1
Draft For Discussion
Wittgenstein, Bourdieu and the ontology of the social:
some Kripkean reflections on the notion of the Habitus
Lorenzo Bernasconi
2004 IACR Annual Conference
Section I
According to Pierre Bourdieu, the central role of the social theorist is
to uncover the most profoundly buried structures of the various
social worlds which constitute the social universe, as well as the
“mechanisms” which tend to ensure their reproduction or their
transformation. (Bourdieu 1989, p.7).
This view of the ultimate task of social theory can be summarised as in essence the
tackling of the problem of order, that is, of asking the metaphysical question of what
accounts for the fact that the social world holds together.
At the heart of this problem of order lies the question of how it is that normatively
constrained areas of human thought and action are reproduced and transformed. This
question arises from the fact that as opposed to the natural world, many of the regularities
which characterise the social world are not just repeated patterns of behaviour imposed
upon us by physical necessity, but rather, are regular in virtue of responding to particular
demands and norms which have some generalisable form. One way to characterise these
regularities is to say that they are in some form or other a matter of rules. Political
institutions, judicial systems, economic structures, language, morality, etiquette are all
phenomena of this sort. For all of them there is a matter of correctness and incorrectness
concerning the practices that underpin them. One of the key questions that social
theorists have therefore concerned themselves with is of specifying an ontological theory
that explains how this normativity is anchored.
On Bourdieu’s view, traditional social science offers two opposing answers to this
general question each of which reduce social life to two unsatisfactory extremes. First,
there is the response offered by subjectivism. Subjectivists insist that all of our actions
are the result of our conscious mental states. On this view, social order is explained
exclusively in terms of our individual intentions and beliefs. Second, there is the
objectivist response. On the objectivist view, our intentional mental states and actions are
nothing else but the causal upshot of certain ‘objective’ regularities. Social order is thus
conceived as the mechanical resultant of objective forces such as structures, laws and
systems of relations.
It is against the backdrop of attempting to resist the reduction of social reality to
either of these extremes that Bourdieu develops his ‘praxeological solution’ to the
problem of order. As he insists, we must abandon all
theories which explicitly or implicitly treat practice as a mechanical
reaction … But rejection of mechanistic theories in no way implies
that … we should reduce the objective intentions and constituted
significations of actions and works to the conscious and deliberate
intentions of their authors. (Bourdieu 1977, p.73).
2
The social world, as Bourdieu puts it, is ‘intrinsically dual’, and the goal that he therefore
sets himself is of finding a framework able to capture this basic fact. Bourdieu attempts
to do this by integrating the respective insights of objectivism and subjectivism and
introduces the notion of the habitus meant to capture the middle ground that lies between
these two extremes.
In developing this theoretical framework, Bourdieu acknowledges the important
influence of Wittgenstein’s rule following considerations. As he once commented:
Wittgenstein is probably the philosopher who has helped me most at
moments of difficulty. He’s a kind of saviour for times of great
intellectual distress—as when you have to question such evident
things as ‘obeying a rule’. (Bourdieu 1990a, p.9).
As this quote suggests, Bourdieu clearly sees his ‘praxeological’ solution to the problem
of order as an extension into the realm of social theory of the basic insights of
Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. Alas, however, Bourdieu suggests this
independently of a proper exploration of the underlying reasons for why Wittgenstein’s
thought points in the direction of the sort of account he proposes.
Whilst attempts have been made to bring to the fore more explicitly in what way
Bourdieu follows in Wittgenstein’s footsteps (notably by Charles Taylor), my interest in
this paper is to go down the opposite route and explore some of the reasons why we might
take Wittgenstein as offering a case to reject the sort of account proposed by Bourdieu.
Section II
My point of reference in exploring this theme is Saul Kripke’s interpretation of
Wittgenstein as proposed in his 1982 book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language:
An Elementary Exposition. Kripke reads Wittgenstein as raising a devastating ‘sceptical
challenge’ of a very intuitive presupposition concerning the types of explanations we are
prone to put forward in accounting for normatively constrained areas of human thought
and action. This is that there is some fact that we grasp in virtue of which we correctly
engage in such rule-like regularities.
The example of following the rule of addition strongly spells out this central
intuition of the existence of such a normativity-determining fact. Let us imagine that I am
following the rule ‘add 2’ when writing out the arithmetical series: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10…. Here
I am naturally led to the idea that certain continuations are correct (e.g. 16, 18, 20) and
others incorrect (e.g. 11, 19, 31) in virtue of the rule being followed, namely that of
addition. I naturally suppose that the addition rule is the fact that tells me which
continuations are correct. This is brought out by the fact that, for instance, when someone
makes a mistake, or disputes whether a particular number fits the series, it is by reference
to this rule that the matter is settled.
Given this picture, when I am able to follow this arithmetical series correctly, it is
natural to assume that the addition rule plays some role in the production of my thoughts
and actions. When I correctly continue this series, I do not suppose that I reach a correct
answer as result of—as Kripke puts it—an ‘unjustified leap in the dark’, but rather in
virtue of me somehow grasping what the addition rule requires and acting accordingly.
(Kripke 1982, p.10).
Under the assumption that such normativity-determining facts exist, social
theorists have naturally been led to attempt to specify the nature of these facts and their
place in our lives. It is indeed along these lines that Bourdieu interprets Wittgenstein as
hinting towards a new way of conceiving of what he calls the ‘principles’ that underpin
our practices. In particular, Bourdieu sees Wittgenstein as showing—against the
3
presuppositions of subjectivism—that we cannot think of our practices as determined by
explicit rules that we consciously picture in our minds. Thus, Bourdieu once remarked:
“all my reflection originated from this: how can behaviour be regular without being the
product of obedience to rules?” (Bourdieu 1987, p.81). As I shall come to discuss a little
bit further on, Bourdieu’s answer is to argue that rather than thinking about our practices
as the result of us following explicit rules, we need to think of our practices as
underpinned by a set of unarticulated principles which must be seen as embodied.
By contrast, the conclusion that Kripke draws from Wittgenstein’s rule-following
considerations is that no such normativity-determining facts exist at all—be it in the form
of rules that we consciously picture in our minds; or in the form of unarticulated,
embodied principles, or however else we might conceive of them. According to Kripke’s
Wittgenstein (or Kripkenstein), our intuitive assumption that such facts exist has no
bearing in reality, it is an ontological myth, a philosophical flight of fancy caused by a
misunderstanding of our ordinary language. Thus, if Kripkenstein is correct, descriptions,
theories and explanations of social life premised on this assumption are bound to be—to
some extent or other—flights of fancy too.
Section III
For a philosopher who famously proclaimed that “we may not advance any kind
of theory” (PI 109), Kripke’s interpretation may seem a rather puzzling view to attribute
to Wittgenstein. This is however to misunderstand the nature of Kripke’s sceptical
challenge. Kripkenstein’s point is not to offer a rival theory of the ontological
underpinnings of our normative practices based on a more profound view of how the
world ‘really is’. Rather, what Kripke draws from Wittgenstein’s rule-following
considerations is an immanent critique of the idea that our rule-like practices are
determined by some normativity-constituting fact. All that Kripkenstein therefore does is
consider with a critical eye that which we are prone to take for granted.
Kripkenstein’s argument thus begins by accepting the intuitive assumption that
our normative practices (in his case meaning) are explained by a certain fact.
Kripkenstein then considers what such a fact might be. In doing so, he imagines that we
have unlimited epistemic access to all areas where such a fact might reside so that all
metaphysically possible candidate facts are considered. Kripkenstein then introduces a
sceptic who analyses each candidate fact to see whether it is able to account for the
phenomenon in question (e.g. meaning). Against our initial intuitions, the sceptic shows
that none can do the job required. Thus Kripkenstein draws the famous sceptical
conclusion that “there can be no such thing as meaning anything by any word” (Kripke
1982, p.54).
However, by this he means that there is no such thing as meaning if we conceive
of meaning as resting upon our initial assumption that our normative practices are
underpinned by a certain type of fact. But, given that we clearly do have meaning (and
other normatively constrained practices), the point of the sceptical conclusion is to argue
that our initial conception is what must be flawed.
The conclusion that there are no normativity-determining facts therefore flows
from the sceptic’s dialectic: if, even under conditions of complete epistemic access the
sought after normativity grounding facts elude our grasp, then it follows that there simply
were no such facts there to begin with.
Section IV
4
With the general strategy of Kripkenstein’s sceptical challenge in mind, the
question arises of asking how these considerations relate more specifically to Bourdieu’s
attempt to find a middle ground solution to the problem of order. The way I shall
approach this question is by first looking at what Kripkenstein’s arguments have to say
against the proposals of subjectivism and objectivism.
This will allow us in the first place to better understand the reasons why Bourdieu
develops his answer to the question of order in terms of the embodied dispositions of the
habitus. Second, and more importantly however, by looking at how Kripkenstein shows
neither subjectivism nor objectivism to be able to account for our normative practices, we
shall be able to see better why—when considering Bourdieu’s proposal directly—a
solution that attempts to combine these views will not work either.
As we saw above, subjectivists locate the dynamic of social life in the conscious
intentions of individual agents. Whilst subjectivists differ in stressing the purported
voluntaristic or autonomous nature of these intentions, all are united in the belief that the
determining cause of action is ultimately ‘thought objects’. Although some subjectivists,
particularly of a Sartrian inclination might conceive of social order as the miraculous
outcome of individuals’ unregulated actions, the most common subjectivist explanation of
social order is to argue that because we share in our minds common rules, our actions are
thus guided in similar ways, ergo the order we find in the social world.
Just as in the example we considered earlier of ‘adding 2’ to a sequence, central to
this subjectivist view lies the intuitive assumption that the representations of a rule that
we have in our minds can tell us what it is that a rule requires. Put otherwise, central to
this view lies the assumption that the conscious representation of a rule in our minds can
serve as a normativity-determining fact. Kripkenstein’s argument targets this
presupposition to show that such a subjectivist view cannot account for our normative
practices. His argument runs roughly along the following lines.
Let us suppose someone by the name of Jones. In general, Jones has no particular
difficulties performing the addition function—when given simple sums to work out he
rarely hesitates in giving the right answer. Now, let us suppose that Jones is presented
with an addition problem that he has never encountered before. For simplicity, let us say
that ‘68 + 57’ is an example of such a problem. Checking that he hasn’t made any
careless arithmetical errors, Jones answers ‘125’. Jones is naturally convinced that ‘125’
is the correct answer as this is the answer that accords with what in the past he always
meant by the plus sign (‘+’).
At this point Kripke asks us to imagine a ‘bizarre sceptic’ who challenges Jones to
justify why the correct answer is ‘125’, rather than ‘5’? Would it not be possible, the
sceptic points out, that Jones in fact meant quaddition by ‘plus’ and not addition, where
quaddition coincides with addition for all cases where the numbers being added are
smaller than 57, but otherwise gives the result of 5?
Jones feels compelled to rule out the sceptic’s seemingly wild hypothesis and with his
subjectivist hat on, seeks to justify his presupposition that he meant addition by plus and
not quaddition by reference to some fact about his ‘thought objects’. Clearly—Jones
supposes—there must be something inside his head that constitutes his understanding of
addition by the plus sign (‘+’).
Jones thus answers that he meant addition and not quaddition by plus because he has
internalised in his mind a finite set of simple instructions that determines what he should
answer to the question ‘What is 57 + 68?’. For instance, one such algorithmic procedure
might be that used in the counting of marbles. We can determine the outcome of 57 + 68
by arranging two heaps of marbles, one with 57 and the other with 68, combining the two
heaps into one, and counting the overall number of marbles.
Such an algorithmic procedure, Jones argues, is what he explicitly followed in
guiding his counting behaviour in the past and it is what guided him in every new case
5
hence justifying ‘125’ as the correct answer. How does Jones’ following of the basic
‘counting’ procedure help in satisfying the sceptic’s challenge? As Kripke points out, not
very much at all for the sceptic can always answer that by ‘counting’ Jones could have
meant quounting rather than counting where quounting refers to the procedures by which
he should give the sum 5 when one of the heaps counted exceeds 57.
Perhaps, in this case, Jones might appeal either to past performances that were guided
by the counting rule or to more basic linguistic rules to interpret the counting rule. The
problem with the former is that Jones’s past usage of ‘counting’ is finite, and hence every
past application is compatible with the hypothesis that he meant quounting by ‘counting’
as well as counting. Nothing therefore from the finite pool of Jones’s previous behaviour
is able to identify a normativity-constituting fact. The problem with the latter proposal is
that the sceptic can come up again with a deviant interpretation for what the more basic
rules imply that results in a fruitless infinite regress. Given that all contentful mental
states can be interpreted in any number of different ways, the point raised by this
challenge can be generalised to any set of instructions meant to facilitate the
understanding of a rule. Kripke takes himself here to be expounding Wittgenstein’s
remarks in the Philosophical Investigations on “a rule for interpreting a rule”:
[A]ny interpretation still hangs in the air along with what it
interprets, and cannot give it any support. Interpretations by
themselves do not determine meaning (PI, 198).
Thus, what flows from this analysis is that by appealing to our ‘thought objects’, the
fact that determined that Jones meant addition by ‘plus’ (if such a fact exists at all)
remains hidden. No contentful representation in the mind gives us an appropriate
normativity-constituting fact. By implication no subjectivist view that presupposes such a
fact can do the job of accounting for our normative practices.
Given the problems just considered with the subjectivist approach, objectivism may
appear to offer a more promising candidate fact to satisfy the sceptic. As we briefly
considered, objectivism conceives of our practices as the outcome of objective forces:
agents’ actions and thoughts are reduced to the causal influence of rules, laws or systems
of relations. Kripke considers such an objectivist response to the sceptical challenge in
terms of reductive dispositions. Such a response simply says that ‘it is a fact about Jones
that, when faced with the query ’68 + 57=?’, he is disposed, ceteris paribus, to answer
‘125’’. The prima facie attraction of such a dispositionalist view is that Kripke’s attack
against subjectivism falls by the wayside. By arguing that our actions and
representational mental states are our dispositions, the infinite regress that threatens ‘a
rule for interpreting a rule’ is immediately pre-empted.
However, as Kripke shows, no such account can do the job of establishing whether
Jones meant addition by plus because dispositions cannot perform the central task of
drawing the conceptual borderline between correctness and incorrectness that underwrite
our normative practices.
This problem is brought out when Kripke shows that objectivism cannot
accommodate our intuition that someone can mean addition by ‘+’ and yet systematically
make mistakes. If, as an objectivist argues, it is our dispositions that are determining of
our meanings; this implies that what an agent means by plus can be directly read off from
his or her dispositions. So, for instance, returning to our example above, if in response to
the query what is the sum of ’68 + 57’, Jones answers ‘125’, according to
dispositionalism we could read off that what he meant by ‘+’ is the addition function.
However, what happens in the case where Jones systematically fails to carry such that
he gives the answer ‘115’? On the dispositionalist view, there is nothing we can appeal to
in order to say that in this instance he has miscalculated. Such an appeal would
6
presuppose that we somehow know independently of his dispositions what function he
means.
Thus, on pain of circularity, given that we cannot on the dispositionalist view appeal
to any meaning that Jones attaches to the ‘+’ sign other than what his dispositions are, we
would be forced to say that Jones in fact meant another function by ‘+’ such as
‘skaddition’ where ‘skaddition’ refers to the extension generated by adding without
carrying. In short, bereft of the platitude that the meaning of a predicate can be invoked
to justify its uses, on an objectivist account it is impossible to claim the application of a
term as incorrect.
As Wittgenstein makes the point and as quoted by Kripke: in the case of
dispositionalism “whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means
that here we can’t talk about ‘right’” (§258). (Kripke 1982, p.24). Thus, a reductive
account of the sort objectivism proposes cannot do the job of establishing what Jones
meant by ‘+’ in the past either.
Thus, the upshot of Kripkenstein’s analysis is that no candidate fact offered by either
subjectivism or objectivism can establish whether Jones in the past meant addition or
quaddition. Given the fact that the present will become past in the next moment, the
sceptical argument can be reapplied to show that we can never know on the
presuppositions of objectivism and subjectivism which rule or principle we are following
in the present either. The devastating implications of Kripkenstein’s paradox is thus laid
bare: without knowing which rules or principles we are following, we have no way of
distinguishing correct from incorrect applications of those rule or principles and thus can
have no such thing as normative practices at all.
Section V
Given however that we clearly do have such things as normative practices, if
Kripkenstein’s arguments against subjectivism and objectivism considered above are
correct, they can be interpreted as bringing out two important insights for any account of
social order. First, as brought out by Kripkenstein’s attack on subjectivism, whatever
mechanism or fact is invoked as underpinning normative regularities in practice, it cannot
rest at the level of conscious ‘thought objects’. And second, as Kripke’s attack on
objectivism shows, such a fact cannot simply be reduced to non-intentional dispositions
either.
The first question to consider then is whether Bourdieu avoids the problems that
confront subjectivism. Prima Facie it seems that he does. Although his reasons for
rejecting subjectivism are distinct from those presented by Kripkenstein, Bourdieu is
emphatic that the dynamic of social life cannot be understood at the level of our
conscious representations in terms of codified propositions. As he notes
…to account for the quasi-miraculous and therefore somewhat
incredible necessity, without any organizing intention, that [is]
revealed by analysis, one [has] to look at the incorporated
dispositions, or more precisely the body schema, to find the
ordering principle … capable of orienting practices in a way that is
at once unconscious and systematic. (Bourdieu 1990b, p.10)
Bourdieu coins the term of the habitus to refer to these incorporated dispositions and in
describing this term he again stresses—contra subjectivism—their unconscious nature:
7
“The schemes of the habitus” Bourdieu tells us “are the primary
forms of classification … [and] … function below the level of
consciousness and language, beyond the reach of introspective
scrutiny or control by the will.” (Bourdieu 1984, p.466)
If we recall, the problem that confronted subjectivism was that any proposed
normativity-determining candidates at the level of conscious representations can be
variously interpreted and any further ‘thought objects’ cited to fix their content were
shown to be subject to the same problem of interpretation. By specifying the generating
principles of practice in terms of embodied dispositions of the habitus lying beyond the
grasp of consciousness, it appears—at least at first sight—that this problem of
interpretation is avoided.
The question that then arises is whether Bourdieu avoids the central problem that
confronts objectivism. For this, we need to consider in a little more detail how Bourdieu
thinks of the relationship between our embodied disposition and our practices.
On the one hand, Bourdieu’s reference to the habitus as the ‘generating principle’ or
‘generative scheme’ of our practices suggests that what he has in mind is the idea that our
practices are dependent upon but not identical to the dispositions of the habitus. On this
interpretation, Bourdieu conceives of the dispositions of the habitus as—to use John
Searle’s phrase—a sort of unarticulated background out of which our normative practices
are derived.
However, on closer analysis, it is clear that this is not the conception that Bourdieu
has in mind. Such a conception introduces an ontological distinction between what
Bourdieu refers to as the ‘structuring structures’ and the ‘structure structures’. One of
Bourdieu’s principle aims is however to supersede precisely such a metaphysical
distinction.1 As Bourdieu insists, there is an ‘ontological complicity’ between our
practices and the habitus which any ‘total social science needs to capture.
Thus, another way of understanding what Bourdieu means by the suggestion that the
generating principle of our practices are located in our embodied dispositions (i.e. the
habitus) is in terms of an identity relationship between the two. In other words, we
interpret Bourdieu as conceiving of our practices as reducible to our embodied
dispositions.
Several passages from Bourdieu’s writings point towards such an interpretation. In
The Logic of Practice for instance Bourdieu states:
Enacted belief, instilled by the childhood learning that treats the
body as a living memory pad, an automaton that ‘leads the mind
unconsciously along with it’, and as repository for the most precious
values, is the form par excellence of the ‘blind or symbolic thought’
… which Leibniz refers to. (Bourdieu 1990b, p.68).
Practical sense, social necessity turned into nature, converted into
motor schemes and body automatisms, is what causes practices.
(Bourdieu 1990b, p.69)
Elsewhere, again appealing to Leibniz, Bourdieu writes:
1
It is on these grounds that Bourdieu for instance criticises structuralism: in conceiving of
practices and objective structures as ontologically distinct, structuralists fail to account for
how these structures come into being, i.e. how they become themselves structured.
8
… as Leibniz put it, ‘we are automatons in three-quarters of what
we do’ … the ultimate values, as they are called, are never anything
other than the primitive dispositions of the body… (Bourdieu 1984,
p.474).
Bourdieu’s reference in these passages to us as ‘automatons’ responding in a
‘blind’ fashion to ‘primitive dispositions’ hints at a reductionist conception of practice
that is very close to (if not the same as) that of objectivism considered above. However,
as we saw above, such a view is not only liable to the sceptic’s challenge but represents a
mechanical conception of practice of precisely the type that Bourdieu sought to transcend.
To get away from this reductionist picture, another way of interpreting Bourdieu’s
proposed solution is in terms of imputing intentionality or understanding directly to the
level of the body. Such an interpretation is given clear expression by Bourdieu in the
following quote:
Practical belief is not a ‘state of mind’, still less a kind of arbitrary
adherence to a set of instituted dogmas and doctrines (‘beliefs’), but
rather a state of the body. (Bourdieu 1990b, p.68)
This interpretation is further suggested elsewhere by Bourdieu, as for example with the
proposal that “states of the body are states of the mind” (Bourdieu 1990a, p.131). The
point suggested here is that for Bourdieu the body is not conceived as just implementing
goals we consciously frame (as per subjectivism), nor as just the locus of supra-individual
causal factors (as per objectivism), but as a source of understanding and intentionality.
Seen in this light, we can appreciate most clearly the sense in which Bourdieu claims to
have transcended the antagonism which opposes objectivism and subjectivism whilst
retaining the insights gained by each.
Furthermore, it might appear at first sight that by introducing understanding at the
level of dispositions of the body, Bourdieu avoids the clutches of Kripke’s sceptic. By
equating our practices with our dispositions Bourdieu appears to avoid the infinite regress
of a ‘rule to interpret a rule’ that burdened subjectivism, and yet by imputing
understanding to these dispositions, he also seems to avoid the problem that confronted
objectivism which was as we considered, the inability to draw a conceptual borderline
between correctness and incorrectness.
However, to see if indeed Bourdieu’s proposal does put Kripkenstein’s sceptic to
rest, we need to consider more closely how Bourdieu conceives of our embodied
understanding. How are we to make sense of the idea that ‘states of the body are states of
the mind’?
Bourdieu suggests that our bodies become encoded with a certain know-how or
understanding as a result of a process of socialisation. As he argues
the cognitive structures which social agents implement in their
practical knowledge of the world are internalised, ‘embodied’ social
structures. (Bourdieu 1984, p.468)
Bourdieu insists that this homology holds because our dispositions are “genetically
linked” to objective structures. Bourdieu elaborates what he means by this by appeal to
Leibniz’s discussion of possible ways to conceive of why several clocks show the same
time. Bourdieu quotes Leibniz:
Imagine … two clocks or watches in perfect agreement as to the
time. This may occur in one of three ways. The first consists in
mutual influence; the second is to appoint a skilful workman to
9
correct them and synchronize constantly; the third is to construct
these two clocks with such art and precision that one can be assured
of their subsequent agreement. (Bourdieu 1990b, p.59)
Bourdieu identifies his position with the third possibility highlighted by Leibniz. As he
goes onto to say, we are harmonised in our practices because our bodies are inscribed
“by identical histories” (Bourdieu 1990b, p.59). Bourdieu’s argument is that as a result of
exposure to statistically common experiences (particularly in early childhood), members
of the same group or class come to embody the same cognitive schemes or principles.
These schemes or principles are what agents use in ordering their world and are
what generate their practices. As Bourdieu writes, they are
the strategy generating principle[s] enabling agents to cope with
unforeseen and ever-changing situations … a system of lasting and
transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences,
functions at ever moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations
and actions and makes possible the achievement of infinitely
diversified tasks. (Bourdieu 1977, p.72, 95)
This passage is instructive because it reveals the sense in which Bourdieu conceives of
the dispositions of the body as comprising a form of ‘understanding’. As Bourdieu
suggests here, the principles that we embody in the form of dispositions are ‘transposable’
to new contexts—as he says, they ‘allow for the achievement of infinitely diversified
tasks’. This feature is brought out even more explicitly by Bourdieu in arguing that all
that a child needs to learn in order to gain practical mastery is
the product of the systematic application of a small number of
principles coherent in practice … in [their] infinite redundance,
[they] suppl[y] the key to all the tangible series, their ratio, which
will be appropriated in the form of principle generating practices
that are organised in accordance with the same rationality.”
(Bourdieu 1990b, p.75).
The picture that Bourdieu thus draws is that through a process of socialisation we
come to embody a form of understanding because we come to grasp certain basic
principles or schemes which guide our practices in new circumstances. In short,
Bourdieu identifies our embodied principles as unconscious practice generating
procedures which can act as normativity-grounding facts.
Such a view cannot however do the job of satisfying Kripke’s sceptic. The
problem is that even if we share ‘identical histories’ as Bourdieu assumes, nothing from
the finite pool of our past patterns of behaviour can fix a determinate content for the
principles or schemes which Bourdieu claims can be transposed to enable agents to cope
with unforeseen and ever-changing new situations. The problem lies in the fact that all of
our experiences are necessarily finite whilst meaning-constituting facts of the sort
required have an infinitary nature. Bourdieu’s answer to the sceptic would be to argue
that it is the ‘embodied principle’ that constitutes what Jones meant by ‘+’ in the past and
is what will determine how Jones is to use the term ‘+’ in an infinite number of new
cases. But as we saw before, the sceptic can always envisage that Jones’ past usage falls
under another principle (such as the quus principle) whose instances are the same as those
of plus for all past applications of the principle, but diverse at the next new case.
By implication, this proposal falls foul of the sceptical challenge and if so, it
seems that no matter which way we interpret Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus, there is no
10
way to escape the clutches of Kripkenstein’s sceptic. What this means is that there is no
way of making sense of our normative practices on Bourdieu’s proposed model without
entering into a set of intractable conceptual confusions.
Conclusion
In closing, the question I wish to consider is what Bourdieu’s failure to answer the
sceptic teaches us. If Kripkenstein is correct, what implications are we to draw from the
fact that it is impossible to answer the sceptic’s challenge?
The conclusion Kripke draws from his analysis is that all we can offer in response to
the sceptic is a ‘sceptical solution’. Kripke’s sceptical solution consists of two parts: first,
it provides a diagnostic of the urge for underwriting our normative practices with a
normativity-constituting fact, and second, an argument to the effect that—contrary to
appearances—our normative practices do not require for their tenability the sort of
justification which the sceptic has shown to be untenable.
Let us look at this second aspect of the sceptical solution first. This solution will
leave those seeking an ontological theory of the social world dissatisfied for it suggests
merely an overview of how we speak about normative practices in everyday life. We are
enjoined by Kripke not to look for metaphysical facts corresponding to our practices but
rather to look at the circumstances under which ascriptions of ‘correct’ practice are
actually made and the utility that resides in ascribing them. The key idea behind this
‘solution’ is that there is nothing to grasping or following a normative practice apart from
what we might call ‘following a practice’ and ‘going against it’ in actual cases. This
echoes Wittgenstein’s famous remark in §201 of Philosophical Investigations that “there
is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what
we call ‘obeying a rule’ and ‘going against it’ in actual cases.
The diagnostic part of Kripke’s solution looks at what it is that tempts us to search for
normativity constituting facts in the first place. His answer is that it is the result of a
fascination with a particular form of representation. For various reasons, we are prone to
misunderstand our ordinary language and assume the that our normative practices must be
underpinned by some determinate fact. In particular, we are prone to commit the
category mistake of taking conditionals about our normative practices to be the same as
conditionals about physical events. (Kusch 2004). Consider:
[1] If the brakes work then the car will (must) stop before reaching the wall.
[2] If Jones means addition by ‘+’ then he will (must) reply ‘125’ to ’57 + 68’.
In the case of [1] we take it that the brakes of the car is what causes it to stop.
Reading [2] on the model of [1] suggests that Jones’ meaning addition by ‘+’ is what
causes him to reply ‘125’ to ’57 + 68’. The antecedent is taken as the cause of the
consequent. Kripke’s point is that whilst sentences or thoughts like [2] are commonplace
in our talk about meaning, philosophers fall into the mistake of reading them on the
model of [1]. On this assumption, we rush ahead into formulating explanatory theories
that satisfy this urge convinced that greater understanding must be the consequence of
discerning some deep pattern capable of fruitful generalization.
But according to Kripkenstein, talk of rules or principles existing that are determining
of our normative practices is nothing else but a convenient turn of phrase. What such talk
hides however is that the sole reality of which we can speak consists of interlocking
patterns of actual and potential justification and explanation, actions and reactions. As
Wittgenstein wrote in his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (VI,§31):
11
The difficult thing here is not, to dig down to the ground; no, it is to
recognise the ground that lies before us as the ground.
For the ground keeps on giving us the illusory image of a greater
depth, and when we seek to reach this, we keep on finding ourselves
on the old level.
Bibliography
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
—. 1984. Distinction : a social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
—. 1987. Choses dites. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
—. 1989. La Noblesse d'Etat. Grandes écoles et esprit de corps. Paris: Les Éditions de
Minuit.
—. 1990a. In other words. Cambridge: Polity.
—. 1990b. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kripke, Saul A. 1982. Wittgenstein on rules and private language: an elementary
exposition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kusch, Martin. 2004. "Rule-scepticism and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: The
Bloor-Lynch Debate Revisited." Social Studies of Science 34: ??? - ???
Miller, Alexander, and Crispin Wright. 2002. Rule-Following and Meaning. Chesham:
Acumen.
Wacquant, Loïc J.D. 1992. "Toward a Social Praxeology: The Structure and Logic of
Bourdieu's Sociology." Pp. 1-47 in An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, edited by
Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J.D. Wacquant. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations: Translated by G. E. M.
Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
—. 1956. Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.