How Not to Read Philosophical Investigations: Brandom’s Wittgenstein

This paper, originating from a Wittgenstein conference in Delphi, Greece in June 2001, questions Brandom’s reading of Wittgenstein on “Following a Rule”. For the purpose of our current investigative dispute, it is a very good starting point to draw our attention to some of the vital differences between Wittgenstein’s and Brandom’s approach to the relation between practice and rules that may not be quite as clear at first sight from Brandom’s own writings. This writing maintains that Brandom misconstrues Wittgenstein’s remarks about signposts and Philosophical Investigations §201 with the consequence that his own explications about tacit rules involved in practice seem more Wittgensteinian than they really are. For one, Brandom duplicates Wittgenstein’s requirement of correctness in rule following: “...correctness that consists in following a rule [does not presuppose] correctness that does not.” On the other hand Brandom’s reading makes Wittgenstein’s quietism look like ”a pretext for not doing constructive work”, while Wittgenstein’s point is that there is nothing left to enquir