TRADITION AND INDIVIDUALITY SYNTHESE LIBRARY STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Managing Editor: JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University Editors: DONALD DAVIDSON, University o/California, Berkeley GAB:ru::EL NUCHELMANS, University 0/ Leyden WESLEY C. SALMON, University ofP ittsburgh VOLUME 221 J. C. NYlRI Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences TRADITION AND IND IVID U ALITY Essays SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nylrl. Janos Kristof. Tradition and individuality : essays / J.C. Nyiri. p. cm. -- (Synthese 11brary ; v. 221) Includes blbliographlcal references and index. ISBN 978-94-010-5176-7 ISBN 978-94-011-2660-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-2660-1 1. Tradltion (Philosophy) 2. Wlttgenstein. Ludwlg. 1889-1951. 3. Knowledge. Theory of. 4. Language and languages--Phl1osophy. 1. Title. II. Serles. B105.T7N95 1992 148--dc20 91-39683 ISBN 978-94-010-5176-7 printed on acid-free paper AII Rights Reserved © 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Origina11y published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1992 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1992 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utiIized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, incJuding photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retr.ieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. For /lanka TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ix CHAPTER 1: Wittgenstein's New Traditionalism 1 CHAPTER 2: Wittgenstein 1929-31: Conservatism and Jewishness 9 CHAPTER 3: Collective Reason: Roots of a Sociological Theory of Knowledge 25 CHAPTER 4: Some Marxian Themes in the Age of Information 39 CHAPTER 5: Tradition and Practical Knowledge 47 CHAPTER 6: "Tradition" and Related Terms: A Semantic Survey 61 CHAPTER 7: Historical Consciousness in the Computer Age 75 CHAPTER 8: On Esperanto: Usage and Contrivance in Language 85 CHAPTER 9: Heidegger and Wittgenstein 93 CHAPTER 10: Writing and the Private Language Argument 105 NOTES 115 BIBLIOGRAPHY 159 INDEX 171 vii PREFACE During the last fifteen years I have experimented with two successive approaches to the problem of the social embeddedness of individual behaviour. The first approach was community-centred, traditionalist; the second more individualistic. The present volume contains essays from both phases: chapters one to six representing the earlier, chapters seven to ten the later approach. I have chosen to have those earlier essays published along with the later ones for two reasons. First, because my current arguments (for what they are worth) clearly presuppose the background of my former en deavours. Secondly, I still do not think that my earlier attempts were entirely misdirected. In fact the choice in favour of the one or the other position depends on the evaluation of a single cluster of arguments: those pertaining to the epistemological significance of writing. I have come to believe that it is the medium of writing which creates, historically and psychologically, a space for individual, critical thinking. But one can have doubts about how far this space extends; how deeply it permeates social interactions; whether the written word will retain, in the future, the role it has now. And to the extent that communication remains pre-literal, or becomes post-literal, the issue of traditionalism still appears to be a living one. I am fully aware that the transformations in my views are not independ ent of recent political changes in Eastern Europe; that both my earlier and later theoretical attitudes are in some measure reflections of a certain political bias. By presenting them side by side, I hope to avoid the danger of apparent extremism which either alone might represent. The source of my traditionalist leanings was the Hungarian experience of social decay, from the 1960s to the 1980s: the recognition that the Hungarians have become a people without traditions, that their traditions were undermined by a totalitarian bureaucracy, and the impression that they were yearning not just for freedom, but also for rootedness, stable institutions, social cohesion. Today the politically dominant ideology in Hungary is a traditionalist one, and the fruits it bears seem to be hypocrisy, intolerance, social and economic bankruptcy. It seems that stable institutions in a IX x PREFACE modem society do, after all, rely on a liberal culture; on learning, education, and critical thinking. I wish to acknowledge the profound debt lowe to Professor Georg Henrik von Wright for essential inspiration and assistance. His influence upon my work has been decisive. Research fellowships granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung in 1986-87 and 1990-91 for work at the University of Bochum gave me the leisure and opportunity to develop my ideas in detail, and to write most of these essays. I am greatly indebted to my colleagues in Bochum. Special thanks are due to my host Prof. Gert Konig, who not only provided generous scientific guidance, but also convinced me to put together this volume and was instrumental in organizing its publication. To my friend Barry Smith I am indebted for the invaluable and unfailing support he gave me during all these years. Without his stimulus and constant help the volume could not have been completed. The essays have been to some extent edited in order to avoid overlaps. "Wittgenstein's New Traditionalism" appeared originally in Essays on Wittgenstein in Honour o/G. H. von Wright (Acta Philosophica Fennica 28/1-3, 1976), pp. 503-512. In this essay the reference to Wittgenstein's "General Remarks", a manuscript compilation since published as Vermischte Bemerkungen, could of course have been easily updated. I left it as it is deliberately, in order to preserve something of the flavour of those early days of scholarly work on Wittgenstein's manuscripts. "Wittgenstein 1929-31: Conservatism and J ewishness" is an abridged version (with note 25 newly added) of the study "Wittgenstein 1929-1931: Die Riickkehr" (KODIKAS/CODE - Ars Semeiotica 4-5/2, 1982, pp. 115-136, English translation in Stuart Shanker, ed., Ludwig Wittgenstein: Critical Assessments, vol.4, London: Croom Helm, 1986, pp. 29-59). I wish to express my thanks to the members of the now sadly defunct Wittgenstein Archive in the University of Tiibingen, without whose technical support this study, prepared in October 1979, could not have been written. "Collective Reason: Roots of a Sociological Theory of Knowledge" appeared in W. Gombocz et al., eds., Traditionen und Perspektiven der analytischen Philosophie: Festschrift fUr Rudolf Haller, Wien: HOlder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1989, pp. 600-618, note 48 newly added. "Some Marxian Themes in the Age of Information" appeared in Doxa 15 (Budapest: 1989), pp. 169-182. ''Tradition and Practical Knowledge" appeared in J.C. Nyfri and B. Smith, eds., Practical Knowledge: Outlines 0/ a Theory o/Traditions and Skills, Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1988, pp. PREFACE xi 17-52; the pennission of Routledge (fonnerly Croom Helm) to reprint this piece is gratefully acknowledged. "'Tradition' and Related Tenns: A Semantic Survey" appeared in Doxa 14 - Semiotische Berichte 1-2/1988 (Budapest - Vienna), pp. 113-134. "On Esperanto: Usage and Con trivance in Language" appeared in Rudolf Haller, ed., Wittgenstein - Towards aRe-Evaluation, Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1990, vol. II, pp. 303-310. The pennission of the publisher to reprint this essay, and the essay "Collective Reason", is gratefully acknowledged. Chapters 7, 9 and 10 have not been hitherto published. The volume is dedicated to my wife. Dunabogdany, June 1991 J. C. Nyfri CHAPTER 1 WITIGENSTEIN'S NEW TRADmONALISM* Towards the end of his life Wittgenstein wrote: "Men have judged that a king can make rain; we say this contradicts all experience. Today they judge that aeroplanes and the radio etc. are means for the closer contact of peoples and the spread of culture".' This remark is a rather clear allusion to what Wittgenstein, in my opinion, always believed: that man's so called historical progress, and especially the positive role reason is supposed to play in it, is an illusion. The same conviction is reflected in Wittgenstein's choice of the motto for his Philosophical Investigations, a quotation from Nestroy: "Uberhaupt hat der Fortschritt das an sich, daB er viel groBer ausschaut, als er wirklich ist". That this motto refers to the social-historical progress of mankind and not, say, to Wittgenstein's own progress in philosophy, becomes obvious when viewed together with the Foreword written to the Philosophical Remarks, dated 6.11.1930, where Wittgenstein states that the spirit of his work is different from that of the mainstream of European and American civilization, since the latter is characterized, as the former is not, by the idea of a constant progress. Wittgenstein 's attitude towards the liberal idea of progress is that of a conservative. This attitude is, actually, not conspicuous in the Philosophical Remarks, to which the Foreword was written subsequently; but it was already there, I believe, at the time of the Tractatus and it becomes quite manifest in Wittgenstein's later writings. My purpose in the present paper is to suggest that Wittgenstein 's so-called later philosophy is the embodiment of a conservative-traditionalist view of history, and, in particular, to show that this philosophy in fact provides a logical foundation for such a view. There can be no doubt at all that the conservative-traditionalist sentiment really was a basic element in Wittgenstein's personality. True, many of his later friends in England were left-wing; and his plans, in the thirties, to settle down in the Soviet Union, might suggest communist sympathies. But Wittgenstein could have been attracted by the personal integrity of some Marxists without being in agreement with their political views; and even if he shared, as I believe he did, their contempt towards bourgeois society, the background of that contempt was, in Wittgenstein' s 1