Abstract

This discourse is an attempt to bring the dialectical investigations of Aristotle alongside the grammatical investigations of Wittgenstein in order to draw attention to certain formal connections discernible between them. Toward this end some fundamental misunderstandings which lie at the bottom of some common misinterpretations of the philosophical methods of Aristotle and Wittgenstein are made apparent. Against D. J. Allan's contention that Aristotle's deductions in the Eudemian Ethics follow a mathematical pattern it is argued that these deductions, like those in the Nicomachean Ethics, are not scientific demonstrations, but dialectical clarifications of first principles known in themselves prior to their definition. Against Terence Irwin's contention that Aristotle offers dialectical arguments which give reasons to believe that their conclusions represent objectively true principles it is argued that Aristotle's realist assumptions entail that investigations which produce reasons to believe that they are arriving at objectively true principles are neither fundamental nor dialectical and cannot provide a solution to the problem of scepticism about fundamental principles once this problem is granted the significance that Irwin attributes to it. Against Wittgenstein's own claim to be advancing an entirely new method for philosophy, one which constitutes a radical departure from the received methods of dealing with philosophical problems, it is argued that the grammatical form of investigation involves dialectical techniques employed with great facility by Aristotle and Wittgenstein alike in order to overthrow spurious theories and escape from common conceptual confusions. Wittgenstein is interpreted as using arguments dialectically to recollect and to clarify our knowledge of the functions of words by means of propositions which express rules of grammar rather than properties of things. Against David Bloor's contention that Wittgenstein refuses to give reasons for the formation of concepts it is argued that the reasons which Wittgenstein thinks we need to appreciate are internal to each concept that we sustain and therefore can be given only in the form of descriptions which make apparent the conditions which belong to the applications of our concepts. Philosophical investigations which terminate in reasons of this sort are recognized as properly fundamental and dialectical