@phdthesis{Damour2019,
  author    = {Damour, Jean-Claude},
  title     = {Hegel und Wittgenstein {\"u}ber den Sinn der Sprache},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43103},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-431036},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {132},
  year      = {2019},
  abstract  = {The key objectives of this dissertation are to justify the use of dialectic methodology in the realm of the philosophy of language and to conduct a systematic processing of a limited part of this field. In order to explain and determine this approach, which is found rarely, if ever, in contemporary research, I will begin by referring to two philosophical authors: Hegel and Wittgenstein. Although Hegel and Wittgenstein are, prima facie, two authors who have very little in common, the primary supposition of this dissertation regarding the history of ideas is that Hegel's concept of "Spirit" and Wittgenstein's concept of "Form of life" are nevertheless both approaches and the results of philosophical effort that imply the necessity of solving a sceptical challenge. Wittgenstein actually developed an argument in his Philosophical Investigations that has been described as the "rule-following paradox" and has been considered in secondary literature (especially Kripke) as the main tenet of a sceptical argument. Consequently, Wittgenstein's theory of language as developed in Philosophical Investigations has been interpreted by various authors either as a solution to this scepticism or as a sceptical, or "aporetic", text in itself (Brandom). The first section of my dissertation aims to demonstrate that dealing with this paradox does not constitute a full sceptical argument and can be considered as the first moment of a higher form of sceptical challenge, an antinomy. A full sceptical challenge implies both the possibility that the theory corresponding to the unique solution of the paradox, the negation of any explicit normativity ("dispositionalism"), and the negation of the principle of this solution, can be proved. I'll therefore attempt to establish an antinomy of the concept of normativity with respect to the rule of language, similar to Kant's exposure of his cosmological antinomy (thesis cum antithesis). The second aim of my dissertation is to show: that Kant's approach to solving his antinomy is ineffective concerning the antinomy of normativity; that this antinomy implies a confrontation with radical scepticism in a sense that we are committed not to simply challenging or reconsidering some theories, but to engaging in a deep revision of our methodology (This in turn entails a deep revision of the current norms of rationality); that the Hegelian dialectic emerges as the solution to such a radical sceptical challenge, as the true solution to antinomy. A further goal of this dissertation is to use this methodological result to gain a new knowledge of language, consisting of two contradictory moments of cognition that are constructively combined: normativity by means of disposition, and normativity by means of an explicit rule-following. The tangible benefit of such a methodological approach is the possibility of building a systematic philosophy of language that enables the establishment of a dialectical deduction of the moments of the concept of language as moments of the concept of the spirit, in other words, to establish the sense of language. Nonetheless, I must limit myself to exposure to the doctrine of imagination, which encompasses general semiotics and the system of grammar.},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Giesewetter2011,
  author    = {Giesewetter, Stefan},
  title     = {Resolute readings of later Wittgenstein and the challenge of avoiding hierarchies in philosophy},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-57021},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {This dissertation addresses the question: How did later Wittgenstein aim to achieve his goal of putting forward a way of dissolving philosophical problems which centered on asking ourselves what we mean by our words - yet which did not entail any claims about the essence of language and meaning? This question is discussed with reference to "resolute" readings of Wittgenstein. I discuss the readings of James Conant, Oskari Kuusela, and Martin Gustafsson. I follow Oskari Kuusela's claim that in order to fully appreciate how later Wittgenstein meant to achieve his goal, we need to clearly see how he aimed to do away with hierarchies in philosophy: Not only is the dissolution of philosophical problems via the method of clarifying the grammar of expressions to be taken as independent from any theses about what meaning must be - but furthermore, it is to be taken as independent from the dissolution of any particular problem via this method. As Kuusela stresses, this also holds for the problems involving rule-following and meaning: the clarification of the grammar of "rule" and "meaning" has no foundational status - it is nothing on which the method of clarifying the grammar of expressions as such were meant to in any way rely on. The lead question of this dissertation then is: What does it mean to come to see that the method of dissolving philosophical problems by asking "How is this word actually used?" does not in any way rely on the results of our having investigated the grammar of the particular concepts "rule" and "meaning"? What is the relation of such results - results such as "To follow a rule, [...], to obey an order, [...] are customs (uses, institutions)" or "The meaning of a word is its use in the language" - to this method? From this vantage point, I concern myself with two aspects of the readings of Gustafsson and Kuusela. In Gustafsson, I concern myself with his idea that the dissolution of philosophical problems in general "relies on" the very agreement which - during the dissolution of the rule-following problem - comes out as a presupposition for our talk of "meaning" in terms of rules. In Kuusela, I concern myself with his idea that Wittgenstein, in adopting a way of philosophical clarification which investigates the actual use of expressions, is following the model of "meaning as use" - which model he had previously introduced in order to perspicuously present an aspect of the actual use of the word "meaning". This dissertation aims to show how these two aspects of Gustafsson's and Kuusela's readings still fail to live up to the vision of Wittgenstein as a philosopher who aimed to do away with any hierarchies in philosophy. I base this conclusion on a detailed analysis of which of the occasions where Wittgenstein invokes the notions of "use" and "application" (as also "agreement") have to do with the dissolution of a specific problem only, and which have to do with the dissolution of philosophical problems in general. I discuss Wittgenstein's remarks on rule-following, showing how in the dissolution of the rule-following paradox, notions such as "use", "application", and "practice" figure on two distinct logical levels. I then discuss an example of what happens when this distinction is not duly heeded: Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker's idea that the rule-following remarks have a special significance for his project of dissolving philosophical problems as such. I furnish an argument to the effect that their idea that the clarification of the rules of grammar of the particular expression "following a rule" could answer a question about rules of grammar in general rests on a conflation of the two logical levels on which "use" occurs in the rule-following remarks, and that it leads into a regress. I then show that Gustafsson's view - despite its decisive advance over Baker and Hacker - contains a version of that same idea, and that it likewise leads into a regress. Finally, I show that Kuusela's idea of a special significance of the model "meaning as use" for the whole of the method of stating rules for the use of words is open to a regress argument of a similar kind as that he himself advances against Baker and Hacker. I conclude that in order to avoid such a regress, we need to reject the idea that the grammatical remark "The meaning of a word is its use in the language" - because of the occurrence of "use" in it - stood in any special relation to the method of dissolving philosophical problems by describing the use of words. Rather, we need to take this method as independent from this outcome of the investigation of the use of the particular word "meaning".},
  language  = {en}
}