The word “conservative” is used because if a language game (to quote Ernest Gellner) “constitutes [its] own automatic vindication”, then surely there’s little room to criticise the status quo. In terms of the word “relativism”. Again, if our language game is the “foundation of the legitimacy of our ideas, in morals, science, politics, anywhere”, then that must apply to all other languages games too. What’s more, isn’t this stance a “kind of romantic communalism, a view that the spirit of the community (expressed in its language) is the only foundation one can ever have for the basic principles of one’s activities, whether moral, aesthetic, scientific or any other”?
There’s been quite a debate on whether or not Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of “language games” is relativist in nature. Oddly enough, some commentators simply ignore the possible relativist implications of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. It’s as if it would besmirch his name to even bring up the possibility of relativism. The philosopher and social anthropologist Ernest Gellner (1925–1995) picked up on this when he wrote about what he calls “Wittgenstein and his intellectual progeny”. (As found in his paper ‘Three Contemporary Styles of Philosophy’.) In technical terms, one way in which our philosophical problems are “dissolved” (a word that has often been used) is with
“the idea that our verbal custom could be the foundation of the legitimacy of ours ideas, in morals, science, politics, anywhere”.
That position, at least on the surface, certainly has a relativist timbre to it. So it’s not surprising that Gellner saw “our custom [as a] problem and not a solution”. He didn’t mean his or our particular custom. He meant any custom at any time is bound to create philosophical and otherwise problems. (It’s worth noting that Gellner never actually mentioned relativism.)
Gellner cited “morals” in the quote above, and later in his essay he went into more detail. Interestingly, he tied his discussion about language games to John Rawls’s thought experiment about the “veil of ignorance” (which is, in my view, an unexpected link). Gellner wrote:
“Are [the values] chosen in this imaginary situation because they are good values, or are they good values because, by definition, anything chosen in this situation is good? Do you *know* that other people, who are unlike yourself, would also choose them?”
It does seem very odd — or at least very radical — to argue that “verbal custom[s] [are] the foundation of the legitimacy of our ideas, in morals, science, politics, anywhere”. Thus, the Wittgensteinian argument must be that whenever a supposed “problem” does arise, then we must consult verbal customs for an answer. Not only that, once we do that, then we’ll quickly realise that it’s not, in fact, a problem at all.
As already stated, this is a very radical — or extreme — position. It also has clear relativist implications. However, many Wittgensteinians have strongly denied this. Gellner puts the almost-obvious case against this denialism when he wrote the following:
“[T]he morality of any given age may indeed be embodied in its verbal behaviour, but obviously this doesn’t mean that we must uncritically accept the morality of any given age or culture.”
At first sight at least, the Wittgensteinian position seems wrong. So perhaps those Wittgensteinians who deny that Wittgenstein was a relativist are right. Yet many people have indeed held this position or similar ones, whether postmodernists, social constructionists, or whoever. That said, the Wittgensteinians who don’t deny this may now ask the following question:
If the “morality of any given age” is not to be found “in its verbal behaviour” (or “verbal custom”), then where, exactly, is it to be found?
Well, one need to do a lot of philosophising to offer an alternative to this. And it can be argued that Wittgenstein himself didn’t like this kind of philosophising.
Gellner offered his readers a reason why (some?) Wittgensteinians have accepted this relativist position. He argued that such people
“did expressly embrace a kind of romantic communalism, a view that the spirit of the community (expressed in its language) is the only foundation one can ever have for the basic principles of one’s activities, whether moral, aesthetic, scientific or any other”.
Gellner quotes the philosopher Stanley Cavell putting this position in even stronger and simpler terms. In terms of Wittgenstein’s “forms of life” at least, Cavell told his readers that “[h]uman speech and activity, sanity and community, rests upon nothing more, but nothing less, than this”.
Gellner’s words (i.e., above the Cavell quote) come across as if he’s expressing a Heideggerian position — or even a National Socialist (Nazi) one. This is made even clearer in a later passage in which Gellner tells us that language-games theory “has a most exaggerated sense of and respect for cultural systems, their autonomy and incommensurability”. Indeed, such Wittgensteinians “endorse[] and love[] them all”. It also “assumes that [language games] are somehow self-contained and authoritative”. Of course, when you scratch the surface, one often finds that even hardcore self-described relativists (the few that there are) don’t accept at least some “forms of life” or “cultural systems”. (For example, the Nazi form of life, the racist form of life, etc.)
Is the Wittgensteinian point here that philosophers, or anyone else, can never transcend (or rise above) “the spirit of the community (expressed in its language)” in order to formulate (or discover) an alternative position on moral, aesthetic, scientific, etc. problems or issues? After all, such people will be doing their transcending in the language — and even in the “spirit” — of the “community” they’re questioning. That said, there’s nothing inherently contradictory about criticising a language with that language, or criticising a community from within that community.
Gellner puts this language-games position in basic terms when he says that if one accepts it, then one must also accept that “cultures are self-legitimating, and validate the norms of conduct and sanity found within them”. Put in another way, Gellner told us that each language game “interacts with the world only in part referentially, but in the main socially, and each of which constitutes its own automatic vindication”.
Thus, surely languages games would include head-hunting cultures, Nazi culture, etc., just as much as they would include the cultures of Sweden and France in 2025, or the United States in the 1960s. (One can ask here is there’s even such a thing as — in the singular — the culture or the language game of any given country at any given time.)
Where is the World?
In terms of Wittgenstein himself, Gellner tackled Wittgenstein’s (possible?) relativism within the context of him rebelling against his Tractatus position. In simple terms, Gellner sees both the Tractatus position and the language-games position as being equally extreme. Talking about Wittgenstein himself, Geller says that
“[i]t was as if he knew how to do two things only, either observe linguistic custom, or project logic onto the world — and having got tired of the former, there was nothing else to do but return to the latter”.
In response to those words one can even say that, at one point, Wittgenstein — among many other philosophers — wanted “the world” to tell us what to say about it. What’s more, philosophers and everyone else must simply be faithful to “the world’s own logic”. This project is suspect in that, even if philosophers were obedient to the world (or at least tried to be), what was to stop them getting it wrong? Perhaps late Wittgenstein realised that philosophers couldn’t really get the world right or wrong because the world itself isn’t made up of statements and theories which can simply be repeated (or communicated) by diligent philosophers. Thus, the ball was always in the “linguistic custom” corner.
So Where is the world within language-game theory?
Gellner didn’t actually believe that (to quote Richard Rorty) “the world is well lost”. At least not when it comes to, of all technical terms, “reference”. He told us that when it comes to language games, “each of which [ ] interacts with the world only in part referentially”. What of the other parts? Language games “interact with the world [ ] in the main socially, and each of which constitutes its own automatic vindication”. Readers may now wonder why a language game needs to be referential at all. (We’d need to flesh out the notion of reference to answer that question.) Can’t a Wittgensteinian language game be built on fictions, untruths, fantasies or hallucinations? For example, why wouldn’t, say, a Harry Potter language game also “constitute[] its own automatic vindication”?
Reference is said to (quoting Keith Donnellan) “tie us to the world”. So, is (to use Gellner’s example) “the nature of things” the source of that tie? Yet, according to Gellner’s Wittgenstein, the nature of things is also an “artefact[] of customs of linguistic communities”. Moreover, this position is directly linked to another of Wittgenstein’s ideas — “meaning is use”. Thus, “[i]f you want to know what a given expression means, don’t ask what it refers to, ask what it does”. In addition, one must “[e]xplore the social context in which [the expression] operates and the multiform purposes which it serves”.
Earlier, Gellner was quoted arguing that a language game “interacts with the world only in part referentially”. Here that referential part of the equation seems to be eliminated too. Yet isn’t it counterintuitive to eliminate reference entirely when one asks what something means? After all, and to state the obvious, no one asks what a given expression “does”… Perhaps, then, it doesn’t matter if no one asks that because words do things even if the questioner doesn’t look at things that way. Most people, in other words, do have a referential position on many words and meanings — even though they don’t use the word “referential” either. So perhaps a given expression refers to something, and it also does something within a language game. Perhaps it does something precisely because it refers to something. Alternatively put, perhaps a meaning has a use because it’s also tied to a word with a meaning which has a reference. Yet one can easily imagine a Harry Potter language game which doesn’t require reference, at least if reference is deemed to be metaphysically realist in nature. However, even here some philosophers have argued that you can refer (in the technical sense/s of that term) to fictional entities. Thus, if that’s the case, one can see why a language game based on fictions, untruths or fantasies could constitute its own vindication. Still, there seems to be a binary opposition set up between reference and use in all the previous words. As already stated, perhaps reference and use (or reference and “doing things with words”) can — or even must — work together.
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