Wittgenstein and the Social Sciences
ANTHEM STUDIES IN WITTGENSTEIN
Anthem Studies in Wittgenstein publishes new and classic works on Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinian philosophy. This book series aims to bring Wittgenstein’s thought into the mainstream by highlighting its relevance to twenty-first-century concerns. Titles include original monographs, themed edited volumes, forgotten classics, biographical works, and books intended to introduce Wittgenstein to the general public. The series is published in association with the British Wittgenstein Society.
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Series Editor
Constantine Sandis – University of Hertfordshire, UK
Wittgenstein and the Social Sciences
Action, Ideology, and Justice
Robert Vinten
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
This edition first published in UK and USA 2020
by ANTHEM PRESS
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Copyright © Robert Vinten 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940392
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-311-7 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-311-6 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
This book is dedicated to the memory of a former supervisor of mine, Bob Arrington, who sadly died in 2015. My discussions with him have had an enormous influence on the way that I think about philosophy.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1The Nature of Philosophy and of Social Science
1.Is There Such a Thing as a Social Science?
2.Wittgenstein and Relativism
Part 2Does Wittgenstein’s Work Have Ideological Implications?
3.Was Wittgenstein a Conservative Philosopher?
4.Was Wittgenstein a Liberal Philosopher?
5.Leave Everything as It Is
6.Eagleton’s Wittgenstein
Part 3Applying Wittgenstein’s Work to Problems in Social Philosophy
7.Wittgenstein and Freedom of the Will
8.Wittgenstein and Justice
Bibliography
Index
I would like to thank the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia1 for their financial support throughout my PhD in Lisbon as well as for my postdoctoral work there. They also funded a visit to Argentina for me to present a paper in La Plata and in Córdoba during August and September of 2017 (‘Interpretaciones de Wittgenstein por marxistas ingleses: una crítica’). I would like to thank Andrés Oliva for translating that paper into Spanish. Material from the English version of that paper appears in this book in Chapters 5 and 6. Pedro Karczmarczyk helped to arrange the trip and also arranged my accommodation (with the wonderful and kind Angélica Sangronis and Luis Alberto Pacheco). I am very grateful to him and to Angélica and Luis. It was Guadalupe Reinoso in Córdoba who arranged my talk there. I am grateful to her for arranging that and for showing me around the campus there. She was a fabulous host! The audiences who were present at my talks in La Plata and Córdoba also gave me valuable feedback on my work. I met a Spanish Wittgensteinian, Isabel Gamero, while I was in Argentina and I would like to thank her for stimulating discussion as well as for her help with practical matters in La Plata and Buenos Aires.
In Portugal I would like to thank Nuno Venturinha and Diogo Pires Aurélio, who were my advisors during my doctoral studies. Nuno, in particular, has been very helpful not only with advice about my philosophical work but also with administrative business in the university and outside of it. He helped to arrange for me to travel to Granada, Spain, to give a talk there (a paper about justice which appears, in slightly revised form, as Chapter 8 of this book), and has also invited me to speak at conferences at Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
I would like to thank the MLAG group at the Universidade do Porto for giving me the opportunity to present my paper about Wittgenstein and Freedom of the Will at their conference (the organisers of the conference were Anna Ciaunica, Sofia Miguens, João Alberto Pinto, José Pedro Correia, Diana Couto, and Luís Veríssimo). That paper has now become Chapter 7 of this book.
In Spain I would particularly like to thank Vicente Sanfélix Vidarte. He arranged for me to visit the Universitat de València to present a paper about Wittgenstein and Liberalism. That paper has since appeared in the Spanish journal Teorema (in English) in 2017 and in the Colombian journal Análisis (in Spanish) in 2018. I’m grateful to participants in the seminar in Valencia for their comments. Nicolas
