Anscombe on Wittgenstein

I have a review forthcoming in Philosophical Investigations of John Berkman's and Roger Teichmann's Anscombe on Wittgenstein: Reminiscences of a Philosophical Friendship. The book is great, especially for the reminiscences from Anscombe (which she titled "Anecdotes"). But the published text differs in places from the original manuscript. Handwriting being what it is, it isn't always easy to be sure, but I think there about sixty places where the mansucript is slightly different from what has been published (which is based on a typescript produced by Luke Gormally, who numbered the paragraphs). It seemed pedantic to list these in the review, but perhaps some people will want to see them, so I thought I would publish them here. (In case you're wondering, I have read the original manuscript and took photos of it all, which I compared with the book.) OK, here's the list:

1. On p. 121 section 13, last sentence (“He was regarded with some awe in his own family.”) is a separate paragraph in the original.
2. Gormally's paragraph 72 begins on the same line as the last sentence of 71. I.e., Anscombe writes as if these are part of the same long paragraph.
3. Similarly, Gormally’s 154 begins on the same line as the end of his 153. This really does seem like a new paragraph in terms of its subject matter, so Gormally is hardly wrong, but it does make it tricky to join the dots between what Anscombe wrote on the page, how Gormally typed it up, and what has now been published (which does not try to copy Gormally’s order).
4. On p. 153 section 138 the words “at all” appear in the manuscript after “only one I can remember” but are absent in the published version.
5. On p. 119 (section 3) the book has “someone said” where the manuscript has “one of the Wittgenstein children said”
6. On p. 120 (section 5) the book has “used to say that he had” where the MS has “used to say he had”
7. On p. 121 section 12 the second long dash is a comma in the MS
8. On p. 121 section 13 the word ‘that’ has been added, which is not in the MS. The MS also has a paragraph break, so that the last sentence is its own paragraph
9. On p. 121 section 14, the MS has a comma after ‘sister’ and after ‘him’. These are missing from the published version.
10. On p. 123 section 20 the MS has a comma after Salzer
11. On p. 123 section 22 the MS has the word ‘very’ before ‘friendly’
12. On p. 124 section 24 there is a long dash where the MS has a comma
13. On p. 125 section 28 the first word in the MS looks like ‘On’, not ‘Of’. The published text has ‘with not’ where the MS looks more like ‘without,’ although it’s hard to tell. The MS also has the word ‘that’ after ‘I mean’, which is missing in the book
14. On p. 126 the text presents Anscombe’s wording as ‘porte-welière’ and explains that this means post-delivery. The original looks to me like porte-cochère.
15. On p. 129 section 42 the word ‘that’ has been inserted after ‘follow’
16. On p. 130 section 45 a comma has been inserted after ‘me’
17. On p. 130 section 46, this paragraph begins with an open parenthesis mark in the MS, although there is no closing mark at the end. The published version omits the opening mark.
18. On p. 131 section 47 is given the Gormally number 189, but I think it should be 196. Gormally 189 is here section 76 on p. 137.
19. On p. 131 section 49 the word in the MS looks much more like ‘complimented’ than ‘congratulated’
20. On p. 132 section 50 three words have been rendered as ‘through whim, say’. This is a plausible guess, the writing being very unclear, but I don’t see a w for ‘whim’. Nor a comma after that word. The first word clearly ends with ‘o’, but would Anscombe have spelled ‘through’ as ‘thro’? Perhaps she did. It almost looks like a name, but not one I can make out. The first word looks like Tyro, Dyno, Truro, Two or possibly Geo. The next two look like “him say” or “Lin say”. Was there a furniture maker called something Linsay?
21. On p. 133 section 55 the MS has a semi-colon after ‘convent’ instead of a full stop, and the h in the following word (‘He’) is not capitalized. There is also a comma after “pleased by” in the MS.
22. On p. 134 section 57 ‘things’ is ‘thing’ in the MS
23. On p. 135 section 63 there is no comma after ‘Something’ in the MS
24. On p. 136 section 70 the MS says “I can’t remember” rather than simply “can’t remember”
25. On p. 138 section 77 the word ‘could’ looks more like ‘would’ in the MS, and the word rendered as ‘take’ (which makes the most sense, given the context) looks more like ‘late’. I doubt this is a mistake, except on Anscombe’s part, but it does reflect the difficulty of reading her handwriting sometimes.
26. On p. 138 section 82 the MS has commas before and after “I remember”
27. On p. 140 section 89 the MS does not have the word ‘that’ before ‘Russell’
28. On p. 141 section 96 I think there should be a comma after ‘that’ (line 2)
29. On p. 142 section 96 I think there should be a comma after ‘badly’
30. On p. 142 section 99 the question mark after ‘strength’ has been supplied by the editors
31. On p. 145 section 106 the word given as ‘as’ looks like ‘in’ in the MS
32. On p. 151 section 130 the final sentence begins a new paragraph in the MS. In fact, each half of the equation starts on a new line
33. On p. 151 section 131 a comma has been added after ‘saying’
34. On p. 151 section 133 the MS has a comma after “But of course”
35. On p. 153 section 138 in the MS it looks as though the word ‘in’ appears after ‘smile’, there is no comma after “savagely serious”, a new paragraph begins with “The only one I can remember” and the words “at all” appear after this ‘remember’. They are absent from the printed text.
36. On p. 153 section 140 the MS appears to have a comma rather than a full stop after 1944 and then the next word (“he’d”) starts with a lower case h. Anscombe seems to write Moral Science Club, which has been corrected to Moral Sciences Club.
37. On p. 155 section 144 I think there should be a comma after ‘himself’ and a full stop, rather than a comma, after “Yes”.
38. On p. 157 section the MS has a comma after ‘came’
39. On p. 158 section 157 the published text is missing the word ‘quite’ after ‘remember’
40. On p. 158 section 161 the word ‘a’ has been added before ‘sculptor’ and it looks as though an ‘s’ has been omitted after ‘verb’
41. On p. 159 section 162 the word ‘that’ has been added between ‘thing’ and ‘Wittgenstein’
42. On p. 160 section 165 the MS says ‘used to’ but ‘would’ is printed in the book instead
43. On p. 161 section 170 the MS has a comma after “Oh”
44. On p. 165 section 183 in the MS it looks to me as though Anscombe has crossed out the ‘s’ at the end of ‘remarks’, which is printed as in the plural
45. On p. 167 section 189 I think the MS has a colon after ‘replied’
46. On p. 167 section 190 I think there should be a comma after ‘been’
47. On p. 168 section 192 the text says “and a lot of stuff in one long false note” whereas the MS appears to say “and a lot of stuff is one long false note”
48. On p. 169 section 195 the text has “And how would it look as if it looked as if the earth rotated on its axis?” while the MS says “And how would it look if it looked as if the earth rotated on its axis?”
49. On p. 170 section 198 the MS has a dash while the book has a semi-colon
50. On p. 171 section 200 a comma has been inserted after ‘time’
51. On p. 172 section 200 the words “we went’ have been omitted after “four o’clock” and the word ‘quarter’ has been used instead of Anscombe’s ¼
52. On p. 173 section 201 the MS seems to have “Now try and open your eyes!” rather than “Now try to open your eyes!”
53. On p. 174 section 202 in the MS there is a comma after ‘why’
54. On p. 175 section 205 a comma has been added after ‘roar’
55. On p. 176 section 207 the word ‘an’ has been omitted in “fear of an unforeseeable judgment”
56. On p. 176 section 208 the MS has a comma after ‘know’
57. On p. 176 section 209 the MS has a semi-colon, not a comma, after ‘time’ (I think) and a comma after ‘unaffected’
58. On p. 176 section 210 the word written as ‘train’ looks more like ‘tram’ to me
59. On p. 178 section 214 the word printed as ‘You’re’ looks in the MS as though it could be ‘Your’ (which would not be wrong—instead of saying “You are saying that you could not lie” Wittgenstein would be saying “About your having said that you could not lie…”
60. On p. 178 section 215 the book has ‘wouldn’t’ but I think the MS might say ‘couldn’t’
61. On p. 180 section 221 the word ‘I’ has been omitted between ‘which’ and ‘had’
62. On p. 184 section 228 I think there should be a comma after ‘listened’
63. On p. 186 section 234 I think instead of “him saying" it should be “his saying”

None of this matters very much, no doubt, but perhaps someone will care. More details (including a missing paragraph) in the review.

Contextual Ethics

 

This new collection is out now. Here's a description:

Moral philosophy has traditionally strived towards abstraction and universalization, its claims tending to leave behind the specificity of bodies, individuals’ lives, situations, culture, and history. Yet there are ways of thinking and doing moral philosophy that do not leave context behind but make it their. This makes it a point , never to lose sight of context, to place it at the centre of ethical investigations. To present and defend the richness and validity of this approach to ethics his is , at any rate, the claim and the ambition of this volume.

Placed in the new field of contextual ethics, the anthology presents articles that focus on issues ranging from the theoretical and the methodological – Does taking context into account imply relativism?  Can the normative and the descriptive in ethics be separated? How does moral change occur in the thick of everyday life? – to applied issues in biomedical, animal, and environmental ethics. The volume opens with a programmatic chapter on contextual ethics that traces its historical roots, its most central themes and methodological issues, and its relation to different traditions in contemporary ethics.

South Korean cafes

My wife has become interested in all things Korean, so we've traveled to South Korea each of the last two years. Perhaps the main thing that has struck me about the country is the cafes. They are great (good food, good design, good atmosphere, good coffee), but also interesting. They suggest something about the culture, and raise questions about how to live. Korean Air even has a playlist called "Pop Songs to Enjoy in Instagram-Worthy Cafes," and the popularity of Instagram in South Korea is surely part of the reason these places exist and look the way they do. The look tends to be minimalist: lots of white, lots of concrete. The menus tend to be either minimalist (one place in Jeonju had no food at all, another in Seoul had about two kinds of cookies and nothing else to eat) or the opposite (scones or bagels in flavors you wouldn't dream of). The music tends to be classic and mellow, e.g. Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, but perhaps a bit less obvious than that. The implication seems to be that life should be simple but beautiful, or that a simple life can be enough if its contents are beautiful enough. A bit like the film Perfect Days (which is set in Tokyo, and, I think, is a bit ambiguous as to whether such a life is really enough), whose hero lives a simple life but listens only to classic rock and pop music, and reads classic literature. He doesn't have much in his life, but what he has is good. There's a thread on reddit about this film (here) in which a couple of posters say (plausibly) that the movie is Buddhist, emphasizing the value of living with less stuff. But how unattached to things are you (or can you be) if you enjoy the classics? (Not to mention really good coffee and baked treats.) Is this tastefully minimalist life compatible with love or family life? Is it really desirable, or is it a bit sad?

Some of these questions (the first, especially) come up in Hōjōki, whose Buddhist author (Kamo no Chōmei, c. 1154-1216) lives in seclusion in a ten foot square hut, but nevertheless brings with him musical instruments and books of poetry, and worries that he is too attached to his hut and too proud of the life he has been living. The thought of living with only a relatively small number of carefully curated possessions is appealing, but how easy would it be to achieve? How satisfying would it really be? And, even if satisfaction is not the right goal, would it be worthwhile? 

South Korean cafes offer a vision of a tastefully simple life, sophisticated yet in touch with nature (when possible, they have really nice views). Quite a few explicitly connect this with philosophy. Cafe Onion's baseball caps have a quote from Will Durant about Aristotle sewn on the inside, and the person behind several popular chains of cafes, Ryo, has recently published a book called Philosophy Ryo. Of course, there's philosophy and "philosophy," and when a businessperson publishes their philosophy it's reasonable to wonder whether this is sincere or just marketing. Or perhaps, as seems likely, some mix of the two. But then philosophy, or the idea of philosophy, is part of the brand. Some posters advertising Cafe Layered, part of Ryo's empire, feature a book by Sartre (in Portuguese) along with some British money, an apple, and a book that seems to be for bird watchers. Layered, which has writing, often in English, all over the walls and even windows, presents itself as being for people who enjoy simple things, like coffee and toast, without everything having to be perfect. But then it sells high quality coffee and cakes, especially scones, and I don't think toast is even an option. But perhaps it's important to some people to think of their fancy treats as not fancy at all. 

Anscombe on Faith and Justice

Another new publication. This one is short, open access, and quotes unpublished letters to von Wright. 

Abstract

In G. E. M. Anscombe’s extensive correspondence with G. H. von Wright, one of the many topics that come up is the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. What she says in these letters is significant because of the interest in what she wrote elsewhere about the use of atomic weapons. It is especially interesting because she might seem to imply here that only a person with religious faith is capable of being just. This paper quotes the relevant passages from the correspondence, explores what she might have meant, and concludes that she is not committed to the view that only the faithful can be just.

Wittgenstein Versus Anscombe on How to Live

My next book is now available to pre-order here. Here's a description of the contents:

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) and Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001) are two of the most interesting and influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Anscombe was Wittgenstein's friend and student, chosen by him to be his translator and editor, but the two had very different views on ethics and religion. Anscombe was a devout Catholic, while Wittgenstein was much less traditional. Each cared passionately about living the right way, and each was noted for their eccentricity. Why did they live as they did? What did they have to say about how one ought to live? And what, if anything, can we learn from them? This book explores their different beliefs about killing in war, about sexuality, about politics, about God, and about the meaning of life. Drawing on previously unpublished work by Anscombe, Duncan Richter explains where these beliefs came from, how they affected the lives of these two great philosophers, and some of the strengths and weaknesses of their divergent positions. If we understand these two thinkers better, we may improve our own chances of living a good life.

Sheer Poison? Anscombe and Wittgenstein on Philosophy of Religion

I have a new, open access publication available here. It's part of a special issue on New Work on Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion edited by Sebastian Sunday Grève.

Abstract 

Anscombe once said to Anthony Kenny that “On the topic of religion, Wittgenstein is sheer poison”. This paper offers an assessment of that view. I take it that Anscombe meant that Wittgenstein was a bad influence rather than that his views were necessarily false, although she seems to have been uncertain about what exactly his views were. In “Paganism, Superstition and Philosophy”, she identifies five ideas that make up “a certain current in philosophy which has a strong historical connection with Wittgenstein”. I identify some of the sources of these ideas, in Wittgenstein’s writing and in work by some of his followers, and consider what Anscombe’s objections to them might have been. I also look at whether we should think of these ideas as belonging either to Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion or to his personal beliefs. This will involve some consideration of how far we can, or should try to, separate the personal from the philosophical. So far as he held objectionable views about religion, I argue that these ought to be considered personal rather than philosophical.

Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science

 

This book brings together scholars from ethics and philosophy of science in order to identify ways in which insights gleaned from one subfield can shed light on the other. The book focuses on two radical Anti-Theory movements that emerged in the 1970’s and 1980’s, one in philosophy of science and the other in ethics. Both movements challenged attempts to supply general, systematized philosophical theories within their domains and thus invited the reconsideration of what philosophical theorizing can and should offer. Each of these movements was domain-specific – that is, each criticized the aspirations to philosophical theories within its own domain and advanced arguments aimed at philosophers within their own specific subfield. The innovative systematic comparative examination of these movements by scholars from each domain sheds new light on some familiar debates, offers new and exciting paths of research to pursue in each domain, provides insight into the place of science and ethics in contemporary life and culture, and enables a fresh view on the longstanding and alluring philosophical aspiration for a fully general, absolute theory of reality and an ultimate objective foundational theory of knowledge.

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   
   

2. Introduction to Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science

   • Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko, Isaac Nevo

   Pages 1-13

3. Moral Philosophy Is Not What It Used To Be: Reflections on Three Decades of Anti-theory

   • Nora Hämäläinen

   Pages 15-34

4. Feyerabend’s Asymmetry Argument for Epistemological Anarchism

   • Jamie Shaw

   Pages 35-51

5. The Scientific Method and the Moral Method

   • Uri D. Leibowitz

   Pages 53-80

6. Against Theory and Method in Ethics and Philosophy of Science

   • Klodian Coko

   Pages 81-104

7. Ethical Description as a Form of Anti-theory

   • Duncan Richter

   Pages 105-122

8. Overcoming Metaethics: Interpretation, Objectivity, and Realism

   • Michiel Meijer

   Pages 123-140

9. What Is It Like to See an Animal? Self-Examination and the Moral Relevance of Ordinary Descriptions of Animals

   • Erich Linder

   Pages 141-157

10. Anti-theory in Philosophy: A Case for Pragmatism

    • Isaac Nevo

    Pages 159-181

11. The Dangers of ‘Best Practices’: Against Supposedly Revolutionary Theories of Evidence in Medicine

    • Charles M. Djordjevic

    Pages 183-209

Available here and wherever expensive academic books are sold

Sally Rooney's Intermezzo

Sally Rooney’s new novel is possibly her best yet. It’s hard for me to judge, since it’s so relevant to topics I have a special interest in, which makes it appeal to me in ways it might not to others.

I take Intermezzo to be primarily about what to do concerning sex (and religion) in this age that might seem to lie between the age of Anscombe’s Catholic Christianity (at least in Rooney’s Ireland) and whatever is to come. It could also be read as a consideration of the differences between Anscombe’s traditional views on sex and religion and Wittgenstein’s still demanding but much less traditional views. He believed in God in some sense and was a Christian, at least in his own mind, in some sense, but he was nowhere near as orthodox or clear in his views as she was, and he considered Anscombe to be narrow-minded. He was somewhere in the LGBTQIA+ realm, especially the G, B, and A parts of that ballpark. 

Why call the novel Intermezzo if that is what it is about? One of the main characters in the book, Ivan Koubek, is a chess-player.  Ryan Ruby points out that intermezzo has a chess-related meaning in his review here.

Wikipedia explains this meaning as follows:

The zwischenzug is a chess tactic in which a player, instead of playing the expected move (commonly a recapture), first interposes another move posing an immediate threat that the opponent must answer, and only then plays the expected move. It is a move that has a high degree of "initiative". Ideally, the zwischenzug changes the situation to the player's advantage, such as by gaining material or avoiding what would otherwise be a strong continuation for the opponent.

 

This kind of move is also called an intermezzo or an in-between move. More commonly, ‘intermezzo’ means a short dramatic composition or piece of music that comes between two other, longer pieces. It sounds to me as though it could refer simply to something that comes between two other things or, in chess, to the messy period in dialectical progress that comes before what will later be evident progress.

So what does this have to do with Anscombe? I have mentioned Ivan Koubek already. His brother Peter and his ex/girlfriend Sylvia Larkin are two more major characters. Peter’s and Sylvia’s relationship is complicated, originally because of an accident she suffered a few years earlier. An overheard conversation between doctors includes this information:

 

History of chronic refractory pain following traumatic injury. Road traffic accident. […] The old life of pleasure gone and never returning. (p. 14)

 

The “old life of pleasure” that has gone includes her sex life.

Compare this with the ending of Anscombe’s paper “You Can have Sex without Children: Christianity and the New Offer” (in her Collected Papers Volume III, pp. 82-96). Speaking of sexual intercourse with the intention not of performing “a generative type of act” but for one or both of the people involved to achieve orgasm, she asks:  

 

if it is indeed all right to do this for good ends, then it is excessively difficult to see why after all the act need closely resemble a normal complete act of copulation; supposing that to have been made very difficult, say by a crippling accident to the wife, why should the couple not achieve sexual climax by mutual stimulation, rather than hold themselves obliged to a heroic degree of continence?  

 

A large part of what Intermezzo is about is what Peter and Sylvia, or any couple in this situation, should do. Since they are not already married, my understanding is, the Catholic view is that they should not get married.

 

Code of Canon Law in section 1084:

 §1. Antecedent and perpetual impotence to have intercourse, whether on the part of the man or the woman, whether absolute or relative, nullifies marriage by its very nature. (Quoted from https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/why-the-church-cannot-marry-the-impotent)

 

They should either stay single, holding themselves to what might be considered a heroic degree of continence, or Peter should find someone else to marry.

This is roughly the position taken by Sylvia. Her relationship with Peter will not work, she believes, so he should find someone else. She says this not on religious grounds, although those might be lurking in the background, and not really sincerely. In reality, they both still love each other and want to be together, although their lives get even more complicated when Peter falls in love with one of the other women he dates. What to do about this (kind of) situation is another big question that the novel raises without really answering.

Philip Larkin is quoted in the novel early on, and Sylvia’s sharing his last name is probably not just a coincidence. The quotation is from “Church Going,” a poem about an atheist’s feeling the pull of religion, or at least a church. Here’s how it ends, including the bit that Rooney quotes:

 

[…] though I've no idea

What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

It pleases me to stand in silence here;

 

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round.

 

Ruby writes:

 

Rooney’s engagement with Christianity in her fiction is less-often remarked on, but far more prevalent [than Marxism in her fiction]. Sylvia has a ‘sincere and transcendent love of Christ’, which is sometimes also a ‘terrifyingly real and serious fear of Christ’. Margaret ‘seems to feel obscurely that the day she met Ivan, they brought into existence a new relationship’, and that, ‘in the eyes of God’, her loyalty to this new ‘way of being’ may demand sacrifices of her, including ‘her pride, her dignity, her life itself’. When she asks Ivan if he believes in God, Ivan articulates a theory of divinity as a kind of aesthetic principle.

 

Beauty, or at least beauty of a certain kind, Ivan explains, makes him think there is a meaning behind everything. He connects this with belief in God.

Near the end of the novel Peter and Ivan each describe themselves as trying to believe in God.

Ruby also quotes a character (it’s Sylvia as registered in Peter’s consciousness, I think) referring to the “Sense that nothing can mean anything anymore, aesthetically.” Anscombe says something very similar. I have in mind especially things she says in an unpublished document which I don’t have permission to quote here, but also her claim in a 1972 letter to The Human World that, according to contemporary literature, “we are all crawling around in shit, that all is hopeless and absurd.” Sylvia is a bit like Anscombe, but not exactly like her. She doesn’t believe what Anscombe believes, and is at least somewhat open to possibilities that Anscombe rejects.

Rooney does not preach, but she does suggest some options to consider. One of these is that we do not yet have the concepts we need to think very well about all this. Perhaps our ideas of God will do, but our ideas about love and sex might need some revision. Here Rooney sounds a bit like Paulina Sliwa. Sliwa introduces the notion of what she calls hermeneutical inquiry, which she characterizes as making sense of the situation one is in. (See Paulina Sliwa “Making Sense of Things: Moral Inquiry as Hermeneutical Inquiry” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 2023, pp. 1-21.) For instance, a woman who has been raped (the example Sliwa focuses on) might take some time to realize this. Partly this could be because one is reluctant to acknowledge such a repellent truth, but it might also be because one associates certain ideas with rape (a stranger in an alley or overt threats of violence, for instance) and one’s own case might not match these stereotypes.

 

This is not simply a matter of working out “how to conceptualise one’s experience” though, Sliwa argues. Rather, it is a matter of trying to find a perspective on one’s experience:

 

A perspective is a complex set of interconnected cognitive, affective, and motivational dispositions: dispositions to find salient, to be moved by, to see as explanatorily or morally significant, to see a situation as similar to or different from another. A perspective is thus a way of making sense of a situation. (p. 2)

 

The confused rape victim does not lack the word or concept ‘rape’. Nor is it that she suffers from “uncertainty about which option from a menu is the correct one” (p. 5). Rather, she is confused and needs to find “a different way of looking and feeling about the subject matter at hand” (p. 5). The idea that what has happened to her is rape might not occur to her until some way into her attempt to make sense of things. And when that idea does occur to her, it might well not be immediately obvious that ‘rape’ is the right word to use. So she isn’t simply at a loss for words. She is engaged in an intellectual process that will, if successful, result in her learning something about her situation.

What she needs is to find the right, most apt, perspective, Sliwa says. Perspectives are not just words or concepts, but they are expressed by words. For instance, one perspective on what has happened is expressed by the words “dealing with an asshole” (p. 12). Another is expressed by “rape.” I think this point might be expressible in terms of conceptualization, but, if so, Sliwa is surely right that this is not a simple matter of hitting on the right word.

 

Rooney has a similar idea about choosing a name for something from a given assortment of options. She talks about what Peter and Sylvia are as:

 

A philosophical problem. When they go out together, to be mistaken for what they aren’t. Or rather: to be mistaken for what they are. And how is that possible. To see a man and a woman walking together: to name in the mind their relationship to one another, as it were automatically. Which is to select from the assortment of existing names the one that seems appropriate to the particular case. To say to oneself that in relation to the man, this particular woman must be a friend, or else a girlfriend, or a wife, or sister. An act of naming which stands open to correction, but correction only in the form of replacement: that is, the replacement of one existing name for another. If you are mistaken in thinking this woman my friend, that means merely that you have chosen the wrong term from the assortment, and therefore that I can correct you by supplying the appropriate one in its place. The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, says Wittgenstein, and it was the very one that we thought quite innocent. Because the name you give to a presumed relation between a man and woman may be both correct and incorrect at once. Each name including within itself a complex of assumptions. (p. 400)

 

Rooney quotes Wittgenstein here, but she might equally have quoted Iris Murdoch (who, like Anscombe, was also born in Ireland). Murdoch writes:

 

if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over. (“The Idea of Perfection” in Existentialists and Mystics, p. 329.)

 

Contemporary sexual ethics seems to be a bit of a mess, in the sense that a lot of people seem to be unhappy about what is expected or what actually happens or both. Women continue to be treated badly. There is a lot of involuntary celibacy. More people seem to want to get married than actually manage to do so. Dating is often said to be an unpleasant or disappointing experience. Whether we would do best to go back to traditional values or press on with the current ones or find something new seems to be a live question.

What we need might be new names or new complexes of assumptions. Which, as Rooney (or Peter) notes, is a social as well as a philosophical problem. And for that we would need to pay attention, thinking both carefully and imaginatively. In the meantime, in this intermission between the moral world that Anscombe (and most of Ireland) lived in and some possible new one that might be to come, we have to struggle to make sense of how we live and ought to live, including what to call things. (Assuming, that is, that we don’t simply agree with Anscombe. But Rooney seems to take this for granted.) Rooney’s contribution to the struggle is bringing up the apparent need for it, and getting us started on exploring some options, drawing the attention that is needed to at least some of the places where it needs to go.

Schulte on Wittgenstein in 1929

Joachim Schulte's review of Wittgenstein's Philosophy in 1929 says this about my contribution to the collection:  

Duncan Richter (in “The Good, the Divine, and the Supernatural”) discusses central    concepts from Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics, that is to say, concepts like those mentioned in his title, the distinction between relative and absolute value, “absolute safety”, “experience par excellence”, and other notions well-known to readers of that   lecture and the secondary literature dealing with its topics. The background of Richter’s reflections is a discussion between Cora Diamond and Michael Kremer. These authors focus on certain passages from Philosophical Investigations, in particular §107, which is read as referring to “a conflict” that could be seen as having taken place in Wittgenstein’s thought around 1929. This interpretation is fruitfully illustrated and supported by quotations from Wittgenstein’s manuscripts, “Some Remarks on Logical Form”, the Lecture on Ethics, and in many cases Richter’s characterisations of Wittgenstein’s words hit the nail on the head, for instance when he says of the better part of the lecture that it is “like one long false start” (p. 203). A good deal of the content of Richter’s piece is alluded to by a quotation from MS 107, where Wittgenstein notes in November 1929: “If something is good, then it is also divine. Strangely this summarizes my ethics. |Only the supernatural can express the supernatural” (Richter, p. 195). He is surely right in   foregrounding this passage, even though he misreads Wittgenstein in claiming of this remark that “even he [Wittgenstein] admits that it is strange” (this claim is repeated on p.208, where Richter speaks of “Wittgenstein’s strange identification of the good with the divine”).  Strangeness, however, is attributed, not to the quoted remark, but to the observation that the first sentence serves, or suffices, to summarise his ethics.

I agree that Wittgenstein attributes strangeness to the fact that "If something is good then it is also divine" summarizes his ethics. But why is this strange? Is it because Wittgenstein's ethics can be summarized in just one sentence? That doesn't seem so strange. It seems most likely to me that it is because the view that if something is good then it is also divine is in some sense strange. By 'strange' I don't mean false, of course. But it is unusual, and perhaps hard to understand. 

I don't argue for this reading in the paper, as I probably should have, but I don't think it's a misreading.

Wittgenstein and Ethics

For the next ten days or so this new book by Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen is available to download for free. It's highly recommended, as is looking out for other books in this series. 

Rachel Fraser on Sophie Grace Chappell’s Epiphanies

Although I have yet to read the book under review, I have some thoughts about Rachel Fraser's criticism of Sophie Grace Chappell's new book Epiphanies. All quotes from this in the Boston Review. Bits that seem extra important to me are in bold.

Chappell’s proposal for managing disagreement is what she calls “a republic of conversation.” We should explore together our various epiphanies. Only extremists—those whose epiphanies preclude such conversation—will be excluded. This, of course, is textbook political liberalism. As such, it inherits much of the dreamy unreality characteristic of liberal visions of collective life. There are particular agents with their private projects. Sometimes those agents come together. When they do, their conduct is governed only by the thinnest of requirements: be tolerant, be respectful.

This seems unfair. Chappell is not responsible for the alleged faults of other members of the same tradition or family of views. And Chappell offers, apparently, a proposal (concerning what we should do), while Fraser criticizes a “fantasy” of how our collective lives are lived.

This is a fantasy. Our collective lives are always governed by a thicket of normatively structured institutions—institutions that orient us to a particular conception of the good. [...] Arguably, it is just these thickets which enable conversation. Meaningful discourse requires an interpersonal infrastructure, which cannot be laid in a normative vacuum; it needs some lifeworld to bed into. But it seems to be within just such a vacuum—all moral content thicker than civility pumped out—that Chappell proposes we converse.

Evidence that Chappell proposes conversation in a moral vacuum? None that I can see. But, of course, I haven't read the book.

Once we start thinking of ethics as a social technology, systematicity and argument take on a different hue. It’s hard to be all that piecemeal or poetic when thinking about how to organize social institutions. We may live by our visions, but they can’t write our social policy. And some of us are doomed to live within a moral order that we disavow. This, I am inclined to think, is an unavoidable feature of human life: there could not be a form of life both neutral and meaningfully collective.

Once we do what?! Can this be a good idea? I would think that piecemeal is the only way to think about social institutions. Pretty much for reasons that Fraser gives. We are borin into a world of such institutions and they shape the way we think. We can destroy everything but only literally, only physically. We cannot imaginatively or intellectually wipe the slate clean and then think afresh from there. Wiping the slate clean removes the tools we need to think with. We are stuck with something like reflective equilibrium as the best or only option for social evaluation.

Moving on... So, to converse (meaningfully and collectively) we need a lifeworld. This will not be neutral. And so neither can we ever be. OK.

But if we can’t be neutral, we should at least be articulate. In other words, you owe me an argument. The vision of the good life that our social institutions encode should be explicit and contestable. And to be explicit and contestable—well, that sounds a lot like the law, and less like art criticism (at least as Chappell conceives it). Arguments can be challenged, rather than merely traded, in a way that visions cannot. 

Couldn’t one equally say, “But if we can’t be neutral, we should at least be civil, tolerant, and respectful”? And surely articulating a vision of the good life need not, and usually will not, take the form of putting forward an argument. And how contestable will a vision be that is encoded into the social institutions that enable the very conversation in which alone it can be contested? Somewhat, no doubt, but imperfectly or awkwardly, I would think, at best.

This seems like the key to the mystery here. There's an ideal (that seems visible in Fraser's thinking) of stepping back to get as clear a view as possible of social norms so that they can be critiqued and changed as desired. But there is also a recognition that we cannot do this except from within a lifeworld that is not completely separable from those norms and institutions. Which makes Chappell's view seem more correct than Fraser's.