“Our task is merely to be just”: Courtroom Scenarios in Wittgenstein’s Last Writings. As is well known, it was a Parisian court trial that inspired Wittgenstein to write his picture theory of language in the Tractatus logico-philosophicus – but less well known or at least far less reflected, are the courtroom scenarios he himself invented in his last writings, that is the writings dating from 1947 to 1951. There, Wittgenstein repeatedly sketches court proceedings by means of which he challenges the (...) validity of certain statements and modes of expression in the manner of a thought experiment, so it seems as if the courtroom serves to check and rebuke those misleading modes of expression that distort the ordinary use of language and to which we repeatedly let ourselves be tempted when philosophising. In the following, I will trace the role of these courtroom scenarios in Wittgenstein’s last writings and suggest that they primarily fulfil the methodological function of a touchstone for certain philosophical modes of expression and misleading images, and in this way help to survey the actual use of language. After a brief overview of the occurrences of courtroom scenarios in Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, I will take a closer look at some of these courtroom remarks in his later writings with regard to the modes of expression and misleading images problematised by Wittgenstein: these include the importance of inner processes, the ‘picture of the hidden inner’ as well as Moorean knowledge assertions and ‘unreasonable’ doubts. Based on this, I will finally elaborate on the methodological function of Wittgenstein’s courtroom scenarios. (shrink)

In his last writings, Wittgenstein repeatedly addresses the question of how our concepts relate to general facts of nature or human nature and how they are embedded in our lives. In doing so, he uses the term “pattern of life”, characterizing the complicated relationship between concepts and our lives and how our concepts “are connected with what interests us, with what matters to us” (LWPP II, 46). But who is this “us”, and whose interests manifest in the concepts we use (...) to designate patterns of life? What if certain concepts—or their absence—are exclusionary, discriminatory, or otherwise unjust to those who are not “us”? In this paper, I want to discuss Wittgenstein’s notion of “pattern of life” in its interweaving with facts, human life, and concepts, as well as its political implications. To this end, I will first outline the relationship between facts and concept formation as Wittgenstein drew it in his last writings. Based on this, I will argue that he uses the concept of pattern of life to capture the complicated relationship between concepts and human nature or “social facts”. Going beyond Wittgenstein and drawing on recent feminist epistemology, I will raise the question of the political implications of our patterns of life and concomitant social “conceptual injustices”. Finally, I will show how imagining facts otherwise and other conceptual worlds can help us to reveal the prejudices and injustices of our concepts and can lead to conceptual change and new patterns of life that may ultimately even change “things”, i.e., our thinking, judging and acting in the world. (shrink)