A Wittgensteinian-Waismannian Dissolution of the Question of Space

 

Copyright © 2006-2009 by C. L. Brown – UnrestrictedPhilosophy.com

 

   We begin with the following question: what is space?  In our asking this question we understand this question along the lines of its being a “Socratic” question; in other words, it is considered to be a question of essence, that being of space.  Thus, in the initial moment space is something at first glance which, by means of this very question’s being asked, is deemed to be or at least believed to be admissible in some way of (an) essence.  In the Socratic tradition the essence of X is what X “really” is, more particularly, it is that-about-X-which-makes-X-X, so to speak; it is expressible by way of formal definition.  Thus, for us, what can in response then be taken as that which would satisfactorily answer this question about space for us would be the one, formal definition of what is the essential, dare we say, presupposed being of space considered as a thing unto itself, so to speak.  Apart from our making in this paper any formal definition as to what space really or essentially is, we would in this paper – the first in a series on the subject of space – simply like to explore how it is possible that this particular question of the essence of space, i.e. “what is space?”, can rightly or wrongly be made to disappear.  The dissolution of the question itself is what interests us here: the freedom from its obsessive hold on us is what we seek.  It was none other than Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann who showed us a way out of the bottle in which essence-seeking questions like “what is space?” in particular and “what is X?” in general hold us captive.  To their efforts we now turn. 

 

   To begin again, we do thus re-ask the question “what is space?”  We do note that in presenting a question such as this the more or less traditional approach towards it has been to turn one’s attention towards the object of interrogation, namely, in this case, space.  Wittgenstein, at least in terms of how we have assessed especially his later work, notes however that the peculiarity which surrounds specific questions of the form “what is X?” quite often has little to do with the object of interrogation and instead does have a lot to do with the grammar of the word “X.”  We ask questions of the form “what is X?” because we have become puzzled or confused over the grammar, or as Wittgenstein would prefer, the usage of the word “X” in our everyday lives.  In this specific case it is the everyday use of the word “space” which has managed to puzzle us.1  “It appears we don’t know what it means, and that therefore, perhaps, we have no right to use it.”2  As a result of this we express such confusion, such puzzlement with, in the words of Wittgenstein, the “slightly misleading” question, in our case, “what is space?”  Such a “question is an utterance of unclarity, of mental discomfort, and it is comparable with the question ‘Why?’ as children so often ask it.”3  In terms of such a question “we are up against one of the great sources of philosophical bewilderment: we try to find a substance for a substantive.”4

 

   It is perhaps favorable for us to know from a historical standpoint that we are not the first to note the bothersome effect a question of the form “what is X?” seems to have on us.  One need look no further than Augustine of Hippo for one of the better known instances of this.  In his Confessions XI.14 Augustine reveals a seemingly instinctual familiarity with what is an innate notion of time, as what all of us probably do have, and yet also the inability to literally account for what time is.  “What, then, is time?  I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.”5  It might seem based on Augustine’s reply that as long as time remains for him at the subconscious level – as when “nobody asks me” – “it”6 resides below the threshold of perception free of any apprehension as to what “it” might be.  When asked to make the conscious effort to explain or account for what time is, however, Augustine’s mind buckles, for all of a sudden is time now indefinable.  Why is this?  What has happened here?  Our answer to this is that time, in the mind’s conscious attempt to consider time objectively, gradationally evolved, for lack of a better description, from a subconscious and hence unnamed if not unnameable form to, in a very loose and generic sense of the word, something, if not in particular then some thing – a schema of some sort, if one will.  Likewise, “time” in the very question’s being asked becomes entrenched as it were as the name of this so-called something.  The latter here is of particular importance to us, for it elucidates what is the basis of the so-called Augustinian theory of language.  With Augustine, as Wittgenstein relates to us, “the individual words in language name objects.”7  It is as if every noun and every noun substantive which is found in our language becomes as it were a common or proper name of something.  Accordingly, to ask then “what is X?” is to be making implicit the notion that “X” the word is or must therefore be a name of some sort.  In order then to be able to adequately answer “what is X?” one first needs to actually, really acquire somehow either a or the thing named “X.”  Under the auspice of this thinking, we can thus say that if asked “what is X?” we instinctively therefore look for a bearer named “X.”  In a problem similar with Augustine and time and thus us with space, we can say that the finding of a substantial bearer named “Space” can prove to be frustratingly difficult.  Where in the real, natural world do we find a thing or even just something – anything for that matter – named “Space”?  Our answer is we don’t,8 and for us this is troubling.  

 

   If we reflect for a moment upon our predicament it might occur to us that a possible remedy to our malady could begin to be found if we simply do not, upon being asked the question “what is space?”, look for any thing, any object, any bearer identifiable as “Space” in name.  While the very notion of one’s actual “looking” for something named “Space” in the real world might simply be utterly inconceivable for some of us, we do nonetheless mention it here as a sort of straw man for no other purpose than to be at least mentioned by us before we subsequently, immediately dismiss it.  Our decision thus not to attempt a search for an objective thing hence answer to this question can be justified if we can recognize in it the flash point for our problem.  According to Waismann9, in this question it is the interrogative what which is that which serves naturally as the source of tension for us.  Such tension “arises out of a false grammatical background, since to the word ‘what’ we imagine some ‘this’ to correspond or expect some ‘this’ to be an answer.”10  In our imagining or expecting a this as our answer, we desperately set out looking for a thing named “Space”, in other words a this to which or at which we can point and say of it “(this is) Space.”  To this end “one searches compulsively for a meaning, a sense, and on finding no such thing, one supposes that what is sought must be some ethereal essence.”11  All we know of the “ethereal” is of the “queer role” which it plays in our philosophy, as “when we perceive that a substantive is not used as what in general we should call the name of an object, and when therefore we can’t help saying to ourselves that it is the name of an aethereal object.”12  A substantive’s not being used for what in general is the name of an object: perhaps we are then in the words of Miller correct to “discover – to our philosophical chagrin – that, though nominal, we do not generally use the substantive as a nomen, that is, to name an object.”13  This gives us confidence to say then that “space” – when this word is used as a name – is not used as the name of any material object but rather as the name of an aethereal one, the latter of which we know as being a subterfuge – a means of deceit for something we are embarrassed as not knowing.14  It stands to reason then that any speculation on (the nature of) space in terms of asking “what is space?” will not yield any underlying nature of any type of substantial being.15  With this now understood we might be allowed to excuse ourselves from searching for an object named “Space” when presented with this question. 

 

   After having now made the argument that we ought not really look for an object or thing named “Space” because “space” is not used as (and thus really is not then) the name of a material or substantial thing or object, we ought to consider what Waismann did pose as a “solution”, if it can be called one, to a question like ours, namely, “what is space?”  Let us take as our lead in this Waismann’s comments concerning time and in particular the question “what then is time?”  The following insight is worth quoting at length. 

 

But in fact the question is similar to the question ‘What is time?’  In everyday discourse the word ‘time’ causes us no difficulties.  We say: ‘I have no time’, ‘this is not the time for that’, ‘much time has passed since then’, ‘that takes time’, etc., etc.  Now the philosopher comes along and asks: ‘What kind of a thing is time really?’  From this question springs the conviction that there must be some kind of deeper insight into the nature of time, some grasp of its true nature.  The philosopher’s question suggests that people have never known precisely enough what time is, that they have had only a rough and distant conception of it, whereas he himself wishes to say absolutely precisely what it is.  He then asks: Is time the same thing as the events that take place in it? or is it the position of the clock-hand?  And if it is replied that none of these is time itself, then the question arises ‘What then is time?’  And now one seeks some definition, e.g. ‘Time is the form of what happens’, ‘Time is the possibility of change’, etc., whereas the simple truth is that just this whole loose and complex pattern of speaking provides the true meaning of the word ‘time’ and that there is nothing else to be done other than describe the complete grammar of this word.  If we are in a position to understand and use the word in all its combinations and contexts, then we in fact know exactly what time is and no formula can express it more exactly.16

 

Waismann’s proposal on how to cope with what is Augustine’s famed question, that is, what is time?, is not in the end to offer anything definite in response, in particular, to offer an account which can or could be construed by someone as signifying a/the so-called “essence” of time.  An “answer” given in such a form would, as referenced earlier in this paper, be a definition in that a definition – as understood in the Socratic tradition – is an expression indicating essence.17  “The form of what happens” and “the possibility of change”: these are two examples of definition (definiens, actually) which Waismann at least mentions before summarily rejecting in favor of what for him is “the simple truth” – that we know exactly what time is and thus can answer if not at least sensibly respond in some way or another to the question “what is time?” provided we know how to speak the language of and in terms of “time.”  It is conceivable perhaps even anticipatable that one may look at all of this and feel that what would be then Waismann’s non-definitional attitude towards the answering of “what is space?”, namely, the understanding of how to appropriately use the word “space” in its variety of combinations and contexts, is nothing more than a cop-out for a search for an essence, i.e. criterion, of or to space – space regarded in some way as a reality or real thing in itself.  To this charge we respond by reiterating that we simply just do not find anywhere in the real world a real thing or object named “Space.”  We simply don’t; thus, to assail Wittgenstein or Waismann or even us for that matter for overriding the notion of definition as the preferred or naturally precipitable form of answer as to what space is is to simply be in the wrong.  Metaphysics may lead us in the search for something hidden, or something substantial, or something essential, or something real behind, say, the term “space”, but in Wittgenstein’s thinking at least “philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.  Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain.”18  We invoke here the dictum that “essence is expressed by grammar.”19  By this expression it may be meant by Wittgenstein that it is not a metaphysical evaluation of the content of the word, say, “X” which we implement in order to arrive at an understanding of what X is but rather instead a description of how the word “X” has significance to us when we confess “X exists” or simply “X is”, respectively.  Such a view precipitates for us then the need to have an understanding of not only the context of language which surrounds “X” but also, of course, a familiarity of the usage of “X” within that context.  It is precisely this understanding and familiarity, in our case, with the word “space” which is what Waismann would propose we must have in order to know what space is.  This really is the only task in front of us, that is, to “describe the complete grammar of this word.”20  This task is never quite completed, and yet it does bring to us a sense of completion.  Our now knowing how to “solve” or “answer”, if we can call it that, the question “what is space?” or “what is X?” in general is what does bring to us a sense of peace if not contentment.  This is for us the “real discovery” spoken of by Wittgenstein, “the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to.”21  It is “the one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself in question.”22  Our method of “solving” this question and others like it, i.e. those of the form “what is X?” where “X” is a commonly spoken word in our language, is a method “by examples; and the series of examples can be broken off.”23  In just this way questions precisely such as these are solved and, more importantly, dissolved. 

 

WORKS FROM WHICH WE HAVE QUOTED

 

Baker, Gordon (ed.), Gordon Baker, Michael Mackert, John Connolly, and Vasilis Politis (trans.).  The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann.  London: Routledge, 2003.

 

Miller, D. J.  “Wittgenstein: Time for a New Philosophical Practice.”  Continental Philosophy Review 31 (1998): 415. 

 

Pine-Coffin, R. S., trans.  Saint Augustine Confessions.  New York: Penguin Books, 1961.

 

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, G. E. M. Anscombe (trans.).  Philosophical Investigations.  Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963.

 

Wittgenstein, Ludwig.  Preliminary Studies for the “Philosophical Investigations”; Generally Known as the Blue and Brown Book.  New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958.

 

ENDNOTES

 

1.  “Space” as a spoken word appears in a myriad of examples which can be elicited at times from everyday life.  For example, (we say that) we park our vehicles in parking “spaces.”  We take up “space” on a park bench.  Satellites in “space” beam signals around the Earth.  Our Earth travels in an elliptical orbit in “space” thousands upon thousands of miles per hour around the Sun.  It is the “space bar” which we strike on our keyboards when we want to leave a “space” between our words.  Nothing but “empty space” is poetically said to fill the prairie landscape.  Examples such as these can be continued indefinitely. 

 

2.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Preliminary Studies (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), p. 27.  This remark is actually made in reference to the word “knowledge” than to the word “space.” 

 

3.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Preliminary Studies (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), p. 26.   Wittgenstein is instead speaking here in terms of the question “what is time?”.

 

4.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Preliminary Studies (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), p. 1. 

 

5.  R. S. Pine-Coffin, trans., Saint Augustine Confessions (New York: Penguin Books, 1961), p. 264.

 

6.  We are obviously referring to time here by way of the pronominal referent “it.”  Such usage, at face value at least, does seem only natural on our part.  About this we can say that such usage does tend to connote or bestow upon time the notion of time’s, for lack of a better expression, “being” something, perhaps something substance-like in the classical if even Aristotelian sense.  While it is our intention in the discussion to come to argue against a real substantiality on the part of time and thus, ultimately, on the part of space as well, we do note here the intrinsic notion of substantiality that does inescapably accompany the use of this pronoun in its being, if one will, an inherent, i.e. “natural”, feature of the English, in general, Indo-European languages in which such said forms are spoken.  We find in Archie Bahm a reference here which acutely relates to us this peculiarity: “Part of the problem of interpreting the nature of time, or of any category, consists of referring to it as “it” (i.e., as “something”) when such reference takes the grammatical form of a noun, which in Indo-European languages tends to connote substantiality.”†  Our attitude henceforth towards the use of “it” in reference to time and in particular space is therefore one of intrinsic naturalness, that is, that it is only natural for us to do so provided the caveat, of course, that such said use does not – in our immediate thinking – necessarily imply any (real) substantiality on the part of time or space, respectively. 

 

†Archie J. Bahm, Metaphysics: An Introduction (Albuquerque, New Mexico: World Books, 1974), p. 46.

 

 

7.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), § 1.  The familiarity and admiration Wittgenstein has for Augustine as a philosopher is quite evident in his quoting the philosopher directly from his Confessions I.8 in the first section of the Philosophical Investigations.  Wittgenstein’s commentary here on Augustine has as its purpose the introducing of the reader to what is Augustine’s (and others’) central picture of language, namely, that there is a simple one-to-one correspondence between a word and what the word means.  Words mean the objects which they name, the objects for which they are mere representations.  Wittgenstein’s intent in the Investigations is to deconstruct this view and replace it with the thinking that meaning is acquired, actually, negotiated by the way in which the language which encapsulates the word is used.  

 

8.  Au contraire, one might say to the notion that we cannot find or, better yet, there is nothing to which or at which we can point and say of “it”, “(that is) space.”  Anyone who has cast his eyes heavenward on a cloudless night and taken in the grandeur of the star-filled wonder he sees might, he just might, be moved enought to inquire into the nature of the awesome, seemingly infinite, black backcloth “in” which the distant stars seem somehow embedded, a backcloth which he has customarily called “space” in the sense of outer space, of course.  “What is space?” might be then the question, if he asks a question, he offers as to his desiring to know and truly understand the nature of the spectacle that he is beholding.  In this example, the “space” that our man says he can “see” is black in color as contrasted with white, which is the “color” of (most of) the stars’ light entering his eyes; perhaps blackness then can somehow be ascribed as being a property of the now considered-to-be “thing” space.  If this is the case with blackness then considered as being a property of the thing, then why couldn’t we begin our pursuit of (our knowing) what space is by considering instead the space between the desk and the bookshelf or the wide open space presented by the wheat field or the space between oneself and his hand when it is placed in front of his face?  After all, space is space no matter where space is, isn’t it?  Our answer here to this is that we could, and yet there’s a catch: obviously the space between the desk and the bookshelf or the space which is presented by the open field or the space which is between oneself and his hand when he places it in front of his face is (said to be) colorless (or invisible) whereas the previously mentioned “(outer) space” was (said to be) black in color.  In terms of the colorless or invisible space, if one will, if such is the case then how may we ask can one even possibly, perceptually “see” such said space in the first place?  How can he even visually ascertain that it’s there?  Our answer is he can’t apart from either any refractivity or reflectivity which also presumably cannot be perceptually observed on the part of such said space.  We’d like to think the situation holds differently for the former scenario of “outer”, astral space described as being “black” in color.  Here, too, however, we run into problems in terms of our endowing space to be a thing which as a property of it is black in color.  For example, in our bringing the star-filled nighttime sky a little bit closer to home and in our considering a scenario within our very own solar system, if the space, say, between the planets Mars and Jupiter, respectively, is really black then why isn’t the space between Earth and Mars really black as well such that we would not be able to see Mars on account of its, i.e. space’s, opacity?  Again, can such said space be said to be really “seen” by us?  How can one visually ascertain that “black” space is somehow amongst or between the more distant stars and not amongst or between the less distant planets including Earth?  With what confidence at this point can we continue to speak of space as (actually) being some thing or just something now — colorless, invisible, black, or opaque — at which we can point and say of it “that is space” as in there being something named “Space” at which we are pointing, at which we are looking?  Our answer, in terms of our confidence, is very little if any at all.  Our appeal here to an astronomical argument for the visual existence of a somehow substantial bearer named “Space” possibly endowed with a property of color has fallen short.  What explanation though, say, not literally in terms either of a colored or invisible backcloth, if one will, but rather simply in terms of what it is we actually do see, i.e. stars, planets, desk, bookshelf, hand, face, etc., accounts and accounts correctly for the visual situations just described wherein one “sees” black, distant space as “embedding”, for lack of a better word, the distant stars?  Norman Swartz provides the following exceptional assessment here as being the proper explanation, the proper response as it were, to give (his emphasis):

 

“Why, then, is the space between the chair and the table, unlike the space between Mars and Venus, not black?”  This way of putting the question persists with the confusion.  The ‘space’ between Mars and Venus is not black.  We do not see blackness between the chair and the table, not because the space ‘there’ is some other color, but because we can see, by looking through that place, the illuminated wall beyond.  If space existed and were colored, then I could not see my hand when held up a few inches from my nose: the intervening space would block my view.  The sky is black between Mars and Venus, not because (interplanetary) ‘space’ is black, but rather because there is nothing to be seen there (between the planets) and nothing (except for an occasional distant star) to be seen further on, either.†

 

†Norman Swartz, “Beyond Experience: Metaphysical Theories and Philosophical Constraints,” 2001, http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/beyond_experience/chap08.htm.  (Accessed May 23, 2009).

 

 

9.  Vienna Circle member Friedrich Waismann was a collaborator of Wittgenstein’s whose original duty with the latter was to gather, organize, and make more readily presentable Wittgenstein’s ideas concerning his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to a wider audience.  When such a collaboration with Wittgenstein began, however, the latter was already rethinking his positions taken earlier in the Tractatus and had subsequently widened his views concerning language and the role that language plays in philosophy.  (Such views would form the basis of what was to posthumously become the Philosophical Investigations.)  It was therefore at Wittgenstein’s suggestion that he and Waismann coauthor a work which would present the former’s latest, newest thoughts, if one will.  Due, however, to Wittgenstein’s thinking being in a state of flux as well as his way of dismantling completely bit by bit any and all of his previous work, the project between Waismann and him never ran smoothly and eventually eroded to a point which Waismann found intolerable.  Because of this Waismann persuaded Wittgenstein to step down as coauthor and instead allow him, i.e. Waismann, and Waismann’s mentor Moritz Schlick to write the actual text.  After Schlick’s untimely murder by one of his former students in 1936, Waismann took it upon himself to see to it that the project be completed.  In Waismann’s papers found after his death in 1959, material dating from 1928-1939 was found which pertains to Waismann’s project concerning Wittgenstein.  Editor Gordon Baker gathered together this material which consists of the original German texts as well as English translations of a selected, edited, and organized version of two sets of typescripts which were found.  With the exception of a few fragmentary pieces, all of the texts found were transcribed or composed by Waismann.  The resulting compilation of such material is Baker’s edited work The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann.  Baker is clear here in that “authorship is therefore appropriately ascribed to Waismann” (Introduction, p. xvii).  Because such draft material was prepared, however, at a time when Waismann was in collaboration with Wittgenstein, Baker defends the appearance of the latter’s name in the title.  In any event because as Baker states the authorship of the material taken from this text is “appropriately ascribed” to Waismann and since we will be incorporating into our work a number of points made by Waismann (as will be evident shortly), we have opted to thus give credit where credit is due and to therefore include the term “Waismannian” in the title of this, our paper. 

 

10.  Gordon Baker et al., The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 483. 

 

11.  Gordon Baker et al., The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 481. 

 

12.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Preliminary Studies (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), p. 47.

 

13.  D. J. Miller, “Wittgenstein: Time for a New Philosophical Practice,” Continental Philosophy Review 31 (1998): 413.  Miller is actually speaking here in terms of “time.”

 

14.  Wittgenstein’s exact words here are: “I mean, we already know the idea of ‘aethereal objects’ as a subterfuge, when we are embarrassed about the grammar of certain words, and when all we know is that they are not used as names for material objects.”  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Preliminary Studies (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), p. 47.

 

15.  Wittgenstein indicates that it is objects emanating from natural science, that is, objects which can be explored and demonstrated via the so-called scientific method, which are aptly subject to the question “what is X?”  In Philosophical Investigations §89 he notes “what is the specific gravity of hydrogen?” as an example of this question asked of this type of object.  The specific gravity of hydrogen is a knowable object, if one will, of natural science.  We, and if not then, at least the scientist can readily explain what it is to someone without much problem if prompted to do so.  Can we say the same for space, however?  Is space something subject to the scientific method?  As for time, for example, we can certainly invoke science by way of chronometric measurements if we need to answer “what time is it?”, but can such methodology, i.e. science, be used to answer “what, then, is time?”  Our problem in terms of our asking “what is space?” can be said to be based in the mistaken belief that all objects of interrogation are subject to the same format of question and answer.  Because the scientific method can allow for us to answer for various things questions like “what does it look like?”, “where is it naturally found?”, and “what (physically) causes it?”, respectively, we instinctively presume such a methodology when taken to its most extreme and exhaustive limit to be able to ultimately answer in some sense at least the question “what really is it?” as well.  A Bengal tiger, thorium, and lightning are various things or phenomena to which some or all of these questions can be applied, respectively.  We would expect based on this then the full and exhaustive application of the scientific method when thoroughly pressed to these things to be able in a sense to answer for each of them the question “what really is it?” as well.  For space and time, however, we realize that questions such as “what does it look like?” and “where is it naturally found?”, respectively, simply do not apply to them.  We cannot in any sense offer intelligible answers for these things to these questions.  It follows that there can be, therefore, no application of the scientific method to the answering of “what is it?” for them, either.  The lesson we learn here is that just because a question can be posed in terms of what at first glance may appear to be an object of science, we cannot nonetheless allow ourselves to fall into the trap of easily imagining there to be an answer to such a question.  (Space is not a proper object of science!)  We must therefore refrain from imagining there to necessarily be an answer to a question simply because the question can be posed by us.  

 

16.  Gordon Baker et al., The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 483.

 

17.  Traditionally speaking, this sense of definition in which the essence of X is expressed has come to be referred to as “real definition”; this sense of definition makes its first historical appearance, if one will, in the dialogues (conversations) of Socrates as given to us by Plato.  We know who each of Socrates’ conversational partners was in the respective dialogues by the names (titles) which they bear: Hippias, Laches, Lysis, and Meno, for example.  The following passage from Donald R. Morrison presents an excellent evaluation on these points we have made.  In terms of Socrates’ dialogues Morrison writes the following:

 

Socrates steers the conversation by searching for a “definition.”  Socrates asks his conversation partner to give a definition, to “say what courage is” or “what justice is.”  What Socrates wants is not (what we would call) a dictionary definition, telling how the word is typically used, but (what philosophers have come to call) a “real definition,” an account displaying the essential nature of, for example, courage or justice.  In fact our concept “essence” goes back historically to Socrates’ quest for definitions: “the essence of F” is whatever is given by a correct answer to the Socratic question, “What is F?”†

 

†Donald R. Morrison, “Socrates,” in A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, ed. Mary Louise Gill and Peierre Pellegrin (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), p. 110.

 

 

18.  See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), § 126.  On what metaphysics, say, in the form of either essentialism or realism, respectively, does encapsulate, Waismann mentions this: “One populates the world with ethereal essences, namely with things that one thinks one sees behind substantives.  The science of these pseudo-beings might justly be called metaphysics.”  (Gordon Baker et al., p. 485.)

 

19.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), § 371.  The emphasis here is Wittgenstein’s.

 

20.  Gordon Baker et al., The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 483. 

 

21.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), § 133.

 

22.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), § 133.

 

23.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), § 133. 

 

 

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