Pragmatism and Political Practice: Language, Skills and Institutions

Abstract

This article aims to show the importance of the pragmatic conception of language proposed by Wittgenstein in relation to his philosophy of action, as well as the possibilities it offers to political theory, by explaining the impact and influence that his theory had in some of his readers. This is particularly important for the notion of political representation, which emerges as a linguistic practice of rule-based behavior in terms of giving and asking for reasons. This idea will be reinforced by a reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s arguments applied to a social instance a work that is done by many of his readers and commentators, specifically Searle, Brandom and Mouffe. Such instance would be limited in this text, by making use of Rawls’ idea of public reason through the lens of this socially conceived Wittgenstein’s pragmatism.