Saul Kripke - Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein

First published in 1982, Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language contends that the central argument of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations centers on a devastating rule-following paradox that undermines the possibility of our ever following rules in our use of language. Kripke writes that this paradox is "the most radical and original skeptical problem that philosophy has seen to date." (p. 60) Kripke argues that Wittgenstein does not reject the argument that leads to the rule-following paradox, but accepts it and offers a 'skeptical solution' to ameliorate the paradox's destructive effects.

Whilst most commentators accept that the Philosophical Investigations contains the rule-following paradox as Kripke presents it, few have concurred with Kripke when he attributes a skeptical solution to Wittgenstein. It should be noted that Kripke himself expresses doubts in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language as to whether Wittgenstein would endorse his interpretation of the Philosophical Investigations. He says that the work should not be read as an attempt to give an accurate statement of Wittgenstein's views, but rather as an account of Wittgenstein's argument "as it struck Kripke, as it presented a problem for him" (p. 5).

The portmanteau "Kripkenstein" has been coined as a jesting nickname for Kripke's reading of the Philosophical Investigations. The real significance of "Kripkenstein" was to put forward a clear statement of a new kind of skepticism, dubbed "meaning skepticism", which is the idea that for an isolated individual there is no fact in virtue of which he/she means one thing rather than another by the use of a word. Kripke's "skeptical solution" to meaning skepticism is to ground meaning in the behavior of a community.

Kripke's book generated a large secondary literature, divided between those who find his skeptical problem interesting and perceptive, and others, such as Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker, who argue that his meaning skepticism is a pseudo-problem that stems from a confused, selective reading of Wittgenstein. Kripke's position has, however recently been defended against these and other attacks by the Cambridge philosopher Martin Kusch (2006), and Wittgenstein scholar David G. Stern considers the book to be "the most influential and widely discussed" work on Wittgenstein since the 1980s.