Malcolm on Wittgenstein on Rules

Abstract

In 'Wittgenstein on Language and Rules',1 Norman Malcolm argues that following a rule must be, and according to Wittgenstein is, a social practice. This social practice requires 'a human community in which there is agreement as to whether doing such-and-such is or is not following a particular rule' (p. 5). Malcolm contends, against the individualist position of Gordon Baker and P. M. S. Hacker,2 that a person's following a rule in complete separation from other human beings for his whole life is impossible. Malcolm also contends that this was Wittgenstein's own view. I shall raise some doubts about both of Malcolm's contentions, but I shall not pretend to have settled the interpretive dispute. My main concern is Malcolm's argument for the view that rule-following requires a social community. Let us begin with Malcolm's interpretive contention. He holds that Wittgenstein's remarks on solitary language users3 concern only individuals who were trained in a linguistic community. Malcolm denies that Wittgenstein ever suggested the possibility of a 'forever solitary person with a language', i.e., someone who follows linguistic rules but has not been trained to do so by the members of a linguistic community. Malcolm contends that Wittgenstein's solitary rule-followers all share a key feature of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe: they have acquired language via training in a social context. On this reading, Wittgenstein holds that all language must be socially established, but grants that Crusoe can speak a socially established language to himself. Malcolm's reading seems to be the typical understanding of Wittgenstein on solitary language users. But it faces questions from some textual evidence, even some evidence cited by Malcolm. Here is Malcolm's own translation of MS 165, pp. 116-17 (with my italics):