In Different Voices: Pitkin and Cavell on Wittgenstein’s Political Relevance

Wittgenstein’s work has been mobilized in recent decades to address questions of justice and politics, and in this respect Hanna Pitkin’s 1972 book Wittgenstein and Justice (W&J) was indeed pioneering, the first to explore explicitly the political potential of reading Wittgenstein. What is striking today is how W&J remains one of the most illuminating and deep readings of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Pitkin is among those who have experienced the power of ordinary language philosophy, of the examination of the actual uses of language, in J.L. Austin’s words, “what we should say when . . .” In her preface, she evokes her “passionate love of words as such,” that is to say, of the sensitive reality of words, their aspects and appearances, “the sheer delight in tracing the individual contours of meanings.” This sensitivity to language as it is pronounced by a human voice, Pitkin evokes it as a milieu: “perhaps only someone with a multilingual and multicultural childhood like mine, out of a milieu compounded of psychoanalysis, Marxist humanism, and Jewish humor, can take towords in quite this way.” This sensibility to “the touch of words” is something she shares with Stanley Cavell. Pitkin manages to highlight the power of Wittgenstein’s simple idea that language matters: “the