John Wilson on Philosophy

(All passages are from John Wilson, Thinking with Concepts. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1963.)

U[T]he concept of philosophy is ... a puzzling concept and one which is

very much in dispute at the present time.... [I]t includes far more than our
techniques [sc. of conceptual analysis]. It includes, to name but one activity, the
giving of general advice on how to live one's life (such as might be offered by a
'guide, philosopher and friend'): and this is no part of our task [sc. of analysing
concepts]. Certainly our techniques are widely and effectively used amongst
modern philosophers, particularly in England and America: there is every reason
to think them very important for philosophy in any sense of the word, and even
to believe that anyone who wants to study philosophy should begin by
mastering them. But to describe the techniques briefly as 'elementary
philosophy' would be trying to gain an unfair monopoly of the concept of
philosophy" (50 f.).

"One view [sc. of the business of philosophy], perhaps still the most
popular, is that philosophy is directly and immediately concerned with a way of
life and with the truth about reality. It has to do with what people are, what they
do, and what they feel: with their behaviour, their emotions, their beliefs and
moral judgments. By this account a man's philosdophy is a sort of blend between
his motives, his behaviour, and his values.... Philosophy as a Whole makes a
living, on this theory, by outlining various philosophies and attempting to judge
between them....[D]ifferent philosophers will criticise different ways of life, and
the individual reads them and then chooses for himself. This is still perhaps the
most common view of philosophy....
"The objection to this picture is that it makes of the philosopher no more
than the manager of an art gallery in which paintings of different ways of life are
displayed, held up to the light, criticised, valued, and finally bought. The
philosopher exhibits these, explains them, assesses them, and so forth. People
buy what suits them. There appears to be no real place for rational assessment, no
criteria by which one painting may be firmly judged better than another. Various
alternative choices are offered.... All this may be amusing, and may improve
mutual tolerance: but it signally fails to satisfy the intense demand for truth, the
need to know as exactly as possible what is so and what is not so, and the desire
for some effective tool or method by which to judge, all of which are as common
in the twentieth century as they ever were.
"The second view, which is still practised if not preached by the modern
linguistic philosophers of Oxbridge, is a sharp and radical reaction from the first.
On this view the philosopher has no direct connection with ways of life, motives,
behaviour or values at all. He is an analyst of language, concerned with the .
verification and meaning of statements and with the logical use of words. The
philosopher is not interested in what people think about life (much less how they
choose to behave), but only in the words in which they express their thoughts.
Do statements about God have meaning? Is the notion of truth applicable to
moral judgements? What is meant by saying that a man acts freely? These are
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linguistic questions, which turn on the use of words like 'meaning,' 'truth,'
'freely,' and so forth.
"Plainly such radicalism has a lot to be said for it.... Plainly there is little
point in discussing what is right and wrong unless we know what is meant by
the words 'right' and 'wrong': and so with all questions....
"But as a complete programme for philosophy this will not do. It will not
do primarily because language is not an abstract activity, but a form of life. It is
something used by people; and not only this, but something much more close to
people, much more a part of them, than most linguistic philosophers suppose. A
man's language is only a symptom of his conceptual equipment, just as his
neurotic behaviour-patterns are only symptoms of his inner psychic state. The
phrase'conceptual equipment' covers far more ground than language: though
the analysis of language is one way-and a good way--of investigating
conceptual equipment. To discover the stance in which a man faces the world,
and to make him conscious of it so that he can change it, one good method is to
see how he talks and make him conscious of his language.
"Yet words represent only one part of the equipment with which people
face life. When we say, for instance, 'He sees life differently from the way I see
it,' we do not mean either (as the first view claims) that he has a different way of
life from me, that his behaviour-patterns, motives, and values are different, or
(according to the second view) just that he makes different sorts of statements
from the ones I make, that he uses language differently. Of course both these
may be true, and probably will be true: yet this is not what we mean when we
say 'He sees life differently.' We mean that his conceptual equipment is different.
It is as if we said, as we frequently do, 'He speaks a different language,' using
this sentence metaphorically, or 'It's no good, we don't speak the same
language.' Here we are, significantly and interestingly, extending the notion of
language to cover far more than the spoken symbols of words: we refer to the
whole pattern of thought, the categories, concepts and modes of thinking, which
lie behind both the man's way of life and his actual spoken words.
"Of all the beings we know, man alone is capable of entertaining the
notion of meaning. This is to say that man has experiences in a different sense
from that in which we might say, if we wished, that animals or inanimate objects
have experiences.... Man has the freedom to attach, within limits circumscribed
by his own nature, whatever force or weight to his experiences he likes: the
freedom to give them meaning.
"If we give the concept of meaning or interpretation a wide sense, we see
that it enters into all activities or occurrences of which we are at any time
conscious....[W]hether we choose to lie in the sun, to watch a blue and
sparkling sea, to make love, to read a novel, to order a particular wine, to buy a
particular car or even to smoke one more cigarette, our choices are very
obviously governed by the weight or force which these happenings have for our
minds: and this is to say, in a sense, that they are governed by our own
interpretation or evaluation of them....
"Many of our interpretations are, no doubt, in some sense forced upon us.
We grow up in a world in which, for the sake of survival, we are forced to attach
a certain weight to food, warmth, physical objects, and so on: and thereby we
uncritically create and accept a framework of interpretation which, for the most
part, stays with us for the rest of our lives. Events happen to us in early
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childhood which unconsciously exercise power over the conscious activities of

our later lives, by forcing upon us certain interpretations and evaluations....
Later we acquire, more or less consciously, a framework of attitudes and values
towards all the aspects of human life that we meet: to men, women, children and
all the roles that these may play (fathers, sisters, lovers, etc,), to money and
posessions, to nature, to our own role in society, to music and literature and the
arts, to science, mathematics, philosophy and all the other disciplines of
mankind. This framework is our conceptual equipment.
"To describe conceptual equipment, to expand the meaning of the phrase,
is not easy. One can use many metaphors, each as good or as bad as any other, to
give a general idea of what we are talking about. At any particular period of his
life, each man faces himself and the world by adopting a certain posture, a
certain stance towards it. ...Or else we shall say that he faces things with a
certain set of tools: the incisive, straightforward tool-kit of the physicist, the less
informative but deeper probes and sounders of psychoanalysis, etc. Or else we
shall say that he sees through different sets of spectacles....Or else we shall say
that he speaks certain languages and understands them.... Or else we say,
finally, that he has the skill to playa certain number of games in life....
"Of these metaphors perhaps the most productive is that of a game.
Almost all human behaviour, and all behavioiur which has any claim to be in
any sense rational, is artificial. Consciously or unconsciously, people obey or try
to obey certain rules. These may be rules of procedure, as in a law-court: rules of
convention, as in personal relationships at a casual level: rules of reasoning, as in
logic or the study of some specific subject: rules of behaviour in their moral lives:
rules of language in ordinary communication, and so forth.... We can describe,
and fruitfully, people who fail in one way or another as failing because of lack of
skill . ... A final example from a field which is more obviously connected with
our present conception of philosophy: people who reject religion in toto often do
so because, as it were, they cannot find their way around the conceptual
landscape of religion. The concepts and experiences of religion (like those of
poetry or music) form a game which it takes skill, practice and study to play.
"To produce a rough approximation: the business of philosophy is to
make people conscious of the rules of these games. For unless they are conscious
of them, they will be unable to play them better, and also unable to see which
new games they want to learn to play, and which old games they want to
continue to play or to discard. With certain games, the logic of which is fairly
simple, philosophy has already succeeded. The rules or principles by which one
does science, or mathematics, or formal logic, are now fairly clearly established:
and this is partly why these studies have prospered. Other games present more
difficulty. How, for instance, does one decide about moral problems, or problems
of personal relationships? How is one to assess works of art? How is one to
decide whether to have a religion, and which one to have? In all these cases, the
philosopher's business is neither (as the first view holds) simply to put forward a
moral view, a view about personal relationships, a theory of aesthetics or
religion, and compare it with other views, leaving the individual to choose for
himself-for on what criteria can he choose?-nor (the second view) simply to
analyse the language of morals, aesthetics and religion, for this alone does not
clarify the rules of the games with sufficient depth. His business is, first and
foremost, to make clear how the games are in fact played: to clarify what it is to
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settle a moral issue, what it is to have a religion, what it is to love or be friends

with someone, in the same way as we are now clear about what it is to do science
or mathematics.
"What kind of process is this clarification? To use the example of science:
... we might feel that the clarification of the science-game was actually very
simple.... But in fact and in history, it took humanity till the Renaissance to gain
a clear idea of this game.... This sort of change [sc. from one view of the world
to another] has various aspects to it. Depth psychologists ... have given a clear
account of its psychological nature.... But it has also an important conceptual
aspect; and it is this which is the business of philosophy. It is not just a question
of how we feel about the world and ourselves: it is a question of in what terms we
conceive them. This is something which is amenable to rational discussion, in
which we may become more conscious of our own concepts, our own language,
our own pictures of the world, and hence learn to change them. All of us are
largely unaware of the conceptual principles by which we work: we have, in this
century, a reasonably firm grasp of the world of sense-experience, and feel at
home with science. But with morals, religion, literature and the arts, and above
all in personal relationships we feel lost and bewildered (unless we are already
so blind that we think there is nothing to see). Neither of the two views I have
criticised earlier cater[s] adequately for this blindness or bewilderment. It is inept
to say that we must just try harder or behave better or follow more sensible ways
of life: and it is inadequate to say that we must scrutinise our language and
become more clever about the logic of words. For our difficulties do not arise
either because we are not good or virtuous enough, or because we are not clever
enough. They arise because we feel lost, out of our depth, groping, trying to learn
how to play the various games of life. It is the same sort of feeling that one might
have when about to step on to the dance floor without knowing how to dance:
one doesn't know how to start.
"Philosophy, then, is clarification of method, of the way in which these
games are played.... [T]here are hundreds of questions in life, which ... arise
because we are trying to play games without being clear about the rules... .
[O]rdinary people are puzzled by parts of their lives in precisely the same kind of
way [sc. in which professional philosophers are puzzled by the so-called classical
metaphysical questions], a way which necessitates education in self­
consciousness, in awareness of how they are in fact facing the world and
themselves, in overhauling their conceptual equipment. It is this process which I
have described as philosophy" (126-138).

"[T]he philosopher should be familiar with, and sympathetic to, all the
major fields which relate directly to human concepts: all the studies and forms of
creation which can teach, influence, or otherwise affect our conceptual
equipment. Obvious candidates for study are: literature (particularly the novel
and drama), music, psychology, the social sciences and history. All these bear
directly-and, for most people, much more effectively than philosophy--on our
conceptual equipment: on our stance towards life, the spectacles we wear, the
game-playing skills we have, the tools we use, the pictures we form .... Even
though the arts do not assert facts, they still teach us-and teach us rationally. It
is this kind of rational teaching that philosophy needs to include within its
ambience. In so far as rational discussion takes place in words, the basic and
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essential part of the philosopher's tool-kit will, of course, be linguistic. But there
will be other tools: instead of merely being able to analyse statements, he will
learn to relate them to the general world-pictures and the conceptual equipment
as a whole of individuals.
"This process of philosophy is, of course, itself a game: and a particularly
difficult one to play. It is as if philosophy had to move up to a higher storey and
watch the people on the ground-floor playing their various games with more or
less success, and then assess and criticise their rules; or as if one were presented
with a compendium of games in a box, like a Christmas present, only the rules
had been left out~ne has to try and work out what the games are, how they
should be played, and whether they are worth playing at all. All this makes the
most stringent demands: a demand for logical r6gour, so that the game of
philosophy should be purposive and not a mere art-gallery comparison of
different concepts, and yet also a demand for breadth of understanding, so that
we can keep good communications with all the games that actually exist. Yet the
importance of philosophy, at any level of life and in any context, is obvious: for
without this process of becoming more aware)More conscious of the rules, it is
perhaps impossible to assess or make any deliberate rational change in one's life.
Certainly we may change, and live, without philosophy, just as we may without
common sense, or without some of the five senses. But we cannot do so
effectively. We desperately need a technique to handle the problems involved;
and it may be possible, without much further research, for the first time to
establish such a technique on a firm footing. For at least we recognize the fields
of activity involved-literature, the arts, social science, and so forth-and can
begin to think about the methods of each, and the way in which they bear upon
the problems of life. We may yet live to see the philosopher really earning his
keep" (138-140).

"The analysis of concepts ... emerges as only one tool in the philosopher's
equipment: but a very necessary tool, because it is a very good way of generating
consciousness. One thing, at least, everyone can always do: he can always say
'What does that mean?' But if he is content with what we may call a purely logical
analysis, his increase of consciousness, though helpful, will not be as profound as
it might be. For meaning goes deeper than usage: it stems from a man's whole
conceptual equipment, which itself is rooted in his personality and past
experiences. For this reason we have more than a purely verbal landscape to
map.... [F]or the sake of simplicity at least, we must count philosophy as a
different subject from psychology, history, sociology, and so on. But even this is a
little misleading. We deceive ourselves if we suppose that these humane studies
possess totally separate and discrete subject-matters: it is better to say that there
are human problems which can and must be approached both philosophically,
psychologically, sociologically and so forth. We need a harmonious team of
experts, who are experts in particular methods of approach: not a number of
disjoined specialists working in their own studies and laboratories" (140 £.).

* * * * * * *
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1. Wilson's is what I would call a llrich," or, possibly, "thick,"

understanding of philosophy as analysis of concepts closely convergent with that
of the later Wittgenstein. True, it quite fails to do justice to the first of the two
alternative views it criticizes insofar as it fails to allow for philosophy's function
(which Wilson, oddly, recognizes [50 f.]!) of giving "general advice on how to
live one's life," i.e., what I call philosophy's other critco-constructive function.
For that matter, it also quite fails to recognize that, even in carrying out its first,
analytic function "the impulse behind [philosophy's] concern with language," as
Passmore puts it, "is metaphysical, not linguistic." Consequently, it in no way
recognizes the possibility and the necessity of a transcendental metaphysics as
the fulfilment of philosophy's first function of analyzing concepts and deducing
fundamental presuppositions. But, fully allowing for all this, Wilson's
understanding meets the main objections to the second alternative view-the
Oxbridge view of philosophy as linguistic analysis-while still incorporating its
strengths, including, above all, a concern that philosophy, in some way, meet the
demand for truth, criteria for rational judgment, and so on.

2. Oddly enough, however, Wilson entitles his book, Thinking with

Concepts, as though, on his own use of terms, there could be any other kind of
thinking! Surely, Thinking about Concepts is the title that more nearly indicates
what he in fact means by "analysis of concepts," or "conceptual analysis" (d. 21;
also 139, where he rightly recognizes that philosophy is a "higher storey" activity
of watching people on the ground floor play their games, etc.).

3. The other thing that introduces a certain lack of clarity (or consistency)
in his understanding of philosophy is his failure to explain adequately what the
other tools are, besides conceptual analysis, that the philosopher as such employs
in doing her or his bit towards solving "human problems." On the one hand, he
seems to hold that what makes philosophy distinctive is precisely its concern
with concepts, meaning, and so on; but on the other, he seems unwilling to allow
that conceptual analysis (granted that it is more than merely "linguistic
analysis") is philosophy's only contribution, or "tooL" My guess is that what's
missing from his understanding in this respect is clear recognition of the need for
something like a philosophical anthropology, distinct from but by no means
unrelated to the social sciences. Anyhow, what fails to emerge clearly and
consistently from his account is exactly wherein philosophy's distinctive
contribution to coping with human problems lies. At no point, for example, does
he clearly contrast the historian or social scientist's proper concern with semantic
meaning of language with the philosopher's proper concern with its depth
meaning, or (logical) kind of meaning, and so on.