Dewey and the Existential Matrix, pt 2

In my last post, I gave a brief summarization of John Dewey’s paper concerning the existential matrix of culture. In this post, I’d like to relate Dewey’s ideas to the imminent 20th century philosophers Heidegger and Wittgenstein.

Dewey’s pragmatic approach to philosophy is closely related to the philosophical enterprise of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, in which Wittgenstein analyzes language in terms of use. Dewey and Wittgenstein both see language as stemming from cultural activity. Both philosophers attempt to step aside from the traditional picture of language as a correspondence of words with objects. Instead of directly arguing against such a conception, they instead take the time to actually look at how language is used in order to give an existential analysis of the phenomena. Some might say this is merely a crude form of sociology or anthropology, but both Dewey and Wittgenstein see their work as therapeutic for philosophers who are caught in conceptual muddles.

Wittgenstein famously analyzes language use in terms of different language games, a concept that “brings into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.” Wittgenstein uses this term in order to emphasize that the meaning of words is dependent on how they are used in a particular cultural context, or game. The great German philosopher Martin Heidegger, in his seminal world Being and Time, also helped the 20^th century appreciate the importance of context. Heidegger, like Dewey, uses the example of equipment to illustrate the fact that the significance or meaning of the human world is not dependent on one-to-one correspondence, but instead depends on a “referential totality” that is “disclosed” upon the world by communal activity. For example, a hammer is not just the physical conglomeration of a wood-block with a metal-block, but rather, an object that has a particular mode of being, or significance, imbued upon it by the fact hammers are existentially related to an entire “matrix” of nails and other equipment. In other words, like Dewey, Heidegger thinks it is a drastic philosophical mistake to separate hammering, and almost every other human activity, from the totality of meaning given to it by the community of language-users.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Bernard Suits: The Grasshopper

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein said ‘Don’t say “there must be something common or they would not be called ‘games’”- but look and see whether there is anything common to all.’

This is excellent advice, but Wittgenstein himself did not follow it. He famously declared that when it comes to games, instead of a definition, there is only a “complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing.” Thus, Wittgenstein used games as an example par excellence that there are at best ” family resemblances” characterizing the definitions of most words, instead of necessary and sufficient conditions.

In his supremely witty and delightful book The Grasshopper:Games, Life, and Utopia, Bernard Suits takes up Wittgenstein’s advice and actually looks to see if it is possible to define games. Suit’s definition is as follows:

To play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favor of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity…playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”

By engaging in brilliant parodies of Platonic dialogues, Suits runs through many counter-examples and deftly defends his definition against the objection that it is too broad or too narrow. I would only be spoiling the book if I attempted to summarize some of the pithy and playful dialogues, so I can only suggest that you read it yourself! I leave you with a quote from Simon Blackburn, who says says that Suits “engages not only Wittgenstein but human life itself at the highest level, in a book that challenges philosophical orthodoxies, while all the time flowing like honey.”

Normal Geras has a good review of it here and Nigel Warburton has a shorter review of it here