Finding
The authors then take on the formidable task of showing that Santayana’s and Wittgenstein’s meta-ethical views “are virtually indistinguishable” (47).
Paper
Thinking in the Ruins: Wittgenstein and Santayana on Contingency (review)
Citations: 0
Full textAbstract
Anyone acquainted with Wittgenstein’s and Santayana’s work should be aware of a number of obvious differences between the two philosophers. While both were praised for their literary style, Wittgenstein’s compact aphorisms and Santayana’s flowing prose were radically different, and while Santayana seemed to unapologetically engage in systematic metaphysics, Wittgenstein’s philosophy seems both antisystematic and antimetaphysical. Nevertheless, Hodges and Lachs attempt to argue that while Santayana’s and Wittgenstein’s “resources, tools, and strategies are different, the philosophical goals they wish to achieve by means of them are remarkably similar” (93). The opening chapter presents both as responding to the perceived collapse of the “comfortable certainties of Western civilization” (xii) that followed the First World War. The authors contrast Wittgenstein’s and Santayana’s “conservative” and “ironically accepting” reactions to “the twentieth century’s painful discovery of contingency” (3) with “Cartesian,” “Neitzschean,” “Pragmatist,” and “Postmodernist” responses to the problem. The second chapter argues that both Santayana and Wittgenstein think that “persistent and unallayable doubt shows that something has gone wrong in the intellectual enterprise,” and that while skepticism cannot be defeated on its own terms, those terms are irrelevant to the actual processes of inquiry. Consequently, “both reject absolute certainty as the standard of cognition and want to return the criteria of knowledge to the looser practices of ordinary life” (32). The authors then take on the formidable task of showing that Santayana’s and Wittgenstein’s meta-ethical views “are virtually indistinguishable” (47). The negative aspect of Santayana and Wittgenstein’s agreement resides in their “rejection of universal claims about the good,” while their positive accord shows up in their “belief that moral life and moral values reside in particular social practices” (52). The authors discuss the possibility that such ethical views might lead to a type of complacent conservatism about ethical matters, and argue that
Authors
H. Jackman
Journal
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy