Realistic Spirit - Preface

Preface

I have been reading Wittgenstein since 1965, and the papers published in this collection have come out of that reading . There is an obvious way to divide them : seven are explicitly about Wittgenstein , and three about the philosopher who most strongly influenced him ; the other five , in which Wittgenstein is hardly mentioned , are about ethics and are done in a way which reflects what I have learned from him . But in fact the papers are connected more closely than that suggests . I found , in trying to make clear their relations to each other , ' that I was trying to show how the unity of Wittgenstein s thought had been refracted through my own discussions now of this , now of that . So the difficulties of trying to write an introductory essay were ' in part those of understanding the development of Wittgenstein s thought and of presenting it so that what was central could be seen as such. The result has been two . Both essays introductory essays 's take the change of perspective between Wittgenstein early and his " later work as pivotal ; both connect that change with what I call the " " " realistic spirit (and thus treat Realism and the Realistic Spirit as the central paper of the collection ); both are critical of the attempt to understand that change through the contrast between philosophical realism and antirealism . The first essay treats the change in perspective as a change in the philosophical treatment of the mind and thus gives a reading of the collection as a whole as in philosophy of mind , though perhaps in a queer sense. The second contrasts the realistic spirit with metaphysics and connects the papers of the collection to the character of philosophy and the significance in it of the laying down of philosophical or metaphysical requirements . The two essays are poor bastards this way : they are not self-contained essays on the ' development of Wittgenstein s thought ; nor are they neat, brief explanations of how fifteen essays of mine make sense together . Of the fifteen papers, three have not been previously published . For the most part , I have made only minor stylistic changes in the " papers that have already appeared; Wright 's Wittgenstein " has been

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shortened . I have added a postscript to " Throwing Away the Ladderll remark of Gilbert Harman 's. I have also commenting on a startling Il added something to Riddles and Anselm 's Riddle .1I Of the papers collected here, that is the one that now seems to me most in need of reworking . Every year for more than a dozen years I have taught an class in philosophy of religion and have discussed An undergraduate ' selm s Proslogion. What changes most from year to year in that class is what I find I can say about Anselm and IIthat than which no greater can be conceived.1I One thing in the paper 's discussion of Anselm , though , that still seems to me right is the connection between riddles and Anselm 's understanding of what it is to speak about God . He makes the connection himself in the Monologion; and the fact that he does so might have found its way into my paper, had it not been written while I was in Shetland , dependent on a few books which I had with me and the generous help of the library in Lerwick . I have now added a short paragraph about the Monologion. For several reasons I have not included in this volume some recent papers of mine on ethics, nor two essays on Wittgenstein , essays which go on in different ways from where the papers in this volume leave off . IIRules: Looking in the Right Placell gives a reading of Witt 's remarks on rules and connects that genstein reading with Rush ' Rheess discussions of Wittgenstein ; IIEthics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein 's Tractatusll considers the implications of ' treating seriously Wittgenstein s claim in the Tractatusthat besidesor ] dinary senseful propositions there is only plain nonsense. The papers reprinted here are not in chronological order ; the order essay corresponds roughly to the organization of the first introductory . But I should point out that two of the papers - IISecondary Sensell and "The Face of Necessityll- are very much earlier than the rest and draw on a more limited reading of Wittgenstein 's work . II II II Frege Against Fuzzll is later than Frege and Nonsensell and What Nonsense Might Bell; its arguments imply that some of the points in the two earlier papers need to be revised or hedged about with qualifications . Several of the papers are critical responses to things I had read; two were invited commentaries : IlMissing the Adventurell is a reply to Martha Nussbaum 's II ' Finely Aware and Richly Responsible' : Moral Attention and the Moral Task of Literaturell2 and IIHaving a Rough Story about What Moral Philosophy ISII was written as a discussion of several other papers in an issue of New Literary History on Literature and/ as Moral Philosophy .3 IIExperimenting on Animalsll was originally written for a symposium at a meeting in 1977of the British

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PsychologicalAssociation and was rewritten for a collection addressed to a generalaudience. For their commentsand suggestions, I am very grateful to Martha Nussbaum, Richard Rorty, JamesConant, and Anthony WoozIey. I am indebted also to Judy Mitchell for preparing the bibliography and to Anthony WoozIey for helping with computers, printers, and programs. Notes " is in D. Z. 1. " Rules:Lookingin the RightPlace PhillipsandP. Winch, eds., Witt: Attention to Particulars genstein (Basingstoke , Hampshire , 1989 , . 12- 34; " Ethics 's Tractatus " )ispp , Imaginationand the Methodof Wittgenstein forthcomingin Wiener Reihe 5 (1991 ). 2. Journalof Philosophy 82 (1985 )' pp. 516-29, reprintedwith revisionsas " 'Finely AwareandRichlyResponsible " in Martha : LiteratureandtheMoralImagination 's Nussbaum , Love : Essays onPhilosophy andLiterature Knowledge (Oxford, 1990 ) pp. 148-167. 3. Vol. 15no. 1 (Autumn1983 ).