ readings; literary and philosophical intertextuality; politics and ideology.

Until recently, Descartes’ idea that the human mind is, by definition, a non-extended entity, enclosed in the body but constitutionally different from common bodily and external realities, found wide acceptance among students of cognitive sciences. But in the past few years the barriers between outer and inner worlds have begun to blur, projecting the process of cognition as a complex distributed phenomenon. The case of Lucretius and Epicurean philosophy discussed in this paper aims to show that the narrow fortress of the knowing self is not as ancient as some present-day theorists are inclined to think, and that the very concept of distributed cognition, broadly construed, has a history of its own with deep roots in Greco-Roman physiology. Lucretius’ poem provides especially compelling evidence that, on the one hand, Epicurean epistemology conceives of cognition as a material process extended across the borders of atomic bodies, and that, on the other hand, true knowledge can be achieved only through cooperative didactic techniques. Standing at the crossroads between poetry and philosophy, Lucretius’ didactic method tries to involve the addressee (both intellectually and emotionally) in the cooperative construction of an internalized cognitive artefact: the image of the atomic cosmos, faithfully reflected in the text.

Much has been written on the ‘implied reader’ in Lucretius’ DRN. From G. B. Conte’s textually constructed reader to recent work on Lucretian receptions, Lucretius’ readers or their textual condition have received substantial scholarly attention. What remains largely undiscussed – and what has left generation upon generation of the poem’s readers spellbound – is not so much other readers of the DRN, but the elusive ‘author’ himself. Jerome famously claimed that Lucretius wrote the DRN between intervals of insanity brought on by a love potion, and increasingly wild biographies of Lucretius crop up again and again in the reception traditions of the poem – from death-bed hallucinations brought on by his wicked wife to his beautiful but unresponsive male paramour. Taking some of these biographies as its point of inspiration, this chapter uses the concept of the ‘implied author’ to investigate what exactly it is about Lucretius’ text that inspired and inspires such imaginative, but arguably still textually grounded, portraits of its author.

This chapter offers a reconsideration of the well-known letters–atoms analogy in Lucretius’ DRN. By reviewing two readings of this analogy and then turning to the anagrammatic ‘readings’ of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (who in three unpublished cahiers found significant names hidden in DRN), the chapter highlights gaps and omissions in the two existing interpretations. In particular, whereas the previous interpretations use the analogy as license to focus on either the sound of syllables or the arrangement of letters, Saussure instead allows us to think that the force of the analogy may lie not only in the written or spoken properties of letters but also in their creative power, their performative ability to create new words and denote new objects in the world.