Subiect Against Procedure: the Argument of Following a Rule in the Second Wittgenstein

Abstract

This paper attends to treat the question about the “following a rule” in the philosophy of the second Wittgenstein and to connect it with the relation between pragmatics and semantic. In the philosophical Investigations this argument (§§ 185-142) represents the culmination of the attempt to elucidate the concepts of use, meaning and understanding, which are introduced in the previous paragraphs. I mean to show that the rule, designed like a sign which indicates how take an action, is an inscrutable fact if we don’t insert it in a precise context of human practices and behaviour. This inscrutability of the rule and of the sign raises an apparent contradiction: the rules make possible our lived but they have not sense if considered alone. Such dependence of the rules on the practices is mutual because it’s impossible thinking a practice without a rule. The connection rule-practice, that is treated similarly as the relation meaning-use, permit us to introduce the follow arguments my paper will consider: holism of the rule and of the meanings, the question about the understanding and the recognizing of rules and meanings, finally the question about the agreement in the actions.