Skepticism, Grammatical Criteria, and Politics in Stanley Cavell
Abstract
Stanley Cavell reads Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as a collection of philosophical responses to the threat of skepticism. However, he criticizes the widely held anti-skeptical interpretations of Wittgenstein for reducing the problem of skepticism to an intellectual riddle to be solved. Cavell claims that Wittgenstein’s arguments do not defeat the skeptical threat but reveals what he calls ‘the truth of skepticism’ according to which our relation to the world as language users cannot be reduced to that of mere knowing. The truth of skepticism points to political and social dimensions of the threat of skepticism which are ignored in both skeptical and anti-skeptical arguments. Cavell shows how skepticism is a form of epistemological mistrust towards politically and socially established grammatical criteria. The skeptic totally repudiates the epistemic authority of grammatical criteria, and the anti-skeptic endorses it unconditionally. Cavell criticizes both of them for ignoring language users’ moral and political participation in the formation of grammatical criteria. He refers to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s social contract theory to discuss the moral and political dimensions of language users’ relations to grammatical criteria, and argues that the vulnerability of our grammatical criteria to the skeptical threat is not a deficiency as the skeptic and the anti-skeptic seem to think alike, but an inherent condition of our speech acts.
Keywords
Kaynakça
- Prof. Dr. Ayşegül Baykan YTÜ İnsan ve Toplum Bilimleri Bölümü
Ayrıntılar
Birincil Dil
İngilizce
Konular
Felsefe
Bölüm
Araştırma Makalesi
Yazarlar
Yusuf Öz
*
0000-0001-7459-5009
Türkiye
Yayımlanma Tarihi
30 Ocak 2020
Gönderilme Tarihi
6 Eylül 2019
Kabul Tarihi
30 Ocak 2020
Yayımlandığı Sayı
Yıl 2020 Sayı: 12