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The amount of Wittgenstein-inspired writing on Politics is small, and on Economics even smaller (in fact almost non-existent). The lack of attention given to Politics and Economics in Wittgenstein’s own work seems strange given that:
(1) the academic study of both subjects is highly parasitic upon the ‘ordinary’ language used by political and economic actors, but
(2) the academic appropriation of that language is distinctly partial and one-sided, and leads to crucial dimensions of both practices being marginalised or ignored in that ‘academicisation’.
In other words both disciplines are bedeviled by precisely the same misunderstandings of, and misappropriations of, ordinary language which Wittgenstein saw as bedeviling Philosophy, so should provide equally fertile ground for Wittgensteinian therapy.
In this lecture I take the ‘Winchian’ proposition (1) above as given, and focus on explaining and justifying proposition (2). In doing so I suggest that the academic study of both Politics and Economics involves fundamentally misconceiving the normative dimension of ordinary peoples’ lives, but that this misconception arises in very different ways in the two disciplines. In the case of Politics, a rationalistically ‘normative’ tradition of theorising ignores the hot fusion of intellect and emotion that renders certain aspects of politics both personally compelling and socially divisive. In the case of Economics a supposedly ‘positive’ discipline takes as its predominant rationale – ‘the efficient pursuit of economic growth’ – an objective which is both at odds with the existential objectives motivating economic actors, and significantly distorts the normative meaning of such actions.
I conclude with some general reflections on normativity and scientism in contemporary society and on the possibility of a distinctively ‘Wittgensteinian’ politics. I express the conventional view that Wittgensteinian philosophy – qua Wittgensteinian philosophy – provides no justification for any broad ideological or ‘party political’ stance. However, it does mandate a particular form of academic politics focused on the principled defence of the humanities as distinct, non-scientific, knowledge-producing disciplines.
About the speaker
Gavin Kitching (BSc, DPhil) is a British author and Professor of social sciences and international relations at the University of New South Wales, where he has taught since 1991. In 2007 Kitching became a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
Professor Gavin Kitching is interested in the later philosophy of Wittgenstein and its implications for social science. He also has interests in globalisation, and in rural and agricultural development in the Third World.
In his latest work, Kitching has argued that postmodernism is a hollow form of philosophy, setting ‘an athletic Enlightenment cat among the plump postmodernist pigeons’.He argues not only that postmodernism is either boring or wrong, but that it can be a distorting influence in education.