Between Tradition and Criticism

Abstract

Abstract This essay considers how the ‘authority of tradition’ can be viewed as an intellectually enabling (not just authoritarian) principle, invoking for this purpose a ‘naturalism of second nature’ in which rational capacities are understood as embedded in a quasi-Wittgensteinian ‘form of life’; and hence, as grounded ultimately in a certain contingent like-mindedness which exceeds what we can make explicit (or ‘codify’). However, we need to enquire further into what is meant by ‘codification’. It is argued that the kind of authority which does genuinely inhere in cultural tradition will prove not to be at variance with the demands of independent or critical thought, and that recognition of the real social possibility of such thought—where that possibility exists—is in fact required by Wittgenstein’s (metaphysical) quietism.