El futuro de la filosofía después de Wittgenstein

Abstract

According to the narrative proposed by the canonical reading of Philosophical Investigations, the traditional philosopher plays the role of transgressor of grammar with a vengeance; the Wittgensteinian thinker is the public clerk whose function is to «bring him to order», replacing theorizing with platitudinous descriptions of grammar and policing the frontiers between what is permitted in grammar and what is not; the boundaries between sense and nonsense are objective, immovable and «given», and thus, nonsense is not constructed, but discovered; and, finally, from this point of view philosophy might enjoy a re-gained autonomy with regards to empirical sciences only as consequence of an oath which demands absolute fealty to «ordinary language». We aim at overcoming this narrative, replacing it by a Pyrrhonian reading which underlines the pathological nature of language, the relativist and constructivist conception of nonsense defended by Wittgenstein and the essential role played by imagination in the creation of fresh analogies whose goal is reaching a «suspension of concern». Nevertheless, this method requires a negative dogmatism capable of supplementing and justifying a Pyrrhonian approach to philosophy. Wittgenstein provided it in On Certainty, leaving a space for pure reason and for a substantive way of working in philosophy.