The following contribution aims at presenting a reading of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy as a kind of idealism within the Kantian and post-Kantian traditions. The goal is to argue that Wittgenstein’s position shares substantial theoretical and methodological grounds with Hegel’s idealism. The main concepts pertaining to the later Wittgenstein’s position are analyzed and understood as a form of idealism. After defending the reading against anti-idealist interpretations we argue that the kind of idealism presented clashes with central tenets of the Kantian position. (...) These points of departure are then shown to cover in a substantial manner the same kind of criticism Hegel raised against Kant. In the last section, an interpretation of central concepts of the Hegelian position is offered in order to dissolve any fundamental incompatibility with Wittgenstein’s idealism. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that, like the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, Wittgenstein’s response to negative–dogmatic skepticism in On Certainty turns on the attempt to free us from the demands of traditional philosophy and is therefore not a philosophical position, strictly speaking. Rather, it is a therapeutic metaphilosophy designed to bring into view (i.e., to illumine) the relationship between our everyday epistemic practices and those of philosophy such that we simultaneously come to recognize (a) what I call the pragmatic–transcendental self–standingness (...) of the everyday and (b) its philosophical–rational groundlessness. The Pyrrhonian illumination of the everyday is therapeutic in that it aims to purify our metadoxastic attitudes of dogmatism. (shrink)

Esta obra compila los estudios presentados en las I Jornadas de Filosofía del Instituto CEU de Humanidades Ángel Ayala y está prologada por Abelardo Lobato, O. P. Los filósofos tienen el deber de buscar y alcanzar la verdad apelando a las fuerzas de la razón, la cual, por cierto, no impide otras vías genuinas de conocimiento, como la fe. La búsqueda intelectual exige un trabajo de análisis que debe afinarse ante las obcecaciones que a menudo se interponen en el horizonte (...) de la existencia humana. En no pocos momentos de la historia ha habido claudicaciones generalizadas ante esa búsqueda, olvidos más o menos conscientes de que las verdades se alcanzan si se mantiene la esperanza de sabiduría y el amor a ella. El relativismo y el escepticismo se presentan casi como el polo opuesto de esa esperanza y ese amor; como una consecuencia de la “con-fusión” cultural, de las mentiras interesadas y de la desidia moral de algunas sociedades. La nuestra, la europea occidental, es una de ellas. El relativismo afecta al modo de pensar y de comportarse del hombre y es habitual que le lleve por vericuetos que a la postre terminan dañándole a él y a sus congéneres. En este libro se analizan algunos errores que han llevado a suscribir las tesis del relativismo y a rechazar la posibilidad de dar con algunas verdades comunes para todos. La obra tiene dos partes, una histórica y otra temática. Las páginas con enfoque histórico estudian las tesis que sobre el relativismo han mantenido algunos pensadores o corrientes de la filosofía. De su lectura se puede extraer la conclusión de que el fenómeno del relativismo es tan viejo y tan actual como el propio hombre y su apertura inteligente a la verdad. Filósofos de la época antigua de la talla de Protágoras, Pirrón o los “Académicos” coetáneos de San Agustín; modernos como Descartes; contemporáneos como Wittgenstein o Kuhn han dejado huellas que luego abrieron el camino hacia un régimen de pensamiento en que el hombre abandona la posibilidad de admitir verdades universales. Algunos argumentos favorables al relativismo —y, más aún, algunas actitudes “propedéuticas” de él— se han ido instalando culturalmente hasta consolidarse de manera cada vez más indiscutida. La segunda parte analiza el relativismo de forma temática, como un asunto abordable desde las diversas ramas del saber filosófico. Así, se tratan las repercusiones que tiene esta forma de pensamiento en la pragmática, la lógica, la estética o la religión, y se intentan desenmascarar los tópicos y falsos argumentos que justifican un comportamiento ético o religioso “abierto a todas las opciones”. (shrink)

Wittgenstein scholars have tended to interpret the acquisition of certainties, and by extension, of a world-picture, as the achievement of a state in which these certainties are assimilated in a seemingly unconscious way as one masters language-games. However, it has not been stressed that the attainment of this state often involves facing a series of challenges or difficulties which must be overcome for the development of the world-picture and therefore the socialization process to be achieved. After showing, on the one (...) hand, how a world-picture is usually developed, and on the other hand, why a child who seemingly found itself trapped in a precocious skepticism might have serious problems in assimilating certainties, in this paper, I describe some of the challenges children often meet as they acquire a world-picture. Since the overcoming of these challenges is often needed for children to develop a world-picture, I aim at raising the awareness of the necessity of ‘learning to believe’, that is, of developing a series of skills that allow children to undertake the challenges described in this paper. (shrink)

In the text the author tries to investigate Wittgenstein’s notions of action, practice and pragmatism in his book On Certainty. An attempt is made to sketch the criterion of Wittgenstein’s analysis of certainty and to define the crucial concepts such as world-picture, practice, certainty and justification. The analysis shows that Wittgenstein applies a specific form of pragmatic solution to the problem of justification, which after all, can and should be called a kind of pragmatismus. This is the subject of the (...) first and the second part of the text. The third part shows the application of this pragmatic theory of justification to Wittgenstein’s refutation of scepticism. The author suggests that his pragmatic analysis of certainty presents an adequate means for the refutation of scepticism. However, his anti-scepticism is situated in the tradition of common sense and ordinary language philosophy and epistemology (Moore, Chisholm, Lehrer, Austin, Grice, Strawson, etc.). In the conclusion the author applies this anti-sceptical solution to the so called rule-following problem (as stated in Kripke’s work) and shows that there are some far reaching consequences of this interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later work to his position on language, learning, ontology and knowledge. (shrink)

After describing Wittgenstein's notion of ‘certainty’, in this article I provide four arguments to demonstrate that no certainty can be acquired at will. Specifically, I argue that, in order to assimilate a certainty, it is irrelevant whether the individual concerned has found a ground that seemingly justifies that certainty; has a given mental state; is willing to accept the certainty on the proposal of a persuader; or tries to act according to the certainty involved. Lastly, I analyse how each of (...) these arguments is reflected in the way children acquire certainties. (shrink)