1. science
2. social science
3. philosophy

i s s u e No. 1, 2015
Jens Pier
THE ‘I’ AND THE ‘WE’
WITTGENSTEIN, STRAWSON, AND THE WAY BACK TO HEGEL
Jens Pier (Bonn)
Abstract
In light of the Cartesian paradigm of methodological solipsism, the philosophical
conceptualizations of the subject in modern times have been bestowed with a series of
innovations and merits, yet at the same time with equally essential inconsistencies and
flaws. The 20th century’s reactions towards the traditional Cartesian concept of the
autonomous ego mostly embrace highly skeptical outlooks and criticize the
corresponding notion of personal identity, the most prominent strands being poststructuralist and behaviorist interpretations. The present approach tries to outline the
difficulties both of said paradigm and its deconstructive critics and expounds an
alternative constituted of the means of normal language philosophy provided by
Wittgenstein and Strawson as well as of transcendental considerations first delivered by
Hegel and reintroduced by the former two. The aim is to show the systematic and
constitutive connections between the subject and the social space of interaction and
thus to illuminate the conditions of subjectivity found within the intersubjective sphere.
1. Introduction
The question of personal identity and the subject is one which, in modern
philosophy, has been answered in many diverging and, often, revolutionarily new
ways. The 20th century saw itself confronted with as many skeptical takes on the
concept of the subject as never before. In terms of the line customarily drawn in said
period between continental and analytic philosophy, a general tendency seems to
be eminent in equal measure on both sides: the concept of the autonomous subject
is questioned rigorously. The sometimes so-called ‘death of the subject’ is often
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summarized in the words of Foucault who believes it to be the mere product of
social mechanisms of power and suppression and thus deems its autonomy
illusionary and its whole very concept on the edge of being “erased, like a face
drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.”1 Nevertheless, deconstructive criticisms
analogous in scope, if not in their reasoning and motivation, can be found in
classical analytic writings as well: The criticism of any sort of ‘soul’-conception of the
subject, i.e. the notion of some metaphysical substance individuated in a physical
body, causes many analytic stances to embrace some form of behaviorism instead
and reduce what constitutes the personal viewpoint of the subject to questions of
behavior and thus ultimately to physically describable phenomena.2
I will argue for the view that firstly, both those influential approaches to the
problem of personal identity represent a misguided reaction, viz. an overreaction, to
what might be called the Cartesian paradigm, which I will shortly summarize below.
Secondly, said paradigm as well as the reductionist reactions to it can be overcome
by a different strand of thought which demonstrates the flaws and failures of both
and draws a more consistent and adequate picture. This stance encompasses merits
from thinkers initially quite different in their historical and systematic background
and thus, at least in part, overcomes the mentioned and in many ways antiquated
dichotomy between so-called continental and analytic philosophy. The thinkers
which I mainly want to cite here are Strawson and Wittgenstein, and I attempt to
show that the achievements of these two thinkers point all the way back to Hegel’s
philosophy and thus to current analytical philosophy’s heritage of German idealism.
All three philosophers bring forth innovations which can be integrated in the
approach envisioned here, though they use different methods which in the end
M. Foucault: The Order of Things. London/New York 2002, p. 422.
Thomas Nagel gives a selective overview on corresponding reductionist views at the beginning of
his argument for a reintegration of the personal viewpoint, cf. T. Nagel: What Is It Like To Be A Bat?,
in: The Philosophical Review 4 (1974), pp. 435-450.
1
2
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Jens Pier
complement
one
another.
In
each
instance,
the
theoretical
means
for
conceptualizing the subject are closely connected to the epistemological or
semantic assertions (which, as we shall see, entail one another) the respective thinker
espouses, and therefore also render the epistemological strand of Cartesianism, i.e.
the distinct border between the subject and the world, obsolete or, at best, dubious.
In terms of reconstruction, I will start by examining the relevant aspects of
Wittgenstein’s philosophy. That is mainly because, as is often claimed, Wittgenstein
has indeed set a bar with his philosophy which in many respects must be recognized
and dealt with in order to avoid the numerous misconceptions and confusions he
has rightly identified. However, this introduces a form of quietism into Wittgenstein’s
work which prevents him from delivering systematic accounts on several important
problems – one of them being personal identity.3 In this way, the benefits and
results of Wittgenstein’s philosophy lead to Strawson who has developed a theory of
persons as ‘basic particulars’ within our conceptual scheme. His main points, in turn,
revive Hegel’s theory of the subject which at its heart is based on the concept of
recognition. All three approaches point towards the interconnection of our lingual
and conceptual framework and the corresponding parameters and capacities on the
one hand and our subjectivity and identity as a person on the other – and this
framework, in turn, has a constitutive social dimension. There is hence a conceptual
connection of the individual subject to an intersubjective social space which is, in the
Kantian sense, the transcendental condition of possibility for both the subject and
the epistemic claims she can put forth.
Although it can be argued that this is precisely the point of Wittgenstein’s radical reenvisioning of
the philosopher’s task, this exegetical question cannot be tackled here. I assume that in any case, it is
necessary to transcend the framework Wittgenstein has set himself in order to react to certain aspects
of personal identity and the subject which he evaded.
3
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2. The Cartesian paradigm
A deeply-rooted and defining, yet – as remains to be shown – essentially misguided
paradigm of modern philosophy is what is often called methodological solipsism. It
is a view characterized by the assumption that, in order to achieve a foundation for
any sort of insight, it is possible, advisable or even necessary to withdraw the
perceiving subject from the outer world (social and material) and thus gain
somewhat of an ‘archimedean point’. It was famously introduced by René Descartes
whose basic claim is that ‘first knowledge’ is to be gained by introspection and
skepticism about everything else. Employing arguments on the doubtfulness of
sense impressions and the ever-present possibility of dreaming in the very moment
of seeming certainty about one’s observations, Descartes concludes that other living
beings and the ‘external world’ in general are burdened with fundamental doubt.4
The human mind, on the other hand, seemingly offers the certainty he aims at: While
its connection to a physical body is as uncertain as the existence of the physical
world in general, the thinking and doubting mind remains, which Descartes
expresses in the famous phrase that “this proposition, ‘I am, I exist’, whenever it is
uttered by me, or conceived in the mind, is necessarily true.”5 The corresponding
distinction Descartes draws lies between the res extensa, thus any extensive body,
and the res cogitans, that which has become known as the Cartesian ego and which
is necessarily un-extensive and possesses the capacity to think. Descartes himself
summarizes:
4
5
Cf. R. Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy. Oxford/New York 2008, pp. 13-17.
Ibid., p. 18.
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Jens Pier
I am now admitting nothing except what is necessarily true: I am therefore,
speaking precisely, only a thinking thing, that is, a mind, or a soul, or an
intellect, or a reason – words the meaning of which was previously
unknown to me. I am therefore a true thing, and one that truly exists; but
what kind of thing? I have said it already: one that thinks.6
He subsequently goes a long way in trying to proof the existence of an external
world which is not of much interest here; however, the solipsistic paradigm set by
these considerations has proven to be highly influential – it is the line drawn
between the thinking, perceiving subject (that which is certain, self-sufficient and
superordinate) and the outer world (that which is doubtful and to which access has
to be achieved, supposedly through efforts and aches, by the sole, isolated mind).
This notion arguably lies at the heart of schools of thought as different as Cartesian
rationalism, classic empiricism and its reliance on ‘sense data’, and the so-called
‘common sense philosophy’ having arisen from the assumptions above, to name
only a few.7 Thomas Hobbes, who bases his whole social ontology and theory of the
state on the solipsist paradigm, delivers one of its catchiest formulations: “Let us […]
consider men as if but even now sprung out of the earth, and suddenly (like
mushrooms) come to full maturity, without all kind of engagement to each other.”8
The two codependent claims that epistemologically speaking, the world remains
uncertain and that, in terms of the theory of self-consciousness, the subject is what is
antecedently self-sufficient and fully-formed, are what provokes many objections
until the present day, many of which commit fallacies by buying into one or several
of the implicit conditions set in the Cartesian paradigm. I will now try and shed some
light on the lessons to be taken from Wittgenstein, Strawson and Hegel here.
Ibid., pp. 19-20.
For a concise overview cf. E. Tugendhat: Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination. Cambridge,
Mass./London 1986, pp. 78-80.
8
T. Hobbes: De Cive or The Citizen. New York 1949, p. 100.
6
7
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3. Wittgenstein: The Grammar of Subjectivity
Right at the beginning of his famous ‘Private Language Argument’, one of his most
important reflections with regard to the nature of the individual subject,
Wittgenstein gives a harsh reply to his opponent’s claim that only he himself could
know about his own mental states and sensations, using the example of pain: “In
one way this is false, and in another nonsense. […] It can’t be said of me at all
(except perhaps as a joke) that I know I’m in pain. What is it supposed to mean –
except perhaps that I am in pain?”9 He does not, in the course of the argument, give
a detailed explanation of this restrictive conception of knowledge. While his
extensive elaborations on this question in another of his works will serve as the final
keystone in order to understand his thoughts on individuality and the ‘I’, for the
moment the remark above shall serve as an indicative and illuminating first glance at
Wittgenstein’s strong rejection of the Cartesian paradigm: The mental and allegedly
‘private’ impressions and mental episodes of the subject are not to be taken as an
exclusive, primary form of knowledge from which to start; on the contrary – to state
this would be to talk nonsense. The insistence of Wittgenstein’s interlocutor –
representative of the Cartesian epistemologist and theorist of the subject – on the
exclusiveness of the self and its contents echo in his exclamation: “But surely
another person can’t have this pain!”10 Wittgenstein’s answer that “one does not
define a criterion of identity by emphatically enunciating the word ‘this’”11 points
towards the argument’s main point: the notion of a private language is, although
virtually never explicitly espoused or even formulated in philosophy, crucial to a
conception of the subject as Descartes envisions it (and, for that matter, numerous
L. Wittgenstein: Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations. Malden, Mass./Oxford
2009, p. 95 f. (§ 246) [hereafter cited as PI]. All subsequent quotations from the Investigations will
refer to the English translation of the respective sections.
10
PI, p. 97 (§ 253).
11
Ibid.
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Jens Pier
other modern philosophers, some of whom are in flat contradiction to him in many
respects). If the subject is able to introspectively gain primary insight and knowledge
‘without all kind of engagement’ to other subjects or the world on the whole, her
assertions would still have to be formulated in some intelligible way, if only to
herself. But what would the criterion of success for such a way of formulating be?
Wittgenstein’s opponent, convinced of the subject’s metaphysical autonomy in
the Cartesian sense, claims that there is the possibility of a private language: “The
words of this language are to refer to what only the speaker can know – to his
immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the
language.”12 To discuss this notion, Wittgenstein enters into a scenario in which the
private linguist keeps a diary about a recurring sensation of which he had no former
knowledge nor, naturally, a concept in the ordinary, public language. To the
objection that for this reason, the sign’s definition cannot even be formulated, the
opponent replies: “But all the same, I can give one to myself as a kind of ostensive
definition!”, which Wittgenstein answers with the question “How? Can I point to the
sensation?”13 The ensuing dialogue contains the, often misread, core of the private
language argument:
Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the
same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation – and so, as it were,
point to it inwardly. – But what is this ceremony for? For that is all it seems
to be! A definition serves to lay down the meaning of a sign, doesn’t it? –
Well, that is done precisely by concentrating my attention; for in this way I
commit to memory the connection between the sign and the sensation. –
But ‘I commit it to memory’ can only mean: this process brings it about
that I remember the connection correctly in the future. But in the present
case, I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is
going to seem correct to me is correct. And that only means that here we
can’t talk about ‘correct’.14
PI, p. 95 (§ 243).
PI, p. 98 (§ 258).
14
PI, p. 98 f. (§ 258).
12
13
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The point of the assertion that the private linguist finds himself in lack of a criterion is
not that he cannot trust his memory: That would be to state that his attempted
‘ostensive definition’ of the sign for his sensation is a success, but that subsequently,
he finds himself in peril whenever he wants to remember whether it was precisely
this sensation he is seeking to reidentify. But this is not the case; rather, the whole
process of defining a term ostensively already requires a certain set of lingual rules
and other terms.15 Otherwise, all the parts of language other than nouns – such as
verbs and adjectives, but also exclamations, gestures, actions etc. – drop out of the
picture: These are viewed by representationalists as secondary components and thus
“something that will take care of itself”16, whereas Wittgenstein shows that they play
a pivotal role in the practice of ostensive definition and can neither be left out nor
replaced by a solitary ‘inner monologue’ – this kind of soliloquy rests on public
language as well.17 This means that, whenever the private linguist attempts to, as he
says, ‘concentrate his attention on the sensation and point to it inwardly’, he has to
fail – even if he reidentifies the sensation correctly every time he will still not have a
criterion concerning the correct usage of his newly-introduced term: “As if someone
were to buy several copies of today’s morning paper to assure himself that what it
said was true.”18 Anthony Kenny, who first demonstrated this crucial difference in
Wittgenstein’s argumentation from an approach embracing memory skepticism,
clarifies that using mental episodes as the method of determining whether one talks
about other mental episodes in a sensible manner is indeed “fairly compared to
purchasing two copies of the same newspaper, and not just, say, to purchasing two
different newspapers owned by the same untrustworthy magnate.”19
Cf. PI, pp. 7-21 (§§ 6-35). Wittgenstein subsequently asserts that memory is in principle reliable, cf.
PI, pp. 125-126 (§ 386).
16
PI, p. 5 (§ 1).
17
Cf. PI, p. 99 (§ 261).
18
PI, p. 100 (§ 265).
19
A. Kenny: Wittgenstein. Oxford 2006, p. 152 (my emphasis).
15
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The implementation of the rule-governed use of words as the criterion for lingual
competence is Wittgenstein’s essential point against representationalism, the idea
that said competence only measures itself in terms of whether the speaker can
associate terms and objects correctly. In terms of subjectivity, Wittgenstein shows
that both Cartesian mentalism and behaviorism fall into this trap, either by trying to
apply egological vocabulary to ‘the inner self’ or to ‘the outer behavior’.20
Instead, he offers a different way of grasping self-reference and selfidentification: We need to analyze and understand “the peculiar grammar of the
word ‘I’, and the misunderstandings this grammar is liable to give rise to”21 in order
to gain a clear outlook on the phenomenon of subjectivity. According to
Wittgenstein, there are two lingual uses of the word ‘I’ which, when confused, serve
as one of the major causes of philosophical confusion: the “use as object” and the
“use as subject”22. Whereas the former is exemplified in phrases like ‘I have grown
six inches’, ‘I have a bump on my forehead’ and so forth, instances of the latter are ‘I
see so-and-so’, ‘I try to lift up my arm’ or ‘I think it will rain’. It is evident that a
Cartesian is especially interested in the second class and deems the infallibility of
the respective sentences as the qualifying factor for them to be ‘first knowledge’,
but Wittgenstein strongly objects: they cannot be said to be knowledge precisely
because of their infallibility. As he emphasizes in a similar context, “Whether I know
something depends on whether the evidence backs me up or contradicts me.”23 To
think that this would be the case with propositions concerning the immediate mental
episodes expressed in subject use sentences would be to confuse it with the object
use: Here, the respective language game necessarily involves “the recognition of a
Cf. H. Sluga: ‘Whose house is that?‘ Wittgenstein and the self, in: Id./D.G. Stern (eds.), The
Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein. Cambridge 1996, pp. 320-353, pp. 338-342.
21
L. Wittgenstein: The Blue Book, in: Id., The Blue and Brown Books. Malden, Mass./Oxford 1958,
pp. 1-74, p. 66 [hereafter cited as BB].
22
BB, p. 66.
23
L. Wittgenstein: On Certainty. Malden, Mass./Oxford 1969, p. 66 (§ 504) [hereafter cited as OC].
20
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particular person, and there is in these cases the possibility of error”24, i.e. the
criterion is once more identification – but for this, what has to be provided is what
Wittgenstein calls the ‘common space’. This is precisely where sentences employing
the subject use can be applied in the first place and thus gain sense: an otherwise
nonsensical sentence like “’I am here’, to make sense, must attract attention to a
place in common space.”25 The differences in grammar are therefore precisely that
and nothing more – they resolve the Cartesian ontological distinction between mind
and body into a grammatical question and assert the unity of the person. They
consist in the differing use we can make of the word ‘I’ and point towards one of the
central lessons of the private language argument: That the reference to inner
episodes is, in one way or the other, linked to reference to other subjects, to their
behavior, and to the multiple ways in which the subject’s mental contents are linked
to outer criteria such as the social world, but also the place she herself holds as an
agent within the space constituted by her and others. Wittgenstein’s succinct credo,
given in another discussion of attitudes towards the world, is therefore: “To have an
opinion is a state. – A state of what? Of the soul? Of the mind? Well, what does one
say has an opinion? Mr N.N., for example. And that is the correct answer.”26 If, on
the contrary, one confuses the grammatical conditions of self-reference and selfidentification, the fundamental Cartesian mistake is bound to occur: The thinker
takes herself to identify something, though nothing corporal, “and this creates the
illusion that we […] refer to something bodiless, which, however, has its seat in our
body. In fact this seems to be the real ego, the one of which it was said, ‘Cogito,
ergo sum’.”27
BB, p. 67.
BB, p. 72.
26
PI, p. 160 (§ 573).
27
BB, p. 69.
24
25
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Mental episodes expressed in sentences employing the subject use of ‘I’ are
therefore rather a starting point and basic constituents of our language games, and
the fact that they are infallible is irrelevant: Firstly, it does not prove anything – “it is
not one of the hazards of the [pinball] game that the balls should fail to come up if I
have put a penny in the slot.”28 Secondly, the opposite would simply be nonsense,
which makes the claim for them to be knowledge superfluous at best: “To ask ‘are
you sure that it’s you who have pains?’ would be nonsensical. Now, when in this case
no error is possible, it is because the move which we might be inclined to think of as
an error, a ‘bad move’, is no move of the game at all.”29
I therefore offer that, should we accept Wittgenstein’s reasoning and take him
seriously, a first consequence for our treatment of the subject and her episodes is
that the latter cannot be said to be genuine knowledge, but something equally more
basic and more ineffable: They constitute the borders of the board on which we play
our language games, and in this sense, they are essential, but at the same time can
never qualify as knowledge in the sense of it that we are prepared to ascribe to a
proposition due to the very grammar of our language. They play the exact role that
David Pears ascribes to epistemic claims about that grammatical structure which was
so basic for the earlier Wittgenstein and the Tractatus: “We can see all the way to
the edge of language, but the most distant things that we can see cannot be
expressed in sentences because they are the pre-conditions of saying anything.”30
Wittgenstein, however, fails to deliver a clear perspective on how exactly these
components of the mental life of the subject relate to the public space and the
constitutive function it has on language and thus on the necessary conditions for
BB, p. 67.
BB, p. 67 (last emphasis added by the author).
30
D. Pears: The False Prison. Oxford 1987, p. 147.
28
29
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knowledge of any kind.31 He elaborated on these conditions of knowledge
extensively in his last work On Certainty, whose project is to establish a vital trait of
our language that also extends to self-relations (via the paramount importance of
self-identification rather than mere self-reference, which happens, as we saw, by
default):
All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place
already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and
doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the
essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point
of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.32
He offers many different terms and images for this system or life element. Some of
the most fitting and significant are certainly the descriptions of a ‘frame of
reference’, a ‘riverbed’, or a ‘scaffolding’ for our propositions, actions and epistemic
claims,33 of a ‘rotation axis’ around which they circulate,34 or of ‘hinges’ on which all
our propositions, but also our questions and doubts turn.35 All of these images rest
on the notion that there are propositions which are “exempt from doubt”36.
However, as is mostly the case in Wittgenstein’s writings, his suspicion of extensive
philosophical inquiry to lead into nonsense causes him to leave out a clear answer to
the questions what constitutes the most fundamental components of this system and
how they relate to the subject and its mental states and episodes. He once suggests
that an individual’s thoughts and views about herself and the world are somehow
Hans Sluga suggests that for Wittgenstein, the answer to this problem lies in its practical resolution,
i.e. in finding a way of life contemplating the questions one can address in language and therefore
find satisfactory replies to (cf. H. Sluga 1996, pp. 342-345). This interpretation is quite in line with
Wittgenstein’s quietist traits and seems to further stress the need for transcending his philosophical
framework if one is not content with a stance as modest as his.
32
OC, p. 16 (§ 105).
33
Cf. OC, p. 12 (§ 83), p. 15 (§§ 96-99), p. 29 (§ 211).
34
Cf. OC, p. 22 (§ 152).
35
Cf. OC, p. 44 (§§ 341-343), p. 87 (§ 655).
36
OC, p. 44 (§ 341).
31
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tied to our lingual practice in order to be determinate;37 and with respect to what
lies at the core of the lingual system postulates at one point that “the foundation of
all operating with thoughts (with language)” is formed by “propositions of logic”
and “statements about material objects”38.
Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the interconnection between the subject’s mental
states and her self-identification, his whole transcendental approach to the
conditions of knowledge, and especially the last two considerations position him
close to Peter F. Strawson who, in many respects, delivers the systematic formulation
of several of Wittgenstein’s thoughts and insights which he himself shied away from.
4. Strawson: The Concept of a Person
The conception that Strawson puts forth as his philosophical method is summarized
by himself as descriptive metaphysics. He distinguishes it from traditional or, as he
calls it, revisionary metaphysics and the far-reaching and often problematic
implications it bears. The task set for the discipline of descriptive metaphysics is “to
describe the actual structure of our thought about the world, [whereas] revisionary
metaphysics is concerned to produce a better structure.”39 Strawson sets out in
doing this by explicitly acknowledging the merits and standards established by
Wittgenstein and the paramount importance of ordinary language empirically
spoken; he calls the corresponding axiom in tackling philosophical problems of
various kinds the ‘principle of tolerance’: The understanding of a concept has thus
always to take into account that concept’s “applications […] as forming a family, the
members of which may, perhaps, be grouped around a central paradigm case and
Cf. OC, p. 45 (§ 350).
OC, p. 51 (§§ 401-402).
39
P.F. Strawson: Individuals. London/New York 2005, p. 9.
37
38
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linked with the latter by various direct or indirect links of logical connexion or
analogy.”40
His core hypothesis is one that Wittgenstein seems to tacitly embrace in the
concluding quotations above, yet never fully formulates or expounds:
[T]here is a massive central core of human thinking which has no history –
or none recorded in histories of thought; there are categories and
concepts which, in their most fundamental character, change not at all.
Obviously these are not the specialities of the most refined thinking. They
are the commonplaces of the least refined thinking; and are yet the
indispensable core of the conceptual equipment of the most sophisticated
human beings.41
The task to discern these core elements of our thought about the world is thus
indeed a systematic approach – maintaining caution concerning traditional
metaphysics – to the task that Wittgenstein himself poses for his way of
philosophizing: “When philosophers use a word […], one must always ask oneself: is
the word ever actually used in this way in the language in which it is at home? –
What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.”42
Strawson’s enterprise to formulate a transcendental argument about the necessary
conditions and characteristics of our thinking and talking qualifies his approach as a
response to crucial problems raised by Wittgenstein’s reflections.43 It is this
transcendental perspective which leads to Strawson’s conception of the subject
which, in turn, just as his thoughts on our access to the world, yields an account
superior to the Cartesian one.
Ibid., p. 11.
Ibid., p. 10.
42
PI, p. 53 (§ 116).
43
For Peter F. Strawson’s description of his transcendental approach cf. P.F. Strawson: Individuals,
op. cit., p. 40. For his integration of Wittgenstein’s points from On Certainty into a respective
transcendental argument, cf. P.F. Strawson: Skepticism, Naturalism and Transcendental Arguments,
in: Id., Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. New York 1985, pp. 1-29, pp. 14-17.
40
41
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Strawson’s approach is thus one which encompasses many of the merits
Wittgenstein and the ‘linguistic turn’ have achieved and which, at the same time,
incorporates crucial elements that Kant and the thinkers of German idealism have
built their respective philosophical systems on. As he puts it, the general line of
thought he espouses is as follows:
We could not talk to one another about the private if we could not talk to
one another about the public. We could not talk unless we could talk to
one another. Above, at any rate, a very rudimentary level, the limits of
thought are the limits of language; or ‘what we can’t say we can’t think’.
Finally, there is no experience worth the name, certainly no knowledge,
without concepts, without thoughts.44
As he himself readily admits, this description only serves as a summary and thus
oversimplifies certain aspects of the schools of thought he draws from; the important
aspect, though, is this: What we can claim to be knowledge, either about ourselves
or about the world surrounding us, is established within our conceptual scheme.45 In
accordance with ordinary language philosophy’s axiom, he begins his investigation
by a description of the actual scheme we employ in everyday use, so as to advance
towards determining its necessary elements. This conceptual scheme is first of all
defined by our thinking of the world as “containing particular things some of which
are independent of ourselves”, and of its history as “made up of particular episodes
in which we may or may not have a part; and we think of these particular things and
Strawson 2005, p. 68.
This notion is widely considered one of analytic philosophy’s most important rediscoveries of
German idealistic thought and has been formulated by several thinkers in the middle of the 20th
century. It is often seen as the decisive step towards ‘post-positivistic’ analytic philosophy which
transcends the narrow and often rather naïve axioms of its beginnings, e.g. in logical positivism.
Another important strand can be found in the Pittsburgh School’s notion of the space of reasons, first
established by Wilfrid Sellars. Cf. W. Sellars: Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge,
Mass./London 1997, pp. 68-79. For a concise history of important innovations within post-positivist
thought cf. Richard Rorty’s introduction, ibid., pp. 1-12.
44
45
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The ‘I’ and the ‘We’
events as included in the topics of our common discourse”46. These elements, which
he calls particulars for short – and which include, among others, “historical
occurrences, material objects, people and their shadows; [but not] qualities and
properties, numbers and species”47 – are thus characterized by the possibility to be
identified by a hearer in discourse if a speaker refers to them. That possibility is
therefore the condition of its inclusion into our scheme and, what is more, it is “a
necessary condition of the inclusion of [the respective particular’s] type in our
ontology.”48 This notion is a transcendental one in that it outlines the conditions of
any possible ascription of existence to a type of particulars. It also echoes
Wittgenstein’s understanding of our ‘frame of reference’ which makes possible the
formulation of propositions in the first place. Concerning such a proposition, one
might ask whether it “agree[s] with reality, with the facts”; but “[w]ith this question
you are already going round in a circle.”49
Strawson goes on to establish two more essential traits of our conceptual
scheme: Firstly, the necessary acceptance of the notion of the particulars’
perseverance over time in order to reidentify them.50 This is due to the fact that a
category or type of particulars can only be a consistent notion if they do not
undergo steady, large-scale change prohibiting any classification whatsoever. This
means, secondly, that our conceptual scheme can now be put in fairly more
concrete terms: It necessarily contains “the idea of a single spatio-temporal system
of material things; the idea of every material thing at any time being spatially
related, in various ways at various times, to every other at every time.”51
Strawson 2005, p. 15.
Ibid.
48
Ibid., p. 16 (my emphasis).
49
OC, p. 26 (§ 191).
50
Cf. Strawson 2005, pp. 31-34.
51
Cf. ibid., p. 35.
46
47
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Jens Pier
The consequence of this reasoning is that material bodies obviously have an
accentuated status. Strawson describes them as the first class of basic particulars,
which is to say that they, unlike events or places for instance, can be identified and
reidentified with reference to objects of their category only.52 What is already
implicitly stated here, namely the inconsistence of a purely solipsistic consciousness,
is elaborated by Strawson broadly in his experimental attempt to conceive of an
‘alternate’ conceptual scheme in which the spatial paradigms of our own do not exist
(the scenario involves a conception of a purely auditory world without extension):
Here, the identification and thus cognition of anything cannot be envisioned since
the whole notion of either a particular to be identified or of an identifying subject
remains, at best, dubious.53 For how should the ‘true solipsist’ proceed here? “He
certainly would not think that everything particular which existed was himself or a
state of himself. […] [He] simply has no use for the distinction between himself and
what is not himself.”54 The hypothetical theorist advancing a theory like the one
above would, in the end, have to resort to employing increasingly bizarre analogies
to the processes of identification, both of outer particulars and oneself, and of
factors like movement, persistence etc. that constitute the spatio-temporal
framework of our actual conceptual scheme – which, in a way, serves as another
confirmation for its constitutive function for our thinking and reasoning. These
preliminary thoughts on the thinking and perceiving subject lead Strawson to his
conceptualization of it as a person.
The issue of solipsism is one which, under the conditions of the conceptual
scheme envisioned by Strawson, is already very much in doubt. Still he notes that it
is not resolved as yet: The question remaining is primarily why states of
consciousness are ascribed to the kind of thing “which has certain corporeal
Cf. ibid., pp. 53-56.
Cf. ibid., p. 73.
54
Ibid.
52
53
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characteristics, a certain physical situation”, and which we usually call a person.55 The
Cartesian distinction between the res cogitans and the res extensa collapses here:
Strawson deduces two fundamental factors in the identification of persons and
subsequent ascription of mental episodes. Firstly, regarding the identification of
others:
Now one thing here is certain: that if the things one ascribes consciousness
to, in ascribing them to others, are thought of as a set of Cartesian egos to
which only private experiences can, in correct logical grammar be
ascribed, then this question is unanswerable and this problem insoluble.56
A Cartesian thinker could object here that this was precisely the point of the first two
Meditations: to demonstrate how only knowledge about oneself can be regarded as
certain and thus as true knowledge. But, as we have seen above, that very
conception runs into a self-contradiction as it would either fail to give the
discriminatory criterion of what that ‘self’, ego, or res cogitans actually is, or have to
resort to analogies to our own conceptual scheme. Thus, with regard to the
identification of oneself, the Cartesian theory hits a dead end:
If, in identifying the things to which states of consciousness are to be
ascribed, private experiences are to be all one has to go on, then, for the
very same reason as that for which there is, from one’s own point of view,
no question of telling that a private experience is one’s own, there is also
no question of telling that a private experience is another’s. All private
experiences, all states of consciousness, will be mine, i.e. no one’s.57
This leads to Strawson’s all-decisive argument: If a single or a plurality of isolated,
introspecting Cartesian egos cannot possibly render an intelligible way in which an
individual subject can be identified, then a simple consequence arises – “that it is a
necessary condition of one’s ascribing states of consciousness, experiences, to
Cf. ibid., p. 90.
Ibid., p. 100.
57
Ibid. (my emphasis).
55
56
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Jens Pier
oneself, in the way one does, that one should also ascribe them, or be prepared to
ascribe them, to others who are not oneself.”58 This ascription, of course, is
something entirely different from the immediate occurrence of the discussed states
of consciousness: It is instead tied to successfully identifying oneself as a person and
thus logically necessary for the constitution of a unified subject. That this takes place
not only within a social world (i.e. in some form of correspondence and mutual
ascription with other subjects) but within the spatio-temporal world constitutive for
our conceptual scheme arises analytically from the constellation of the subject, the
conceptual scheme, and the properties of identification and ascription. Therefore,
the identification of oneself is tied to discriminating one’s own body from those of
others, and to acknowledge that both aspects, states of consciousness and
corporeal aspects, are inseparably unified within the concept of a person. Strawson
calls this the ‘primitiveness’ of said concept and concludes: “The concept of a
person is logically prior to that of an individual consciousness. The concept of a
person is not to be analysed as that of an animated body or of an embodied
anima.”59
5. Back to Hegel: Recognition and the Subject
As already said, Strawson delivers a theory of our access to the world, our access to
ourselves, and the conceptual connection between them which, in many ways,
serves as the systematic formulation of Wittgenstein’s essential insights into the
questions surrounding our subjectivity and its correlation with the world. He
illuminates the precise character of the differing grammar in which the ‘I’ can be
expressed: It is, once more, not an ontological difference, but a difference in the
58
59
Ibid., p. 99 (my emphasis).
Ibid., p. 103.
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The ‘I’ and the ‘We’
way we use our language to express, identify and refer to ourselves. The subject,
envisioned as a person in Strawson’s sense, on the other hand, is a unified entity,
and not a ‘soul’, as Cartesian dualism supposes, nor an ‘acting and observable
body’, as materialist behaviorism keeps on asserting. Both cases rest on a confusion
of the grammar of subjectivity which, although it can significantly differ due to the
circumstances in which the speaking subject wants to act in a certain way with her
words, still retains a unifying element: This is precisely the conceptual framework in
which all of these assertions, claims, actions etc. take place, as Wittgenstein stresses
in his reflections in On Certainty. Strawson gives an account of how this framework
can be analyzed in order to see clearly its indispensable, necessary conditions and
components and elaborates a point Wittgenstein himself only hints at in passing:
The identification and reidentification of particular things which has to be a given
possibility in order to start and make sense of the world and recognize anything as
existing and persevering.
All of these considerations have their starting point in the ordinary language and
its functions. But this also means something more: Since a) it is the essentially social
language, spoken in the intersubjective sphere in which the subject is positioned
and in which she formulates all her claims about herself, others, and the world, and it
is only this language which gives her the criteria for the correct use of expressions,
even when referring to her inner episodes; and since b) the ascription of mental
episodes, therefore the identification of persons, and therefore the logical
conditions of identifying herself as a subject are necessarily embedded within the
social language as well; it follows that the precondition for subjectivity on the whole
is a social one. This insight leads right back to Hegel who, in his Phenomenology of
Spirit, delivers his theory of recognition for the parameters of the subject.
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Hegel’s fundamental insight is just the same as Strawson’s, although he reaches
it through his dialectical method of intrinsically retracing the theoretical steps of
rivaling approaches, then dissolving them, and thus aiming for absolute
knowledge.60 On this path, the self-conscious subject plays the key role between the
first, inferior forms of knowledge that Hegel follows through and the essential term
of his philosophy, the spirit. After having reenacted the epistemic processes of naïve
realism about immediate sensations, then the classical form of empiricism and
subsequently more sophisticated ways of science, each representative of more
elaborate conceptions both of solipsistic consciousness and of its access to the
world, Hegel points out that none, however, can give the sort of access as
envisioned in the first claim to knowledge and which the other two try to achieve by
‘elaborating’ its outset. Instead, all knowledge is necessarily conceptual, which
means that even the sophisticated scientific consciousness can only gain from the
world what it has already invested into it terminologically – Hegel gives the
memorable name “self-satisfaction” to this enterprise: “communing directly with
itself, enjoying only itself; although it seems to be busy with something else, it is in
fact occupied only with itself.”61
Hegel’s logical argument for the internal relation of the subject, so far only
envisioned as consciousness, to intersubjectivity and therefore self-consciousness,
starts with the conclusion that, in its isolated form as envisioned so far, the subject is
no more than “the motionless tautology of: I am I”62. The factor which makes the
subject what it actually is – actual satisfaction, rather than its pseudo-correlate selfsatisfaction – is its self-demarcation vis-à-vis another subject, i.e. recognition: “Selfconsciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.”63 Hegel
Cf. G. W. F. Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford/New York 1977, p. 57.
Ibid., p. 101.
62
Ibid., p. 105.
63
Ibid., p. 110.
60
61
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The ‘I’ and the ‘We’
gives an elaborate and abstract account of the logical structure of recognition and
its “three moments” in which the subject and its counterpart go through several
stages of ascribing oneself and the other cognitive qualities and finding them in
oneself and the other respectively, whereby in the end both become independent
subjects and go from “the pure undifferentiated ‘I’” to “a living selfconsciousness”64. Subjectivity is therefore tied to intersubjectivity just as is the case
vice versa: “A self-consciousness exists for a self-consciousness. Only so is it in fact
self-consciousness; for only in this way does the unity of itself in its otherness
become explicit for it.”65 Hegel’s theory of the subject neither denies it nor does it
ignore its social ties. “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact
that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged.”66 The
process of recognition can thus be summed up as follows:
Each [self-consciousness] is for the other the middle term, through which
each mediates itself with itself and unites with itself; and each is for itself,
and for the other, an immediate being on its own account, which at the
same time is such only through this mediation. They recognize themselves
as mutually recognizing one another.67
What Strawson, by means of the methods and axioms provided by Wittgenstein’s
philosophy, actually puts forth is thus one of Hegel’s key insights too: the paramount
importance of the social space for the subjectivity of its elements – i.e., persons.
Successful self-identification, which is in turn the precise result of Hegel’s process of
recognition, is logically tied to that sphere in which the ‘I’ can realize itself in the first
place. Furthermore, if we take the results offered by Wittgenstein and Strawson
seriously, we have to include into this picture the fact that the conceptual framework
which provides the means for the processes of recognition and identification is in
Ibid.
Ibid.
66
Ibid., p. 111.
67
Ibid., p. 112.
64
65
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itself, again, tied to intersubjective courses of action and the ‘riverbed’ instantiated
by them. All of this offers an alternative to Cartesianism and its proposed remedies
of the 20th century: It is neither a consistent position to exaggerate the subject’s
status towards that of a metaphysically autonomous ego, nor can it be reduced to
behavior or social conventions. In stressing the importance of the social parameters
of individuality, Hegel, Strawson, and Wittgenstein do not deliver another
reductionist account; rather, they remain true to the course of transcendental
argumentation set by German idealism and carried forth into modern philosophy. If
language is social and sociality is bound to a space of practical intersubjective
interrelation, then articulate thought and reflection, also and especially in the most
fundamental sense of self-relations, have to be grasped in those terms. Recognition
in the Hegelian sense therefore becomes the transcendental antecedent for both
sociality (or community) and individuality (or the subject) and the link between the
two; it is not only a claim or an optional focus, but the defining feature of human
existence and interaction: “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’.”68
68
Ibid., p. 110.
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