HUMAN STUDIES 1,184--200 (1978)

Lebenswelt and Lebensformen:

Husserl and Wittgenstein on the Goal
and Method of Philosophy
EARL TAYLOR

Harvard University

It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or,

better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning.
And not try to go further back.
--WlTTGENSTEIN (On Certainty, par, 471)

In recent discussions of the foundations of the social sciences, little attention

has been given to the conception of "grounding" itself. Appeals frequently
have been made to philosophy, notably to the phenomenology of Husserl and
the analytic philosophy of Wittgenstein. Some approaches, e.g., ethnomethodelegy, claim both as intellectual progenitors. Problems arise, however, in the
attempts to synthesize two such diverse programs. Not the least of these is the
difference between the two thinkers' views on language and certainty. On these
and other issues, Husserl's goal of "philosophy as rigorous science" and Wittgenstein's "therapeutic" practice are widely at odds. Here we can only begin the
comparison that is a necessary step in evaluating the potential contribution of
each approach to the issue of grounding the social sciences.
The essential features of the theory of language that Hussed was to retain
throughout his work can be found in the Logical Investigations (Husserl, 1970a)
Reprints of this article may be obtained from the author at Department of Sociology,
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

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(originally published in 1900). 1 There he distinguishes the linguistic expression

per se from the conscious act that confers meaning on it by referring to something through it. Ultimately, this distinction is rooted in Husserl's conception
of the "intentionality" of consciousness. Because consciousness is always consciousness of something, it is possible to direct reflection either to the objects
"intended" in consciousness (the noema) or the acts of "intending" themselves
(the noeses). No reference to an object outside consciousness need be made in
either case. Rather, the phenomenological epoch6 or reduction suspends all factual issues about the (non)existence of objects in favor of an investigation of the
transcendefital conditions of the appearance to consciousness of any experience
whatsoever.
The phenomenological epoch~ has been likened to Descartes' method of
radical doubt, but there is an essential difference. Whereas Descartes employed
a systematic version of mundane doubt as to the existence of objects in the world
(arriving finally at the certitude of the ego cogito), Husserl radicalizes the mundane ability to revise anticipations of events in the light of subsequent experience.
Both the event as anticipated and as it "really is" (and "was all along") are taken
purely as intended, i.e., in terms of the acts of consciousness that confer on the
event its different modes of apprehension as anticipated, as directly experienced,
as remembered, etc. The goal of Husserl's method is to show how all such modes
are founded on the originary mode of apodictic certainty of the thing presented
"clearly and distinctly" to consciousness (thus rejoining Descartes at this point).
We shall be concerned throughout what follows with this conception of certainty
and its effect on Husserl's view of language.
Husserl's early investigations revealed that any object necessarily appears as
a figure against the ground of the world. While the given object is intended
explicitly in terms of its relevance to practical activities, the world is usually
intended implicitly as taken-for-granted. Unexpected exigencies can cause the
mundane experiencer to reflect on his plans and even on the world as such, but
only for the practically limited purpose of revising his plans and returning to his
mundane involvement in the world. Husserl's method attempts to sustain the
momentary suspension of practical involvement that is possible within the
"natural attitude," and it thereby bears a curious relation to the natural attitude.
While originating from within it and preserving it as the object of inquiry, the
1The present analysis was arrived at independently of Derrida's (1973)incisive critique,
but is substantially supported by it. In his preface to Derrida, Newton Garver suggests that
Wittgenstein's "philosophical development, with respect to the foundations of language, is
in many ways parallel to the movement in Continental philosophy from Husserl to Heidegger
to Derrida" (xix). This parallel provides for the possibility of extending Wittgenstein's
critique of his own earlier view of language to Husserl's view. The interesting similarities
between Derrida and Wittgenstein thus revealed cannot be explored here. For a reply to
Derrida, see Mohanty (1974).

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phenomenological epoche nevertheless represents a break from the natural attitude insofar as the practical "lived" involvement that is the natural attitude is
replaced by a theoretical interest in this involvement considered as an "attitide".
Indeed, part of the paradox of the epoch6 (which Husserl acknowledged) follows
from the fact that to characterize unreflectively lived experience as an "attitude"
is to render it a mere thesis which like that concerning the (non)existence of any
given object is to be suspended in order to describe the way in which it appears.
It is important to note that Husserl's claims for his method require that the
epoch~ be carded out on nothing less than the entire world and "all at once."
Mundane doubt derives from the experience of error, illusion, etc., where previously perceived things are seen differently in the light of subsequent experience.
It is always possible that any given thing could be other than it appears. The
mundane experiencer, however, never doubts the existence of the entire world,
but rather in his very doubting necessarily preserves the means, including the
certainty of his own existence, whereby the doubt concerning a given object will
be resolved. Descartes' method was systematic doubt only in that he reduced his
assumptions to a minimum (cogito, ergo sum) and systematically proceeded to"
reinstate other things that could not be doubted if doubt itself as an activity of
the ego was to be preserved.
In Husserl's (1970b) view, such a piecemeal approach fails to escape the natural
attitude by preserving those aspects that are not being doubted at any moment.
Thus, the failure of Descartes to suspend the last vestiges of a substantialist
subject/object dichotomy inherited from Galilean science led him to posit mind
as a thinking substance (res cogitans) set over against the mathematically specifiable universe of physical objects (res extensa). Husserl shares with Descartes
a conception of a un/-verse, a unified world of possible experience, but charges
that rather than returning to the things themselves as experienced, Descartes
substituted a theoretical vision, the world as conceived by science. Hussed's
program is an attempt to elucidate the ways in which such abstract ideals are
founded on a pretheoretical experience of the world, and his method therefore
consists of suspending both naive and theoretical preconceptions about out experience of the world. Whereas neither common sense nor science has a "perspective on itself' (Natanson, 1973, p. 61), it is the task of phenomenology to
provide such a perspective on - and thereby a grounding for - both common
sense and science. Ideally, it provides a perspective on its own methods and goals
as well.
It is this reflexive character of phenomenology that provides the occasion for
the problems raised in the Crisis (Husserl, 1970b). Although many of these
problems derive from a continuous development of Husserl's thought, the notions
of the Lebenswelt and the "historical reduction" represent something of a break
from the topic and method (respectively) of his earlier work. Husserl's criticism
in the Crisis of Kant's failure to return to the pretheoretical life-world is, as Carr
(1974) notes, equally a criticism of his own earlier preoccupation with grounding

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the various ontologies of the empirical sciences of his day. He now seeks, by
means of the newly conceived historical reduction, to avoid Kant's mistake of
taking Newton's materialistic ontology as the basis for the explication of the
conditions of mundane experience. The question for Husserl is no longer merely
how to return to the world of "things themselves," but rather the very nature
of such a world experienced prior to (and as the basis of) any abstract conceptualization. He explicitly formulates his program as an ontology of this lifeworld and adds to his array of methods the necessity of uncovering the very
tradition within which transcendental questions themselves are addressed to a
given conception of the world.
The new methodological element of the Crisisis what Husserl calls his "criticalhistorical reflection" on the tradition of Western philosophy. Stressing the analogy
to other aspects of Husserl's method, Carr (1974) refers to this as his historical
reduction, since it seeks to clear away the prejudices that the philosopher inherits in appropriating his tradition. Such a tradition is not considered "in itself'
as objective history, but rather as the "total unity of history," our history insofar as we partake of it. Thus, while history is rendered amenable to analysis
within Husserrs "subjective" phenomenology, he does not confront this issue
as one imposed from without and to which his method must adapt. Rather, his
own studies of the constitution of objects for consciousness had pointed to the
historicity of consciousness itself. With the Crisis, Husserl begins to fully realize
the radical implications of his discovery. The return "zu den Sachen selbst" is
now seen to be hampered not merely by the natural prejudices of consciousness
but by historically accumulated theoretical prejudices as well. Husserl was aware
of many of the difficulties that his new method created for his old conception of
phenomenology as a "rigorous science," and he referred to its results as "Dichtung" - poetic invention. It is not clear whether he realized that his original goal
of explicating a unitary life-world may itself have been a reflection of the
theoretical conception of the world that he wished to suspend and ultimately
"ground."
One of the additional difficulties in interpreting Husserrs late works is, as
Cart (1974) has demonstrated, that he uses the crucial term Lebenswelt in several
different (and often seemingly contradictory) ways. Generally, he uses the term
to refer to both the world of physical objects and that of cultural meanings
created by man. He argues that the two levels are analytically distinguishable
in that the latter is founded on the (ontologically prior) former, though he
sometimes seems to further suggest that there is a "preculturar' world of perception which culture somehow (merely?) overlays. In the Cartesian Meditations,
Husse rl (I 960) proceeds from the methodological solipsism of the trancendentally
reduced sphere of "ownness" to the life-world and science as more or less equally
intersubjective spheres of experience. Only in the Crisis does he suggest that the
life-world is ontologicaUy prior and that consequently his method must begin
with a descriptive ontology of the life-world. That he has not yet clarified this

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new conception, however, is shown by the fact that he equates (or confuses)
the cultural and perceptual levels of the life-world in terms of their common
nontheoretical status vis-a-vis science. Ironically then, his conception of the
life-world remains derivative from the unitary world-view of science (as opposed
to it), despite his avowed intention of "grounding" this very conception of science.
In an essay written about the time of the Crisis (published as "The Origin of
Geometry," Appendix VI to the English edition of the Crisis), Husserl relies on
a conception of language that makes the historical reduction both necessary and
problematic. In this view (which will be considered in more detail shortly).
Hussefl treats language as a cultural artifact that allows the geometer to communicate his discoveries but which in no way affects his original perception of
the world and the conceptualization of his private discoveries. Because language
is necessary as a depository of such discoveries, however, we are vulnerable to
the "seduction of language" wherein we forget the origins of its sedimentations.
There is a need for the historical reduction as an adjunct to the original conception of the epochS. The difficulty for Hussefl's earlier program arises when
he argues that previous sedimentations not only determine our conception of
the world but "flow into" our very structures of perception. This argument is
most fully developed in the posthumously edited Experience and Judgment
(Husserl, 1973), but it bears directly on the issues and ambiguities of the Crisis.
We should note that Carr (1974) warns that Experience and Judgment was
largely written by Husserl's student Ludwig Landgrebe from Husserl's notes.
Consequently, it is not clear how much of it represents Husserl's own last thoughts
and how much it is Landgrebe's reaction to the ambiguities he perceived in the
Crisis. The text explicitly makes a distinction between the pregiven (preinterpreted) life-world of both science and commom sense and the "pure" life-world
experienced prior to any such conceptualizations. The term Lebenswelt is reserved
for this "pure" life-world in Experience and Judgment. Husserl had consistently
distinguished between psychology within the natural attitude that locates consciousness "within" the world and phenomenology for which consciousness is
the necessary point of access to the "world" seen as the intentional correlate of
consciousness. Even in the Crisis, however, he argues that psychology, properly
understood and pushed to its limits, can be a way into phenomenology. Experience and Judgment departs from this line, rejecting even a phenomenological
psychology insofar as it is based on reflection alone. The objection is that such
a psychology returns us merely to the pregiven world that we share with other
"men of our time." Reflection alone cannot move behind the historical prejudices
that have been inherited to the pretheoretical world that the text terms the lifeworld proper. The argument, in effect, is that in order to recover "our" life-world
we must move behind "our" subjectivity to that of those men (e.g., Galileo)
who first founded the traditions that we have inherited. Only in their experience,
it would seem, can we discover the life-world prior to theoretical conceptualization. This new vision of the object ofphenomenology seems to undercut Husserl's
previous methodology.

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The paradox is that Experience and Judgment seems to argue that the historical
prejudices encountered by the historical reduction are so deep as to challenge any
method that seeks to eliminate them. As Carr (1974) observes, "on the one hand,
the reasons for the necessity of the hostorical reduction are even stronger than
those offered in the Crisis; on the other hand, Experience and Judgment robs us
of the very means of carrying out that reduction" (p.229). The tong section of the
Crisis on Galileo's role in founding the modern tradition of science and philosophy
is meant to be a model of the historical reduction. Husserl asks us to imagine the
world as experienced prior to Galileo's accomplishment, but later work denies that
we can do this. Instead, Experience and Judgment hints that a method of "dismantling" (Abbau) is necessary, as though the Galilean idealizations could be subtracted from our experience of the pregiven world of our tradition to yield the true
life-world as a residue. This method of Abbua is not described in any detail, and
as Carr (1974) remarks, "this is a far cry from the phenomenological insistence
on grasping in original intuition the thing itself" (p. 231).
The paradox may be more apparent than real, however, if we consider carefully what Husserl has done in his study of Galileo. Far from marking the "fall"
from an unadulterated experience of the life-world, Galileo was a revolutionary
figure in the history of science and philosophy. That is, he stood between two
traditions, having himself inherited and partially transcended the Euclidean tradition of geometry, thereby founding the tradition of modern physical science.
Indeed, it is Galileo's crucial role in this change of traditions that makes him
exemplary and leads to Husserl's study. Galileo stands as proof that men both
always find themselves within a tradition and are capable of at least partially
freeing themselves to enter another. This seems more consistent with the establishment of science as described in "The Origin of Geometry" (Husserl, 1970b,
Appendix VI). We agree with Carr's conclusion that "'Experience and Judgment's
quasi-historical search for some primitive consciousness in direct, culturally
unmediated relation to the world will not do" (p. 235). The extrapolation of the
historical reduction to a precultural zero-point rests on the assumption that
history is the orderly accumulation and sedimentation of successive layers of a
monolithic tradition. The very concept of tradition, however, presupposes
breaks and discontinuities that bound a given tradition as such. The assumptions of Experience and Judgment are unfounded. The apparent impossibility
of carrying out the historical reduction stems from an exaggeration of the role
that any one tradition has in shaping the "receptacle" of language which embodies it and thereby determines our perception. As we shall see, this very view
of language as a receptacle itself tempts Husserl to overstate his position, thus
creating the paradox.
Near the end of the Crisis, Husserl (1970b) writes
The life-world - "the world for us all" - is identical with the world that can be
commonly talked about. Every new apperception leads essentially, through apperceptire transference, to a new typification of the surrounding world and in social intercourse to a naming which immediately flows into the common language. Thus the

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world is always such that it can be empirically, generally (intersubjectively) explicated

and, at the same time, linguistically explicated. (pp. 209-210)
This may appear at first to be an endorsement o f some form of ordinary language
philosophy, but in keeping with his earliest view o f language, meaning is bestowed upon the common language by acts of consciousness in apperceptive
transference. This interpretation is borne out in later passages in which Husserl
clearly rejects any (merely) linguistic analysis. He argues that a "genuine phenomenological-psychological epochS" is necessary as the first step toward the kind
of "inner perception" required by a science of psychology and cautions that
the beginner who is bound to the tradition . . . . starting with the experience of the
external attitude (the natural, anthropological subject-object attitude, the psychomundana attitude), at first thinks that (the epoche) is a matter of an obvious,
simple "purification" of oneself from one's load of realistic presuppositions, whereas
the psychic experiential content is essentially already known and even expressible in
ordinary language. But this is a fundamental error. If this were correct, one would
need only to explicate analytically the experiential concept, derived from common
experience, of man as a thinking, feeling, acting subject, a subject experiencing
pleasure and pain and the like; but that is only the outside, so to speak, the surface
of the psychic, that part o f it which has objectified itself in the external world. (p.
248, emphasis added)
This conception of an essentially "interior" consciousness objectifying itself
(via language, among other means) in the (merely) "external" concepts intersubjectively available has fateful consequences for Husserl's goal and method o f
philosophy.
We may now more fully appreciate the argument made in "The Origin of
Geometry." The problem o f that essay is stated by Husserl as follows:
How does linguistic embodiment make out the merely intrasubjective structure the
objective structure which, e.g., as geometrical concept or state of affairs, is in fact

present as understandable by all and is valid, already in its linguistic expression as

geometrical speech, as geometrical proposition, for all the future in its geometrical
sense? (p. 358)
Husserl (1970b) is concerned to show how the "intrapsychically constituted
structure" that the individual geometer formulates is transformed into an "intersubjective being o f its own as an ideal object" (p. 359) o f geometry. His solution
is that mankind, as a "community o f empathy and language" is capable o f "reciprocal linguistic understanding" wherein there is a "self-evident consciousness
of the identity of the mental structures in the productions o f both the receiver
of the communication and the communicator" (p. 360). Written records extend
the scope o f this sharing of mental structures since once these have been committed to written form, "the reader can make it self-evident again, can reactivate
the self-evidence" (p. 361). Generally, however, one merely passively and unreflectively appropriates the meanings sedimented in a tradition. This results in
the possibility of science and culture and the need for the historical reduction
to resist the "seduction" o f language (p. 362). We see then that Husserl's concep-

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tion of language captures many essential features of his philosophy. It is largely

in terms of this that we shall compare Husserl and Wittgenstein in the following
section.

II
While a comparison of Husserl and Wittgenstein reveals many similarities as
well as differences, we will be concerned primarily with the problems that
Husserl's conceptions of language and certainty create for his program, as seen
from the standpoint of Wittgenstein's quite different views. We will argue that
Husserl's goal of elucidating the essential structures of a unitary Lebenswelt via
the "rigorous science" of phenomenology reflects to a greater degree than he
apparently realized the very scientific conception of the world that he sought to
ground. Pursuing the consequences of this vision, he tends to absolutize certain
of his discoveries (such as the historicity of consciousness). A picture adequate
to one aspect of his problem is illegitimately extended; tradition becomes a
barrier rather than a means of access to reality. The advantage of using Wittgenstein's conception of language and philosophy to understand Husserl's views is
that Wittgenstein, while respecting the deep-rooted need to employ such universal
visions, was acutely aware of the problems that this could create. His goal, like
Husserl's, was the explication and clarification of basic philosophical problems.
His method, however, while also descriptive, was almost diametrically opposed
to Husserl's and more suited to his own task of "dissolving" rather than "solving" philosophical problems.
When Husserl (1970b) states that the central goal of the Crisis is "the correct
comprehension of the essence of the life-world and the method of a 'scientific'
treatment appropriate to it" (p. 123), he seems to suggest that this "science"
will be both like and unlike other sciences. As a "science" of the essence of the
life-world, it is continuous with Husserl's vision ofphenomenology as a "rigorous
science," where the rigor is assured as much by the ideal of a unitary (transcendental) structure of experience as by the "presuppositionless" method. That
is, Husserl is interested in an explication of the essential structures of the lifeworld (taken as a unified object of inquiry) in principle, as a theoretical task
with no necessary "practical" motivation. In contrast, Wittgenstein's (1968)
"therapeutic" conception of philosophy stresses the plurality of Lebensformen
and Sprachspiele, forms of life and language games which are "meant to bring
into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or
a form of life" (#23). 2 Even in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus where he
posited a unitary "true logical form" for language, Wittgenstein also insisted that
everyday language is in order "as it is" and requires analysis only for certain
2Citations employing "#'" refer to numbered paragraphs in the works cited. Elsewhere,
the reference is to page numbers,

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reasons (e.g., its use in formulating theories in the natural sciences). His later
work (Wittgenstein, 1968) rests on the conviction that "philosophical problems
arise when language goes on holiday" (#38); and that, consequently, philosophical
analysis is neither required nor possible "in principle" (as a theoretical pursuit
in its own right). Language games and forms of life are to be understood in this
context as simplified idealizations tailored to given philosophical problems. They
are constructed to remind us o f features of ordinary usage, not to "secure" such
practices by revealing their "essence."
Although Husserl (1970b) declares that "the point is not to secure objectivity
but to understand it" (p. 189), he rejects the claims to certainty of mere opinion
which "has its ground in the pregiven world," requiring instead a method that
stands "above" the world in order to render it a "phenomenon" for study (p.
152). In effect, the naive "grounding" of the natural attitude is suspended, only
to return as secured by the perspicuity o f the phenomenological method which
surveys it from "above." Much of Wittgenstein's later work was intended to
show that the certainties o f everyday life and those o f logic and mathematics did
not in fact require such "grounding" (whether from "above" or "below"). Thus,
in response to the philosopher's conviction that mathematics " m u s t " be based
on logic, Wittgenstein (1967) remarks that it is not logic that compels us to
accept results of a calculation, but rather that something compels us " t o accept
such a proposition as in accord with logic" (p. 73). To see what this "something"
is for Wittgenstein, we must turn to specific examples of his therapeutic practice.
In one case, Wittgenstein (1967) asks us to consider what might happen if
our rulers were made of some elastic material:
So if you had measured the table with the elastic rulers and said it measured five feet
by our usual way of measuring, you would be wrong; but if you say that it measured
five feet by your way of measuring, that is correct. - "But surely that isn't measuring
at all!" - It is similar to our measuring and capable, in certain circumstances, of fulfilling "practical purposes". (A shop-keeper might use it to treat different customers
differently.) (p. 4)
The interlocutor's objection is understandable. It is repeated, with a similar
reply, in the Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1968).
"So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?" It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they
use. That is not agreement in opinions but in forms of life. (#241)
What has to be accepted, the given i s . . . forms of life. (p. 226)
Agreement in forms of life (e.g., measurement for "practical purposes") is the
basis for (dis)agreements that can intelligibly arise within the context of such
shared practices. In the case at hand, "the establishment of a method of measurement is antecedent to the correctness or incorrectness of a statement of length"
(Wittgenstein, 1967, p. 45). For the same reason, an "arithmetical proposit)on
would not be false but useless, if confusion supervened" (p. 98). In the abseJ~ce

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of such confusion, no other "grounding" is necessary. Analysis may be undertaken on the occasion of and in order to dispel confusion, but no grounding in
principle is needed, nor could "additional" certainty be secured by such means
in those cases where confusion does not arise.
The distinction between Wittgenstein's and Husserl's conceptions of philosophy
is nicely embodied in their different uses of geological metaphors. We have seen
that the extreme version of HusserI's view of tradition employs the notion that
layers of tradition are deposited via a presumed uniform process of sedimentation.
Problems arise in the effort to find an equally uniform method to reverse (and
thereby "escape") this process. Wittgenstein's (1969) metaphor also makes
reference to the influence of tradition on perception, but with an important
difference:
The river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the
waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself: though there is not a sharp
division of the one from the other. (#97)
The riverbed is a metaphor for the form of life that defines the scope of, e.g.,
doubt or belief appropriate to any given language game. As such, this bedrock
is itself "beyond" doubt (see below). It sets the course for our "moves" in a
language game as the riverbed determines the course of the river. In both cases,
however, the boundaries are indeterminate, though as the example of the elastic
ruler illustrates, they can be useful for "practical purposes." Changes occur in
both kinds of bedrock, often with unforseen consequences. Su~ h extensions
result in everyday usages loosely related in terms of "family resemblances" (as
in the case of the term "game") (Wittgenstein, 1968, #67). Lines can be drawn,
boundaries made artifically clear for limited purposes, but these definite boundaries are no more generally useful or certain than are the indefinite ones which
precede them. As Wittgenstein observes, ' " i n e x a c t ' . . . does not mean 'unusable"'

(#88).
Central to the differences between the two conceptions of philosophy is the
issue of "certainty" hinted at in the example above. Husserl's return to the
"things themselves" has as its ideal the unmediated intuition of "clear and
distinct" entities present to consciousness) Wittgenstein's discussion of certainty
constitutes a sustained challenge to the notion that the "objects" of experience
are or need be "clear and distinct" and present to consciousness in order to "be
experienced." In On Certainty, he takes up G.E. Moore's defense of the commonsense certainty expressed by propositions such as "I know that this is my right
hand." According to Moore, if we call into question such basic certainties, then
nothing can be safe from skepticism. Wittgenstein would hardly disagree that we
experience such certainty - and that it is essential to our normal way of life, but
he wishes to show that there are good reasons for not considering this to be a
3Derrida's (1973) critique dwells at some length on this conception.

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function of what Moore (or anyone else) says he "knows" or "believes." Rather,
the certainty that Moore expresses reflects the "grammar" of a language game
that simply excludes the intelligibility of doubt in the absence of extraordinary
circumstances. Such certainty is not "knowledge" (and, hence, it does not "belong" to Moore or anyone else), nor would to challenge such certainty be merely
"doubt" (as Moore realizes). This certainty constitutes the game within which
knowledge and doubt are "moves" (Wittgenstein, 1969):
A doubt about existence only works in a language-game.(#24)
The child learns by believingthe adult. Doubt comes after belief. (#160).
Moore does not know what he asserts he knows, but it stands fast for him, as also for
me; regarding it as absolutely solid is part of our methods of doubt and certainty,
(#lSl)
This is more than a terminological quibble, for if we decide with Moore that
his certainty is a form of knowledge, then we have standards of evidence which
are applicable. If we can imagine that he fails to meet these standards, then he
could be wrong, the subjective feeling of his certainty notwithstanding. The way
is indeed open to skepticism. Alternatively, we may demand that certainty be
the grounding of all knowledge in the intuition of "'clear and distinct" objects.
But in Wittgenstein's (1969) view, "What stands fast does so, not because it is
intrinsically obvious or convincing: it is rather held fast by what lies around it"
(#144). The interdependent propositions (whether formal or empirical) that
constitute the "grammar" of our language games are "fundamental" precisely in
the sense that they determine what we accept as evidence and "need not give
way before any contrary evidence" (#657). That they so function is the result
of our so using them:
"we could doubt every single one of these facts, but we could not doubt themall."
Wouldn't it be more correct to say: "we do not doubt them all." Our not doubting
them all is simply our manner of judging, and therefore of acting. (~i~232)
Neither Moore's personal conviction nor Husserl's in principle explication of
general "essences" can secure any certainty over and above that embodied in our
very methods of judging and acting.
For Wittgenstein, "grammar" is as central a concept as "essence" is for Husserl,
and their respective roles in the two conceptions of philosophy are in some ways
analogous. Indeed, according to Wittgenstein (1968), "'Essence is expressed by
grammar" (#371). It is important to see how this relates to his distinction between certainty and knowledge. To begin with, "experience does not direct us to
derive anything from experience" (Wittgenstein, 1969, #130), or, as Hacker
(1973) explains, "it is grammar which excludes doubt, not experience" (p. 245).
Agreement in forms of life is not derived from experience, but rather determines
what counts as experience within a given language game. Elucidating the parameters of a language game reveals its "grammar." Our convictions and doubts
form systems that are not themselves the result of our individual experiences. It

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is in this sense that grammar expresses "'essence," that is, the presupposed conditions under which a n y o n e whatsoever can lay claim to knowledge, experience
doubts, etc., intelligibly. Moore's feeling of certainty is the consequence, not
the basis, of the "logic" of doubt and belief that the grammar reveals. The certainty expressed by Moore is a "logical and not a psychological one" (Wittgenstein, 1969, #447).
Wittgenstein's conception of certainty throws into relief the problems created
by Husserl's epoch~ and the claims that he makes for its ability to "ground"
naive experience. Although modeled on the distancing from naive experience
achieved in mundane doubt, Husserl considers the epoch~ a suspension of both
doubt and certainty. That such a suspension can be effected rests on the explicit
assumption that both doubt and certainty are (or can be made to be) "theses"
positing the world as certain or doubted. Wittgenstein's remarks challenge the
intelligibility of this assumption. We have already seen why "a doubt that doubted
everything would not be a doubt" (Wittgenstein, 1969, #450). This is because
the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions
are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn. But it isn't
that the situation is like this: Wejust can't investigate everything, and for that reason
we are forced to rest content with assumption. If we want the door to turn, the hinges
must stay put. My life consists in my being content to accept many things. (#341,
343 -44)
One cannot make certain experiments if there are not some things that one does not
doubt. But that does not mean that one takes certain presuppositions on trust. (:/~i/Y337)
Here Wittgenstein is pointing to a crucial a s y m m e t r y between certainty and
doubt that Hussert's assumption obscures. Knowing and doubting are moves
within the presupposed certainty of a language game which gives them their intelligibility. This certainty itself, however, is neither knowledge nor the absence
of doubt. We may "know" how to play chess without constantly thinking about
it, but "doubting means thinking" (#480). Husserl is perhaps correct to conceive
of doubting as a conscious negative judgment made of an explicit thesis. The
difficulty arises from his conception of apodictic certainty as a kind of "clear
and distinct" seeing from which empirical doubt, belief, knowledge, etc., are
derived as "modes" of this original intuitive givenness. If certainty is the ground
rather than the opposite of doubt, then Husserl's bracketing of both is not
"neutral" as it would be were they opposing theses.
The asymmetry between certainty and doubt also calls into question the claim
that a method surveying the natural attitude "from above" can secure the naive
certainty of normal experience. Consider the case of the native speaker who says
"This is red" and the linguist who reports that "In language X, object b is called
'red."' As Wittgenstein (1969) observes, "an Englishman who calls this color 'red"
is not 'sure it is called red' in English" (#527). The language game of reporting
that an object "is called" a certain color in a given language is parasitic on the
more basic language game of knowing how to use color names in the language.

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A child first learns a person's or thing's name and only later that it "is called"
such-and-such. If the prior game can exist perfectly well without the other, then
nothing in the way of certainty is secured for the former by an analysis along
the lines of the latter. The linguist, of course, has his reasons for so studying the
natives' language, and the natives may in turn appropriate his results for practical
activities such as developing a written language. In time, the natives may agree
that this color "is spelled 'r' 'e' 'd'," having assimilated the written language. But
once again, they will not be saying that they are "sure it is spelled 'r' 'e' 'd'."
The spelling, like the naming before it, will be grounded in the unchallenged
certainty of everyday practice for which no further grounding is possible or necessary.
In Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy, an explication of the Lebenswelt
such as Husserl proposes is unnecessary except for limited, therapeutic purposes.
"Than d a n g e r . . , is one of giving a justification of our procedure where there is
no such thing as a justification and we ought simply to have said: that's h o w we
do i t " (1967, p. 98). Language games are to be regarded as "proto-phenomena"
(1968, #654) for which certainty is not secured, but rather revealed by analysis:
"The question is not one of explaining a language-game by means of our experiences, but of noting a language-game" (1968, #655). A language game "is only
possible if one trusts something (I did not say "can trust something") (1969,
#509). We can have no further grounds for the very things that are themselves
our grounds. A language game "'is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or
unreasonable). It is there - like our life" (1969, #559). Wittgenstein (1969) says
that he wants "to conceive it as something that lies beyond being justified or
unjustified" (#353). As such, nothing I could produce in support of my certainty
would add to it: "my having two hands is, in normal circumstances, as certain
as anything that I could produce in evidence for it. That is why I am not in a
position to take the sight of my hand as evidence for it" (#250). Only if this
certainty were m y certainty, something I "know," would it be appropriate for
others to consider my evidence for knowing it. This certainty is not my certainty,
however. It needs no evidence because it is the ground of what could count as
m y evidence. In direct contrast to Husserl's emphasis on "seeing" clearly in
direct intuition, Wittgenstein (1969) argues that
giving grounds . . . justifying the evidence, comes to an end; - but the end is not
certain propositions' striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not a kind of seeing on
our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game. (:/~204)
Philosophy, language, and certainty are closely related, in strikingly different
ways, for both Wittgenstein and Husserl. In the latter's case, certainty is the unmediated intuition of essence that philosophy yields by suspending the natural
attitude. Language, like tradition, is a barrier to philosophical inquiry rather
than its medium and object. For Wittgenstein, certainty is the ungrounded ground
that constitutes every language game, and philosophy "dissolves" its own problems by returning us to the details of everyday practice. Philosophical confusion

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197

arises when we extrapolate "pictures" of our everyday practice beyond the limited
areas of their application: "we are inclined to take the measurement of length
with a footrule as a model even for the measurement of the distance between
two stars" (1967, p. 67). In Husserl's case, the certainty of unmediated intuition
is taken to be certainty t o u t court, and he demands of his method that this type
of certainty be the ground and the goal of a "presuppositionless" philosophy.
The danger with such a program of the systematic explication of the essential
features of a unitary Lebenswelt is that "one will think one is in possession of
the complete explanation of the individual cases when one has this general way
of talking" (Wittgenstein, 1967, p. 153).
Wittgenstein's (1970) alternative, of course, is to describe our everday usages.
The difficulty.., is not that of finding the solution but rather that of recognizing as
the solution something that looks as if it were only a preliminary to it. This is connected, I believe, with our wrongly expecting an explanation, whereas the solution of
the difficulty is a description, if we give it the right place in our considerations. If
we dwell upon it, and do not try to get beyond it. The difficulty here is: to stop.
(#413)
Wittgenstein's language games are not first approximations to a reform of language, nor are they meant to inventory all possible forms of experience. Rather,
"the work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular
purpose" (1968, #127). Solution, or rather, "dissolution," of philosophical
problems is like curing a disease: "In philosophizing we may not terminate a
disease of thought. It must run its natural course, and slow cure is all important.
(That is why mathematicians are such bad philosophers.)" (1970, #382). It
is perhaps no accident that Husserl, with his penchant for a rigorous method of
solving philosophical problems in terms of the intuition of (formal) essences, was
a mathematician. To fully appreciate Wittgenstein's own rigorous method of
piecemeal "dissolution" of problems, however, we need to clarify the role of
"grammar" in his descriptions.
The problems that confront Husserl in the Crisis stem from the fact that the
phenomenotogical epoche was to be carried out as the philosopher's reduction
of the world to a sphere of "owrmess" (cf. Husserl, 1960). The "historical
reduction" was a response to the threat that the conception of a monolithic
tradition posed to Husserl's program. In contrast, Wittgenstein's explication of
the grammar of language games is from the beginning addressed to intersubjective
conventions rooted in forms of life. To the extent that Hussefl allows such an
intersubjective status of language, he reduces it to an external receptacle to be
animated by individual acts of meaning-endowment. The direct intuition of
objects apart from language is said to yield their essences. For Wittgenstein
(1967), however, "it is not the property of an object that it is ever 'essential,'
but rather the mark of a concept" (p. 23), and concepts are always grounded in
forms of life and expressed by grammar,
Wittgenstein's famous argument against the possibility of a private language is
relevant here. The would-be private linguist insists that he can identify a sensation

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S and call it "S'" in his language in order to be able to subsequently recognize it

as "S." But Wittgenstein points out that if in fact this private language is to be
regular in this sense, that is, to be rule.governed, then the private linguist must
be capable both of following his own rules correctly and o f making mistakes. In
normal usage, however, whether or not a person is correctly following a rule
depends not on his subjective certainty, but rather on intersubjective standards
and his ability to act correctly. Ex hypothesi, the private linguist lacks this intersubjective check: he can never be sure that he is correctly following his own
rules, since his memory may deceive him. What the private linguist needs is not
the private experience (intuition) o f an object such as a sensation S, but rather
the intersubjective concept "S." In fact, it is only because the philosopher already
speaks a public language and has the concept "S" that he is tempted to posit
a ghostly sensation S as the basis for a private language.
We can imagine at this point that Husserl might object that what he means
by essence is something "deeper," more fundamental than mere human convention. Wittgenstein (1967) replies specifically to such an objection that "to the
depth that we see in the essence there corresponds the deep need for convention"
(p. 23). Husserl also rejects a philosophy that consists merely o f analyzing words,
but we cannot charge Wittgenstein with this intention.
One ought to ask, not what images are or what happens when one imagines anything,
but how the word "imagination" is used. But that does not mean that I want to talk
only about words. For the question as to the nature of the imagination is as much
about the word "imagination" as my question is. And I am only saying that this
question is not to be decided - neither for the person who does the imagining, nor
for anyone else - by pointing; nor yet by a description of any process. The first
question also asks for a word to be explained; but it makes us expect a wrong kind of
answer. (1968, #370)
Husserl's devaluation o f language as a tool and object o f philosophical inquiry
made him susceptible to linguistic confusions o f the kind that, according to
Wittgenstein, are the source o f philosophical problems in the first place. Husserl,
like Moore, sought an apodictie certainty in unmediated intuition such that one
could say with confidence "I can't be making a mistake here." But as we have
seen, this subjective feeling o f certainty is irrelevant to the intersubjective constitution o f language games grounded in forms of life that determine the conditions for making such assertions.
"I can't etc." shows my assertion its place in the game. But it relates essentially to me,
not to the game in general. If I am wrong in my assertion that doesn't detract from
the usefulness of the language game. (1969, #637)
III
We have seen that conceptions o f language, certainty, and the goal and method
o f philosophy are closely related for both Husserl and Wittgenstein. Husserl treats
certainty as a kind o f seeing prior to and outside o f language. If the "European

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199

sciences" are to secure the grounding they require, an equally scientific explication of the essential structures of the unitary Lebenswelt is necessary in principle.
The return to "the things themselves" involves a suspension of the historically
accumulated prejudices of common sense and science alike. In order to suspend
our tradition, however, we must suspend its medium, language. Here Husserl
reveals a deep ambivalence. The ideal of science, which Husserl traces as the
telos of Western man from the Greeks to the present "crisis," is possible only
if language acts as a depository of the findings of individual scientists. At the
same time, it is just this power of language that tempts modern science to forget
its origins, both in Western history and as the formalization of an ontologically
prior "lived" experience of the Lebenswelt. For Husserl (1970), ultimately, the
"life" of both language and certainty lies outside them:
the originally intuitive life which creates its originallyserf-evidentstructures through
activities on the basis of sense-experiencevery quickly and in increasingmeasure falls
victim to the seduction of language. (p. 362)
Wittgenstein, too, is aware of the role of language in the creation of philosophical problems. But as in the case of the geological metaphors, the two conceptions of philosophy diverge most sharply where they first appear to converge.
Language can "seduce" us only if it stands over against us as something not
properly our own and yet as something we desire. For Husserl, of course, this
desire is for the Greekideal of knowledge attuned to the cosmos, language offers
both the only hope of and the most insidious threat to this goal. For Wittgenstein,
the danger is different. Our experience of certainty is the consequence, not the
cause, of our language games which are grounded in ungrounded forms of life.
The "life" of language and certainty is constituted from within, or rather, our
lives consist of this certainty within language (Wittgenstein, 1969, #344). Language does not "seduce" us into taking this certainty for granted. Rather, as our
very medium, it "'bewitches" us, alienates us from ourselves, and sends us off on
quixotic attempts to supply external grounds for the very things that are our
grounds. If language is a barrier standing between us and a rigorous unmediated
intuition of "'the things themselves," then Bacon has taught us that we must
dispose of this "idol" and Husserl has shown us how. If, however, we are under
the spell not of an alien power but of our own devising, then philosophy must
be a form of therapy. Husserl locates the "crisis of European sciences" in the
failure to attain a scientific grounding for them. The tradition of Western man is
the source of this crisis because it both embodies the telos inherent in the Greek
ideal of science and represents a forgetfulness of that ideal. For Wittgenstein,
the "crisis" arises when that ideal is extended beyond its legitimate application;
language "goes on a holiday." It tempts us to look for "grounds" beyond or
behind the very things that are our grounds. Here there can be no question of a
science:
We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. And
this description gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical prob-

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lems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by looking
into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize
those workings: in despite ofan urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved,
not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
(1968, #109)

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I wish to express my thanks to Jeff Coulter for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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