[Note: We will get back to our series on “Mere Metaphysics” and cosmological reasoning soon. Here is a quick study I recently did comparing Russell’s work The Problems of Philosophy with Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. I hope you enjoy it.]

Those, then, who are to join in argument with one another must to some extent understand one another; for if this does not happen how are they to join in argument with one another? — Aristotle, Metaphysics

Few ideas have been more central to Western philosophy than the discovery of universals. This post will seek to explore, explicate, and navigate the nature of universals and how they shape each of Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophical outlook. When comparing and contrasting Russell’s work The Problems of Philosophy, with Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, it becomes clear that they have two different conceptual schemes for interpreting reality. The difference, I believe, is that each thinker is functioning with different metaphysical assumptions of reality (or being). Russell, coming from the broadly Platonic tradition, views reality through the scheme of realism (the metaphysical principle that essences or universals have objective reality), and Wittgenstein’s way of looking at the most fundamental questions of reality is through nominalism and a metaphysical framework he calls the “language-game,” generally following but going further than Kant, Berkeley, Hegel, and Hume ¹. Russell and Wittgenstein differ at the most basic and elementary aspects of reality. I believe an analysis of the most basic and elemental differences between Russell and Wittgenstein will demonstrate how and why they diverge and come to contrasting positions regarding being and the nature of reality. Furthermore, I believe that through an analysis and coming to understand the basic differences between these two great books helps one arrive at a clearer understanding of the world and how we know it, primarily through the perspective of Aristotelian moderate realism (the belief that universals are apprehended in the intellect while they are individualized in objective things in the world). In order to understand and analyze the conversation between Russell and Wittgenstein, it will be helpful to examine the philosophical antecedents regarding universals. Universals are important because they help clarify how language and logic actually work and ultimately how we know reality.

It is the question of universals that is central to understanding Russell, Wittgenstein, and moderate realism. In general, Russell holds to the classical, or broadly Platonic, understanding of universals. A universal is any concept common to a number of things. For example, because a number of things can participate in whiteness and justice, Russell explains, “a universal will be anything which may be shared by many particulars, and has those characteristics which, as we saw, distinguish justice and whiteness from just acts and white things” (271). While there can be many particular acts of justice, and many individually white things, the universal whiteness or justice is that which is common to or are shared with white things and just actions. Russell is clearly drawing on the broadly classical Platonic and Aristotelian tradition. Plato believed that universals exist in a transcendent world, the world of “forms,” while Aristotle held that universals are found in the things themselves. Both Plato and Aristotle believed universals are real and timeless. Like Plato and Aristotle, Russell believes that universals are real, and holds to a position known as “metaphysical realism” (or sometimes just “realism”) because he thinks that forms or essences are objectively real. On the other hand, Russell does not place universals in a transcendent world as Plato does, nor does he find them in things themselves as Aristotle argued for. Instead, Russell believed that universals are found in the order of logic. Russell’s worry is that Plato’s theory of forms leads to a kind of mysticism and is ultimately unrealistic and unhelpful (271). Regarding Plato’s theory of forms, he states, “These mystical developments are very natural, but the basis of the theory is in logic, and it is based in logic that we have to consider it” (271). Russell thinks that Plato was not completely correct with his theory of forms, and points to the fact that logic (and language) requires universals.

Although Russell accepts the idea of universals, and thinks they are real, he believes they are correctly found in the rational order of logic. It is important to understand why Russell comes to this conclusion. There are two basic reasons why, I think, logicians such as Russell are tempted to ground universals in logic. The first reason is that logic is a property of being itself (being, after all, is a universal that many things participate in) and the second reason is that deduction and induction will not function without universals. The logical laws of identity, noncontradiction, and excluded middle are inescapable properties of reality. These laws of logic explain that for anything that exists and participates in being, something is what it is (law of identity), something either is or is not (law of excluded middle), and nothing can both be and not be at the same time and same respect (law of noncontradiction). These laws are also metaphysical and epistemological in nature because they explain the basic features of what it means for something to exist (something cannot both exist and not exist at the same time) and how we can know something is true (a statement cannot both be true and not true at the same time and same respect). The laws of logic work because they are properties of being. In a similar way, logical syllogisms do not work without universals. Take, for example, the standard deductive argument:

All humans are mortal

Socrates is a human

__________________

Therefore, Socrates is mortal

It is clear that the argument is based on the universals “human” and “mortality.” When one realizes the essence of humanity, one can know that the argument is valid and correct. Universals are essential to correct logical reasoning.

Induction, as well, is based on universals. If one were to conclude that all humans are mortal based on the fact that Plato is mortal, Aristotle is mortal, Chopin is mortal, I am mortal etc., the universals “human” and “mortality” are necessary for understanding the argument.² Both deduction and induction demonstrate that there is a metaphysical order to being which includes universals. The laws of logic, or what Russell calls the laws of thought are objective as Russell explains, “The name “laws of thought” is also misleading, for what is important is not the fact that we think in accordance with these laws, but the fact that things behave in accordance with them; in other words, the fact that when we think in accordance with them we think truly” (265 italics in original). Russell is simply echoing the same point Aristotle made centuries earlier, “It is not because we think truly that you are pale, that you are pale, but because you are pale we who say this have the truth” (577 italics in original). Logic and truth are not a product of the mind, nor of language, but an objective property of reality. In the same way, universals are an objective property of being. Truth is simply that which corresponds to reality. This will be important when we come to Wittgenstein and moderate realism.

Interestingly, however, Russell also pointed out that language itself rests on universals.

Russell’s understanding of language will also help to explain the difference between realism and the nominalism of Wittgenstein. Russell believes that language can not function without universals. Russell explains,

It will be seen that no sentence can be made up without at least one word which denotes a universal. The nearest approach would be some such statement as “I like this.” But even here the word “like” denotes a universal, for I may like other things, and other people may like things. Thus all truths involve universals, and all knowledge of truths involves acquaintance with universals. (272)

Russell believed that most words are universals (272). This has always been a source of fascination for linguists and philosophers. If I point to a triangle someone from Germany, or Nicaragua, or ancient Athens would know what I had in mind even if they have different words for the triangle. The definition seems to be universal across language, place, and time. Similarly, words like love and justice are timeless universals. One can love someone who is dead and hope for love in the future just as one can recognize acts of justice in the past and seek justice in the future. It is the universal and not the word itself with which we are concerned. For Russell, the universal seems to be real and an objective part of reality that makes both logic and language function. Russell does seem to think that the universal is both part of things of physical reality and transcendent across place and time. If there were no triangle, act of justice or love, there would be no universal (271).

With this foundation, we can now understand Wittgenstein’s position regarding universals, language, and metaphysics. First, however, I think it is important to make a few introductory remarks about Wittgenstein’s Philsophical Investigations. It is important to note that the work is aphoristic and somewhat incongruent as complete thoughts or lines of argumentation seem to end abruptly or are unfinished. It reads as if it was a collection of notes. This is not necessarily a negative reflection on the work, since Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and Blaise Pascal’s Pensees are both collections of notes and considered by many to be great works. Nonetheless, it makes interpretation a difficult and tentative process because Wittgenstein’s thoughts seem to be incomplete at times. In addition, Wittgenstein does not lay out his philosophical starting points as clearly as Russell and it is difficult for the reader to follow his argumentation based on foundational concepts (since they are not stated) in order to get a clear grasp of what he determines to be ultimate when it comes to being, universals, and language. For these reasons, what I give as Wittgenstein’s position can only be viewed as conditional. Nonetheless, I do think there is enough evidence in the Philosophical Investigations to suggest what follows—that Wittgenstein was largely a nominalist and went further than the idealists that preceded him. Wittgenstein largely rejects the idea of foundational concepts and universals which is why he goes further than the idealists such as Kant, Berkeley, and Hegel, who did hold to universals but believe they are just products of the mind or a mind. Two things are fairly clear in the Philosophical Investigations—language is a game, and words are defined not by reference to the universal but by use and convention.

In the Western intellectual tradition, the broadly Platonic and Aristotelian position is not the only conceptual structure for interpreting universals or language (how we talk about reality or universals). Kant, Berkeley, and Hegel, for example, believed that the mind is ultimate in determining reality, that being is mind dependent, and universals are purely mental concepts. For these reasons, these thinkers are called idealists because all reality is reducible to the mind and its ideas. Wittgenstein is a little hard to interpret. To the degree that Wittgenstein thinks language is a mental or societal construct, he is a conceptualist (universals are concepts in the mind alone, not in reality. The idealists held this position). However, I think there is evidence, at least at times, that Wittgenstein goes further than his idealist predecessors and really is a nominalist (the theory that words do not refer to universals but are names we attach to things). The nominalist rejects universals altogether. At other times, Wittgenstein emphasizes the pragmatic nature of words and grounds their meaning not in universals, but simply in how they are used. Wherever he lands, he does not think that words refer to universals. Overall, however, it is clear that instead of focusing on universals which make communication possible, Wittgenstein believed it was best to conceive of language as a type of game.

Wittgenstein believed that language, like games, operate within fixed rules and procedures. As with games, language works within a set of rules whether one is learning a language or using language with another (318). As Wittgenstein explains, “I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the action into which it is woven the “language-game” (318 – 319). Words are simply like chess pieces which find their meaning when used in accordance with the rules of the game (324 – 325). According to Wittgenstein, “the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (327). The rules of language come from the “forms of life” and custom (320, 360). In fact, Wittgenstein believes that the rules of the language-game are all encompassing and govern all of life,

It is not possible that there should have been only one occasion on which someone obeyed a rule. It is not possible that there should have been only one occasion on which a report was made, an order given or understood; and so on.—To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are customs (uses, institutions).

To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to be master of a technique. (360)

According to Wittgenstein all human communication is locked up within a language-game. It is not even possible to get outside the language-game for to do so would require the use of another language-game (333). Like Hegel’s world-soul, Wittgenstein’s language-game is what ultimately controls, defines, and determines reality. The best one can do is master the rules of the given game.

Not surprisingly, Wittgenstein rejects the concept of essences or universals (342). The meaning of words are simply how they are used syntactically. “Essence is expressed by grammar,” according to Wittgenstein (379, italics in original). Contra Russell, Wittgenstein believes that there are no fixed universals or essences which provides meaning to words, rather, words find their meaning in their conventional usage and how they are related to one another in sentences. As Wittgenstein states, “I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all,—but that they are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all “language” (333). It is the relationships that exist between words that create their meaning, not their inherent definition, essence, or universal. For Wittgenstein, essences (or universals) are just names, words used as pieces in a language game.

A few brief thoughts need to be made about Wittgenstein’s philosophical outlook. First, Wittgenstein’s philosophy can be seen as nominalist in perspective because he held that words and things do not have essences or refer to a universal. In addition, Wittgenstein believed there are several language-games available to human experience (318). Since an essence is only expressed through grammar, the essence of a word could completely change if a different language game were to be applied to it. From the moderate realist perspective, however, if essences are fluid and not fixed, they are not essences nor universal. For Wittgenstein, there are no fixed universals to things and language. It all depends on the language-game that is being deployed. The worry here is what Aristotle pointed out so long ago, that if there are no fixed universals to words, communication would be impossible. Aristotle put it this way, “If, however, … one were to say that the word has an infinite number of meanings, obviously reasoning would be impossible; for not to have one meaning is to have no meaning, and if words have no meaning our reasoning with one another, and indeed with ourselves, has been annihilated” (525). Later in his Metaphysics, Aristotle concludes,

Those, then who are to join in argument with one another must to some extent understand one another; for if this does not happen how are they to join in argument with one another? Therefore every word must be intelligible and indicate something, and not many things but only one; and if it signifies more than one thing, it must be made plain to which of these the word is being applied. (590)

Aristotle would certainly disagree with Wittgenstein about the nature of universals. Without universals, communication is impossible. Furthermore, because there is a matter and form (essence) composition to all things, including human beings, communication is possible.

This brings us to Aristotelian moderate realism which sheds further light on both Russell and Wittgenstein. In metaphysics, the doctrine that forms, or essences, possess objective reality. In modern philosophy, realism is the concept (contrasted with idealism) that physical objects exist independently of perception, the mind, or theory of reality. For realists, theories of reality or perceptions are logically separate from objective reality itself.

The name itself was given to a certain philosophic way of thought first inaugurated by Plato and Aristotle, developed and refined in the Middle Ages, and still living at the present time. This view includes three basic theses: 1. The world is made up of substantial beings really related to one another, which exist independently of any human opinions or desires. 2. These substances and relations can be known by the human mind as they are in themselves. 3. Such knowledge can offer sound and immutable guidance (the law of nature) for individual and social action. Classically understood, human beings have the capacity or potential for comprehending universals or essences. It is a rational property of being human. In the order of knowing, the mental concept of something is not the being of the external object, it is the essence. Being or that which is in act (what Aristotle calls “complete reality”) is always matter and form³. The concept resides in the intellect as the essence or universal abstracted from external reality through the senses. The process by which the intellect grasps the essence or universal is what classical or moderate realists call simple apprehension: apprehension, because the mind receives and comes to understand the essential nature of the sense object; simple because the mind naturally takes in the intentional concept without affirming or denying it though the faculty of judgment (a secondary process). The operation of simple apprehension is the first act of knowing. The universal exists as that which is common to many in the intellect, while it exists as particular in the individual object. However, it is important to understand that what one perceives is not the concept but the object itself (or abstraction would be impossible). In short, the form is universalized in the intellect and has its foundation in things. What this means is that the form universalized in the intellect, is what makes communication possible. If there were no universals, no communication can take place. Furthermore, this means that the philosopher who is investigating the nature of universals and language needs to keep in mind both the realm of the intellect and physical reality. The form universalized in the intellect is abstracted from the form in the physical object. Moderate realism seeks to achieve this balance between the intellect and objective reality. Wittgenstein, however, seems to miss this important point. If the universal is a product of a language-game, or one’s intellect alone, there is no way to know external reality. (One will never know Kant’s thing-in-itself, for example.) One’s reality would simply be a result of one’s language-game. If many language-games are at work, there will be no communication, unless, ironically, one language-game is decided upon and used universally. But Wittgenstein also misses an important epistemological aspect to being, one that is also grounded in realism. Our senses are the only connection we have to reality. And reality has its own intractable way of being regardless of our mental constructions or language-games about it (one’s construction or language-game, could be wrong, for example). Through sense perception, one abstracts the universal.

The roles of the mind and sense perception is a point of debate between many of the great thinkers of Western philosophy. There have been philosophers such as Kant, Berkeley, and Hegel who emphasize the intellect and the function of the mind in determining reality. Others such as Aristotle, Aquinas, and perhaps Locke, who emphasize the role of the senses and begin their philosophical inquiries empirically. Sometimes this difference in philosophical outlook is illustrated by Rafael’s painting, the “School of Athens” where Plato is depicted as pointing up to the unchangeable world of Being, while Aristotle is pointing down signifying the importance of physical reality. Other philosophers, such as Russell help us to understand that both perspectives are important and necessary. Russell points out that both schools of thought appeal to different philosophical temperaments but both need to be held together in a delicate balance in order to achieve a correct understanding of reality. As Russell puts it,

According to our temperaments, we shall prefer the contemplation of the one or of the other. The one we do not prefer will probably seem to us a pale shadow of the one we prefer, and hardly worthy to be regarded as in any sense real. But the truth is that both have the same claim on our impartial attention, both are real, and both are important to the metaphysician. Indeed no sooner have we distinguished the two worlds than it becomes necessary to consider their relations. (274)

Moderate realism is an attempt to bring language, intellect, and reality together holistically. It provides the necessary balance between Russell and Wittgenstein. The intellect and sense experience are two wings of the same bird. It would be tragic to exclude one or the other. It is a difficult balance to achieve but the only way to fully understand reality as it is.

Works Cited

Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by W. D. Ross. The Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Vol. 7. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996.

Russell, Bertrand. The Problems of Philosophy. Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Vol. 55. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1993.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Vol. 55. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1993.

1 Here, Aristotle would fall into the category of “broadly Platonic” because he believed that forms are universals and real. As will be explained below, Wittgenstein falls into nominalism because he believes that words do not refer to essences or universals.

2 This is also why great imaginative literature works so profoundly. It appeals to the universals found in the human condition.

3 See Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Vol. 7, pg. 572.