Bernard Williams: Wittgenstein and Idealism

Abstract

In 1972 Bernard Williams gave a paper to the Royal Institute of Philosophy as part of a series of lectures entitled ‘Understanding Wittgenstein’. His lecture was called ‘Wittgenstein and Idealism’ and was later published in Volume 7 of these yearly Royal Institute Lectures under the title Understanding Wittgenstein. In that paper he expresses disquiet about Wittgenstein’s philosophical thinking on the relation between language and reality in his later work, notably in Philosophical Investigations, Zette. and On Certainty. His disquiet may be put as follows: The way Wittgenstein conceives of this relation makes what its speakers call realit. relative to and dependent on their language. He thus denies the existence, indeed, the very possibility of a reality outsid. the language a people speak and live with — that is a reality independent of that language. He rejects, that is, an absolute conception of reality as unintelligible. Consequently the objects that constitute what is ultimately real are denied an existence independent of the speakers of the language.