The Elusive Third Way: The Pyrrhonian Illumination In Wittgenstein

The Elusive Third Way:

The Pyrrhonian Illumination In Wittgenstein’s On Certainty

Roger Eichorn University of Chicago

[email protected]

Draft: January 3, 2012

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I argue that, as with the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, Wittgenstein’s response to skepticism in On Certainty involves the attempt to free us from philosophy itself and is therefore not a philosophical position, strictly speaking, but is best understood as a therapeutic metaphilosophy designed to bring into view the relationship between our everyday epistemic practices and those of philosophy such that we simultaneously come to recognize (a) the pragmatic-transcendental ‘self-standingness’ of the everyday, and (b) its philosophico–epistemic groundlessness. The result of this ‘illumination’ of the everyday is therapeutic in the sense that it is intended to transform our meta-doxastic attitude by purifying it of dogmatism. KEYWORDS: Wittgenstein; skepticism; Pyrrhonism; Sextus Empiricus; ancient skepticism

“The Elusive Third Way” / 2

The difficulty of philosophy not the intellectual difficulty of the sciences, but the difficulty of a change of attitude... Work on philosophy is... actually more of a kind of work on oneself. On one’s own conception. On how one sees things. (And what one demands of them.) – Wittgenstein, “Philosophy” (§86 of The Big Typescript)

1. Introduction

Commentators on Wittgenstein all agree that he had something to say about philosophical

skepticism. Beyond that, one finds in the literature precious little—if any—common ground

regarding Wittgenstein’s attitude toward, or the nature of his response to, skeptical threats to

knowledge. In the collection of notes that his literary executors published under the title On

Certainty (henceforth: OC), it is clear that Wittgenstein is concerned, at least as a jumping-off

point, to address G.E. Moore’s responses to skepticism and idealism in “A Defence of Common

Sense”1 and the later “Proof of an External World.”2 Most commentators regard Wittgenstein as

hostile to Moore, yet some take him to be largely sympathetic to Moore’s anti-skeptical

strategy.3 Even if we grant that Wittgenstein rejects, in some strong sense, Moore’s response to

skepticism and idealism, the literature abounds with differing accounts of just what charge

Wittgenstein wants to lay at Moore’s feet.4 It isn’t even agreed that Wittgenstein ultimately

wants (or that he has the conceptual resources) to confute the philosophical skeptic’s claims.5

1 Moore 1925.

In

2 Moore 1939. 3 Cf., Morawetz 2007, 186: “Wittgenstein is fundamentally in sympathy, as I read him, with Moore’s critique of scepticism.” Anthony Rudd claims, echoing Kripke (Kripke 1982, 63), that “Wittgenstein is often still regarded as a robust ‘common sense realist,’ an implacable opponent of idealism and scepticism—essentially just a subtler version of G. E. Moore” (Rudd 2003, 73). 4 Cf., de Pierris 1996, 188; Conant 1998, 230; Wright 2004, 41; Moyal-Sharrock 2005, 165; Proessel 2005, 345; Stroll 2007, 36; Morawetz 2007, 185; Coliva 2010, 59–60; Pritchard (forthcoming), 3. 5 Cf., Wright 2004, 27; Pritchard 2007, 208; Rudd 2003, 89; Stone 2000, 96–9.


other words, although everyone agrees that Wittgenstein had something to say about skepticism,

it isn’t clear even whether he opposed skepticism or propounded a form of it himself.

According to a common interpretive line, the later Wittgenstein responds to skepticism

by (a) rejecting some assumption or set of assumptions shared by both the skeptic and the

(traditional) anti-skeptic, and subsequently (b) advocating a third option, one that forges (or at

least attempts to forge) a new path through the problem. One encounters ‘third way’

interpretations with such frequency because it’s clearly—or so it seems to me—the right sort of

account.6

In the opening sections of Outlines of Pyrrhonism (henceforth: PH), Sextus presents a

taxonomy of philosophers according to which they fall, with respect to any given investigation,

into one of three categories: dogmatists, who claim to have discovered the truth; skeptics, who

claim that the truth cannot be discovered; and Pyrrhonians, who suspend judgment.

I don’t think, however, that the details of the account have been satisfactorily worked

out. In what follows, I argue that the nature of Wittgenstein’s ‘third way’ comes into sharper

focus when seen in relation to the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus; likewise, important aspects

of Pyrrhonism become clearer, at least to contemporary philosophical eyes, when seen in relation

to Wittgenstein’s work.

7

6 Cf., Philosophical Investigations (henceforth: PI) §352.

Generalizing, we can say that a dogmatist will typically claim to know many (perhaps all) truths,

skeptics will typically claim that many (perhaps all) truths are inapprehensible, and Pyrrhonians

7 For ease of exposition, I have modified Sextus’s taxonomy in two important ways. First, the opening sections of PH refer not to dogmatists, skeptics, and Pyrrhonians, but to dogmatists, Academics, and skeptics. By ‘Academics,’ Sextus is referring to the skeptics of Plato’s Academy, the original school of ancient skepticism. The Academics, Sextus says (fairly or not), “have asserted that things cannot be apprehended” (PH §1.3; cf., PH §§1.220–35). The Academics, then, are (at least as Sextus presents them) akin to what modern philosophers think of when they think of ‘skeptics.’ For that reason, I have decided to refer to such ‘negative dogmatists’ as ‘skeptics,’ and to distinguish them from Pyrrhonians, who are not only not skeptics so understood but are opposed to such forms of skepticism. Second, Sextus does not initially distinguish Pyrrhonians from dogmatists and skeptics by saying that the former suspend judgment, but rather by saying that they “are still investigating” (PH §1.4). But (a) Pyrrhonians continue the investigation, if they do, because they suspend judgment, i.e., because for them the question remains open, and therefore (b) their suspension of judgment on the conclusions of philosophical arguments is what sets Pyrrhonians apart from dogmatists and skeptics in Sextus’s taxonomy.


will suspend judgment on a broad (perhaps maximally broad) range of philosophical claims and

arguments. Both the dogmatist and the skeptic are in the business of promoting acceptance of

the conclusions of philosophical arguments. They are mirror images of each other: the skeptic is

simply a negative dogmatist. Pyrrhonians, on the other hand, are in the business of promoting

suspension of judgment (epochē) regarding the conclusions of philosophical arguments (cf., PH

§§3.280–1). The skeptic’s attitude toward skeptical arguments is one of acceptance. The

dogmatist, on the other hand, will generally want to refute the skeptic’s arguments by

marshalling other philosophical arguments. Unlike both dogmatist and skeptic, however, the

Pyrrhonian will, when faced with a skeptical argument, neither accept its conclusion nor claim

that the argument can be or has been refuted. In this way, Sextus signals at the outset of PH that

Pyrrhonism represents a third way with skepticism (and with philosophy more generally).

We’ve already seen that some commentators read the later Wittgenstein as belonging,

with Moore, among (traditional) dogmatists. We’ve also seen that others think—or worry that—

he belongs instead among (traditional) skeptics.8 As for ‘third way’ interpretations, they come in

three basic forms: those that see Wittgenstein as advocating a revised dogmatism; those that see

Wittgenstein as advocating a revised skepticism; and those that see Wittgenstein as wanting to

reject the framework in which it makes sense to talk in terms of either dogmatism or skepticism

(however revised). We’ll look at examples of each in §2. For now, I want to point out that those

who advance the third type of ‘third way’ reading have struggled to articulate a principled means

of responding to skepticism while also breaking free from the traditional philosophico-

conceptual framework in which skepticism has its natural home.9

8 Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s ‘skeptical paradox’ in Kripke 1982, coupled with widespread dissatisfication with Kripke’s proposed ‘skeptical solution,’ has been especially influential in generating concerns that Wittgenstein falls prey to skepticism.

Call this the principled-

9 An example should make the outlines of the problem clear. In Mind and World, John McDowell claims to have


rejection problem.10

discovered, with his conception of ‘experience’ as an ‘openness’ to a richly conceptual ‘world,’ a way for us to “achieve an intellectual right to shrug our shoulders at skeptical questions” (McDowell 1994, 143). It is far from clear, however, that he succeeds at dislodging skepticism. As he admits, “[i]t is true that we could not establish that we are open to facts in any given case. But,” he goes on, “that is beside the point. It would matter if [fallibility] showed that the very idea of openness to facts is unintelligible, and it does not show that... [T]he sheer intelligibility of the idea [of openness] is enough.” At this juncture one might reasonably ask, How so?, to which McDowell would respond: “If the idea is intelligible, the sceptical questions lack a kind of urgency that is essential to their troubling us, an urgency that derives from their seeming to point up an unnerving fact: that however good a subject’s cognitive position is, it cannot constitute her having a state of affairs directly manifest to her” (McDowell 1994, 113). In this passage, McDowell mischaracterizes the nature—and therefore evinces his misunderstanding of the force—of skeptical arguments. He claims, in effect, that skepticism is only troubling if we accept that it is true, or at least if we accept that ‘a direct manifestation of a state of affairs’ is impossible (because of, e.g., a ‘veil of perception’). This is, so to speak, manifestly not the case. Rather, the mere possibility that skepticism is true—that we are unable to justify even our best-case knowledge-claims—is what has troubled philosophers for thousands of years. Simply pointing out, as McDowell does, that the skeptic might be wrong—or that the conceptual framework in which the skeptic operates is not compulsory—hardly underwrites a principled rejection of skepticism or of its conceptual framework, a framework that is (after all) not peculiar to skeptics but is simply taken over from dogmatic philosophers. Moreover, if the conceptual roadblock in question is something like a ‘veil of perception,’ then not only do skeptics take over that framework from dogmatists, but the framework (as philosophers have inherited it) was itself developed by Descartes as part of an argument intended to refute skepticism! Therefore, it cannot be the case that simply throwing the ‘veil of perception’ framework overboard will rid philosophy of the specter of skepticism.

It is my contention that, by viewing Wittgenstein’s ‘third way’ in light of

what I take to be Pyrrhonism’s third way, a new and compelling interpretive avenue opens up,

one that solves the principled-rejection problem. According to the reading advocated here,

Wittgenstein’s response to skepticism is predicated on freeing us from philosophy’s epistemic

constraints and so is not strictly speaking a philosophical position at all, but is rather a

therapeutic metaphilosophy designed to bring into view—to ‘illuminate’—the relationship

between our everyday epistemic practices and those of philosophy such that (a) we come to

recognize common life as constituting a self-standing pragmatic-transcendental framework in

which we live and move and have our being, while simultaneously (b) coming to recognize the

rational groundlessness of that framework, i.e., the fact that it seems to lack the sort of objective

or absolute justification (i) that we are naturally inclined to think it must possess, even if we’ve

never attempted to secure it, and (ii) that alone is capable of underwriting a dogmatic

10 In characterizing their responses to skepticism, Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty inadvertently sloganized the principled-rejection problem; for it is hardly obvious that an adequate or principled response to skepticism can consist in a “‘don’t-care’ conclusion” (Rorty 1972, 12) or in “telling [the skeptic] to get lost” (Davidson 1983/7, 154).


commitment either to the contents of the framework or, crucially, to the framework itself. The

metaphilosophical position that results from the ‘Pyrrhonian illumination,’ as I call it,11

I am not alone in associating the later Wittgenstein with Pyrrhonism.

is

therapeutic in the sense that it is intended to transform our meta-doxastic attitude—that is, our

attitude toward our beliefs—by purifying it not of philosophy per se, but of dogmatism, where

‘dogmatism’ is understood in attitudinal, meta-doxastic terms. The principled-rejection problem

is solved by (a) basing the rejection on principles internal to the rejected position, and (b)

simultaneously extending the breadth and restricting the depth of the rejection: what is ‘rejected’

is not simply skepticism, but philosophy; at the same time, the ‘rejection’ takes the form of

suspension of judgment, not ‘refutation’ or (what is usually meant by) ‘dissolution.’

12

11 I owe this phrase, and far more besides, to Donald Livingston’s work on Hume (see Livingston 1984, Chapter 1; cf., Hiley 1988, Chapter 1).

In what way,

then, does my doing so ‘open up a new interpretive avenue’? One reason why I find OC and PH

mutually illuminating is that both texts have given rise to similar interpretive disputes. The

question of how to understand Pyrrhonism’s ‘third way’ is far from uncontentious. Just as

Wittgenstein is often read as a dogmatist or as a skeptic, so Sextus is often assimilated to one

camp or the other, i.e., he is taken either to out-skeptic the skeptic or to be (in effect) a dogmatist

with respect to at least a restricted range of claims. To the extent that it is novel at all, the

novelty of my application of Pyrrhonism to OC lies in the particulars of my interpretation of

Pyrrhonism, to which I turn in §3. First, though, I want to use the Wright–Kripke–McDowell

debate over meaning-skepticism in Wittgenstein to illustrate the elusiveness of Wittgenstein’s

third way.

12 Robert Fogelin has argued in several places over the years that Wittgenstein ought to be read as a Pyrrhonian (or at least a ‘Neo-Pyrrhonian’). (See: Fogelin 1981; Fogelin 1987, Chapter 15; Fogelin 1994.) Numerous others, though most fall short of enlisting Wittgenstein into the ranks of Pyrrhonians, have seen important connections between Sextus and the later Wittgenstein. Some examples: Naess 1968, 31–2; Park 1985, 226; Williams 1988, 562; Garfield 1990; Forster 1998, 192 fn. 139; Palmer 2004; Plant 2004; Sluga 2004; Bhattacharjee 2011; Pritchard 2011.


2. The Elusiveness of the Third Way

The difficulty with third-way interpretations is that they depend for their tenability on the

tenability of rejecting the assumption or assumptions common to the skeptic and the dogmatist.

One person’s third way is another person’s skepticism.

Crispin Wright has developed a third-way interpretation of Wittgenstein on rule-

following that locates the source of the (putative) normative authority of our rule-following

practices in human social conventions.13 This third way aims to avoid skepticism by rejecting

the view that we can only make sense of objectivity if we can do so without appeal to communal

ratification.14 In a later paper, Wright argues that “[a]bandoning Platonism [i.e., dogmatism]

need not involve [as does ‘irrealism,’ i.e., skepticism] abandoning the objectivity of rule-

informed judgements. There remains the option of regarding such judgements as extension-

determining, of seeing best opinion as constituting their truth.”15

John McDowell, another third-way interpreter, calls foul on Wright’s strategy because, as

he sees it, one cannot reject the assumption Wright does if objectivity is to be retained.

16 In

McDowell’s view, Wright goes wrong (so to speak) in attributing to Wittgenstein an acceptance

of the ‘skeptical paradox’ made famous by Kripke,17 according to which “[t]here can be no such

thing as meaning anything by any word.”18

13 Wright 1980, 220.

McDowell argues that, for Wittgenstein, the

‘skeptical paradox’ is one horn of a dilemma that depends on a “misunderstanding” (PI §201),

14 Cf., Wright 1980, 220–1. 15 Wright 1989, 210. 16 McDowell 1984, 325, 334ff. 17 McDowell 1984, 331. 18 Kripke 1982, 55. Cf., Wright 1980, 21.


namely, “that our problem is to find a fact that constitutes my having given some expression an

interpretation with which only certain uses of it would conform.”19 The dilemma’s other horn is

the adoption of “a familiar mythology of meaning and understanding,” i.e., “the super-rigid

machine”20 According to McDowell, both horns of the dilemma trade on a picture of our basic

epistemic situation vis-à-vis rule-following such that there is “a gap... between the instruction

one received in learning the expression and the use one goes on to make of it.”21 Given such a

gap, it seems that we must either conclude that it cannot be bridged (skepticism) or find a means

of bridging it (a dogmatic ‘mythology of meaning’). According to McDowell, “Wittgenstein’s

point is that this dilemma seems compulsory only on the assumption that understanding is always

interpretation; his aim is... to persuade us to reject the dilemma by discarding the assumption on

which it depends.”22 By overlooking this crucial feature of Wittgenstein’s position, Wright fails

to challenge the dilemma as such. In arguing against the ‘mythology’ horn, therefore, he ends up

impaling Wittgenstein on the other horn: that of the skeptical paradox. “This disastrous upshot

does not, of course, correspond to Wright’s intentions in his interpretation of Wittgenstein...

Nevertheless, it is where his reading leaves us,”23 that is, with “a picture of the relation between

the communal language and the world in which norms are obliterated.”24

In a later article, Wright acknowledges the point (or its general thrust, at least). While

maintaining that the ‘platonist’ horn of the dilemma remains untenable, he admits that

“communitarianism promises to struggle when it comes to recovering basic distinctions on which

In other words,

Wright’s third way is, according to McDowell, just another form of skepticism.

19 McDowell 1984, 332. 20 McDowell 1984, 342. 21 McDowell 1984, 332. 22 McDowell 1984, 338. 23 McDowell 1984, 358. 24 McDowell 1984, 347.


our ordinary ideas of objectivity... seem to depend.”25

He suggests that

[o]ne response to the dilemma is to attempt to find a third way: to work out a conception of rules and rule-governed practices which allows sufficient of a gap between the requirements of a rule and subjects’ reactions in any particular case to make sense of the idea of e.g. a whole community’s misapplication of a rule they aim to follow, yet which stops short of any spurious, platonised idea of the autonomy of a rule and its requirements.26

Wright characterizes Wittgenstein’s third way as one of ridding us of ‘mythological pictures,’

which at least in this case seem to be products of specious philosophizing.27 An assumption

underpinning the platonism–communitarianism dilemma is that we require an account of rule-

following according to which it is rational all the way down. But, according to Wright, in ‘basic

cases’ of rule-following, rules are followed blindly (PI §219), that is “without reason... The

problematic invited us to construct an account of what, when we follow a particular rule,

constitutes the facts about the direction in which, step by step, it guides us and how we are able

to be responsive to its guidance. But in basic cases the invitation emerges... as utterly

misconceived; for it presupposes a false conception of the sense in which basic rule-following is

rational.”28

It is doubtful that McDowell would see Wright’s revised proposal as avoiding skepticism.

McDowell’s own view—that “one can grasp in a flash the principle of a series one is being

taught,” that “one can hear [‘in a flash’] someone else’s meaning in his words”

29—seems to

depend on there being full-blooded rationality (“semantic facts,” as Wright puts it)30

25 Wright 2007, 485–6.

at the

bottom of our language-games. Perhaps this must be the case if we’re to avoid skepticism; for is

26 Wright 2007, 486. 27 Cf., Wright 2007, 488. 28 Wright 2007, 497. 29 McDowell 1984, 355. 30 Wright 1989, 189 fn. 29.


it really an answer to skepticism—rather than a form of skepticism—to argue that irrationality

underlies our ‘rationality’? (As Wright himself notes in a different connection: “How does it

help to have a reminder in detail of the various kinds of groundless assumption we make?”)31 At

the same time, however, it isn’t clear that McDowell’s view (and therefore that of McDowell’s

Wittgenstein) avoids brute dogmatic assertion. For is concluding that a dilemma is both

“intolerable”32 and not “compulsory”33

McDowell wants to avoid any appearance of providing a ‘skeptical solution’ in Kripke’s

sense—that is, a solution that “begins... by conceding that the sceptic’s negative assertions are

unanswerable”

sufficient to justify assenting to any positive claims that

aren’t simple logical entailments of those conclusions? It may be true that if we can hear ‘in a

flash’ someone else’s meaning in his words, then meaning-skepticism can’t get off the ground.

It may also be true that meaning-skepticism trades on an assumption that gives rise to an

intolerable dilemma. But even if it’s true that the culprit assumption must be mistaken, it doesn’t

follow that therefore we can hear ‘in a flash’ someone else’s meaning in his words.

34—while nevertheless finding a way to help himself to the second half of

Kripke’s ‘solution’: “[O]ur ordinary practice or belief is justified because—contrary appearances

notwithstanding—it need not require the justification the sceptic has shown to be untenable.”35

The Wright–Kripke–McDowell debate offers a striking demonstration of the elusiveness

of Wittgenstein’s third way. I take it that there are at least two fundamental difficulties here.

First, it isn’t clear what or how much we can give up without succumbing to skepticism. Kripke

This may be an admirable goal, but it isn’t clear how it is supposed to work.

31 Wright 2004, 42. 32 McDowell 1984, 356. 33 McDowell 1984, 332. 34 Kripke 1982, 66. 35 Kripke 1982, 66.


is content to advocate a revised skepticism, but Wright seems to aim at a revised dogmatism,36

while McDowell wants to reject the entire framework: he rejects both Kripke’s37 and Wright’s38

‘third ways’ on the grounds that they remain committed to the assumptions that, according to

McDowell, Wittgenstein endeavored to uproot and that, should they go unchallenged, would

force one down the path to skepticism. Second, and more importantly, it’s even less clear how

we can address skepticism while also rejecting the framework in which skepticism is a live

hypothesis. The familiar notions of ‘therapy’ and ‘diagnosis’ spring to mind here, but that only

pushes the question back a step; for how, and to what end or ends, are Wittgensteinian therapy

and diagnosis to be applied? It is often said that Wittgenstein demonstrated, or sought to

demonstrate, the nonsensicality or senselessness of certain propositions (especially skeptical

propositions); but what exactly does he mean by ‘nonsense’ or ‘senseless,’ especially when

applied to propositions whose sense we all seem to understand at least passably, if not perfectly,

well? Wright objects to what he calls “‘official’ Wittgensteinianism”39

36 This is perhaps especially evident in Wright 2004, where he proposes, vis-à-vis OC, an ‘unearned warrant’ account. Here, Wright wants to present a theory of the conditions under which we are warranted in holding a belief or set of beliefs; and he presents his theory as both the upshot of a philosophical argument and as a stable, respectable philosophical position. It seems, then, that this theory is both ‘dogmatic’ in Sextus’s sense and positive. At the same time, however, there is a sense in which Wright’s theory is a revised skepticism rather than a revised dogmatism, for it concedes, à la Kripke’s skeptical solution, that “the best sceptical arguments have something to teach us—that the limits of justification they bring out are genuine and essential” (Wright 2004, 50); yet Wright wants to present a skeptical solution, and so he continues: “just for that reason, cognitive achievement must be reckoned to take place within such limits” (Wright 2004, 50). Thus, Pritchard’s objection to Wright’s account—that “once one goes down the internalist road to the extent that Wright does, the only natural conclusion to draw is that, strictly speaking, the skeptic is right after all” (Pritchard 2007, 208)—may simply highlight a position that is internal to Wright’s account, in which case it cannot, in itself, constitute a criticism of that account. Here, again, we have an illustration of the elusiveness of the third way.

on the grounds that it is

far too quick to reject questions either as overtly nonsensical or as just ill-formed in some way:

“Asked what constitutes the truth of rule-informed judgements of the kind we isolated, the

official Wittgensteinian will reply: ‘Bad question, leading to bad philosophy—Platonism, for

37 McDowell 1984, 330. 38 McDowell 1984, 358. 39 Wright 1989, 189. He has in mind Baker and Hacker’s interpretation (see: Backer and Hacker 1984).


instance, or Kripkean scepticism’.”40

As is so often the case when discussing Wittgenstein, the problem is not that there are no

answers to these questions; the problem is that there are too many answers. The issues here are

complex, but I want to suggest, first, that OC—focused as it is on epistemology—is the place to

look if we want to understand Wittgenstein’s response to skepticism, and second, that reading

OC in light of PH suggests a compelling way to resolve the deep tension that pervades OC and

which renders its shape elusive.

The question, of course, is why we should consider such

questions bad. It cannot be because they lead to undesired conclusions.

I’ll now outline some relevant features of my account of Pyrrhonism. I return to

Wittgenstein in §4.

3. The Pyrrhonian Illumination in Outlines of Pyrrhonism

Interpretations of the scope of Pyrrhonian suspension of judgment (epochē) tend to fall

along a continuum between competing poles. On one extreme lies radical interpretations,

according to which Pyrrhonism is intended to leave us, with respect to all truth-claims,

adoxastōs—without belief or opinion. On this view, the target of Pyrrhonian epochē is belief

tout court. The classic contemporary statement of a radical interpretation is found in Myles

Burnyeat’s “Can the Skeptic Live His Skepticism?”41

40 Wright 1989, 211, 191.

On the other extreme lies restrictive

interpretations, according to which Pyrrhonism is intended to leave us adoxastōs with respect

only to a delimited range of truth-claims, generally (something like) otiose philosophical or

41 Burnyeat 1980. It should be pointed out, however, that the main thrust of Burnyeat’s article assumes that the radical interpretation is correct: that is, he is primarily concerned with the question of whether a belief-less life is livable, not whether the Pyrrhonian does or does not have beliefs.


scientific claims regarding ‘essences’ or ‘things-in-themselves.’ On this view, the target of

Pyrrhonian epochē is philosophy—or as Sextus put it, “the conceit and rashness of the

Dogmatists” (PH §3.280; cf., §§1.20, 1.177, 1.205, 1.212, 1.237, 2.21, 3.2). The classic

contemporary statement of a restrictive interpretation is Michael Frede’s “The Skeptic’s

Beliefs.”42

The majority of those who have interpreted later figures in the history of philosophy

through a Pyrrhonian lens either argue for or simply assume a restrictive interpretation of some

kind.

43 The same is true when it comes to Wittgenstein-interpretation.44

For example, Robert

Fogelin, in arguing that Wittgenstein ought to be read as a skeptic in the Pyrrhonian tradition, has

in mind restrictive Pyrrhonism. Sextus, he writes,

was not interested in the plain man’s natural and unpretentious beliefs. As long as a person remained content with modestly reporting how things struck him, then the sceptic had nothing to say against him. The object of the sceptic’s attack was the philosopher, in particular, the philosopher of a dogmatic cast who attempted to maintain that his opinions enjoyed a special status above those of others.45

At least in their most common form, restrictive interpretations trade on an implausible view of

the beliefs of the ‘plain man.’ No doubt we could make out what sorts of belief qualify as

“natural and unpretentious,” and no doubt we would conclude that ‘plain men’ (whoever they

are) do hold such beliefs. But to make out the distinction between philosophers and ‘plain men’

needed to underwrite the claim that Pyrrhonism targets only philosophers, it would have to be the

42 Frede 1979. I should add that I think Frede’s view is more complex than it is usually taken to be. I have here characterized it in the standard way. 43 For example: Foucault (Hiley 1988, Chapter 4), Heidegger (Rudd 2003), Hume (Popkin 1955; Fogelin 1983; Livingston 1984, Chapter 1; Hiley 1988, Chapter 1; Garfield 1990; Bhattacharjee 2011), Nietzsche (Parush 1976; Conway and Ward 1992; Bett 2000; Berry 2011), Richard Rorty (Hiley 1988, Chapter 6). 44 See: Fogelin 1981; Fogelin 1987, Chapter 15; Fogelin 1994; Garfield 1990; Rudd 2003; Palmer 2004; Bhattacharjee 2011; Pritchard 2011. A notable exception: In discussing Pyrrhonism in relation to Wittgenstein, Bob Plant seems—despite the occasional suggestion otherwise (cf., Plant 2004, 227)—to have a radical interpretation in mind (cf., Plant 2004, 223, 229 fn. 43, 238). 45 Fogelin 1981, 5. See also: Fogelin 1996, 3–9.


case that all the beliefs of ‘plain men’ are “natural and unpretentious.” But is that the case? Do

those who are innocent of philosophy ‘remain content with modestly reporting how things strike

them’? I admit to seeing no basis whatsoever for thinking this is true. Immodesty in one’s

beliefs and declarations is hardly a vice unique to philosophers. If Fogelin is right—and I think

he is—that “[a]s long as a person remained content with modestly reporting how things struck

him, then the sceptic had nothing to say against him,” then it should not surprise us to discover

that Sextus distinguishes, in no uncertain terms, between Pyrrhonians and other non-philosophers

as well as between Pyrrhonians and philosophical dogmatists.46

Pyrrhonism, Sextus tells us, is a form of therapy aimed at curing us of dogmatism (PH

§3.280). The ‘cure’ in question takes the form of philosophical argumentation. Proto-

Pyrrhonians, who were “troubled by the anomaly in things and puzzled as to which of them they

should rather assent to, came to investigate what in things is true and what false, thinking that by

deciding these issues they would become tranquil” (PH §1.12). To this end, they “began to do

philosophy in order to decide among appearances and to apprehend which are true and which

false” (PH §1.26). The outcome of their philosophical investigations proved disappointing,

however: everywhere they turned, “they came upon equipollent dispute, and being unable to

decide this they suspended judgement” (PH §1.26). As these passages make clear, Pyrrhonian

suspension of judgment (epochē) depends on a commitment to what I call the philosophical

epistemic norm, according to which one ought to assent only to that which philosophy has

certified as true. Absent such a commitment, there is nothing to prevent the proto-Pyrrhonian

from acknowledging two claims to be equipollent while nevertheless assenting to one of the

46 For example, Sextus tells us that “those who hold the opinion that things are good or bad by nature are perpetually troubled... But those who make no determination about what is good or bad by nature neither avoid nor pursue anything with intensity; and hence they are tranquil” (PH §§1.27–8). It is implausible to think that only philosophers have opinions about whether things are naturally good or bad (such as pain, death, et al.).


claims. Indeed, absent some sort of epistemic commitment, nothing is to prevent a person from

acknowledging a claim false yet continuing to believe it.47

What, then, is the scope of Pyrrhonian epochē? It is clear that, even if proto-Pyrrhonians

started out troubled only by ‘anomalous’ appearances, they soon discover that philosophy

problematizes all appearances. Sextus spares nothing, not even the most run-of-the-mill beliefs,

such as ‘It is day.’ The Five Agrippan Modes (PH §§1.165–9)—the Pyrrhonian’s most

formidable weapon in his battle against dogmatism—are relentless: “every object of

investigation can be referred” to them (PH §1.69), and anything can be made into an object of

investigation (cf., PH §1.185). Given a commitment to the philosophical epistemic norm, proto-

Pyrrhonians are driven inexorably into radical suspension of judgment, for they find themselves

unable to secure philosophical justification for even the most ordinary claim. At the heart of this

failure lies the problem of the criterion, which is a particularly devastating application of the Five

Modes (cf., PH §§2.20, 1.114–7). In the absence of a criterion of truth, all claims are

undermined equally—rendered equipollent—for we have no rational yardstick with which to

compare them (cf., PH §2.56). What the Pyrrhonian method attempts to demonstrate is that, by

philosophical standards, no belief is (appears to be) justified. A commitment to the philosophical

epistemic norm robs proto-Pyrrhonians of their beliefs. In return, philosophy promises to pay

them back with the hard currency of certain knowledge, but it reneges, leaving them empty-

handed.

48

47 It’s a commonplace in the philosophical literature that to believe x means to believe x to be true. I admit to finding this view puzzling. Consider Kierkegaard’s knight of faith, who “renounces” yet “nevertheless believe[s]” (Kierkegaard 1843, 75–6). To say, “It is in the nature of belief that it aims at truth,” strikes me as a wild oversimplification of human psychology—unless, that is, one appends to it an epistemic-responsibility rider, yielding, “It is in the nature of epistemically responsible belief that it aims at truth.” Even then, however, the claim is ambiguous between various interpretations, for the standards of what counts as ‘true’ (and on what basis) are neither historically nor socioculturally monolithic.

48 Cf., Fogelin 1996, 141–2: “[J]ustificationalism is simply the attempt to find philosophical rejoinders to the doubt that has been cast on various portions of our belief by philosophy itself. Indeed, it is tempting to view


This is the radical moment in the Pyrrhonian dialectic, and no sense can be made of

Pyrrhonism if it is not acknowledged, indeed retained. But it is not the end of the story, nor

could it be, for this radical standpoint is inherently unstable: it undermines itself both logically

and psychologically. First, and most obviously, the claim that “no claim is justified” cannot

itself be justified. Sextus embraces the self-refuting character of radical skeptical conclusions

(cf., PH §§1.14–5). The upshot is that Pyrrhonians merely “say what is apparent to themselves

and report their own feelings, without holding opinions [adoxastōs]” (PH §1.15), that is (as we’ll

see), without holding dogmata. For Sextus, skepticism is simply negative dogmatism: skeptics,

“if they say that everything is inapprehensible, no doubt differ from the [Pyrrhonians] precisely

in saying that everything is inapprehensible. For they make affirmations about this, while the

[Pyrrhonian] expects it to be possible for some things actually to be apprehended” (PH §1.226).

Secondly, and less obviously, the proto-Pyrrhonian withdrawal of assent from their natural

beliefs was predicated on a commitment to the philosophical epistemic norm; but this too cannot

be justified, either the proscription or the commitment to it. Central to this picture is the

assumption that human beings are naturally inclined to (perhaps even that they have no choice

but to) believe things, in which case a belief-free state is either impossible or requires, in order to

avoid backsliding, constant maintenance from whatever was responsible for inducing the belief-

free state in the first place. We know that it was a commitment to philosophy that induced, or

would induce (were it possible), a belief-free state. Therefore, Pyrrhonians will either fail to be

‘radical’ because it is impossible or will maintain their ‘radicality’ only through a continued

commitment to philosophy. But the skeptical arguments that prevent philosophy from certifying

any of our beliefs as true also fail to certify themselves. Sextus is clear on this point: the

justificationalism... as an attempt to return to us, now with sound philosophical credentials, the original sense of epistemic security that philosophy itself has taken away.”


skeptical arguments are like purgative drugs that drain themselves away along with the disease

they were administered to treat (PH §§1.206, 2.188). The Pyrrhonian therapy is only complete

when one is freed from all dogmatism—including skepticism (negative dogmatism). In other

words, the Pyrrhonian therapy is only complete when proto-Pyrrhonians abandon their

commitment to the philosophical epistemic norm. But with that, they are once again free to

indulge their natural inclination to form beliefs (cf., OC §516).

Ultimately, then, the mature Pyrrhonian is a restrictive skeptic. But in what sense? The

target of Pyrrhonism, in my view, is not all beliefs (radicality) nor is it only philosophy (standard

accounts of restrictiveness). Rather, the target is dogmatism, which is characterized not by what

one believes, but by one’s attitude toward what one believes.49

What does that mean? In the first instance, Sextus links ‘dogma’ to philosophy:

dogmatists “in the proper sense of the word” are those who “think they have discovered the

truth,” where the examples he gives are philosophers (PH §1.3). But note that this

characterization is given in the process of providing a taxonomy of philosophers; thus, it doesn’t

Sextus repeatedly claims to

champion bios, or ‘common life,’ against the dogmata of the dogmatists (cf., PH §§1.20, 1.226,

2.102, 2.246, 2.254, 3.151, 3.235), but as we’ve seen, he distinguishes mature Pyrrhonians from

the philosophically innocent as well as from philosophical dogmatists. The “modest,”

“unpretentious” doxastic attitude that the Pyrrhonian has “nothing to say against” is not that of

the ‘plain man’—at least, not with respect to all of the plain man’s beliefs—but rather that of the

mature Pyrrhonian himself. What distinguishes the Pyrrhonian from philosophical dogmatists as

well as from those who have not undergone the Pyrrhonian therapy is that they hold their beliefs

undogmatically.

49 On the attitudinal character of dogmatism, see: PH §2.258, where Sextus refers to “dialecticians, who have a special attitude to them,” an attitude that seems to involve a certain scorn for “ordinary experience” in favor of “dogmatic notions” that are “useless with regard to a life adoxastōs.”


follow that only philosophers “think they have discovered the truth.” I take it that, for Sextus,

common life is shot through with more or less implicit dogmatisms,50 e.g., that some things are

by nature good or bad (PH §1.27) or that there are gods (PH §3.2). At the same time, Sextus

suggests that Pyrrhonians assent to both beliefs, yet do so adoxastōs. “We accept, from an

everyday point of view”—by which Sextus means “without holding opinions” (PH §1.23)—“that

piety is good and impiety bad” (PH §1.24). “Following ordinary life without opinions, we say

that there are gods and we are pious towards the gods and say that they are provident” (PH §3.2).

It is only “against the rashness of the Dogmatists” that Sextus brings his skeptical dialectic to

bear against belief in the gods (PH §3.2). What does the skeptical dialectic demonstrate? It

demonstrates that belief in the gods is not, by the dogmatist’s own lights, philosophically

justified. “The existence of the gods... is neither clear in itself [i.e., self-evident] nor proved by

something else” (PH §§3.8–9). Then how can Pyrrhonians claim to believe in the gods?51

Dogmatism, then, can be understood as a meta-doxastic attitude. To live adoxastōs is to

live without dogmata,

They

can do so undogmatically, that is, without the added belief that their belief in the gods enjoys

objective, philosophical justification.

52

50 The gloss on ‘dogmatist’ at PH §1.223 does not restrict the term to philosophers: “[A]nyone who holds beliefs on even one subject, or in general prefers one appearance to another in point of convincingness or lack of convincingness, or makes assertions about any unclear matter, thereby has the distinctive character of a Dogmatist.”

meaning to live in such a way that one holds one’s beliefs without also

holding the meta-belief that one’s beliefs enjoy objective justification. The Pyrrhonian dialectic

aims at ridding us of dogmatism, the ‘self-satisfied delusion’ of objective justification (cf., PH

§1.62); it accomplishes this by making us witnesses to the inability of ‘reasoning’ (which I take

to mean philosophical reasoning) to justify even that which is most apparent. From a

51 It is true that Sextus does not, at PH §3.2, explicitly say that Pyrrhonians believe in the gods; but the passage strongly suggests that they (meaning Pyrrhonians of Sextus’s culture and era) do, especially when read in light of such passages as PH §1.13. 52 Jonathan Barnes claims that this is the only reading of adoxastōs that fits all its instances in Sextus’s texts (Barnes 1982, 78–9 fn. 77).


philosophical standpoint, common life is groundless. The philosophical conclusion bears on

common life because there is continuity between their respective epistemic practices, all of

which share the same structure, that embodied in the Five Modes. The ideal of truth which the

mature Pyrrhonian holds on to is the ideal of presuppositionless truth. This ideal underwrites

Pyrrhonism’s transformative project, for it is only from the philosophical standpoint that one can

recognize everyday beliefs qua everyday, i.e., as failing justification given the pure application

of the very standards that are operative in embedded epistemic contexts. ‘Reason’ or

‘rationality,’ then, is not univocal (it is ordinarily, but needn’t be, embedded in one of

innumerable epistemic contexts in which various propositions are taken as given), yet there is

continuity of form in its application across all contexts. Mature Pyrrhonians, therefore,

acknowledge the (ultimate) groundlessness of their believing.

At the same time, however, the failure of philosophy to ground any commitment to its

own epistemic standards or procedures—its self-refutatory character—reveals to the mature

Pyrrhonian a way of life immune from philosophical problematization. Proto-Pyrrhonians began

their philosophical investigations because they were troubled by anomalous appearances. They

turned to philosophy to settle the question of what they ought to believe. Instead, philosophy

deepened their troubles by rendering all appearances anomalous and by proving unable to

adjudicate any dispute, leading to universal suspension of judgment. But as we’ve seen, radical

epochē undermines philosophy’s epistemic authority. In this way, Pyrrhonians achieved the

tranquility (freedom from troubledness) that they sought (cf., PH §1.25). Underpinning their

tranquility (ataraxia) is a way of life (agōgē) revealed to them on the basis of their suspension of

judgment: “a life in conformity with traditional customs and the law and persuasions and our

own feelings” (PH §1.17; cf., PH §§1.23–4). The Pyrrhonian way of life does not involve a


standard of truth (in the philosophical sense), but does involve a standard of action, “attending to

which in everyday life we perform some actions and not others” (PH §1.21). That standard is

“what is apparent” (PH §1.22), meaning not just what appears perceptually, but in the broader

sense of how things strike them: “an argument may appear valid, a statement may appear true, an

action may appear unwarranted.”53

For mature Pyrrhonians, living according to appearances is synonymous with ordinary

life (PH §1.237). As we’ve seen, the crucial difference between mature Pyrrhonians and ‘plain

men’ is that Pyrrhonians follow ordinary life adoxastōs (cf., PH §§1.226, 2.246), i.e., without a

dogmatic attitude toward the beliefs of common life. This meta-doxastic attitude results from

their inability to secure objective justification for common life; yet the abject failure of

philosophy also entails that philosophy cannot directly challenge the beliefs of common life.

The Pyrrhonian illumination consists both in the realization of common life’s (ultimate) rational

groundlessness and in the realization of the Selbständigkeit, or self-standingness, of common

life. Common life, for the mature Pyrrhonian, is revealed to be a pragmatic-transcendental

framework that holds itself in place. Now, this looks like nothing so much as a dogmatic

philosophical claim, which is precisely what I’ve been suggesting mature Pyrrhonians do not

assent to. But, first, it is important to bear in mind that, for the Pyrrhonian, the realization that

common life is self-standing is not the conclusion of a philosophical argument; rather, it is

revealed to them as a result of their philosophical adventure. Stated picturesquely, the self-

standing framework of common life comes into view when the dust clears following the collapse

of the citadel of philosophy. It is transcendental in the sense that it is (appears to be) the

condition for the possibility of the practices of common life—including even the common-life-

denying practice of philosophizing. All philosophers, Sextus tells us, “start from a preconception

53 Annas and Barnes 1985, 23. Cf., Burnyeat 1980, 39.


common to all men,” that is, “from items which impresses themselves not only on us but also...

on ordinary life too” (PH §1.211). Given the self-immolating vacuity of pure philosophical

reflection, the dogmatist, as Donald Livingston notes, “is protected from total doubt only because

he secretly and unknowingly borrows some favored prejudice, custom, or tradition from common

life.”54

Myles Burnyeat has argued that “Sextus would recognize a kindred spirit” in G.E. Moore,

for “the ancient sceptic philosophizes in the same direct manner.”

Second, the transcendental character of the framework of common life is pragmatic, i.e.,

it is not based on reasons: it does not rest on the nature of the world, nor does it arise a priori

from our human cognitive machinery. Rather, it is constituted by—and at the same time is

constitutive of—our social practices. For instance, the framework-claim that the world did not

pop into existence in the year 1900 both arises from various of our practices (if we did not have

such practices, then the claim would not belong to the framework of common life), yet it also

constitutes those practices (doubting it would render impossible, or at least deeply problematize,

various of our practices). Among the so-called fourfold observances that make up common life

(PH §1.237) are included “handing down of customs and laws” and “teaching of kinds of

expertise” (PH §§1.23–4). What is “found convincing by everyday life” is not a private matter,

in contrast to “the private fictions of the Dogmatists” (PH §2.102). The Pyrrhonian lives “in

conformity with traditional customs and the law” (PH §1.17), yet does so adoxastōs, without the

belief that their traditional customs or laws enjoy objective justification.

55

54 Livingston 1984, 30.

Although he does not do so,

Burnyeat might have drawn attention to a passage in which Sextus refers approvingly to “a

certain philosopher” who, “when the argument against motion was propounded to him, said

nothing but walked about.” Sextus continues: “[O]rdinary men set out on journeys by land and

55 Burnyeat 1980, 115–6.


by sea, and construct ships and houses, and produce children, without paying any attention to the

argument against motion and coming into being” (PH §2.244). If Sextus considers as refutations

of the Eleatic paradoxes the fact that ordinary people engage in ordinary practices, or that a

philosopher walks about in front of a propounder of the paradox concerning motion, then it

might seem that he does indeed philosophize in the same way that Moore did when he responded

to the problem of the existence of the external world by holding up first one hand, then another,

in order to prove that at least two external objects exist, from which (he claimed) it follows that

the external world exists. But notice that Sextus’s examples are of deeds, of practices—of living,

not philosophizing. Sextus specifically tells us that the philosopher, confronted with the

argument against motion, “said nothing but walked about” (emphasis added). And ordinary

people engaged in their ordinary practices are simply acting; they pay no attention to the

philosophical arguments that attempt to problematize that which underlies their activities. A

moment’s reflection should make it clear that Sextus would have no sympathy for Moore insofar

as Moore thought to refute skepticism. Rather, Sextus would find a ‘kindred spirit’ in

Wittgenstein, to whom I now turn.

4. The Pyrrhonian Illumination in On Certainty

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein oscillates between an internal (everyday) standpoint and an

external (philosophical) standpoint.56

56 In this, I am in agreement with Graciela de Pierris (de Pierris 1996).

He concludes that, from the external standpoint, our

contextually embedded epistemic practices appear to be dependent on unjustified assumptions,

with the result that (from this standpoint) our ‘knowing’ turns out to be, as Thompson Clarke put


it in a similar connection, “‘knowing’ in a manner of speaking only”;57

The concept at the heart of On Certainty is, unsurprisingly, certainty. It is one of

Wittgenstein’s central points that “‘[k]nowledge’ and ‘certainty’ belong to different categories”

(OC §308). Part of what he means by this is that the two concepts play fundamentally different

roles in our language-games; they are distinguished in logical, not mentalistic terms. Three

differences between knowledge and certainty are especially important for our purposes. First,

one can infer p from ‘He knows that p’ (OC §13), but one cannot infer p from ‘He is certain that

p.’ “Certainty is as it were a tone of voice in which one declares how things are, but one does

not infer from the tone of voice that one is justified” (OC §30; cf., OC §42). Here, Wittgenstein

is speaking of “subjective certainty,” which is used to “express complete conviction, the total

absence of doubt.” This sort of certainty is, again, a tone of voice, one whereby “we seek to

convince other people” (OC §194). But there is another kind of proposition (or pseudo-

proposition, or rule, or what-have-you) about which we are also maximally certain—about which

there is a total absence of doubt—and which is also logically distinct from knowledge. This is

“objective certainty.” Something is objectively certain “[w]hen a mistake is not possible,” when

a mistake is “logically excluded” (OC §194; cf., OC §§17, 21, 32, 65, 155, 156, 301, 558, 574,

but that such a standpoint

undermines itself, which throws a new light upon the internal, revealing it to float free of rational

foundations. At the same time, however, the ideal of the external standpoint lives a sort of

eternal half-life, for the external epistemic practices are extensions of our internal epistemic

practices. The ‘illumination’ that results consists in the dual realization that (a) our knowing is

not objective in the way we tend to want it to be (or naively think it must be), and yet that (b) it is

both as objective as it needs to be for most everyday purposes, in all their complexity, and is all

we have to fall back on in periods of epistemic crisis.

57 Clarke 1972, 767.


630ff). Thus, a second difference between certainty and knowledge is that objective certainties,

though not themselves items of knowledge, constitute the contexts in which alone knowledge-

claims are meaningfully, and hence successfully, entered: one can infer p from ‘He knows that p’

if and only if it has been “established objectively” (OC §16) that the person in question can’t be

wrong, that a subsequent ‘He thought he knew’ is “inadmissible” (OC §21; cf., OC §12). For

that to be the case, “a mistake in the assertion must be logically impossible... And anyone

acquainted with the language-game must realize this” (OC §21). Only the logic of our epistemic

contexts can elevate mere knowledge-claims to the status of knowledge-claims (cf., OC §272);

and those contexts are bounded by objective certainties that are not, and cannot be, themselves

items of knowledge.

A third difference between knowledge and certainty, one that applies both to subjective

and to objective certainty, is that knowledge requires justification, whereas certainty, as a species

of belief (cf., OC §242), does not (OC §175). In the case of subjective certainty, it may be that

one can produce a justification for the belief, thereby raising the belief to the status of

knowledge. But at least at their most general, objective certainties cannot be justified (meaning

that we don’t know how to justify them), for all justificatory practices take place within the

contexts they constitute: “If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet

false” (OC §205). “To be sure there is justification; but justification comes to an end” (OC §192;

cf., OC §§110, 164, 563). The “total absence of doubt” characteristic of certainty may also apply

to knowledge (which, I take it, we may be subjectively certain we possess); but then it will rest,

qua knowledge, on reasons. In the case of objective certainty, the “total absence of doubt” is not

a product of “certain propositions’ striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not a kind of seeing

on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game” (OC §204; cf., OC


§§110, 144, 360). When we “act with complete certainty” (OC §174), we are manifesting our

objective certainty. When I act in a way that anticipates the regularity of nature, I do not do so

because I have satisfied myself regarding the assumption’s rational merits; it is simply part of my

life (OC §344), my world-picture, that I act in this way.

Wittgenstein employs a variety of colorful expressions to describe the system of objective

certainties: language-game (OC §457), form of life (OC §358), world-picture (OC §95), frame of

reference (OC §83), mythology (OC §97), context (OC §554), inherited background (OC §94),

or simply system or structure (OC §§102, 105, 108, 134, 136, 137, 141, 142, 144, 185, 247, 279,

411).58

58 The system of objective certainties is also related to the later Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘grammar’ (cf., Forster 2004, Chapter 1).

In what follows, I will usually refer to systems of objective certainties as contexts.

Another important term for Wittgenstein is “hinge” (OC §341), which refers not to a system of

objective certainties, but to an individual objective certainty. The two primary characteristics of

hinges, and of contexts more generally, is that they are (a) “exempt from doubt” and, because of

that, (b) provide the structure within which “the questions that we raise and our doubts” get

epistemic purchase (OC §341). Hinges are what “stand fast” for us (OC §151; cf., OC §§116,

125, 144, 235). That which stands fast “gives our way of looking at things, and our researches

their form” (OC §211), not because they are “intrinsically obvious or convincing” (OC §144),

but because they constitute part of a system of practices that depends on such certainties in the

same way that a game depends on a more or less fixed rule or set of rules. Our epistemic

practices require that we “exempt certain propositions from doubt, if they are ever formulated.”

Such propositions must “lie apart from the route traveled by enquiry” (OC §88). In the absence

of hinges, our epistemic practices would plunge into chaos (OC §613). Doubting a hinge entails

“doubting our whole system of evidence” (OC §185)—but if we do that, what is to count as


evidence for or against anything?

This gets at why Wittgenstein finds objective certainties so fascinating. Moore’s

“Defense of Common Sense” provided Wittgenstein with a jumping-off point for his reflections

on knowledge and justification precisely because the long list of Moore’s “truisms” are all—or at

least virtually all—hinges for Wittgenstein, yet they are an odd and varied bunch,59 including

such propositions as: “There exists at present a living human body, which his my body... Ever

since it was born, it has been either in contact with or not far from the surface of the earth...

[T]he earth had existed... for many years before my body was born... I am now observing, that

that mantel-piece is at present nearer to my body than that book-case.”60 Moreover, Moore

claims not only that these propositions are true, but that “each of us... has frequently known, with

regard to himself or his body... everything which... I was claiming to know about myself and my

body.”61

59 See: Moyal-Sharrock 2005, Chapter 5, for a taxonomy of the various types of hinges Wittgenstein identifies in OC.

Moore’s truisms appear to be known empirical propositions. But then how can they

fail to be either true or false? In some places, Wittgenstein persists in referring to Moore-type

propositions as empirical (OC §§136, 167, 273, 519). His considered view, however, seems to

be that although they have the form of empirical propositions, they are not (OC §§308, 401).

Either way, the important point is that they “have a peculiar logical role in the system of our

empirical propositions” (OC §136, emphasis added). That role, as we’ve seen, is context-

constitutive. “[W]e are interested in the fact that about certain empirical propositions no doubt

can exist if making judgments is to be possible at all” (OC §308, emphasis added). In the

absence of hinges—in the absence of a more or less definite epistemic context—we cannot know

anything, because knowledge requires justification and justification requires a context.

60 Moore 1925, 194–5. 61 Moore 1925, 196.


415. ... certain propositions seem to underlie all questions and all thinking. 446. ... why am I so certain that this is my hand? Doesn’t the whole language-game rest on this kind of certainty? [Cf., OC §§497, 579.] 369. If I wanted to doubt whether this was my hand, how could I avoid doubting whether the word ‘hand’ had any meaning?... 370. The fact that I use the word ‘hand’ and all the other words in my sentence without a second thought, indeed that I should stand before the abyss if I wanted so much as to try doubting their meanings—shews that absence of doubt belongs to the essence of the language-game [emphasis added; cf., OC §§558, 613–4].

We cannot know (or at least, cannot claim to know) hinges, yet we require that they

‘stand fast’ for us if we are to know, or claim to know, anything. We cannot even register a

meaningful doubt except within an epistemic context. “If you tried to doubt everything you

would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty”

(OC §115; cf., OC §450). “Here a doubt would seem to drag everything”—including itself—

“with it and plunge it into chaos” (OC §613). The key insight here is that “[d]oubt gradually

loses its sense” (OC §56), for if we push doubt to the limit, we’ll find ourselves doubting the

very meaning of the word ‘doubt,’ indeed the meaning of all our words (OC §§370, 506–7, 514–

5). In the absence of a context, neither doubts nor knowledge-claims can get an epistemic

foothold. They are utterly “idle. Nothing would follow from [them], nothing be explained by

[them]. [They] would not tie in with anything in my life” (OC §117). These are the sentences

“that don’t get us any further” (OC §33). Here, we have an echo of the key moment in the

Pyrrhonian dialectic, the point at which the skeptical arguments undermine themselves, allowing

for the return to common life (cf., OC §516). The further we push our investigations out of

everyday embedded contexts—out of common life—the more tenuous the results become,

whether positive or negative; ultimately, the investigation simply turns on itself, like a purgative


drug. Given that epistemological investigations involve placing claims under question marks,

the investigation’s progress is, at least initially, going to be one of widening doubt. As both

Sextus and Wittgenstein saw, however, far from leading to any general skeptical conclusion,

such epistemological investigations end in incoherence. But does that mean the investigation

ends positively?

How one answers this question depends “[o]n how one sees things. (And what one

demands of them.)”62

This leads to the second worry. It looks as though Wittgenstein’s ‘positive’ account

simply pushes the skeptical problematic to the level of contexts. Even if we admit that, relative

to a context, certain claims amount to (or are treated as) knowledge, what of the context itself? It

might seem that the ‘positive’ account precludes this further question. After all, one cannot, on

pain of falling into incoherence, call contexts themselves into question. Skeptical worries at the

level of contexts can get no epistemic foothold—but claims to knowledge at the level of contexts

can get no epistemic foothold either, and that’s the source of the worry. Far from rejecting it as

In my view, Wittgenstein aims, like Sextus, to bring us to the point where

we can contentedly respond, “Yes—and no.” We’ve already explored the ‘yes’ side. Skeptical

arguments cannot undermine our knowledge-claims because (a) such claims enjoy the status of

knowledge, if they do, by virtue of contextual ‘hinges’ that are themselves immune from

skeptical assault because (b) any attempt to doubt them would plunge the skeptic into

incoherence. Two worries arise immediately, however (the ‘no’ side). First, Wittgenstein

admits that “[a]t some point one has to pass from explanation to mere description” (OC §189; cf.,

PI §124). The ‘positive’ account sketched here looks an awful lot like a mere description of how

we go on, in which case it can seem unresponsive to the epistemological question: it provides no

philosophical ‘explanation’ of our epistemic practices (cf., OC §39).

62 Wittgenstein 1998, 161–2.


nonsensical or what-have-you, Wittgenstein addresses the worry at some length in OC and

elsewhere. “[I]s there no objective character here?” he worries (OC §336). Wittgenstein claims

that the logic of contexts entails that we cannot be mistaken about an objective certainty, yet

“that does not mean that I am infallible about it” (OC §425). “I want to say: it’s not that on some

points men know the truth with perfect certainty. No: perfect certainty is only a matter of their

attitude” (OC §404). It is part of our form of life that we adopt an attitude of certainty toward

certain things (OC §358). But what grounds our form of life? On the one hand, as we’ve seen,

our contexts are grounded on our practices (OC §204) even as our practices—such as our

epistemic practices—are grounded on our contexts (OC §341). (Contexts are “the rock bottom”

(the foundation) of our practices, yet “these foundation-walls are carried by the whole house”

(OC §248).) On the other hand, we do not choose our contexts (OC §317). “[I]t isn’t just that I

believe in this way that I have two hands, but that every reasonable person does” (OC §252).

“[W]e belong to a community” (OC §298) with a shared context that determines what

“reasonable people” do and do not know, doubt, and believe with certainty (cf., OC §§108, 219–

20, 254, 261, 323–7, 556). Our contexts are “acquired,” not “learned” (OC §279; cf., OC §§152,

286), just as a child is taught to believe (or not) in God and can subsequently produce “telling

grounds” for (or against) God’s existence (OC §107). Our epistemic context “is not based on

grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable). It is there—like our life” (OC §559). “I did not

get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am

satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish

between true and false” (OC §94). Wittgenstein goes so far as to suggest that, if I make a

declaration of certainty such as “It is my unshakeable conviction that...”, doing so demonstrates

that “I have not consciously arrived at the conviction by following a particular line of thought”


(OC §103). At this level, at least, it may be that what we believe or disbelieve is not even in our

power (OC §173). Our context determines us to judge (and act) in certain ways. “But that

means I want to conceive it as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as it

were, as something animal” (OC §359), as “the favor of Nature” (OC §505; cf., OC §287).

Wittgenstein is clearest on the problem of rationally grounding contexts when he explores

the possibility of alternative contexts. He considers a group of people who, in seeking

knowledge of the natural world, consult an oracle instead of a physicist. “If we call this ‘wrong’

aren’t we using our language-game as a basis from which to combat theirs?” (OC §609). It

might be objected that, instead of engaging in ‘combat,’ “wouldn’t I give him reasons?”, to

which Wittgenstein replies: “Certainly; but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes

persuasion” (OC §612; cf., OC §§92, 262), the uttering of “all sorts of slogans which will be

used to support our proceedings” (OC §610). Wittgenstein concludes: “Where two principles

really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a

fool and heretic” (OC §611). “‘You’re all at sea!’—we say this when someone doubts what we

recognize as clearly genuine—but we cannot prove anything” (PI, p. 227). To someone who

doubted one of our contextual hinges, we “might simply say ‘O, rubbish!’... That is, not reply to

him but admonish him” (OC §495). Far from rejecting as nonsensical the question of what

rationally grounds our context(s), Wittgenstein seems squarely to address it and conclude:

Nothing.63

Another way of stating the issue is to say that if our contextually embedded epistemic

practices are to be rational, then it would seem that we must be able to demonstrate that they are

63 Cf., Fogelin 1981, 12; Kober 1996, 428. Oskari Kuusela outlines the failure of context-justification on the model of the Five Modes of Agrippa (Kuusela 2008, 239).


non-arbitrary. Michael Forster has convincingly argued that, for Wittgenstein, our ‘grammar’64

is both arbitrary and non-arbitrary. It is arbitrary because there are (a) genuine competing

alternatives,65 and (b) no rational grounds for adjudicating between them.66

64 Wittgenstein mentions ‘grammar’ (in the relevant sense) in only a few passages in OC (§§57–8, 312–3). The hallmark of both ‘grammatical’ and ‘hinge’ propositions is that they cannot be doubted, for “there is no such thing as doubt” concerning them—from which it follows, however, that it makes no sense to claim to know them either (OC §58). One can know only that about which doubt is a logical possibility, for knowledge is linked to justification, justification is linked to evidence, and evidence is only evidence for x if x is the sort of thing that is susceptible to being supported or undermined by evidence, i.e., is something that can logically be doubted. “‘I know’ may mean ‘I do not doubt...’ but does not mean that the words ‘I doubt’ are senseless, that doubt is logically excluded. One says ‘I know’ where one can also say ‘I believe’ or ‘I suspect’; where one can find out” (PI, p. 221). But one does not investigate grammatical propositions in this way. One does not, for example, investigate whether it is possible to travel north of the north pole. Rather, one learns the meaning of the expression ‘north pole,’ i.e., one learns how to act (including speech acts) in accordance with the concept ‘north pole.’ But just as we do not know objective certainties, so we do not know grammatical propositions. It makes no sense to speak of traveling north of the north pole; but that only means that “a combination of words is being excluded from the language, withdrawn from circulation” (PI §500). We do not know that one cannot travel north of the north pole, for in order to know such a thing, the proposition would have to be extra-grammatical.

This argument is

strikingly similar in structure to the Pyrrhonian equipollence method. It is the ‘radical’ moment

in the dialectic. Rationally or philosophically speaking, our contexts are arbitrary—they “cannot

It is tempting to appeal to worldly facts in order to justify our knowledge of the impossibility of traveling north of the north pole. After all, the world is spherical, right? But that very proposition, though “there is much that [it] connects up with” (OC §313), is a hinge proposition, an element of our world-picture. We can easily enough imagine a culture that maintains that the earth is flat. Such a tradition might also make use of a notion akin to our ‘north pole.’ Perhaps they believe that the northern and southern ends of the flat earth reach out to points. The ‘north pole,’ then, is the northernmost point on the earth. Asked, “Can one travel north of the north pole?”, a person with such a world-picture might respond: “No—you’d fall off the edge.” If you pressed him by saying, “Yes, but is there something north of the north pole?”, the flat-earther might reasonably respond, “Sure—empty space.” Here, then, we can see how Wittgenstein’s concerns with ‘grammar’ connect up with the sorts of examples he discusses in OC. On this issue, see also: Coliva 2010, 201–3. 65 Forster 2004, 21–30. The idea that alternative ‘grammars’ or ‘contexts’ can be both genuine and competing opens onto a host of complicated issues. Take the example mentioned in the previous footnote. Are the concepts ‘north pole’ as used in accordance with the spherical-earth world-picture and with the flat-earth world-picture genuine competing alternatives? It might seem that the flat-earth concept is not a genuine alternative, given how puzzling we’re likely to find it. On the other hand, we might conclude that the two concepts are simply different, in which case they’re not in competition. There is no question that Wittgenstein considers any number of alternative grammars (or contexts or world-pictures) throughout his later writings. But to what end? At least one reason for doing so, it seems to me, is straightforward: to combat the mistaken belief that “certain concepts are absolutely the correct ones, and that having different ones would mean not realizing something that we realize” (PI, p. 230). Cf., Coliva 2010, 202: “[T]he question arises of what was the point of reminding us of the fact that things might have been or might be very different from what they are. The value of what in the end appears to be an entirely notional exercise is, I believe, to make us aware of the ungroundedness of our own world-picture—that is to say, of its contingency.” (I would add that the ‘ungroundedness’ in question is rational ungroundedess, rational arbitrariness. In another sense, as we’ll see, our world-picture is grounded.) 66 Forster 2004, 31–46.


be justified”67—from which it follows that our beliefs are ultimately “groundless” (OC §166),

founded on “belief that is not founded” (OC §253; cf., OC §307). But, like Sextus, Wittgenstein

goes on to point out the sense in which our grammar is not arbitrary: it is constrained by nature,

both natural and social.68 Again, this is strikingly similar to Sextus’s appeal to the fourfold

observances as underlying the Pyrrhonian way of life (and ordinary life more generally).69

(1) The external standpoint. It is clear that Wittgenstein acknowledges an internal–

external distinction. The ‘internal’ is shaped by contextual hinges. Some contexts might be

external to others while remaining ‘internal’ in this sense; the absolutely external—a standpoint

“My

life consists in my being content to accept many things” (OC §344, cf., OC §358). Our contexts

are simply “there—like our life” (OC §559). “What has to be accepted, the given, is—so one

could say—forms of life” (PI, p. 226). But the question remains: How is this a response to

skepticism? It is my contention that, like Sextus’s, Wittgenstein’s third way comes into view on

the basis of a Pyrrhonian illumination. If this is right, then it must be the case (1) that

Wittgenstein thinks not only that we can make sense of the external standpoint, despite its fatal

instability, but that it is a stance available to us as reflective beings (at least ‘in our studies,’ as

Hume would say); (2) that our inability to make any progress from the external standpoint

demonstrates the incoherence of skepticism only as part of the more general demonstration of the

failure of traditional philosophy; and (3) the upshot of epistemological reflections is primarily

ethical, not theoretical: it aims to effect a change in how we see things in order to change how

we live. I will now consider each of these points in turn.

67 Wittgenstein 1930–32, 44. Cf., Wittgenstein 1993, 70–1. 68 Forster 2004, 67–9. 69 The fourfold observances (PH §1.23) can be divided between the natural (“guidance by nature, necessitation of feelings”) and the social (“handing down of laws and customs, and teachings of kinds of expertise”).


shaped by no contextual hinges—is the ideal, or paradigmatic, philosophical standpoint.70

(Henceforth, when I refer to ‘external,’ I mean the absolutely external.) The external standpoint

seeks purity, that is, absolute objectivity. The hallmark of externality, as we’ve seen, is the

absence of contextual hinges. Philosophy, in other words, aspires to presuppositionlessness. In

doing philosophy, nothing is certain (at least initially). Things are very different from the

internal standpoint, where the problems characteristic of externality do not normally arise. “We

don’t encounter philosophical problems at all in practical life (as we do, for example, those of

natural science)... It is remarkable that in everyday life we never have the feeling that the

phenomenon is getting away from us, that appearances are continually flowing, but only when

we philosophize.”71

A common source of confusion, one to which Wittgenstein repeatedly draws attention, is

that the same proposition can be made either internally or externally.

72 “Someone who doubted

whether the earth had existed for 100 years might have a scientific, or on the other hand a

philosophical doubt” (OC §259; cf., OC §237). “‘I know that that’s a tree’... As soon as I think

of an everyday use of the sentence instead of a philosophical one, its meaning becomes clear and

ordinary” (OC §347; cf., OC §406).73 Some commentators maintain that, for Wittgenstein, the

external standpoint is merely “the illusion of a point of view.”74

70 Cf., Kober 2007, 229: “[T]here is no strict distinction between normal and non-normal contexts, but a grading off from the normal to the extraordinary (perhaps ‘philosophical’) circumstances.”

A better way of articulating the

intuition captured here would be to say that, for Wittgenstein, the external standpoint has an

illusion of contentfulness. When a doubt is raised about the statement “I know that here is a

hand,” it may be either a practical or a philosophical doubt that is raised. In answer to a

71 Wittgenstein 1998, 189, 191. 72 Cf., Thompson Clarke’s concept of “verbal twins” (Clarke 1972). 73 Cf., Rudd 2007, 146–7. 74 Crary 2000, 6.


practical doubt, the statement could (if we imagine a suitable context) be justified in any number

of ways (for instance: “for it’s my hand that I’m looking at”). But if the question is raised

philosophically, then we are not “dealing with the practical doubt” but with “a further doubt

behind that one.” Concerning such doubts, Wittgenstein wants to show us that they are “an

illusion” (OC §19). But I take it that the illusion in question is not an illusory point of view, but

an illusory doubt. We’ve already seen that, for Wittgenstein, doubts only get epistemic purchase

within contexts. But that that is the case can only be glimpsed from the external standpoint. It is

true that, when we adopt the presuppositionless standpoint, we ‘don’t get any further’ (OC

§33)—indeed, we don’t get anywhere, since we ‘don’t know our way about’ (PI §123)—but we

can occupy the standpoint sufficiently (a) to recognize its vacuity, and (b) to survey the great

complex jumble of what Clarke calls “the plain.”75 It is only because Wittgenstein can reflect at

the utter limits of embedded epistemic contexts that he can say things like: “[I]n the entire system

of our language-games [the proposition that the earth has existed for many years] belongs to the

foundations. The assumption... forms the basis of action, and therefore, naturally, of thought”

(OC §411, emphases added).76

75 Clarke 1972.

Just as for Sextus, the pragmatic-transcendental framework of

common life comes into view only from the standpoint of radical skepticism, with the result that

common life is seen as both groundless and self-standing, Wittgenstein’s descriptions of our

internal epistemic practices oscillate between an internal and an external perspective on them.

Viewed externally, our contextually embedded epistemic practices are based on groundless

presuppositions (or ‘assumptions,’ as in the passage just quoted). Viewed internally, they are

propped up by objective certainties.

76 As de Pierris notes, one problem with the “standard interpretation,” according to which Wittgenstein aims to show “the impossibility of an external philosophical standpoint,” is that it is “in tension” with “Wittgenstein’s seemingly unavoidable use of descriptions that I take to be descriptions of general characteristics and presuppositions of our non-philosophical cognitive practices” (de Pierris 1996, 181; cf., 191).


There are numerous passages in OC where Wittgenstein refers to contextual hinges as

presuppositions or assumptions (OC §§134, 146, 168, 171, 228, 295–6, 411, 492, 661).

Commentators have likewise found it irresistible to speak of hinges in these terms.77

77 This is especially prominent in Wright 2004; but see also: de Pierris 1996, 181; Kober 1996, 414; Stroll 2000, 140; Moyal-Sharrock 2005, 126; Proessel 2005, 328; Kober 2007, 228, 248; Morawetz 2007, 184–5; Coliva 2010, 136; Pritchard (forthcoming), 10.

Yet in

other passages Wittgenstein seems explicitly to reject the presuppositional characterization of

hinges. “If I say ‘we assume that the earth has existed for many years past’ (or something

similar), then of course it sounds strange that we should assume such a thing” (OC §411).

Giving grounds comes to an end, but “the end is not an ungrounded presupposition” (OC §110).

“One cannot make experiments if there are not some things that one does not doubt. But that

does not mean that one takes certain presuppositions on trust” (OC §337). “[I]t isn’t that the

situation is like this: We just can’t investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to

rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put” (OC §343).

On closer inspection, however, these passages are simply emphasizing the internal as opposed to

the external perspective. It may sound strange that we should ‘assume’ that the earth has existed

for many years past, but that’s only because “in the entire system of our language-games it

belongs to the foundations. The assumption, one might say, forms the basis of action, and

therefore, naturally, of thought” (OC §411). Giving grounds ends not in an ungrounded

presupposition, but in “an ungrounded way of acting” (OC §110). When we act, we don’t take

certain presuppositions on trust, but that’s only because ‘presupposition’ doesn’t go deep

enough: we don’t ‘presuppose’ a contextual hinge, we “take it for granted... trust it without

reservation” (OC §337). And this is not a kind of “hastiness or superficiality, but a form of life”

(OC §358). “My life consists in my being content to accept many things” (OC §344). The point

of these passages, then, seems to be that thinking of contextual hinges as ‘presuppositions’ is


potentially misleading78 and risks covering over their fundamental significance in our lives.79

Even so, from an external standpoint, where nothing is taken as given, they reveal themselves as

presuppositions.80

Although it is without content—an abyss—the external standpoint remains accessible to

us as reflective beings. Only from the external standpoint do our most general contextual hinges

come into view. As Annalisa Coliva notes, “it is an essentially philosophical task to bring

[contextual hinges] back to the surface and make them explicit... [T]heir being made explicit and

their clarification can teach philosophers something. In particular, not to ignore and abuse them

by taking them for other than what they are.”

81

(2) The failure of philosophy. When the later Wittgenstein speaks of ‘philosophy,’ he

means one of two things: philosophy as traditionally construed, and philosophy as he practices

it.

As we saw in §3, it is essential to the Pyrrhonian

illumination that philosophy have something to teach everyone, not just philosophers—though,

admittedly, one must first become a philosopher in order to benefit from the Pyrrhonian therapy.

82

Now, as a discipline, philosophy is peculiar in that it seems consistently bent on its own

destruction. A goal of many a founder of a new philosophical school has been (finally!) to

transform philosophy into a proper science (Kant, Husserl) or to align it with the sciences in such

Regarding the latter he is, naturally, sympathetic. Regarding the former, he has little

positive to say. What is often taken to be Wittgenstein’s ‘dissolution of skepticism’ ought

properly to be regarded as the ‘dissolution of traditional philosophy.’

78 Cf., PI, pp. 179–80. Wittgenstein initially concedes that “what we do in our language-game always rests on a tacit presupposition,” but then asks: “Doesn’t a presupposition imply a doubt?” 79 As D.Z. Phillips notes, “[T]alk of presuppositions intellectualizes the sureness of my activities” (Phillips 2007, 23; cf., Proessel 2005, 328). 80 Cf., Coliva 2010, 136: “Wittgenstein insists on the tranquillity of our certainty (OC 174, 278, 357, 425), viz. of our taking for granted, or trusting, what reflectively appear to be the presuppositions of our cognitive inquiries” (emphasis added). 81 Coliva 2010, 61. 82 See: Wittgenstein 1958, 28: “One might say that the subject we are dealing with is one of the heirs of the subject which used to be called ‘philosophy’.” Cf., PH §1.6: “... what they call philosophy” (emphasis added).


a way that it retains a specialized subject matter (the early Russell) or simply serves science by

clarifying its concepts (the logical positivists). Thus, philosophers are prone to welcome the

‘dissolution of traditional philosophy.’ But unless one moves beyond ‘traditional philosophy’ in

the right way, the traditional problems will keep rearing their heads, as Wittgenstein learned

when he found himself forced to return to philosophizing despite earlier believing that, in the

Tractatus, he had “found, on all essential points, the final solution” to philosophical problems.83

It is my contention that no ‘dissolution of traditional philosophy’ can succeed that does

not incorporate an acknowledgement of the unanswerability of skeptical arguments, for

skepticism and philosophy are fused together, like shadow and body. As Duncan Pritchard

notes, “Charging the sceptic with absurdity is... tantamount to charging ourselves with

absurdity,” for “the sceptic is, properly understood, not an adversary at all, but simply our

intellectual conscience.”

84 Like Sextus, Wittgenstein is just as concerned to undermine

philosophical dogmatism as he is to undermine skepticism, for they’re two sides of the same

coin. Philosophy puts things “in a strange light,”85 often “the wrong light” (OC §481). It leads

to dead-ends (PI §436); it depends on a deceptive “conjuring trick” (PI §308). “Philosophers,”

he writes, “often behave like little children.”86

83 Wittgenstein 1921, 4.

“[L]anguage goes on a holiday” not when the

skeptic speaks, but when the philosopher speaks (PI §38). Philosophy makes things seem

strange, and when we get entangled in philosophical reflection, we no longer know how to

proceed (cf., PI §§11, 52, 123, 194, 303, 348, 393, 428, 520, 592, 598). “[I]n the end when one

is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound”

(PI §261). In OC, it is clear that what Wittgenstein finds so strange about philosophy—indeed,

84 Pritchard 2007, 191–2. 85 Wittgenstein 1974, 169. 86 Wittgenstein 1998, 17.


to the point that it looks like insanity (OC §467)—is the way that it throws all our everyday

certainties into question. It does this most obviously simply by raising doubts about contextual

hinges. “When one hears Moore say ‘I know that that’s a tree’, one suddenly understands those

who think that that has by no means been settled” (OC §481). “[W]hen Moore says ‘I know that

that’s...’ I want to reply ‘you don’t know anything!’—and yet I would not say that to anyone who

was speaking without philosophical intention. That is, I feel (rightly?) that these two mean to

say something different” (OC §407). For Wittgenstein, what distinguishes philosophical from

everyday uses of terms of epistemic appraisal, such as ‘know,’ is that qua philosophical claims,

they seem “unjustified and presumptuous” (OC §553), because qua philosophical claims, they

are unjustified, from which it follows that it is presumptuous to claim to know them. “But if I

make the same statement where there is a clear need for it”—i.e., when it is embedded in a

context—“then, although I am not a jot more certain of its truth, it seems to me to be perfectly

justified and everyday” (OC §553). I take it that Wittgenstein here means that from an external

standpoint he is not a jot more certain of the truth of the knowledge-claim; yet he sees the way in

which it is contextually situated and therefore it strikes him as “perfectly justified and everyday.”

As a philosophical claim, ‘I know that...’ is never justified for Wittgenstein (OC §§403, 415,

423). But in everyday life, knowledge-claims find (or fail to find) their justification within

ordinary epistemic contexts. “In its language game [the statement ‘I know that I am now sitting

in a chair’] is not presumptuous. There, it has no higher position than, simply, the human

language-game. For there it has its restricted function” (OC §554, emphasis added; cf., OC

§§406, 638). It is claims made in what Clarke refers to as the “unrestricted, untrammeled”87

87 Clarke 1972, 760.

philosophical mode that are “unjustified and presumptuous.” “‘I know that that’s a tree’... As

soon as I think of an everyday use of the sentence instead of a philosophical one, its meaning


becomes clear and ordinary” (OC §347). “It is as if ‘I know’ did not tolerate a metaphysical”—

i.e., philosophical—“emphasis” (OC §482).

For Wittgenstein, then, only from an external, philosophical standpoint could we

rationally ground our epistemic practices as a whole; yet from such a standpoint, we can make no

progress except to turn back to our everyday epistemic practices and survey them. Does this

investigation yield positive results? Yes: it allows us to command, for the first time, a

perspicuous view of our epistemic practices, revealing their self-standingness. But also no: for it

demonstrates the rational groundlessness of those practices, a fact strikingly illustrated in

Wittgenstein’s consideration of alternative practices. The resulting position aims to show us how

to rest content with our world-picture and forms of life without denying their contingency. But

to what end? Like Sextus, Wittgenstein wants to rid us of dogmatism in the sense discussed

above.

(3) The ethical end of philosophy. “People,” Wittgenstein writes, “are deeply imbedded

in philosophical, i.e., grammatical confusions. And to free them of these presupposes pulling

them out of the immensely manifold connections they are caught up in.”88 Here, we see that

Wittgenstein does not make the mistake made by standard restrictive interpretations of

Pyrrhonism, namely, that ‘philosophical’ and ‘everyday’ beliefs can be pried apart on the basis

of content. Rather, everyday belief is shot through with philosophy.89 As Oskari Kuusela notes,

“Far from being uninfluenced by philosophically problematic tendencies of thinking, the

development of everyday language, according to [Wittgenstein], is affected by just the kind of

tendencies of thinking that also lie at the root of philosophical problems.”90

88 Wittgenstein 1993, 185.

It is for this reason

that proto-Pyrrhonians must undergo a philosophical education; only through a process of

89 Cf., Garfield 1990, 262–3. 90 Kuusela 2008, 277–8; cf., 275. Cf., Plant 2004, 239–40.


explicating their implicit dogmatisms will they then be in a position to rid themselves of them.91

As Stanley Cavell has put it, “Wittgenstein’s claim is that philosophy causes us to lose ourselves

and that philosophy is philosophy’s therapy.”92

The therapy aims to rid us of dogmatism, but only as a means to a greater end: tranquility

(ataraxia). “Thoughts at peace. That is the goal someone who philosophizes longs for. The

philosopher is someone who has to cure many diseases of the understanding in himself, before he

can arrive at the notions of common sense.”

93 But the ‘common sense’ to which Pyrrhonians

return is not the same as the ‘common sense’ of prereflective ‘plain men,’ for by means of their

philosophical investigations, they have freed themselves from “the immensely manifold

connections they [were] caught up in.”94 “In this light,” Cavell writes, “philosophy becomes the

education of grownups... The anxiety in teaching, in serious communication, is that I myself

require education. And for grownups this is not natural growth, but change. Conversion is a

turning of our natural reactions.”95 Wittgenstein does not seek to convert us from our world-

picture—that he ‘leaves as it is’ (PI §124)—but he does want to transform our perspective on,

and hence our attitude toward, our world-picture.96

91 Cf., Hegel 1802, 332–3: Genuine skepticism “elevates the whole range of actuality and certainty to the level of uncertainty, and nullifies ordinary dogmatism which belongs unconsciously in the context of particular customs and laws, and of other circumstances... [S]kepticism anticipates in the individual what the necessity displayed serially in the finitude of time carries out unconsciously for the unconscious race. What counts for the race as absolutely One and the same, and as fixed, eternal and everywhere constituted in the same way, time wrenches away from it; most commonly [what does this is] the increasing range of acquaintance with alien peoples under the pressure of natural necessity; as, for example, becoming acquainted with a new continent, had this skeptical effect upon the dogmatic common sense of the Europeans down to that time, and upon their indubitable certainty about a mass of concepts concerning right and truth.”

Adopting for a more general purpose

92 Cavell 1979, 34. 93 Wittgenstein 1998, 50. 94 Cf., Coliva 2010, 88: In the case of those who think our ‘objective certainties’ represent “a genuine and certain form of knowledge”: “pointing them out [sic] that ‘I know’ is meant grammatically and not empirically and does not therefore express knowledge, but a certainty which is a function of the fact that our language game excludes from doubt and error certain judgments, would have—clearly—a highly therapeutic effect.” See also: Coliva 2010, 95, 116. 95 Cavell 1979, 125. 96 Cf., Plant 2004, 244.


Wittgenstein’s talk of ‘aspects,’ we might say that he attempts to bring about “the ‘dawning’ of

an aspect” of common life (PI, p. 194). “The expression of a change of aspect is the expression

of a new perception and at the same time of the perception’s being unchanged... I see that it has

not changed; and yet I see it differently” (PI, pp. 196, 193). There is no master argument for

effecting this transformation (cf., PI §133; cf., PH §3.280), yet such transformations are possible:

“[s]eeing an aspect... [is] subject to the will” (PI, p. 213). For Wittgenstein, philosophy becomes

again what it was for Sextus: an ongoing, piecemeal effort to illuminate the self-standingness of

common life and to root out dogmatism wherever it crops up, whether in ourselves or in others.

Like Sextus’s Pyrrhonism, Wittgenstein’s third way is an attempt to steer between

skepticism and dogmatism: between an external standpoint that promises liberation but would

leave us paralyzed and an internal standpoint that hides its dogmatism behind a cloak of common

sense. The result is dialectical in that it incorporates both the external and the internal

standpoints, but united and transformed. As James Conant has argued, Wittgenstein aims to

leverage skepticism “to bring the sceptic back to the place where he started, where he already is

and never left, but in such a way that he is able to recognize it for the first time.”97

97 Conant 2004, 125.

This is no

trivial accomplishment. Neither Sextus nor Wittgenstein suggests that achieving the Pyrrhonian

illumination, or living by its light, is easy. Kuusela puts the point well: “[G]iven the

embeddedness of language in forms of life, to be engaged in a struggle with language may mean

struggling with a whole culture and era—including oneself as a product of a culture and its

traditions... The struggle against dogmatism... is a struggle with oneself and one’s prejudices.”

Thus, Wittgenstein’s philosophy “turns from the imposition of metaphysical demands onto

reality to the acknowledgement of the ethical demands that philosophy places on its


practitioners.”98 Like Sextus, Wittgenstein seeks from philosophy the attainment of non-

philosophical ends: thoughts at peace (ataraxia), and a way of life (agōgē) cleared of the

“philosophical fog”99

###

that gets between us and the world, each other, and ourselves.

98 Kuusela 2008, 271, 285, 286. 99 Wittgenstein 1998, 65; cf., PI §5.


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The Elusive Third Way: The Pyrrhonian Illumination In Wittgenstein

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