Technik and Praxis in Later Wittgenstein

The distinction between the notions of “practice” [Praxis] and “technique” [Technik] plays a distinctive role in the maturation of Wittgenstein’s philosophy 1937–1945, the time he composed Philosophical Investigations and his later remarks on the foundations of logic and mathematics. It allows him to sophisticate his idea that meaning arises “in the practice of language”, emphasizing that it is the fact that there are a variety of “techniques” for embedding symbols in forms of life and within practices that shapes our concept of rule-following. His “anthropological” turn, radicalized in his remarks on the “beginnings” of mathematics and logic, offers a deepening response to Spengler’s and Frazer’s philosophies of culture, and allows for his mature responses to Frege, Russell, Ramsey, Hilbert, and Turing— responses that involve self-criticism. Kripke linked Wittgenstein’s idea of a “practice” to social consensus and the extrusion of “privacy”; others have contrasted Praxis with theory or joined it to forms of conventionalism, incommensurability, and “primitive” normativity. But a “practice” always already involves practitioners in disputes, understandings, and alternative routes of proceeding, the mastery of differing techniques. This is of central importance for the mature Wittgenstein.