Wittgenstein and the subversion of Platonic Reason : by Paa Kweku Quansah

Plato invented Reason as this abstract something which is the ultimate reference point of the actual human practice of giving and accepting reasons. Thus a justified belief or action ceased to be what was ACTUALLY ACCEPTED or COULD BE ACCEPTED by a person or group of persons. Not even what was acceptable to some deity would pass muster. Justification became a question of

correspondence to this abstract entity called "Reason". This correspondence in turn was a matter of avoiding contradiction in one's system of beliefs. Plato's Socrates was notoriously known not to have told people what to believe but to always leave them standing stupified after exposing the contradictions in their propositions. This was famous Socratic Elenchus.

For a long time, philosophers played this game of Reason invented by Plato. They rejected common sense justifications and always posed the question of whether whatever was accepted as reason really corresponded to Reason. And so far as the philosopher had any semblance of authority in the social setting, the basis of this authority seemed mysterious to the ordinary mortal for the philosopher's propositions were always said to be grounded in Reason.

Consider in this respect, Kant's attempt to ground everyday common sense morality in Pure Reason. As Hegel was to point out later, anybody who hoped to derive some actual moral guidance from Kant's moral philosophy would be in for a very terrible disappointment. For again, as Hegel says, Kant offers you a merely formal principle, something to the effect of "avoid self-contradiction in all your actions". Here we see some semblance between Kant's moral imperative and Socrates daimon who always told what to avoid doing and not what to actually do. Indeed Hegel tried to subvert this abstract Platonic Reason. He tried to get Reason back to the context from which first Plato abstracted it and made it into a self-subsisting entity. He tried to get it back into the context of human social relations. But Hegel was still too much of a Platonist to overcome the Grandmaster. In the end everything terminated in the mind of Absolute Reason.

It was the Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who actually got the task done. Of course, I do not speak of the Wittgenstein of the Tractactus for this Wittgenstein, enchanted by the sublimity of formal logic still remained shackled to prison of Abstract Reason ( "A picture held as captive"). But Wittgenstein truly comes into his own in the Investigations. Here, Wittgenstein showed in manner undone before, the origin of Plato's concept of Reason in actual linguistic practices of human societies. He showed its origin in what he famously called "a form of life". Reason is returned from its supposed abode in some metaphysical world to the everyday human world of social interactions. As he puts it " What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use".

Anybody who has read and digested Wittgenstein cannot return unproblematically to the sort of conception of Reason Plato championed. It is as if with Wittgenstein, what began as an abstraction from human life in Plato returns gain into that life. The cycle has been completed. I should like to end with the fine words of the American philosopher Richard Rorty, an ardent student of Wittgenstein. Concerning Wittgenstein, Rorty wrote " We philosophy professors are lucky that one of the great writers of the century came among us and left behind a description of our habits which we might never have formulated for ourselves" ====================

my rebuttal:

I suppose I can support what I just read as conceptually sound. But what is the point or better inferred: what am I suppose to be thinking here as result. I read that Wittgenstein was a great philosopher that created his his own aversion of what is reason - into dietetical theory. (This can only be a fact.) Platonic reason is not something we inadvertently seek, because it dominates Westernized frame of thought, debunking, deduction etc. - All of this. So, what point I make herein relates to the dichotomy we live in a dominate view of (1) plutocracy (2) follows that Socratic philosophy is far from mastered in everyday westernized way of life (3) philosophy (truth itself) is fundamental to Witt~ regardless of the deviations we encounter as philosopher's or not! (Truth is a pathless land.) Aristotelean metaphysics would agree with my view, that dialectically speaking poetics is the force behind our causes. And acting as identical beings that master the art of thinking into equal parts or what is presented in such a word for word. This follows: the aspect from which we articulate meaning are metaphorically; ideas. Therefore, ideas govern our philosophical pursuits so much that reason instructs why we express into language is anything that can be taken from what's useful or apart from what is useful.

My conclusion to what I learned reading your dissertation is this: that no matter the philosophical inquisition as it associates to dialect. That Wittgenstein gave us. Then, we formulate rules from which we look deeper into ourselves? This question posits a inferential way of examination, observation, and ultimately our psychological impulses. If what I say in relation to your dissertation, all of it is a laboratory of thought experiments on a spin cycle. = This is my view of doing philosophy. Whether you can adapt to my views. Wittgenstein could be read 20 years from what we discussed and only be understood for what it is, only than based on this query.

My second point here is: most philosopher's are not the same. They would outright reject my views, but maybe only because my use of language seems to oscillate or obfuscate. Not my fault. There is substance to be had. I have had philosophy professors that dismissed me because of this type of jealousy.

- Marco