Back to the Rough Ground: Wittgenstein and Politics

The subtitle of this collection – ‘Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy’ – should strike anyone with a passing knowledge of Wittgenstein’s work and life as odd. Firstly, he wrote nothing that could be construed as political philosophy. Secondly, he had a lifelong antipathy to the idea that values, ethical or political, could be the subject of a philosophical theory. And thirdly, his own negative attitude to political activism is abundantly clear in the few reports we have of his conversations on this topic. So what is going on here? Part of what is going on, I think, is that political philosophers who do not fit neatly into the traditional camps of liberalism and republicanism are trying to clear a path for a different approach to questions of political value. The question we might pose for this particular collection of essays is how Wittgensteinian is this path really. Is his work being interpreted to yield already present but hidden insights for political philosophy or is his work being plundered for ideas and suggestions to be used as tools for a different way of doing political philosophy? I think the answer to this question matters. In the former case we will be concerned to ask whether the interpreters get Wittgenstein right. In the latter case this question has no real importance. In the former case we are talking of a Wittgensteinian political philosophy whereas in the latter instance the political philosophy is Wittgensteinian in a very limited sense. There are other concerns as well. This collection puts Wittgenstein to work on behalf of a significantly left political agenda. Wittgenstein himself was no