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\b\i\f28\fs28 etc.:}{\b\f28\fs28  
\par }{\f5 \tab \tab }{\b\f28\fs28 Reassessing Peter Winch }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
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 Grateful acknowledgements to James Conant, Anne Jacobson, Ivan Leudar, Louis Sass, Theodore Schatzki, Emma Willmer, Peter Winch; and (especially) to Wes Sharrock (who has expanded enormously my understanding of the very idea of a social science).}}}{
\b\f28\fs28  }{\f28 
\par 
\par 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\b\i\f28 Introduction}{\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Peter Winch\rquote s work has been hugely influential in the philosophy of the social sciences. But wait; is that actually true? Many sociologists and philosophers of the sciences}{\i\f28  etc.}{\f28  know Winch\rquote 
s name, and if they know any more than that they are most likely to know of some of his work in the philosophy of the social sciences (rather than, say, his significant contributions to ethical thinking or to the study of Si
mone Weil)... but is what they know likely to represent what Winch actually thought? Or has his \lquote influence\rquote  mostly been, as arguably also in the case of, for instance, Thomas Kuhn,}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 As I argue extensively in my }{\f5\ul Kuhn: The philosopher of scientific revolution}{\f5 , (Oxford: Polity Press (jointly written by Rupert Read & Wes Sharrock). Kuhn\rquote s \lquote followers\rquote 
, such as the proponents of S.S.K., arguably mistake him quite as much as nearly all of his Popperian, Positivistic and Realist \lquote opponents\rquote   -- as he himself repeatedly asserted  (On which see S. Fuller\rquote s work, e.g. \lquote 
Teaching Thomas Kuhn to teach the Cold War vision of science\rquote  (}{\i\f5 Contention}{\f5  4: 1 (Fall 1994)). Fuller\rquote s writings on Kuhn manages to document Kuhn\rquote s understandable dissatisfaction with his interpreters while providing a
long the way yet a further \endash  and a drastic -- instance of the problem...). We will periodically use Kuhn as a comparison-case to Winch in what follows, finding their misfortunes at the hands of interpreters to have been strikingly similar.
\par }}}{\f28  the spawning of some \lquote followers\rquote  who he would repudiate and of many \lquote foes\rquote 
 who actually fail to engage with (and thus in a key sense fail to disagree with) what he wrote and what he said? In short, has Winch unfortunately only been \lquote influential\rquote 
 in the philosophy of the social sciences in creating an argument between friends who are not his friends and foes who are not his foes?
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 We ask, because for anyone who truly admires Peter Winch\rquote s work, reading the secondary literature on him is an almost universally depressing experience. Over and over again, one encounters bowdlerised ve
rsions of what he thought, crude caricatures }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  We are thinki
ng here, for instance, of certain moments in the work of B.D. Lerner and of Patrick Phillips. Lerner\rquote s paper, \lquote Winch and Instrumental Pluralism\rquote  (}{\i\f5 PSS}{\f5 , 25: 2 (June 1995), 180-191) purports to be a development of Winch
\rquote s views in a desirable direction, toward an \lquote instrumental pluralist\rquote  rendition of cultures very different from our\rquote s; Phillips\rquote s reply, \lquote Winch\rquote s Pluralist Tree and the Roots of Relativism\rquote  (}{\i\f5 
PSS}{\f5 , 27:1 (March 1997), 83-95) argues that Winch\rquote s views do not need developing in that direction, because they already }{\i\f5 are}{\f5  \lquote instrumentally pluralist\rquote 
 -- but Phillips thinks this is not desirable, because it leads to \lquote relativism\rquote . We argue below that with interpreters like these, who needs enemies...
\par }}}{\f28   -- and here we only mean to be talking about his would-be friends... With his would-be foes, the situation is sometimes much worse still. There too, one gets renditions of the \lquote theses\rquote  which Winch supposedly 
held, but theses which are then attacked with much analytic zeal; one gets people railing against Winch\rquote s philosophical or political (!) \lquote conservatism\rquote  ... or against his \lquote revisionism\rquote 
 concerning the practice of social science; one gets almost-endless criticisms of Winch for being too slavish a follower of Wittgenstein -- }{\i\f28 and}{\f28 
 almost-endless criticisms of him for having failed to follow Wittgenstein at every point which matters. Above all, time after time, one gets tired and tedious assaults on Winch\rquote s alleged \lquote relativism\rquote .
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Winch has been dead a decade now, and the process of reassessing his work is going on around the English-speaking philosophical world. The publication of Colin Lyas\rquote s useful book, }{\i\f28 Peter Winch,}{\fs18\up6 \chftn 
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\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Teddington: Acumen, 1999.
\par }}}{\i\f28  }{\f28 was a genuine step forward in this process. Our hope is that there really}{\i\f28  }{\f28 will be}{\i\f28  }{\f28 a widespread reassessment, over the coming years. That people will try really reading Winch\rquote 
s work again -- and not just the first presentation of it (in the first edition of }{\i\f28 The Idea of a Social Science and its relation to Philosophy,}{\f28 
 a work whose fiftieth anniversary will soon be upon us) either. We want to try to give impetus to that reassessment by undertaking an intertwined three-fold task: 
\par  (1) Illustrating what we take to be a genuinely Winchian method, in part by the non-standard (because contrastive) means of developing a -- rare -- example, that of sufferers from schizophrenia, where we think that Winch\rquote 
s thought on understanding human action reaches a limit, an impasse;  
\par  (2) Illuminating what is vital, Winch\rquote s (Wittgensteinian) }{\i\f28 conception}{\f28  of philosophy, which informs everything that he wrote;
\par  (3) Rebutting various misunderstandings of Winch, particularly those which have emerged in recent years, along the way.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 But before beginning these tasks, we need to outline some key elements of what we take to be present in any genuine understanding of Winch\rquote 
s central work in the philosophy of the social sciences. We shall cite and quote fairly extensively as we do so, in an attempt to guarantee fidelity to Winch\rquote s intentions in my reading of him. We try then to generate here a \lquote picture\rquote 
 of Winch that, even if the reader is not entirely convinced by it, will we hope at least work as a (polemical, therapeutic) corrective to the \lquote standard model\rquote  of Winch\rquote s philosophy, the \lquote received view\rquote  of his work, the 
\lquote picture\rquote  of him that, generally, reigns.
\par }{\f5 
\par \tab }{\b\i\f28 What is Winch\rquote s \lquote picture\rquote  of the understanding of human action?}{\f28 
\par      A word of warning. This question already risks presupposing a great deal; too much. Does Winch have a picture
 of the understanding of human action? Or does he only guard against various natural/frequent misunderstandings of it? And: is there in fact an \lquote it\rquote , anyway? The social sciences are supposed to be about the explanation of \lquote 
human action\rquote , the understanding of \lquote human behaviour\rquote . But }{\i\f28 is there any such thing}{\f28  as these? Or are they mere -- misleading -- abstractions?
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 We might note with profit, for example, the occasions on which an expression like \lquote understanding other people\rquote  is actually used in the language-gam
es which are its home(s). This expression has a very specific set of uses, outside theoretical social science. It might be used, for example, by someone in distress at their lack of social integration; \lquote I have trouble understanding other people.
\rquote  It is hard to imagine it being used in a positive sense, except by someone who would probably be heard as self-satisfied and self-aggrandizing: \lquote I know how to understand other people. Let me tell ya what makes people tick\'85\rquote 
. But this is what social theorists seem to want to provide a foundation for -- a general }{\i\f28 method}{\f28  for understanding people. And they don\rquote 
t just mean by this the myriad techniques all members of human societies have for finding each other comprehensible: no, they mean something like a general, teachable method.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 In everyday discourse, much more often than invoking any supposed need for or realization of methods of general understanding, one speaks in much more specific ways still than those mentioned above; for example, \lquote 
I understand you perfectly\rquote , \lquote I don\rquote t understand why my mother always does that\rquote , \lquote Do you understand the game of Chess; can you teach me?\rquote 
. We think that it would be best to give up the notion that there is an intelligible general thing, \lquote }{\i\f28 the}{\f28  understanding of other people\rquote . (Here, our idea is relevantly analogous to Michael Williams\rquote 
s central idea, the positing and questioning of epistemological realism, that is, the notion that there is an intelligible general thing, \lquote }{\i\f28 the}{\f28  knowledge of the world\rquote , which it is epistemology\rquote s task to inv
estigate. We too would question the very idea of epistemology; and it is directly analogous to that question whether the very idea of social science or even social study as a generalised or generalisable task.)   }{\i\f28 If}{\f28  we are to talk of this 
}{\i\f28 at all,}{\f28  if we are to talk of enhancing our state of understanding of others, or indeed of ourselves, then I think that we must at }{\i\f28 least}{\f28  absolutely resist the temptation to over-generalize it, to \lquote theorise\rquote 
 it, and to fantasise a \lquote method\rquote  (\lquote social research method(s)\rquote , and a \lquote theory\rquote  of society) for achieving it.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 What Winch argues in his little book, }{\i\f28 The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy,}{\f28  is that the social sciences are }{\i\f28 programmatic}{\f28 
, that they have been designed with philosophical purposes latently or blatantly in mind. They have been designed, in various different ways, on the model(s) of certain conceptions of natural science. They ask, \lquote 
How can we bring human life under the heading, under the concept, of \lquote science\rquote ?\rquote  But, Winch asks: what are their problems, their puzzles? What problems do they actually have, \lquote investigate\rquote ? And }{\i\f28 
what possibly could be}{\f28  the justification for the assumption that }{\i\f28 human life in general}{\f28  can be effectively and profitably brought under the scientific concept?
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 People do not take Winch\rquote s title seriously enough. Just as Wittgenstein was a \lquote complete Bolshevik\rquote 
 in the philosophy of maths, so is Winch in the philosophy of the social sciences. People read Winch and thought/think that the issue now confronting them must be, \lquote How should we do social science, after Winch?\rquote  (or else \lquote 
How can we rebut Winch?\rquote ). But Winch\rquote s title might be paraphrased, \lquote On the very idea of \lquote social science\rquote , and on how philosophy can dissolve it\rquote . Winch isn\rquote t saying: \lquote Here\rquote 
s how to do (and not to do) social science aright.\rquote  He\rquote s saying something much more like, \lquote }{\i\f28 What}{\f28 
 are you trying to do, what genuine non-philosophical problems are you trying to solve? Do you have a clear idea of this? What is the point: why attempt to do \lquote social }{\i\f28 science\rquote  }{\f28 at }{\i\f28 all}{\f28 ?\rquote 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 That this was the central nexus of Winch\rquote s concerns is we think strikingly clear, perhaps}{\i\f28  especially}{\f28 
 in his post-1958 writings, to those readers who are ready to open their eyes, and are not blinded by what they see in front of them (i.e. social theory and theoreticistic philosophy) all the time.
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 
So now, having raised a concern that any attempt to extract a methodology for social science, or a theory of it, will be alien to Winch, we shall for the sake of argument nevertheless take the risk of outlining a tentative an
swer to the question raised above, the question of what \lquote picture\rquote  of human action we find in Winch. At least the in-principle limitations of any such answer will provide us to a surer clue about what is right in the paragraphs above.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 We shall begin by drawing attention to two distinctions present in Wittgenstein's writings, and drawn upon by Winch in }{\i\f28 The Idea of a Social Science and its relation to Philosophy.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 London: Routledge, 1958, 1990; henceforth }{\f5\ul ISS}{\f5 .
\par }}}{\i\f28  }{\f28 
\par 
\par }{\f28\fs28   (a) Between }{\i\f28\fs28 understanding}{\f28\fs28  and }{\i\f28\fs28 explaining.
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28  }{\i\f28 Contra}{\f28  Donald Davidson & co., we take for grant
ed in what follows what we all, arguably, know through and through: that understanding human action is about understanding reasons for action (}{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28  p.45), and understanding practices -- the language of causality is frequently }{\fs18\up6 
\chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Not always; see p.}{\i\f5 xii }{\f5 of the \lquote Preface\rquote  to the revised (1990) edition of }{\i\f5 ibid. .
\par }}}{\f28  irrelevant to it. Describing and }{\i\f28 understanding}{\f28  human action, for Winch, is what -- at its best -- social study / human 'science' can do. 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 What is it to understand human action? Need it -- does it normally -- involve interpretation/explanation, or is this an overly intellectualistic starting-point? Can it instead simply involve description }{\fs18\up6 \chftn 
{\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {
\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Cf. the instructive title of Nigel Pleasants\rquote s paper, \lquote Winch and Wittgenstein on understanding ourselves critically - Descriptive, not Metaphysical\rquote . (Though we must dissent from some of Pleasants\rquote 
s criticisms of Winch in his }{\f5\ul Wittgenstein and the idea of a critical social theory: A critique of Giddens, Habermas and Bhaskar}{\f5  (London: Routledge, 1999) -- there, despite the homage to Winch in the title, Ple
asants makes exactly the move we are critiquing in this essay: he treats Winch as a covert metaphysician, with definite assertions to make and theses and theories to convince us of.)
\par }}}{\f28  and taken-for-granted understanding(s), understandings-in-practice? Winch writes:
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28\fs20 "Understanding is the goal of explanation and the end-product of successful explanation. But ... [u]nless there i
s a form of understanding that is not the result of explanation, no such thing as explanation would be possible. An explanation is called for only where there is, or is at least thought to be, a deficiency in understanding. But there has to be some standa
r
d against which such a deficiency is to be measured: and that standard can only be an understanding that we already have. Furthermore, the understanding we already have is expressed in the concepts which constitute that form of the subject matter we are c
oncerned with. These concepts on the other hand also express certain espects of the life characteristic of those who apply them." }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  }{\i\f5 Ibid.}{\f5 , p.}{\i\f5 x . 
\par }}}{\f28\fs20  }{\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par This seems to us an important and clear passage. Where exactly are these lines drawn from in the work, however? They may su
rprise some readers, they may sound unfamiliar. If they do, that may be because you (the reader) are not familiar with the revised edition of Winch\rquote s book -- and you would not be alone. Regrettably, few of Winch\rquote 
s critics over the 15 years have taken full account of how different Winch\rquote s book -- which, let us remember, was a the first book from the pen of an angry young man -- how different Winch\rquote s book looks, when re-read in the light of the new 
\lquote Preface\rquote  which frames the new edition of }{\i\f28 The Idea of a Social Science.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Has Winch then substantively modified his 
\lquote views\rquote ? Has he actually abandoned his early \lquote bold\rquote  views? No; in some respects, he never held the \lquote bold\rquote  views attributed to him (e.g. like Kuhn, he was never in any useful sense of the word a \lquote relativist
\rquote ); in other respects, his \lquote views\rquote  are just as \lquote bold\rquote  as they ever were. Only he has reformulated his expression of them to lessen (one hopes!) the chances of his being misinterpreted  (As he puts it on p.xi, \lquote 
I should now want to }{\i\f5 express}{\f5  myself differently...\rquote  (my italics) -- most (though not all) of his concesions to his \lquote opponents\rquote 
  say only that he expressed himself badly before (though in philosophy, even that is of quite vast importance)). Finally, as we endeavour to explain below, there is a key respect in which it is misleading even to describe him as having \lquote views
\rquote  at all. }{\i\f5 Qua}{\f5  philosopher (or }{\i\f5 qua }{\f5 social student), he is we think often best described as having no views at all, as making no assertions, as not claiming anything whatsoever. (Whereas }{\i\f5 qua}{\f5 
 layperson, he has for instance (see n.47, below) the view that the poison oracle is strange and probably not to be trusted, that it just isn\rquote t something by which he would want to conduct his life, etc. etc.)
\par }}}{\i\f28  }{\f28 As we shall see, several of the most frequent criticisms of the book are either rebutted or in }{\i\f28 some}{\f28  sense conceded (and thus neutralised, in terms of not constituting criticisms of the mature Winch) in that \lquote 
Preface\rquote . Why, then, has this vital document been largely ignored by Winch\rquote 
s recent critics? The obvious answer would be: laziness, or poor scholarship. The alternative answer we can think of is in a way even worse, and possibly even closer to the truth: that }{\i\f28 whatever}{\f28  most philosophers and s
ocial theorists read of Winch, they manage to misinterpret. In any case, as already stated, one of our aims in this paper, is to draw on the totality of Winch\rquote 
s work on the philosophy of the social sciences, not just upon what he wrote on the subject up un
til the early 1960s... Any reckoning with the point of view of Winch on the philosophy of the social sciences must go by way of the 1990 Preface, which in turn should be placed in the broader context of Winch\rquote 
s (deeply-Wittgensteinian, deeply-subtle, deeply-non-theoretical) later }{\i\f28 corpus}{\f28  as a whole. (For, after all, }{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28  was not only a young man\rquote s book, and a polemical work; it was also a }{\i\f28 short}{\f28 
 book, which it is inadvised to take to task overly for omissions, or for concise statements susceptible of misinterpretation. Winch\rquote s later comments thereon, and his broader corpus, provide invaluable bulwarks against such misinterpretation.)

\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Back to the passage. What are its implications, so far as one is thinking, as we are, about understanding human beings?
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28\fs20 "[E]ve
n if it is legitimate to speak of one's understanding of a mode of social activity as consisting in a knowledge of regularities, the nature of this knowledge must be very different from the nature of knowledge of physical regularities... . If we are going
 
to compare the social student to an engineer, we shall do better to compare him to an apprentice engineer... . His understanding of social phenomena is more like the engineer's understanding of his colleagues' activities than it is like the engineer's und
e
rstanding of the mechanical systems which he studies... // I do not wish to maintain that we must stop at the unreflective kind of understanding of which I gave as an instance the engineer's understanding of the activities of his colleagues. But I do want
 
to say that any more reflective understanding must necessarily presuppose, if it is to count as genuine understanding at all, the participant's unreflective understanding. And this in itself makes it misleading to compare it with the natural scientist's u
nderstanding of his scientific data."}{\f28  }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\i\f5  Ibid.,}{\f5  pp.88-9. 
\par }}}{\f28  
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par Again, the closing two sentences of the quote are crucial for our purposes. Winch is reminding us (i.e. those philosophers and social scientists in need of the reminder; probably, most of us, for much of the time) t
hat, so long as one is not blinded by wrong-headed philosophical ideas (of, say, 'Relativist' -- }{\i\f28 or }{\f28 
Scientific 'Rationalist' -- hues), social actors can gradually be understood in their actions, without imposition or irony. In the project of }{\i\f28 understanding}{\f28  
human being(s) -- human minds in action, specific human practices -- one courts failure if one doesn't begin by engaging with the order inherent in those practices. Here Winch writes almost as if he had read Harold Garfinkel, and (of course) interpreted h
im (as the \lquote Manchester school\rquote  of ethnomethodology do) after Wittgenstein.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Thus we can \endash  extremely tentatively, for reasons given above -- suggest that, to do 'human science' well, one will normally need to begin (and, in a sense, end) by assembling a care
ful and un-imperialistic / un-impositional description of, roughly speaking, the self-understandings-in-action of the person or people in question.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 As is made clear below, stressing how people understand themselves }{\i\f5 in action}{\f5  is not equatable with substantive social theorizing, e.g.of the kind favoured by C. Taylor or the Symbolic Interactionists. Winch\rquote s \lquote picture\rquote 
 isn\rquote t intellectualistic or rationalistic: for detail, consult Winch\rquote s tellingly-titled paper, }{\i\f5 \lquote Im Anfang war die Tat\rquote ,}{\f5  in }{\f5\ul Trying to make sense}{\f5  (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), and p.170f. of Lyas.
\par }}}{\f28  They largely understand themselves, they are evidently not enigmas to themselves, continually surprised and
 bemused by what they do and by what goes on in their cultural environs. We need to understand them, if that is what we want to do and we haven\rquote t yet succeeded in doing so. }{\i\f28 One}{\f28 
 (and only one) useful way of doing this is to compare them with }{\i\f28 whatever}{\f28  helps us understand them. We don\rquote 
t impose a standard on them from our own practices, but we look for comparisons which will help to get them right. Such comparisons need of course to be apt.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Saying this does not force us back into a Realis
}{\f28 t/}{\f5 Literalist account of description and understanding, both because the weaknesses of any comparison are at least as important as its strengths (see below), and because a comparison\rquote s \lquote aptness\rquote 
 may be quite uncashable in any \lquote correspondence\rquote  terms. For full argument as to why, on the latter point, see Read\rquote s piece on schizophrenia and Faulkner in }{\f5\ul The Literary Wittgenstein}{\f5 .
\par }}}{\f28  Thus, Winch suggests, the advantages of comparing what the Azande do with their poison-oracles to what Christians do with prayer -- provided that one hasn\rquote t already got a wrong-headed idea of what }{\i\f28 that}{\f28 
 is! We can also profitably compare and contrast their attitudes to their practices and \lquote contradictions\rquote  within those practices to those of our own philosophers and mathematicians.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 H.O. Mounce goes into detail on this comparison in his mostly illuminating paper, \lquote Understanding a primitive society\rquote , }{\i\f5 Philosophy}{\f5  48 (1973), pp.347-362. Mounce rightly insists that it is not enough for Winch to say, \lquote 
The Azande\rquote s practices are not profitably compared with our science\rquote 
; he needs to look at the similarities (for example, there does appear to be a predictive element in Zande practice, as in science) as well as the differences. What Mounce is doing is taking seriously Winch\rquote s method, and endeavouring to take 
it further than Winch at moments does. Thus Mounce is largely exempt from my criticism of most readers of Winch in this paper. For, like Pleasants, he doesn\rquote 
t misunderstand the character of what Winch is doing, but makes only an internal critique of certain points within it.
\par }}}{\f28  Or we can look at our \lquote superstitious\rquote  attitude toward certain pieces of metal and piece of paper (i.e. money).}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  This is Pleasants\rquote s approach in his }{
\f5\ul (op. cit.);}{\f5  and his work, like for instance some of Chomsky\rquote s on linguistic propaganda, can be usefully seen as exemplifying not social or critical }{\i\f5 theory,}{\f5  but critical }{\i\f5 description -- }{\f5 the describin
g of society with a view to bringing out ways in which it needs to change.
\par }}}{\f28  Or we can compare }{\i\f28 and contrast }{\f28 the Zande \lquote witches\rquote  with \lquote witches\rquote  as those are known to
 us from our own society and history -- Winch stresses that this comparison is particularly fraught with risk, and it may turn out to be unwise to use the same word, \lquote witch\rquote 
, for the two quite different cases. In sum, we can cast some positive light on others if we open-mindedly look for ways of coming to repair breaches in our understanding of them; and, more important still, when we }{\i\f28 look}{\f28  at the \lquote game
\rquote  or \lquote games\rquote  which they play, we can and must note carefully what\rquote s }{\i\f28 wrong}{\f28  with various appealing analogies we might want to make to help \lquote interpret\rquote  them, and thus we can see -- or learn to see -- 
}{\i\f28 how to avoid misunderstanding them}{\f28 .
\par  \tab This is arguably what nearly all \lquote human science\rquote  }{\i\f28 is,}{\f28  in fact -- like it or not --, unless it is straightforward \lquote policy studies\rquote  stuff, or simply misbegotten epistemology and metaphysics.}{\fs18\up6 
\chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  A full exposition of this point would be the topic of a further paper. In brief: A lot of social science is harmless quasi-bureaucratic local \lquote policy studies
\rquote -type work. E.g. What proportion of the population have home access to inside toilets? Such factual enquiries, important in some administrative and political contexts, are like another portion of \lquote social science\rquote  which is similarly 
\lquote local\rquote : enquiries into social }{\i\f5 history }{\f5 . Bot
h such enquiries, let it be noted, run serious risks of being methodologically unsophisticated in ways which can turn out to be problematic. But these risks are almost insignificant compared to the far more intense risks that arise when it comes to 
\lquote the big questions\rquote  of social science, the questions which set the social sciences apart from or \lquote above\rquote  \lquote mere\rquote  history or \lquote mere\rquote  policy studies, questions such as \lquote 
What is the structure of Modern society?\rquote }{\i\f5 ,}{\f5  or \lquote Does \lquote society\rquote  really exist?\rquote , or \lquote Who }{\i\f5 really}{\f5  holds power?\rquote , \lquote How obedient are human beings?\rquote , even \lquote 
What is human nature?\rquote . These questions are -- where they are not just matters of common sense -- philosophical questions, at best, Winch suggests. Social theorists want to choose how to live, and to unders
tand what it makes sense to say ... in short, to do philosophy (including here ethics and political philosophy), }{\i\f5 by other means}{\f5  -- but the means are singularly ill-chosen, and while the conceptual confusion that results from them perhaps 
\lquote makes us think we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us...\rquote ,  in fact ...problem and method pass one another by.\rquote  (}{\f5\ul PI}{\f5  II xiv, p.233). For Wittgenstein, \lquote 
The confusion and barrenness of [e.g.] psychology is not to be explained by calling it a \lquote young science\rquote ; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings.\rquote 
 The dreadful mistake of the programmatic approach to the foundations of human science is to suppose -- to hope -- otherwise. All that is properly left to \lquote human science\rquote 
 -- to social study -- is, for Winch, specific questions arising in specific circumstances concerning the understanding of things that we find hard to understand, concerning coming to terms with persons who we don\rquote t naturally \lquote get\rquote 
. This non-systematic endeavour is best pursued with a sound philosophical sensibility, an open mind  (See also n.14, above).
\par }}}{\f28  We are }{\i\f28 not}{\f28  saying that Winch\rquote s main role is as a methodologist; we are saying that he enables one to understand better what \lquote the methodology of social study\rquote  }{\f28\uldb is}{\f28  and }{\f28\uldb must be}{
\f28 . In particular, that any instance of social study must be premised upon the existence of a puzzle, something where there is a deficit in our understanding or which tends to confuse us or others. Winch is thus }{\i\f28 ineluctably}{\f28 
 opposed to the vision of social study being founded upon social theory. (And, as already suggested, even to say only as much as what we have just said risks already making Winch sound more of a social theorist than he should be read as being.)
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl600\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab \tab 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28\fs28   (b) Between }{\i\f28\fs28 acting-on-a-rule }{\fs18\up6 \chftn 
{\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {
\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  For detail, see Read\rquote s "Acting from rules" (jointly-written with James Guetti),}{\i\f5  International Studies in Philosophy}{\f5  XXVIII:2 (1996), 43-62. D.Z. Phillips has a paper in the special issue of }{\f5\ul HHS}{\f5 
 on Winch, which partially defends and elaborates Winch, and which points in the same pro- and post-Winchian direction, \'93Beyond rules\'94.
\par }}}{\i\f28\fs28  }{\f28\fs28  and }{\i\f28\fs28 interpreting a rule}{\f28\fs28 .}{\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 This is the }{\i\f28 key}{\f28 
 distinction made in para. 201 of Wittgenstein's }{\i\f28 'Philosophical Investigations'}{\f28 
: "[T]here is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call "obeying the rule" and "going against it" in actual cases." }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0
\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  }{\i\f5 Op.cit. .
\par }}}{\f28   When one acts on a rule, one normally does no interpreting.
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 
Thinking about (b) naturally connects with thinking about (a), above, in the following way:  If one is interested in accurately }{\i\f28 describing}{\f28  human behaviour \endash  very roughly speaking, rule-fol
lowing action -- then one will want, much as Wittgenstein says, to 'grasp' the rule actually being followed by the person(s) one is describing, and will manifest that grasp in (for example) how one goes on to see the rule being applied in new examples of 
that person's action(s) which one encounters. One will want to avoid }{\i\f28 interpreting}{\f28  the rule being followed in such action }{\i\f28 if}{\f28 
 that can be avoided, on pain of otherwise risking missing just exactly what rule truly was being followed -- acted upon, acted 'from' -- in any given instance. One will want rather just to look,}{\cs21\f28\up6  }{\f28 
and see it. And then probably to describe it. (This is what ethnomethodologists \endash  and, in general, good ethnographers \endash  typically do. Some of their work is an \lquote existence proof\rquote  of the possibilit
y sometimes of doing what Wittgenstein invites us to do: roughly, simply looking and seeing, rather than always thinking.)
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 This move contravenes the 'conventional (philosophical) wisdom' -- common, albeit under different guises, to philosophers as utterly
 different otherwise as Nietzsche, Gadamer, Habermas and D. Davidson, and just as common among a very wide spectrum of contemporary human scientists -- the dogma that it cannot be meaningful to speak of a description of some human behaviour which is not a
lready an interpretation of that behaviour. The likes of Gadamer continually risk over-}{\i\f28 intellectualizing}{\f28  ordinary human action by means of investing it all within an }{\i\f28 interpretive }{\f28 
horizon. The likes of Davidson assimilates 'understanding' of language to }{\i\f28 'radical' intrepretation,}{\f28 
 which is in turn unfortunately not clearly distinguished from explanation. Such an approach is overly -- narrowly -- scientific and risks mechanizing (the) human being. 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 The 'non-interpretivism' which by contrast we are recommending 
here is not Positivistic, for it does not imagine description as an isolated and purely object-oriented / fact-gathering phenomenon. Rather, after Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin, and Harold Garfinkel \endash 
 and, of course, after Winch --, it allows indeed that there is what we call description}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  And, of course, understanding.
\par }}}{\f28  (which is not best assimilated to interpretation), and that it is important, but does }{\i\f28 not}{\f28  imagine that it prescinds from one's grasp, as a participant-observer in a practice, of that practice as a lived activity. (One can see 
here already what we will focus on later as a more general phenomenon: that in the philosophy of society / of the social sciences, one is always in the business of looking for judicious, perspicuous, modes of presentation ... of truisms. One is looking no
t for discoveries, but simply for ways of making perspicuous presentations of the terrain of what it makes sense for us to say.)
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28   None of this implies that there is only ever one 'true description' available of any given piece of (e.g.) rule-following -- 
there can be several or even indefinitely many true descriptions of same. But it does preserve a role for the notion of descriptions which are not }{\i\f28 ipso facto}{\f28 
 interpretations. For example, as one writes, or reads, the description of one of the objects in front of one on one\rquote s desk as \lquote a glass\rquote  is not an interpretation. And the description of the activity we are currently engaged in as 
\lquote writing a paper\rquote  is not an interpretation either. 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 If one not only avoids explaining but (more important) avoids interpreting, then}{\i\f28  one avoids a hermeneutic. }{\f28 One hopes to avoid adding }{\i\f28 anything}{\f28 
 to people's practices as they understand them (both explicitly -- if interpretation is actually called for, for example, and -- the usual case --'implicitly', in practice ). One hopes no
t to change, wittingly or unwittingly, the terms of the rules which they are following.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Around now, perhaps an objection is floating to the top of the reader\rquote s mind. The objection, frequently made against Winch over the years, runs roughly thus: \lquote Why so much talk about }{\i\f28 rules}{\f28 
? Surely it is absurd to think of human behaviour as literally rule-governed -- surely that removes its spontaneity, and over-intellectualises it, at one and the same time! That\rquote s got to be un-Wittgensteinian -- Wittgenstein didn\rquote t beli
eve that human beings are profitably-described as rule-following animals -- }{\i\f28 and}{\f28  in any case it\rquote 
s wrong-headed. Winch errs in centring his philosophical picture on rules. We would do better to focus, not on rules, but on norms, or on practices.\rquote 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 An initial response would be this: }{\i\f28 Insofar}{\f28  as Winch speaks of \'93rule-governedness\'94
, then this is best heard, to avoid putting Winch in the undesirable position of mimicking the social theorizing that he (rightly) critiques in others, as }{\i\f28 a \lquote picture\rquote  that Winch himself employs, }{\f28 
for the purpose of reorienting his readers in a non-scientistic way to their subject matter: the study (where such is called for) of society. The \lquote objection\rquote 
 we have just envisaged certainly touches on a crucial point (to do with item (3) of our 
self-set tasks in this paper) that we shall only go into full detail on later, but must at least mention now. Our worry about it, as should now be clear, it is that the objection }{\i\f28 assumes}{\f28  that Winch\rquote 
s conception of philosophy is substantive and theoretical; in particular, that Winch is an advocate of a particular implicit (rule-centred) \lquote social theory\rquote . Whereas we should want to claim that Winch can be successfully read as having }{
\i\f28 no}{\f28  social theory, and }{\i\f28 no}{\f28  substantive philosophical anthropology -- and that this is a good thing. So then, even to speak of Winch having a \lquote picture\rquote 
 of human action, as we did earlier is, as suggested there, already to court misunderstanding. Such a \lquote picture\rquote , we are now suggesting, will only be necessary, helpful and relevant if it is designed to prevent one from making }{\i\f28 
particular}{\f28  kinds of mistakes, falling into the habit of generating particular kinds of misunderstanding. It will not be Winch\rquote s place rather to give us a picture which aims to reflect the general metaphysical truth as
 to the nature of persons.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Winch is not asserting, \lquote Rule-following is the essence of human nature\rquote . And even if he does say things a bit like that sometimes, they form no part of any theory of human nature, but merely function (hopefully) as \lquote 
reminders\rquote  or as prophylactics against particular forms of confusion. Winch is not a social theorist; we might suggest that the talk of rule-following is best-heard as an }{\i\f28 analogy.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 Likewise, his talk (as, more obviously, Rorty\rquote s) of \lquote conversation\rquote  -- see }{\f5\ul ISS}{\f5  p.xvii-xviii, and n.41, below. (For Winch\rquote s last words on the potential misleadingness of focussing on rules, see p.xiii.)
\par }}}{\f28  Learning about other people is }{\i\f28 like}{\f28  learning the rules of a game. (Cf. }{\i\f28 ISS }{\f28 p.xvii; We will exploit this analogy more fully below.)  The claim that Winch seems to make, that \lquote 
meaningful action is rule-governed action\rquote  is part of the elucidation, for the purposes of de-mythologizing (i.e. de-scientising) sociology, of the concept of a \lquote form of life\rquote , an \lquote elucidation\rquote 
 that Winch famously engages in on pp.42-3 of }{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28 . The point of this elucidation }{\i\f28 is a negative one}{\f28 : it is to reorient or \lquote respecify\rquote  sociology (insofar as it is \'93misbegotten epistemology\'94
), towards philosophy -- }{\i\f28 as Wittgenstein understood philosophy}{\f28 . 
\par 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\b\i\f28 Winch\rquote s critics: The case of Ted Schatzki}{\f28 
\par Let us prosecute our case as to how to take Winch on rules }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28  by dealing with the objections to Winch of one of his major \lquote Wittgensteinian\rquote  critics: Ted Schatzki. It is worth paying extensiv
e attention to Schatzki, because he aims to be a Wittgensteinian, and because on some important issues we have no disagreement with him. He is not a }{\i\f28 crude}{\f28  misinterpreter of Winch, in the way that so many of Winch\rquote 
s readers are; if he misinterprets, it is at least worth paying serious attention to where and why he does so.
\par     Schatzki refers extensively to }{\i\f28 Wittgenstein}{\f28  in an effort to support his case, but, in a pattern we are all-too-familiar with, fails to cite more than a minimum of }{\i\f28 Winch\rquote s}{\f28  words to supp
ort his case. Schatzki argues as follows:  \lquote In Winch\rquote s account, understanding a practice requires a grasp of the usually nonexplicit rules governing it... . In Winch\rquote s view...understanding a given surface phenomena }{\i\f28 (sic.)}{
\f28  (a practice) requires a grasp of something below the surface which governs it (nonexplicit rules).\rquote  }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  \lquote 
Elements of a Wittgensteinian Philosophy of the Human Sciences\rquote , }{\i\f5 Synthese}{\f5  87 (1991), pp.311-329; p.324. Again, Schatzki is a useful commentator to focus on here partly }{\i\f5 because}{\f5 
 of his undoubted Wittgensteinian leanings. If even he gets Winch wrong, things are in a bad way -- as we fear they are.
\par }}}{\f28  
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 The metaphor of surface and depth here is liable to mislead. As there is no direct quotation from Winch at this point in Schatzki\rquote s paper, it is hard to know precisely where he gets it from; but it could not possibly be Winch
\rquote s account. For the \lquote account\rquote  Schatzki writes of is exactly the kind of picture that we find in (say) Chomsky, and that any Wittgensteinian who takes seriously that \lquote nothing is hidden\rquote  must get away from. 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 It is worth quoting extensively from Winch, to see what he actually says, at the point in his monograph to which Schatzki refers:}{\f28\fs20  
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28\fs20 
\par     \lquote In the course of his investigation the scientist applies and develops the concepts germane to his particular field of study. This application and modification are \lquote influenced\rquote 
 both by the phenomena to which they are applied and also by the fellow-workers in participation with whom they are applied. But the two kinds of \lquote influence\rquote  are different. Whereas it is on the basis of his obs
ervation of the phenomena...that he develops his concepts as he does, he is able to do this only in virtue of his participation in an established form of activity with his fellow-scientists. When I speak of \lquote participation\rquote 
 here I do not necessarily imply a
ny direct communication between fellow-participants. What is important is that they are all taking part in the same general kind of activity, which they have learned in similar ways; that they are, therefore, capable of communicating with each other about
 what they are doing; that what any one of them is doing is in principle intelligible to the others...
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28\fs20 [I]f the position of the sociological investigator (in a broad sense) can be regarded as comparable, in its main logical outlines, with that of the natur
al scientist, the following must be the case. The concepts and criteria according the which the sociologist judges that, in two situations, the same thing has happened, or the same action performed, must be understood in relation to the rules governing so
ciological investigation. But here we run against a difficulty; for whereas in the case of the natural scientist we have to deal with only one set of rules, namely those governing the scientist\rquote 
s investigation itself, here what the sociologist is studying, as well as his study of it, is a human activity and is therefore carried on according to rules. And it is these rules, rather than those which govern the sociologist\rquote 
s investigation, which specify what is to count as \lquote doing the same kind of thing\rquote  in relation to that kind of activity.\rquote }{\f28  (}{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28 , pp.85-87)
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Winch is clearly here attempting to teach us differences.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See p.6 of Baker and Hacker\rquote s }{\f5\ul 
Analytical Commentary on Wittgenstein\rquote s }{\f5\uldb PI }{\f5 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980): \lquote Drury relates that Wittgenstein once thought of using as a motto [to }{\f5\ul PI}{\f5 ] a quotation from }{\f5\ul King Lear}{\f5 : \lquote I\rquote 
ll teach you differences\rquote .\rquote  The precise way in which Winch saw the differences in this case is well-explicated on p.61 of Lyas\rquote s}{\i\f5  (op.cit.)}{\f5 : \lquote 
[A]n explanation in the natural sciences does not remind us of something. ... We are not reminded about sub-atomic particles: we find things out about them.\rquote  Whereas, strange as it might sound, a large part of the activity of sociologists c
onsists simply in reminding us -- unfortunately, often }{\i\f5 in very misleading}{\f5  (e.g. reductionistic, impoverished, or highly-abstract) }{\i\f5 terms}{\f5  -- of things about ourselves and others which we were not ignorant of to begin with.
\par }}}{\f28  He is, we would suggest, onto the thought, much exploited by ethnomethodologists, that what \lquote social scientists\rquote  typically present to us as \lquote data\rquote  ar
e already pre-digested; that the true data of social study ought to be, and in fact must be, typically what is observably present and observably being accomplished in interactions between persons.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 For detail, see e.g. M. Lynch\rquote s work. Lynch, unlike some influenced by certain strands in Garfinkel and by the later Sacks (see n.50, below), avoids falling into a quasi-scientific rendition of ethnomethodology as the }{\i\f5 general uncovering}{
\f5  of the \lquote hidden truth\rquote  of (the constitution of) social order, and sticks to an appropriately Winchian rendition of the (piecemeal) tasks of philosophically-sensitive social study. As Lynch argues in his paper \lquote \lquote 
Against Reflexivity\rquote \rquote , to speak and work as the best ethnomethodologists do, in a manner attempting to escape as much as possible from abstraction (e.g. terms like \lquote observable\rquote , \lquote reflexive\rquote , \lquote indexical
\rquote ) in favour of the concretion of actual social settings, is far less liable to be misleading than are the alternative modes of writing more commonly 
found in the social sciences, which even imagine that they are following Wittgenstein when they speak for instance of a \lquote double hermeneutic\rquote 
 as characteristic of social behaviour and (especially) of social science. As I emphasize more or less throughout this paper, the use of the word \lquote interpretation\rquote  is often much more perilous and misleading than has gener
ally been realized -- and this we think is why Winch uses it far less frequently than do those (e.g. Geertz, and \lquote interpretivists\rquote  in the }{\i\f5 \lquote Verstehen\rquote }{\f5  tra
dition) to whom he is often assimilated. Winch generally avoids the intellectualism which \lquote interpretivists\rquote  typically fall into. Crucially, he agrees with Wittgenstein that what matters is }{\i\f5 both}{\f5 
 to understand humans as engaged in ordered practices }{\i\f5 etc.}{\f5  }{\i\f5 and}{\f5  to understand that stressing the deed, not the word or the thought, is usually least liable to mislead philosophically. We act, we obey rules blindly, and \lquote 
as a matter of course\rquote  -- see pp.30-31 of }{\f5\ul ISS}{\f5 . (Our own brief diagnosis of the persistence of the int
ellectual temptation to intellectualism among intellectuals is... perhaps so obvious after the use of that word three times in one sentence that I won\rquote t bother giving it here.)
\par }}}{\f28  And he is surely not using the notion of \lquote rules\rquote  in any doctrinaire fashion. \lquote Rules\rquote , for Winch, function, we want to say, primarily just as a name for -- as a way of talking about -- \lquote agreement\rquote 
 in Wittgenstein\rquote s sense, as a way of talking about \lquote normativity\rquote  ... of talking, in short, about what makes human interaction worth regarding in most contexts as }{\i\f28 distinctive}{\f28  from \lquote interaction\rquote 
 between non-human items, the kind of interaction that a (natural) scientist typically observes. This is the central difference that Winch is teaching.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Schatzki is quite right insofar as what he is doing is suggesting that any \lquote individualist\rquote 
 or (more generally) theoreticistic attempt to render rules as a foundation for the explanation of human behaviour -- as they are for example in Chomskian linguistics, and in much of Cognitive Science -- is bound to fail.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn 
{\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {
\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  For my own arguments to similar conclusions, problematising careless  moments in the work of Baker & Hacker, who we believe do not, as Winch does, avoid at points falling headlong into a theoreticist picture of rules, see Read
\rquote s \lquote Acting from rules: \lquote Internal relations\rquote  }{\i\f5 vs.}{\f5  \lquote Logical existentialism\rquote \rquote  }{\i\f5 (op.cit.).
\par }}}{\f28  But this Wittgensteinian point is not appropriately directed against Winch.
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 Schatzki\rquote 
s other main argument against Winch opens as follows: \lquote Winch begins from the assumption that each society has its own concept of (or rules for) the intelligibility of human proceedings.\rquote 
 (p.318)  But where does Winch state this as a matter of metaphysical fact? Nowhere. He only claims that it will be useful when presented with a rendition of a \lquote primitive\rquote  society as essentially having the same 
concept of intelligibility as ours (as for example Frazer seems to think -- he appears to think, as Wittgnstein says, that those he is studying are essentially English parsons, only stupid ones}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 Whereas Wittgenstein is struck by the profound sensibility of many of the people(s) portrayed in }{\f5\ul The Golden Bough}{\f5  -- while he suspects that most English parsons lack such a (religious) sensibility!
\par }}}{\f28  ) to consider alternative ways of putting things. }{\i\f28 Provided we don\rquote t think we are stating a metaphysical thesis when we do so,}{\f28  there will then be no harm in saying, e.g., \lquote 
The Azande have a different concept of [say] \lquote prediction\rquote  (or \lquote contradiction\rquote ) than we do.\rquote  }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See p.101 of L. Goldstein\rquote s }{\f5\ul Clea
r thinking and queer thinking}{\f5  (London: Duckworth, 1999) for a useful rendition of Wittgenstein\rquote s thinking on the family-resemblance-ness of \lquote contradiction\rquote .
\par }}}{\f28  
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Schatzki goes on: \lquote [Winch] then argues that cross-
cultural understanding requires that the social anthropologist bring his concept of intelligibility into relation with that of the society under investigation in such a way as to create \lquote a new unity for the concept of intelligibility\rquote 
... . Hence, on Winch\rquote 
s account, commonalities serve merely as a ground upon which more expansive ways of understanding are erected. Commonalities do not suffice to ensure understanding but only make adequate, non-ethnocentric understanding possible.\rquote  (pp.318-9)
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 There is much to be said about this; the waters of potential confusion run deep here. We take up the implicit account of what a Wittgensteinian conception of philosophy is more fully below. And we will turn shortly to addressing Schatzki
\rquote s strong claims regarding the crucial philosophical role of \lquote commonalities\rquote .
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 But let us start by pointing out that Schatzki is in any case wrong when he says that, \lquote For the most part, this account is clearly not Wittgenstein\rquote s... . Only when the spirit [of a \lquote foreign\rquote 
 practice] is so incongruous with any sort of thinking the investigator knows of could there be room, in Wittgenstein\rquote s scheme, for Winch\rquote s Hegelianesque transformation of the investigator\rquote 
s concept (or principles or rules) of intelligibility. It is significant, however, tha
t although Wittgenstein considered (imaginary) cases of extremely opaque practices, he never suggested that we react to these practices by carrying out this sort of transformation. He suggested, instead, that we either renew our efforts to make sense of t
hem using our old concept of intelligibility or abandon the effort and admit that we cannot understand them.\rquote  }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 Schatzki, p.319. Schatzki cites as his evidence Wittgenstein\rquote s deep and difficult \lquote discussion of the wood trade at }{\f5\ul RFM}{\f5 , vol.1, sec.143ff.\rquote 
. But he gives no details. For a perspicuous detailed discussion, the morals of which are not entirely congenial to Schatzki (because they press home a vision of Wittgenstein\rquote s conception of philosophy drawn from p
hilosophers such as Diamond who buttress and extend Winch\rquote s take on Wittgenstein, on philosophy) see D. Cerbone\rquote s \lquote How to do things with wood\rquote , in Crary & Read (eds.), }{\f5\ul The New Wittgenstein}{\f5 
 (London: Routledge, 2000). Among the points to be made against Schatzki hereabouts is this one: if we actually do go so far as to recognise and admit something }{\i\f5 as}{\f5  a language-game, that already implies that we find it to }{\i\f5 some}{\f5 
 extent}{\i\f5  intelligible.}{\f5  Wittgenstein does not speak of }{\i\f5 language-games}{\f5  which are entirely unintelligible to us, which we simply have \lquote no understanding\rquote  of.
\par }}}{\f28  For what, then, of major remarks in Wittgenstein such as the following: \lquote I am not saying [in the sense of a hypothesis]: if such-and-such facts o
f nature were different [then] people would have different concepts... . But: if anyone believes that certain concepts are absolutely the right ones, and that having different ones would mean not realizing something that we realize -- then let him imagine
 certain very general facts of nature to be different from what we are used to, and the formation of concepts different from the usual ones will become intelligible to him.\rquote  }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  }{
\f5\ul PI}{\f5  II xii, p.230; also }{\f5\ul Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology}{\f5  (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980) I, 639-646. We should note parenethetically, what Schatzki is rightly well-aware of: that one should be }{\i\f5 cautious}{\f5 
 before assuming that one can }{\i\f5 succeed}{\f5  in imagining the formation of radically different concepts. On this score, compare the excellent work of James Conant, Alice Crary and David Cerbone, on \lquote logically alien thought\rquote 
. The perplexities raised by Wittgenstein\rquote s famous woodsellers example are not to be dismissed with the crude idea that the woodsellers have their way of counting, we have our\rquote s; that they \lquote simply\rquote  have different concepts; etc.

\par }}}{\f28   Does Schatzki, after those such as Frazer who Wittgenstein and Winch criticised,
 perhaps not realize this? For the parallel between what Wittgenstein is saying here and what Winch (and Kuhn) say elsewhere is close indeed. Thomas Kuhn, for example, is literally trying to get us to understand people (chiefly, past scientists) whose 
\lquote life-world\rquote  is such that such-and-such fundamental facts of nature were taken to be such that certain concepts which are hard for us even to understand were obvious to them, and }{\i\f28 vice versa.}{\f28 
 Wittgenstein recommends here what Kuhn (and Winch), by and large, both recommend and practice: }{\i\f28 the imaginative attempt to understand the formation of concepts different from ours.}{\f28 
 For sure, Schatzki is quite right, as we discuss below in connection with schizophrenia, to say that this undertaking has limits; but Schatzki quite erroneously suggests that the undertaking is for Wittgenstein in principle impossible.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 And what, furthermore, of Wittgenstein\rquote s thought that \lquote ...[o]ur clear and simple language-games are not preparatory studies for a future regularization of language.
.. .The language-games are rather set up as objects of comparison which are meant to throw light on the facts of our language by way not only of similarities, but also of dissimilarities... // We want to establish an order in our knowledge of the use of l
anguage: an order with a particular end in view; one out of many possible orders; not }{\i\f28 the}{\f28  order. To this end we shall constantly be }{\i\f28 giving prominence to distinctions which our ordinary forms of language easily make us overlook}{
\f28 .\rquote  (}{\i\f28 PI}{\f28  paras. 130 & 132; final 
emphasis added). This is the crucial sense in which, for Wittgenstein, looking at the radically different can make us much clearer about what we ourselves do, and are. And sometimes, such clarity will lead to personal or even societal change. For we may b
e unimpressed by our }{\i\f28 own}{\f28  (e.g.) superficiality, in relation to the words and practices of those who are (initially at least) strange to us. 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 This is a large part of Winch\rquote s argument in his important paper, \lquote Persuasion\rquote ,}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\i\f5  Midwest Studies in Philosophy XVII}{\f5 
 (1992), pp.123-137.
\par }}}{\f28  a paper seemingly unread by virtually all his critics. Here Winch draws extensively upon Wittgenstein\rquote s writings,}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See }{\f5\ul PI}{\f5  p.227; and }{\f5\ul 
Culture and Value}{\f5  (ed. von Wright, transl. Winch; Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p.87: \lquote God may say to me: \lquote I am judging you out of your own mouth. You have shuddered with disgust at your own actions, when you have seen others do them.
\rquote \rquote 
\par }}}{\f28  to argue that one must both realize the radical nature of Wittgenstein\rquote s efforts to get one to question pictures that hold one captive, and simultaneously acknowledge that ther
e is no such thing as finding a place outside all pictures from which to assess them apodictically or rationalistically.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  \lquote Persuasion\rquote 
, pp.129-130. (Again, this may sound like trying to have it both ways. We can hear the Analytic critics now: \lquote But you\rquote re not }{\i\f5 saying}{\f5  anything! Your Winch is not giving us any hard philosophical assertions to get our teeth into!
\rquote  The critics are right. Only they fail to understand that this is inevitable, and exactly what the philosopher should be doing. Enabling us to see our language}{\i\f5  etc.}{\f5 
 aright -- not giving us tinpot theories and theses to knock down and put up again, endlessly.)
\par }}}{\f28  Nigel Pleasants puts the moral of Winch\rquote s discussions of anthropology }{\i\f28 etc. }{\f28 strikingly similarly: \lquote The central message of Winch...-- wh
ich has often been overlooked, or ignored -- is the suggestion that in studying a so-called \lquote primitive society\rquote 
 we might, if we engage in the task sensitively and imaginatively, learn something important about or own taken-for-granted form of life. I shall seek to follow Winch\rquote 
s advice that the very point of trying to learn about some apparently incoherent way of life is just as much to do with striving for an enhanced conception of one\rquote s own social conditions of existence, as it is with understanding that 
other way of life.\rquote  }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Pleasants, }{\i\f5 op.cit.,}{\f5  p.2.
\par }}}{\f28  And surely this is right. How could one really think of improving one\rquote s understanding of others, working one\rquote s way out of persistent \lquote mythological\rquote  modes of misunderstanding them, without allowing oneself to change? }
{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  And this is what Wittgenstein was about in \lquote Remarks on Frazer\rquote s }{\f5\ul Golden Bough}{\f5 \rquote 
 when he pointed to things we do (e.g. kissing photos of loved ones) which somewhat resemble things \lquote primitive peoples\rquote  do. The point is not, as Schatzki would have it (and as Lerner thinks Winch himself thinks! -- see p.183f. of his }{
\i\f5 (op.cit.)}{\f5 ), that we can understand them because they are really just like us; the point is that thinking about them enables us to notice things about us }{\i\f5 which we forget, and whose nature is unclear to us.}{\f5 
 Wittgenstein intends his point about our activity (in the photo-kissing) to surprise us -- rather than having us absorb seamlessly a supposed item of knowledge about others; namely, that they are just like ourselves. It is thinking exactly }{\i\f5 that }
{\f5 that Wittgenstein accuses Frazer of! (Thus, in the cause of our understanding others while remaining ourselves, Schatzki turns Wittgenstein into Frazer! What we }{\i\f5 should}{\f5 
 be doing by contrast is what Winch does: noting how openness to understanding others requires readiness to rework one\rquote s self-understanding.)
\par }}}{\f28  Those who have thought deeply about these matters -- for example, Martin Buber and the traditions he has influenced and which have tried to work these matters out practically (e.g. Gestalt Therapy, with its concept of \lquote contact\rquote 
) -- have held that truly to }{\i\f28 meet}{\f28  someone is part of what must be involved in understanding them, and that this must involve a readiness to open oneself up. To open oneself up to the other, part of what it is to }{\i\f28 engage}{\f28 
 with another person, is to have at least a }{\i\f28 readiness}{\f28  to change in response to them, and to the encounter. To understand another, to treat another as a \lquote thou\rquote , is }{\i\f28 not}{\f28 
 to treat them as an isolated ego which one is inspecting and \lquote interpreting\rquote  -- }{\i\f28 contra}{\f28  Davidson and Cognitive Science alike.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Are we lapsing here back into metaphysical huma
nism in a way which undercuts our argument and our reading of Winch? No, for two reasons: first, this is very much a supplementary point, which my main ar
gument could easily stand without, for those readers who are uncomfortable with talking about therapy, }{\i\f5 meeting}{\f5  people, and so on; and second, this point is, we would maintain, still a genuinely Winchian}{\f28 /}{\f5 
Wittgensteinian one (and though I cannot justify the claim here, a tremendous extant justification is to be found in Stanley Cavell\rquote s \lquote Knowing and Acknowledging\rquote  (in his }{\i\f5 Must we mean what we say?}{\f5 
 (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1969)), which makes in brilliant detail the tie between knowing the other (\lquote epistomology\rquote ) and actually acknowledging their reality as a person). We think that a substantial part of what Buber }{\i\f5 et al}{\f5  do is }
{\i\f5 remind}{\f5  us of features of our form of life -- specifically, of the grammar of \lquote meet\rquote , \lquote understand\rquote , }{\i\f5 etc.}{\f5  -- which we frequently forget in philosophy or \lquote cognitive\rquote  or \lquote social
\rquote  science.
\par }}}{\f28  As any but the most scientistically deluded psychotherapists and travellers (e.g. field anthropologists) have long been aware, one cannot just }{\i\f28 study}{\f28  other people, if one would understand them. One must be ready to}{\i\f28 
 learn from}{\f28  them! To learn from them about them -- and also about oneself. To learn \lquote the rules\rquote  (both in a loose sense and in a tighter sense in specific instances) according to which they \lquote work\rquote 
, and order their lives. If we treat them as people at all, we use the unacknowledged resource of most sociology}{\i\f28  etc.}{\f28  -- that is, our easy grasp of most of what most fellow humans do. And then our ability }{\i\f28 where necessary}{\f28 
 to }{\i\f28 focus on}{\f28  making sense of those elements of their lives which are mysterious to us can come into play -- in a decidedly supplementary fashion.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 So, to take a diagnostic step back for a moment: there appears to be an interesting fantasy at work somewhere deep in Schatzki\rquote 
s version of Wittgenstein, a fantasy which we suspect is widely shared among Anglo-American philosophers: a fantasy that one can learn all about the world and about other people without oneself changing, }{\i\f28 without changing oneself.}{\f28 
 Look again at Schatzki\rquote s words; \lquote To state Wittgenstein\rquote s views baldly: there is either sufficient commonality and hence understanding or insufficient commonality and, as a result, no understanding.\rquote 
 There is no place here for response to the other, for change. And yet Wittgenstein thought that the growth of one\rquote s own understanding, and the overcoming of one\rquote s \lquote ignorance\rquote  of one\rquote s own language }{\i\f28 etc.,}{\f28 
 in part through one\rquote s grasp of the other, was absolutely of the most central importance. Thus witness his famous remark to Malcolm: \lquote 
...what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, }{\i\f28 etc.,}{\f28  and if it d
oes not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious than any ... journalist in the use of DANGEROUS phrases [[Malcolm had used the expression, \lquote the British \lquote 
national character\rquote \rquote ]] such people use for their own ends. // You see, I know that it\rquote s difficult to think well about \lquote certainty\rquote , \lquote probability\rquote , \lquote perception\rquote , }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28 
 . But it is, if possible, still more difficult to think...really honestly about your life and other people\rquote s lives.\rquote  }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Ray Monk, }{\f5\ul 
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The duty of genius}{\f5  (New York: MacMillan, 1990), pp.474-5. Cf. also Wittgenstein\rquote s preference for }{\i\f5 change in the way people lived}{\f5  over }{\i\f5 explicit adoption of his philosophy.
\par }}}{\f28  Or consider Wittgenstein\rquote s powerful thought, used as an epigraph by Winch for \lquote Persuasion\rquote , that \lquote 
I ought to be no more than a mirror, in which my reader can see his own thinking with all its deformities so that, helped in this way, he can put it right.\rquote  Win
ch, seemingly unlike Schatzki, and certainly unlike some of his other critics, such as Keita and Phillips, preserves and expands upon this role for \lquote putting one\rquote s thinking right\rquote . Philosophy may be \lquote uncommitted enquiry\rquote  
\endash  but it is not without normative consequences.
\par \tab But perhaps the above is unfair to Schatzki. Perhaps he would accept that one can and sometimes does learn from others and transform oneself, in the encounter with other cultures, if one lets it be a genuine encounter, rather than being like t
he encounter of a biologist with a laboratory specimen. Let us move then on to what is more certainly a salient flaw in Schatzki\rquote 
s approach. In the remarks from Schatzki that we have quoted, one can see that he makes it sound as if Wittgenstein thinks that it makes sense quite literally to assess -- to quantify -- the degree of commonality which human beings have with one another.}
{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Keita\rquote s position (in his \lquote Winch and Instrumental Pluralism: A reply to B.D.Lerner\rquote , }{\i\f5 PSS}{\f5 
, 27:1 (March 1997), 80-82) is similar, only more scientistic. Keita thinks that \lquote the structure of the human brain is such that seemingly incompatible intercultural systems of rati
oncination should really be understood within the context of how humans actually think\rquote  (p.80). Wow, a philosopher who can apparently read off from observable (??) brain structure \lquote how humans actually think\rquote !...
\par }}}{\f28  Once again, here is his astonishing summation of Wittgenstein\rquote s supposed position: \lquote To state Wittgenstein\rquote s views baldly: there
 is either sufficient commonality and hence understanding or insufficient commonality and, as a result, no understanding.\rquote  (p.319)  But we shall go on to show more fully both that it is already usually a misunderstanding to speak of \lquote 
understanding\rquote  as if it were a positive state to be achieved -- and that it is already a misunderstanding ever to speak of Wittgenstein as having philosophical views at all.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 See Wittgenstein\rquote s pointed insistence, in his debates on the philosophy of maths with Turing (see Monk, pp.419-420; though Monk himself misses the \lquote metaphilosophical\rquote 
 point here), that he, Wittgenstein, must not have any views or opinions. Otherwise, he would be  (A) hostage to mathematical fortune,  and  (B) betraying his philosophical mission, as expressed e.g. in }{\f5\ul PI }{\f5 108-134.
\par }}}{\f28  
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Schatzki immediately goes on from the remark just quoted to say something which indicates that he appears to think that Wittgenstein\rquote s \lquote views\rquote  are truth-evaluable, and are in fact true: \lquote Wittgenstein\rquote 
s claim about insufficient commonality is obvious.\rquote ! We shall shortly drastically query this notion, both exegetically and (more important) philosophically. 
Let us do so somewhat indirectly, by focussing first on a closely-related aspect of Schatzki\rquote s argument, as it affects Winch.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Schatzki\rquote s assumption that Winch thinks that different human communities may as a matter of substantive fact have very few commonalities to them is quite unwarranted. Let us ask the following: 
\par How could we determine whether as a matter of fact two human communities have \lquote many\rquote  or \lquote few\rquote  commonalities? 
\par As soon as one asks the question, one realizes that it is, as things stand, a stupid question. There is no such thing as a substantive fact of the matter about whether two communities are deeply different from one another. Whether something is \lquote 
deeply different\rquote  is a matter of nuance, and of context. Someone can at one time find a strange novel practice of a faraway tribe very reasonable or understandable; and at another one can be quite bemused by what one oneself did five seconds ago.

\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 All we can do here (and all we need to do here) is }{\i\f28 assemble reminders.}{\f28  We can stop ourselves being c
onfused. For example, as already mentioned (and this is discussed more fully below), sometimes it is useful to be reminded that what counts as a contradiction can be very different in different places in different times. This is part of what Wittgenstein 
meant when he famously remarked that philosophy leaves everything as it is (This remark is cited approvingly by Winch on p.103 of }{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28 .).  It is also part of what he meants in a remark that is at the very heart of his so-called \lquote 
metaphilosophical\rquote  discussions in }{\i\f28 PI}{\f28 , but a remark almost universally ignored: that \lquote The civil status of a contradiction, or its status in civil life: there is the philosophical problem.\rquote  }{\fs18\up6 \chftn 
{\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {
\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  }{\f5\ul PI}{\f5  125. This sentence is succeeded by the following famous passage: \lquote Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.--Since every
thing lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.\rquote 
\par }}}{\f28  And }{\i\f28 it is precisely this that Winch brings out with his discussion of the \lquote contradictions\rquote  which Western observers find in Azande practice.}{\f28 
 You have to look at the practice in context, says Winch, to see whether it is a good idea to say, \lquote They have a different concept of \lquote contradiction\rquote  from us\rquote , or \lquote What looked like contradictions turn out on close
r acquaintance not to be so\rquote , or whatever. (Some such statements will be, at a given point in a particular \lquote conversation\rquote , much less liable to mislead than others.)
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 And there is not even, of course, a substantive fact of the matter about how to individuate communities in the first place. Winch believes that \lquote social sciences\rquote 
 are somewhat (though only somewhat) less misleadingly described as social studies (This description must not be allowed to lead one to think that Winch is an armchair sociologist, comp
eting with sociology on its own turf). Winch believes that, unless one is clear that a \lquote social science\rquote  is at best not just a science which happens to have as its subject-matter human society, but that the word \lquote social\rquote 
 decisively alters the character of the investigation in the study (studies) in question, one is very likely to become philosophically confused. (Of course, there is no substantive fact of the matter about }{\i\f28 these}{\f28  things either! Winch is }{
\i\f28 not}{\f28  saying, \lquote It\rquote s a scientific fact that you cut up the universe wrong if you classify (e.g.) sociology as a science.\rquote  That too would almost always be a very misleading thing to say. As we say, }{\i\f28 in a way,}{\f28 
 it doesn\rquote t matter if the various social studies are grouped together under the heading of \lquote social science\rquote  --
 so long as one keeps a clear view of what is being thus named, and what its character is. But that is almost impossible to do, even in the best of circumstances.)  Furthermore, he believes, with the ethnomethodologists and with Wittgenstein, that social 
study as a lay activity is ubiquitous, but,}{\i\f28  for that very reason, }{\f28 as a professional activity is only infrequently necessary.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28   Perhaps Schatzki himself, speaking in his own voice, would not disagree with what we have said above. But he }{\i\f28 follows}{\f28  the standard
 reading of Winch, in accusing the latter of having the idea that communities are cleanly separable entities. This idea, which is primarily the fruit of Malcolmian misinterpretation of Wittgenstein, not of Winch\rquote s work, }{\i\f28 was}{\f28 
 suggested by some of Winch\rquote s incautious formulations in the first edition of }{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28 
. He very clearly distances himself from this interpretation of his work, in the 1990 Preface. (It is regrettable that, once again, Schatzki does not pay any attention to the those clear statements.)  Let us explain this important point further:
\par \tab Winch does not think that any \lquote social scientist\rquote  or \lquote social theorist\rquote  -- still less himself -- is in a position even to claim or argue that it is a matter of hard fact that the Azande is one community and our\rquote 
s is a totally separate one.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  And see again }{\f5\ul ISS}{\f5  (2nd edition) pp.xiv-xvi.
\par }}}{\f28  It\rquote s rather that it will sometimes be ethnographically (or indeed philosophically) helpful to distinguish between communities of people which are of course to some significant extent self-identifying. }{\i\f28 That\rquote s}{\f28 
 the important criterion, i
f a criterion we need: whatever one says about the social world must be responsible to social actors, in a manner having no parallel in the physical sciences. However, as just hinted, all this may have been somewhat obscured in Winch\rquote 
s original presentation of }{\i\f28 \lquote The Idea of a Social Science\rquote ,}{\f28 
 by his sometimes appearing to grant the notion that we can definitively identify communities, and indeed that they are definitively separate and homogenous. But (a) there is nowhere}{\i\f28  in \lquote Understanding a Primitive Society\rquote }{\f28 
 where Winch makes any similarly potentially-misleading remarks;  and (b) those who criticise Winch for having left the door open for \lquote relativism\rquote  in}{\i\f28  ISS}{\f28  have }{\i\f28 
failed to appreciate his clarificatory remarks in the new \lquote Preface\rquote }{\f28  to }{\i\f28 \lquote The Idea of a Social Science\rquote }{\f28 
. Here (especially on p.xiii), Winch specifically remarked that he had sometimes misleadingly expressed himself in the first edition of }{\i\f28 ISS }{\f28 
on crucial issues connected with that nature of rules, and thus unnecessarily exposed himself to the kind of mi
sunderstanding we see in (for instance) Schatzki. He goes on immediately to say that, if he had paid closer attention to passages such as para.s 81-82 (on rules) in PI, then he \lquote 
...might have avoided the impression sometimes given in this book of social pr
actices, traditions, institutions etc. as more or less self-contained and each going its own, fairly autonomous way. ... Again, and connectedly, the suggestion that modes of social life are autonomous with respect to each other was insufficiently countera
cted by [the] qualifying remark...about \lquote the overlapping character of different modes of social life.\rquote  Different modes of social life do not merely \lquote overlap\rquote 
; they are frequently internally related in such a way that one cannot even be intelligibly conceived as existing in isolation from others.\rquote  (}{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28 , xiv-xv)
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Winch here evidently regrets some of his phrasings and some more substantial aspects of his project in the first edition of}{\i\f28  ISS.}{\f28  It seems to us absurd for people writing since 1990 to ignore not only 
his many writings since 1958 which have taken greater care than was evident in the first edition of}{\i\f28  ISS}{\f28  over these questions but especially to ignore this revision to the book itself. Winch\rquote s autocritique is enough; we don\rquote 
t need others laying into him while ignoring his intelligent and honest autocritique.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Winch is fundamentally interested in what it makes sense to say.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See the discussion later of Winch\rquote 
s account of the importance but oft-misunderstood nature of the role of language in a sound conception of philosophy. (In a longer presentation, we should of course reckon with the increasing influence of Rhees on Winch\rquote 
s mature thought, and on a resultant increasing emphasis on thought, more than on language. But this would certainly require an entire paper to itself, to discuss adequately.)
\par }}}{\f28  But of course, self-evidently, things are always said by people, in contexts. Philosophers tend to ignore this simple \lquote fact\rquote , fail to re
mind themselves of it, at their absolute philosophic peril. So: What one says in one conversation, speaking as a philosopher with colleagues, may be very different from what one says in another conversation, speaking say with a foreigner from an extremely
 
different background, or with an opinion pollster, or with a popularizing scientist. To one, one might say that the Azande are very different from us; to another, that they are much the same; to a third, that they practice a peculiar and unattractive form
 of magic; to a fourth, that they have a way of life whose categories are hard to mesh in any successful way with our own. There would be no contradiction in one\rquote 
s saying all of these, and more, at different times and places, to different people. Winch is looking for ways of rendering helpfully the concept of \lquote society\rquote 
, and is reaching for formulations which will be least likely to confuse and most likely to productively assist his audience; he is not stating or trying to state once and for all The Truth about social life.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 To further back up our thought about the non-assertoric, non-constative nature of Winch\rquote s thought hereabouts, note the use of the notion of \lquote internal relation\rquote  in the above quote. This term is explicated in the }{
\i\f28 Tractatus,}{\f28  and, in the relatively rare contexts of use it has in Wittgenstein\rquote s later work,}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See my \lquote The career of \lquote 
internal relations\rquote  in Wittgenstein\rquote s thought\rquote , in }{\i\f5 Wittgenstein Studies}{\f5  2 (\lquote 97), where I point out that Wittgenstein virtually never speaks of \lquote internal relations\rquote  after }{\i\f5 c.}{\f5 
1939. (It is also to be noted that Winch came to think that speaking of social relations as internal relations may foster the unwarranted impression that social relations are always \lquote cosy\rquote , whereas Winch remarks on p.xviii of}{\i\f5  ISS,}{
\f5  once again pre-empting his 1990s critics, that one needs to take account of \lquote what role in [a conversational interchange] is played by strategies of deceit, blackmail..., punches on the nose, etc.\rquote .
\par }}}{\f28  it has much the same sense as it did there  (Winch emphasizes the continuities in Wittgenstein\rquote s philosophy far more than is usually appreciated -- for some detail, see below). }{\i\f28 Contra}{\f28  Baker and Hacker, the term \lquote 
internal relation\rquote  cannot be used faithfully to Wittgenstein in a way which provides a generalistic account of \lquote metaphysical glue\rquote  between rule and application -- this idea }{\i\f28 does}{\f28 
 deserve the kind of criticism which Schatzki (inappropriately) levels against }{\i\f28 Winch}{\f28  on rules.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See again Read\rquote s \lquote 
Acting from rules\rquote  for detail as to where Baker and Hacker arguably go wrong.
\par }}}{\f28  
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 So, what sense }{\i\f28 does}{\f28  \lquote internal relation\rquote  have in Wittgenstein\rquote s work? Well, crucial to it, as Winch was well aware, is that internal relations cannot, strictly speaking, be spoken of at all.}{
\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See pp.44-45 of }{\i\f5 ibid.}{\f5  See also J. Koethe\rquote s work.
\par }}}{\f28  They are not }{\i\f28 genuinely}{\f28  relations. Only \lquote external\rquote  relations are actually relations, between separate things. And there have to be separate things, if there are to be relations (between things). 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 It follows that when Winch speaks above of different \lquote parts\rquote  of social life, and similarly of social relations, as being \lquote internal relations\rquote , what he is really saying is usefully put as follows: that }{
\i\f28 they are not relations at all. }{\f28 That characterizing them as relations can, riskily, lead to society being thought of in nonsensical atomistic
 ways. When we read Winch with a sensitivity to the non-assertoric, post-metaphysical nature of his philosophy, and when we attend to his attendance to the continuities in Wittgenstein\rquote 
s philosophy (rather than, as is usual, reading in him only an alleged version of Wittgenstein\rquote s (alleged) \lquote later philosophy\rquote ), then profitable ways of understanding a multitude of his remarks in}{\i\f28  ISS }{\f28 
open up for us. And unprofitable ways, contrariwise, are shut down. For example, when we pick up the notion of \lquote internal relation\rquote 
 for a while we see that, though it cannot be ultimately satisfactory, and though it can risk leading us to say things which sound awfully like (nonsensical) metaphysical \lquote theses\rquote 
 about the social world, it at least usefully closes down the unprofitable avenue of thinking of different practices as being (metaphysically) hermetically sealed off from one another, and furthermore suggests instead an alternative \lquote picture
\rquote  which may help to point up the }{\i\f28 absurdity}{\f28  (not falsity) of the atomism and ontological i
ndividualism which have dominated much social theory. It suggests a sense in which we can usefully said to be part of one another (and also, part of our eco-physical world, not distinct therefrom).
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Having got somewhat clearer on Winch\rquote s observations on the concept of \lquote society\rquote  and \lquote social relations\rquote , we are finally in a position to turn directly to the following question:
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl600\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\b\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\b\i\f28 
Is there a genuine question concerning how strong the commonalities between persons must be in order for them to be mutually comprehensible?}{\i\f28 
\par }{\f28   Our remarks about the rank absurdity of thinking that philosophers (or \lquote social scientists\rquote 
) are in a position proprietarily to individuate communities and pronounce upon their openness and closedness to one another lead naturally into a thought of
 even more importance for comprehending what Winch, after Wittgenstein, is up to in his philosophy of social science. We are thinking of the allegations of \lquote relativism\rquote  and \lquote incommensurabilism\rquote 
 made against Winch. Sometimes these are prosecuted by self-proclaimed rationalists (e.g. Martin Hollis) who think Winch is defeasible on quasi-empirical grounds -- we need, Hollis, argued, a \lquote bridgehead\rquote 
 of shared beliefs in order to comprehend people from other cultures, and that bridgehead is to be found in our sha
red human rationality. Sometimes, this idea becomes more explicitly quasi-Kantian in nature, as in Davidson, who at points suggests that his ultimate grounds for his notions of \lquote charity\rquote  and \lquote humanity\rquote  are \lquote 
transcendental\rquote . These ideas can seem related to Wittgenstein\rquote s thoughts about \lquote form of life\rquote , especially to the famous passage in}{\i\f28  PI }{\f28 on \lquote agreement\rquote , para.s 240-2.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn 
{\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {
\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  On which, see Read\rquote s \lquote Meaningful Consequences\rquote  (jt. with J. Guetti, in }{\i\f5 Philosophical Forum, }{\f5 Winter 1999), a paper which sets out concretely how \lquote form of life\rquote  is \'85 
not something stateable. To avoid particularly crude relativistic misreading of Wittgenstein here, it is crucial to bear in mind that the agreement in question is of course \lquote agreement\rquote 
 not in opinions but in form of life. (Davidsonian and (especially) Hollisian agreement, by contrast, seems to be pretty much agreement in opinions.)
\par }}}{\f28  
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 But Wittgenstein\rquote s remarks there are not quasi-empirical, nor even about transcendental conditions of possibility. They are grammatical \lquote reminders\rquote 
, pointers away from certain specific philosophical confusions in which it is extremely easy to found oneself embroiled; confusions, as we may sometimes put it, of \lquote the grammatical\rquote  with \lquote the empirical\rquote , for example.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 And -- and this is the crucial point -- thoughts such as \lquote We must presuppose massive agreement in order for there to be able to be disagreement at all\rquote 
 are not truth-evaluable, are not quasi-empirical claims or even transcendental truths. Just as it is absurd to imagine that philosoph
ers or their kin can individuate communities by means of determining the facts of the matter as to what communities there really are (irrespective of how people take themselves to be \lquote communitied\rquote 
), so it is absurd to imagine that philosophers can enunciate true statements, \lquote assertions\rquote , \lquote theses\rquote , which (would) settle the debate of \lquote rationalism against relativism\rquote 
, or decide whether incommensurabilism is true or not. It is absurd to suppose that there is a substantive philosophical or anthropological }{\i\f28 fact of the matter}{\f28  about whether the Azande are \lquote really very different\rquote 
 from us or not. Or even about whether they are incomprehensible in \lquote our categories\rquote  or not. 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 One rather cute way of putting this point is perhaps as follows: \lquote incommensurability\rquote  is itself }{\i\f28 not measurable.}{\f28  One can\rquote t measure \lquote loads of agreement\rquote , \lquote very different\rquote , 
\lquote necessarily partial understanding\rquote , and so on. Thus if one stands by a }{\i\f28 thesis}{\f28  of incommensurability (or anti-incommensurability }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  As for example Keita and Schatzki do.
\par }}}{\f28  ), one will be committing oneself to a nonsense. One will be committing oneself to something which sounds as if it is a definite assertion, as if it rules something in and something else out; but when one turns to unpack one\rquote s \lquote 
thesis\rquote  one will be left only with conflicting intuitions, and emptiness. The only theses there can actually }{\i\f28 be}{\f28  hereabouts are sheer (empty) banalities and tautologies, such as perhaps: \lquote 
When two scientific disciplinary matrices seem very different to one another, }{\i\f28 beware}{\f28  of conflating them and assuming that one can be put sensically in terms of the other.\rquote 
 This Kuhnianish remark is pretty much tautologous, and thus harmless, and may sometimes be of \lquote therapeutic\rquote  use. It is, helpfully, phrased explicitly as a warning rather than as a statement. It should }{\i\f28 not}{\f28 
 be seen as a substantive claim -- that way lies only absurdity, and emptiness masquerading as substance.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 The whole debate of \lquote rationality}{\i\f28  vs.}{\f28  relativism\rquote , the whole debate of those who imagine themselves to be arguing for or against Kuhn and Winch, is absurd, a non-starter. }{\i\f28 There is nothing to be said}
{\f28  on the \lquote question\rquote  supposedly at issue, the question in Kuhn\rquote s case of whether as a matter of fact (say) pre-Einstienian physics is incommensurable with post-Einsteinian physics. Kuhn\rquote s deep message is }{\i\f28 not}{\f28 
 \lquote The truth is that there have been scientific revolutions which render scientists unable to understand each other, and us unable to understand old science/scientists\rquote 
. His message is not well-put as the truth of a pluralised Kantianism, as Hoyningen-Huene has claimed it is, nor really as any kind of \lquote relativism\rquote . His message, rather, is something like, \lquote If you\rquote 
re really interested in the nature of the sciences, if you want (as any serious student of science should) to understand what the sciences are and how they work, then try looking 
at science differently from how Whig historians of science and formalistic philosophers of science have taught you to. Use my \lquote new concepts\rquote , such as \lquote revolution\rquote  and \lquote paradigm\rquote , if they help you  (}{\i\f28 
Sometimes}{\f28  I, Kuhn, find them helpful). But be ready to abandon them instantly if they stand in the way of a sound grasp of the actual concretion of scientific practice in its historicity and in its contexts.\rquote 
 His message is philosophical, in an important sense; but we think it is not helpfully-described as epistemological or metaphysical. Those words carry much too much baggage. (If we re-read Winch\rquote s }{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28 
 in light of his later thought, I think we can see that Winch himself would have been less likely to have employed those words, in his own voice.)
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Likewise, }{\i\f28 there is simply nothing to be said}{\f28  about whether Azande thought is incommensurable with ours. Winch\rquote s deepest message is something like, \lquote If you\rquote 
re really interested in the nature of lay and professional social inquiry, then try looking at culture(s) differently from how scientistic \lquote social scientists\rquote  and rationalistic philosophers have encouraged you to. Use Wittgenstein\rquote 
s terms to do so, }{\i\f28 if}{\f28  those help free up your mental cramps.\rquote 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Winch was (and became increasingly) well-aware of the risk that he would be read as saying something more substantive and theoretical than this. But he had/has no }{\i\f28 theory}{\f28 
 of how society is, of how humans are, nor even of how sociologists ought to conduct themselves.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  For support, see W. Sharrock, \lquote 
Understanding Peter Winch\rquote , }{\i\f5 Inquiry}{\f5  28 (1985), 119-122.
\par }}}{\f28  He investigated the concept of \lquote society\rquote , the concept of \lquote social science\rquote , and the concept of \lquote philosophy\rquote , and found that certain oft-made methodological and philosophical \lquote mistakes\rquote 
 were less likely to be fallen into if one attended to the results of such investigations. He had no theory -- any more than do Wittgenstein or those ethnomethodologists with a modicum of philosophical sophistication. 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 One way of seeing the logic of our argument, in Winch\rquote 
s case, is as follows: try taking seriously the idea that there is a debate, a debate heavily constrained by and even set
tle-able by the invocation of facts, a debate which philosophy can hope then to have settled and to pronounce assertorically and definitively upon, a debate concerning how different the Zande are from us. If there is such a debate, then let us hear the ev
idence from the sides to it. Well, for example, we have Davidson opposing \lquote conceptual scheme relativism\rquote , a \lquote relativism\rquote  often associated (largely wrongly, I am suggesting) with Winch and Kuhn. One of Davidson\rquote 
s key claims is that there must be massive agreement in order for there to be disagreement. That we must presuppose that anyone we are \lquote interpreting\rquote 
 shares a vast number of beliefs with us; otherwise, we cannot go so far -- we are not going so far -- as to treat them as a person or their language as a language.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 But has it ever been explained what this presupposition -- if heard as quasi-factual, rather than \lquote merely\rquote  as a situation-relative grammatical reminder -- amounts to?
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 We can make perfectly good sense of the project of enumerating (say) the num
ber of tigers alive in the wild in India. Or even of the project of enumerating the hairs on my head. Or even perhaps the number of grains of sand on a given beach.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Matters become rather less clear when it comes to enumerating the number of dialects spoke
n in a country. Criteria for individuation of dialects are rather less clear, more purpose-relative, exposed to philosophical debate, beset by the special features of any of the objects of the \lquote human sciences\rquote 
. Similarly, enumerating the number of people one has truly loved is a project perhaps as intrinsically important as it is fuzzy and desperately difficult (and potentially life-changing), if taken seriously.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt 
\pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }
{\f5  For argument, see Read\rquote s \lquote Erotic love considered as philosophy of science\rquote , in the }{\i\f5 Review Journal of Philosophy and the Social Sciences.
\par }}}{\f28  
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 But when it comes to enumerating the number of beliefs one has, or the number of beliefs two people share, do we really have any idea how to }{\i\f28 begin}{\f28 
 the process? How are we to count beliefs whose referents are identified differently by the believer than by ourselves? How are we to count beliefs in the puzzle-cases of belief which philosophers are s
o fond of? And, crucially, all the different forms/cases of belief investigated for example by Wittgensteinian }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28  philosophers, by philosophers of religion, indeed by philosophers of anthropology (e.g. \lquote belief-that\rquote  }{
\i\f28 vs.}{\f28  \lquote belief-in\rquote ; \lquote belief\rquote  as }{\i\f28 trust}{\f28 ; belief-in-practice as discussed by Winch, Pleasants, }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28 )? What about meta-beliefs? Concatenations of beliefs? \lquote Unconscious beliefs
\rquote ? What about degrees of belief, and gradations of belief (e.g. \lquote I believe x with about 75 per cent probability\rquote )? And so on -- the list could easily be extended.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 We suggest that one can have no clear notion of what it is to enumerate one\rquote s beliefs, and that the idea of such, which appeared a way of introducing order to the interminable debates around relativism, debates in whic
h Winch and Kuhn supposedly figure on the side of the relativists, is simply vacuous. One could of course invent some way of enumerating our beliefs -- religious authorities have occasionally attempted to do so in restricted contexts for purposes of estab
lishing whether one is a heretic or not -- but how could something which one thus }{\i\f28 invented}{\f28  solve a philosophical problem?!
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 
The only tenable thing to say is as follows. It may sometimes, for certain \lquote practical\rquote  philosophical purposes, be useful to say: 
\par i) \lquote We must share loads of things -- e.g. beliefs -- in common with others in order to be even treating them as human beings, as susceptible of understanding, at all.\rquote  
\par And it may sometimes be useful, for the same kind of purposes, but in }{\i\f28 different }{\f28 local circumstances, where the discourse in one\rquote s area has taken a }{\i\f28 different}{\f28  kind of illusionary turning, to say: 
\par ii) \lquote People can have different world-views/paradigms, which make them partially impenetrable to one another.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See p.199 of Winch\rquote s \lquote 
Can we understand ourselves?\rquote , }{\i\f5 Philosophical Investigations}{\f5  20:3 (July 1997), 193-204: \lquote [T]here is }{\i\f5 a kind of understanding}{\f5 
 of [Zande] practice that we...do not have. I will try to express this by saying that we cannot imagine what it would b
e like for us to behave as the Azande do and make the kind of sense of what we were doing as the Azande, we assume, do make of what they do; or perhaps: we cannot imagine taking the consulation of the oracle }{\i\f5 seriously, }{\f5 as the Azande do.
\rquote  See, similarly, p.223 of }{\f5\ul PI}{\f5 ; and p.32 of Lyas.
\par }}}{\f28  One has to be ready to see others as deeply different from oneself.\rquote  }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 Again, against the foolish claim that Winch thought of communities (nonsensically) as apodictically identifiable and hermetically-sealed one from another, we should note Winch\rquote s fascinating late discussion of difficulties wh
ich can arise understanding members of our }{\i\f5 own}{\f5  culture. See his }{\i\f5 ibid.
\par }}}{\f28  
\par But }{\i\f28 neither \lquote saying\rquote  should be heard as an assertion of any kind.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Winch and Kuhn had cause to say the latter kind of thing ((ii)) more often than the former ((i)), because they were largely combatting inherited traditions of \lquote Whiggism\rquote , \lquote rationalism\rquote , and \lquote Realism
\rquote . But we should not thus fall into the trap of thinking that they believed the latter, and disbelieved the former, simply and assertorically, permanently. No. They did not wish to hold, to argue for, the theses oft
en attributed to them by Davidsonians and others; they only wished to remind us all of how we might best avoid saying nonsensical things about the history of science, about the understanding of persons and cultures, }{\i\f28 etc. .}{\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 They had, they have, no views, they make no assertions. Winch is no more a pluralist (as Lerner wishes he was, and Phillips thinks he might actually be) than a monist (as Lerner thinks he is). He just isn\rquote t in that kind of game.

\par \tab To be fair to Schatzki, his line of thought is subtler tha
n that of (e.g.) Hollis, in that Schatzki does not only emphasise that commonality is needed in beliefs, but also in emotions, needs, physical environment, primitive reactions, interests, and so on (See p.316 of his essay). There needs to be, says Schatzk
i, \lquote agreement\rquote  in much of the whole warp and weft of form of life (and compare }{\i\f28 Investigations}{\f28  section 206). And there is of course something right about this. }{\i\f28 
But the same argument that we ran above could be applied to each of these in turn}{\f28 : there can be no such thing as quantifying the degree of commonality; there is no }{\i\f28 fact}{\f28 
 of the matter as to how much commonality is required; and the claims about the need for a \lquote shared form of life\rquote  do not in the end amount to assertions. They are not claims that could be
 contradicted, or theses that are controversial. They are \endash  they can only be -- efforts to return us all to our actual life with language, no longer deluded by nonsenses that masquerade as scientific-ish claims.
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl720\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\b\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\b\i\f28 Why then, given the above, are Kuhn and Wi
nch so misunderstood?}{\f28 
\par We have already indicated that the answer to this question is multiple. But it must be said that it is only certain incautious remarks that Kuhn made that gave his interpreters }{\i\f28 any genuine}{\f28  reason for foisting this issue onto him. Winc
h was if anything slightly more careful and circumspect than Kuhn, and more cautiously faithful to Wittgenstein in his approach; but as mentioned above, certain incautious remarks in the first edition of }{\i\f28 The idea of a social science}{\f28 
 did unfortunately nevertheless make it easier than it might have been for those who wanted to disagree with him. (We give a slightly fuller account toward the end of this paper as to why Winch has been as badly misunderstood as he has.)
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab We}{\f28  have discussed Kuhn\rquote s incautious moments elsewhere.}{
\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  In our critique of his alleged \lquote incommensurabilism\rquote ,}{\i\f5  if}{\f5  taken as a \lquote theory\rquote , in Read & Sharrock }{\i\f5 (op.cit.).
\par }}}{\f28  And We do not wish to dwell on some of Winch\rquote s unhappy early formulations: as we have made clear, we think that others have dwelt on them too much already, and that Winch himself has given us a perfectly clear \lquote corrected\rquote 
 version of how he actually wants to have been heard, how he wants to be read, in his writings of the last forty years, since 1958 (and especially in his 1990 \lquote Preface\rquote  to the revised edition of }{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28 
). We prefer to get back to the instructive implications of his text. One way of understanding our task in this paper as a whole is as offering a reading of a }{\i\f28 virtual}{\f28  text that Winch never actually wrote: his }{\i\f28 
Idea of a Social Science}{\f28 , re-read in the light of his later work and in particular of its new Preface. That \lquote virtual text\rquote  has a nature and a significance for philosophers (and practitioners) of \lquote social science\rquote 
 that Winch\rquote s interpreters and critics systematically miss.
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl720\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\b\i\f28 Against interpretation}{\f28 
\par To recap: If we are to risk generalizing at all hereabouts, we shall say that the pr
oduction of descriptions or presentations of human action/behaviour which are not interpretations, let alone explanations, is the only way to avoid grossly failing to 'capture' that behaviour, given that such rule-following}{\i\f28  etc.}{\f28 
 behaviour is utterly unlike what we call the 'behaviour' of inanimate objects, is active, deedlike -- though, again, largely in a }{\i\f28 non-interpretative }{\f28 fashion. Most human behaviour is not interpretive, so its understanding }{\i\f28 need}{
\f28  not normally be interpretive either. }{\i\f28 Contra }{\f28 the claims of
 Charles Taylor and other critics of Winch, even self-understanding or self-description need not be self-interpretation. It is an interpretivist (or post-modernist) dogma, a piece of \lquote theoryism\rquote 
, to claim that linguistic articulation of wordless self-under
standings is necessarily interpretive. (When we ask someone what they are doing, sometimes they simply tell us. Or: sometimes we can simply see, even without being told. That such seeing is defeasible does }{\i\f28 not}{\f28 
 infer that it never happens.)  'Self-understanding' }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28 
 is, again, vital to understanding humans as human animals rather than as material objects or even as (non-human) animals -- but it is not (necessarily) interpretation. One needs to think, not of someone treating themselves as another and specula
ting on why they themselves have done something (a very unusual case), but rather of someone having the capability to alter what they are doing in response to social circumstances, say in response to a failure to make themselves understood, or in response
 to a surprising change in the physical environment (usual cases).}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 We need to think, that is, in the kind of ways suggested by Garfinkelian Ethnomethodology, as explicated for instance by Mike Lynch, e.g. on pp.14-17 of his }{\f5\ul Scientific practice and ordinary action}{\f5 
 (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1993), and see also n.22, above. Lynch and Winch are much happier in this regard than (say) Taylor, Weber, or Jaspers. (Though Jaspers's }{\f5\ul General Psychopathology}{\f5 
 (transl. Hoenig and Hamilton; Manchester: Man. Univ. Pr., 1963 (1923)) is }{\i\f5 at times}{\f5  highly pertinent to what I discuss below. E.g., on p.313: "...[T]he two basic properties of what is understandable...are: (1)
 All that is understandable, understands itself; it is in particular an operation of self-reflection, for example the attitude of the patient to his illness; (2) Everything understandable has its own coherence within the individual. The }{\i\f5 
concrete total of meaningful or understandable connections }{\f5 constitutes what we call the personality or character of a person." But perhaps some apparently incoherent \lquote ways of life\rquote  actually }{\i\f5 are }{\f5 
incoherent, ununderstandable: we shall see below cause to doubt whether certain cases of schizophrenia can satisfy the two \lquote properties\rquote  Jaspers identifies, and thus whether they can satisfy Jasperian }{\i\f5 or}{\f5 
 Winchian canons of understandability.)
\par }}}{\f28  }{\i\f28 Then}{\f28  perhaps one will have the chance to see clearly how human action is, and what 'self-understanding' ( when understood in a properly non-intellectualist sense) amounts to.
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 Of course, t
he terms used in all this are not in themselves crucial  (i.e.: So long as one understands "explain" or "interpret" in a sound non-scientistic fashion, }{\i\f28 etc. etc.,}{\f28  }{\i\f28 then}{\f28 
 one can happily use terms like "explaining / interpreting human action" -- as Winch on occasion does. And similarly: if the word \'93description\'94
 seems somewhat forced, as we are employing it, then we will happily shift to another word that seems to you more felicitous, such as perhaps \'93presentation\'94.). We are decidedly}{\i\f28  not}{\f28  seeking to reify any 
of these words we have been discussing and using into 'technical terms', nor encouraging others to do so.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Again, we are }{\i\f5 not}{\f5 
 suggesting that one should understand Winch as showing us or instructing us as to how one ought in all circumstances to use the word "understanding". Words such as this have perfectly good and }{\i\f5 multifarious}{\f5 
 homes in everyday use -- philosophical legislation over them is not required. They are family-resemblance-concepts one aspect of which I am currently emphasizing for the purpose of combatting a certain }{\i\f5 genus}{\f5  of philosophical illusion.

\par }}}{\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28  }{\i\f28 But}{\f28  distinctions at least }{\i\f28 along the lines}{\f28  that we have made are we think usefully correlated with the words (}{\i\f28 describing, understanding,  explaining;  acting-on-a-rule,  interpreting a rule}{\f28 
) discussed in (a) and (b), towards the start of the paper -- in common and intuitively useful senses (uses) of those words. Thus we take it that (to take perhaps an easier example) it is useful to say that Winch ho
pes in his great paper on "Understanding a primitive society" -- his critique of the great anthropologist, Evans-Pritchard -- to be pointing the way toward a }{\i\f28 description}{\f28  or presentation of Azande practices which will not impose upon them.}
{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  (Reprinted in Wilson (ed.), }{\f5\ul Rationality}{\f5  (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), p. 78-111.)  One should note that Winch is by normal academic standards fairl
y 'liberal' on the question of understanding -- he is suggesting that much that seems irrational or incomprehensible is in fact only so on a poor reading of it. In a sense, my question below is: Can Winch's 'liberality' concerning understanding the radica
l
ly 'other' effectively be used with regard to certain philosophical illusions and psychopathological delusions? I doubt that it can. But whether we are thinking about psychopathology or anthropology, once more one should take care not to suppose that Winc
h is trying to give us a superior piece of human scientific research as such -- he is not setting himself up in competition with Evans-Pritchard & co., but is rather only saying }{\i\f5 what}{\f5  must be going on}{\i\f5  in}{\f5  any human science. 

\par }}}{\f28  And imposition will, he thinks, result from (and amount to) interpreting them or (worse) 'explaining' them. Instead, Winch invites us to }{\i\f28 look at}{\f28  the language-game the Azande are actually playing:
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28\fs20 "It might...appear as though we had clear grounds for speaking of the supe
rior rationality of European over Zande thought, in so far as the latter involves a contradiction [over criteria for the attribution of 'witch-hood'] which it makes no attempt to remove and does not even recognize: one, however, which is recognizable as s
u
ch in the context of European ways of thinking. But does Zande thought on this matter really involve a contradiction? It appears from Evans-Pritchard's  account that the Azande do not press their ways of thinking about witches to a point at which they wou
l
d be involved in contradictions. // Someone may now want to say that the irrationality of the Azande in relation to witchcraft shows itself in the fact that they do not press their thought about it 'to its logical conclusion'. To appraise this point we mu
s
t consider whether the conclusion we are trying to force on them is indeed a logical one; or perhaps better, whether someone who does press this conclusion is being more rational than the Azande, who do not. Some light is thrown on this question by Wittge
nstein's discussion of a game..." }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  }{\i\f5 Ibid., }{\f5 p.92.
\par }}}{\f28\fs20  }{\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par Winch goes on to suggest that the Azande are 'playing a }{\i\f28 different}{\f28  game': 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28\fs20 "It is noteworthy...that the Azande, when the possibility of this contradiction about the inheritance of witchcraft is pointed out to them, do }{\i\f28\fs20 not}{\f28\fs20 
 come to regard their old beliefs in witchcraft as obsolete. [According to Evans-Pritchard himself:]'They have no theoretical interest in the subject.' This suggests strongly that the context from which the suggestion about the contradiction is made, th
e context of our scientific culture, is not on the same level as the context in which the beliefs about witchcraft operate. }{\f28\fs20\ul 
Zande notions of witchcraft do not constitute a theoretical system in terms of which Azande try to gain a quasi-scientific understanding of the world.}{\f28\fs20 
 This in turn suggests that it is the European, obsessed with pressing Zande thought where it would not go -- to a contradiction -- who is guilty of misunderstanding, not the Zande." }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\i\f5 
 Ibid., }{\f5 p.93. (Underlining mine.) This point of Winch's is worth juxtaposing with L. Sass's analysis (see p.55f. of }{\f5\ul The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber and the schizophrenic mind}{\f5 
 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1994)) of why schizophrenia often yields irrationality as the result of (hyper-)rationality. Wittgenstein would agree with them in supposing that a great }{\i\f5 delusion}{\f5 
 of Modern 'Man' is that taking things 'to their logical conclusion' is always intellectually right, that for instance it must standardly be rational t
o attempt to make a 'rational' choice as to what to do. Thus the Azande could be held to exhibit a type of good sense that many Modern schizophrenics (and some scientists, and economists, and philosophers...) lack. (Cf. also Wittgenstein\rquote s }{
\f5\ul Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus}{\f5  (London: Routledge, 1922) 6.372.)
\par }}}{\f28\fs20  }{\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl360\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 Winch's primary concern is to avoid }{\i\f28 mis}{\f28 understandi
ng }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Putting the emphasis on }{\i\f5 \lquote (not) misunderstanding\rquote  }{\f5 
 rather than on any alleged quasi-Collingwoodian empathy or imagination, or on some quasi-anthropological methodology that Winch is taken to recommend under the heading of \lquote }{\i\f5 Understanding,\rquote  }{\f5 
could be couched in Austinian terms of shifting our view of which word around here is the \lquote trouser-word\rquote . Perhaps more impor
tant is to note that this is one of the points where Winch is frequently misread; for example, by Schatzki, who suggests (on p.319 of his }{\i\f5 op.cit.}{\f5 
) that Winch aims at a positive state of understanding, whereas for the most part all Winch aims at is the removal of mental cramps }{\i\f5 etc. }{\f5 which force us into ethnocentric }{\i\f5 etc. }{\f5 misunderstandings.
\par }}}{\f28  a radically different society (or misunderstanding religion; or art; }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28 
). He is not asserting, 'Here is the truth on what these 'aliens' are', nor 'Here is how to enter into the positive 'empathic' state of understanding them'. (This is very important, and constitutes another aspect of Winch\rquote 
s practice signally neglected by most of his \lquote friends\rquote  and \lquote foes\rquote . Winch, to say it again, is trying to put us in a better position to avoid misunderstanding something -- that\rquote s all. A bit like with Kuhn\rquote s recast
ing of scientific progress in terms of progress only }{\i\f28 away}{\f28  from past insoluble puzzles (\lquote anomalies\rquote ), there is no teleological vision in Winch hereabouts; and he is not setting up a}{\i\f28  rival }{\f28 
methodology to that employed by field anthropologists either.)  
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Here we arguably have an outline example and given what of someone -- Winch -- being able quite successfully to 'follow along with' -- to make something of -- an 'alien' discourse without}{\i\f28  imposing}{\f28  on it or }{\i\f28 
interpreting}{\f28  it }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  In the worrying sense perhaps in which these latter activities take place in much Art Criticism, when violence is done to a work, by means of interpreting it, beyond its 
'surface', by reference to its 'symbolism', or its author, or its socio-historical significance...
\par }}}{\f28  in terms other than its own.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Zvi Lothane intriguingly argues -- obviously 'analogously' to my anti-interpretivist exposition of Winch and critique of Sass -- that, "Analysis-work, and
 the method of interpreting dreams was revolutionary in this sense: it dispensed with the ready-made symbolic reading of the dream...and relied on the dreamer's own activity of free association... . The interpretive authority was thus vested in the dreame
r
: This is the foundation of the psychoanalytic method. Freud often lapsed from this method of interpretation, falling prey to the temptation of symbolic (hermeneutic) interpretation, as happened in the Schreber analysis. He thus repeatedly abandoned the p
sychoanalytic method in favour of the hermeneutic method." (}{\i\f5 Op.cit., }{\f5 
p.225; & cf. pp.253-6.)  This makes clear, e.g., the stakes in debates between unapologetically interpretivistic psychoanalysts (e.g. Kleinians) and psychodynamical approaches which endeav
our to avoid interpretation (e.g. Gestalt). The latter are clearly attitudinally closer to Lothane -- and Winch.
\par }}}{\f28  Paraphrasing a Wittgensteinian \lquote slogan\rquote , then, one might try simplifying my line here as follows: }{\i\f28 Don't look for the interpretation, look for an adequate description.}{\f28 
 A description that will not evince/evoke failures to }{\i\f28 'meet}{\f28  'those one is encountering as they are.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Again, we must stress that our remarks above too are \lquote grammatical reminders\rquote  (see}{\i\f28  PI}{\f28 
 para. 127). They are not gestures at ineffable truths, or general contributions to a theory of society, or any such. Winch, like Wittgenstein, gives us reminders, }{\i\f28 not}{\f28 
 a theory. (Sorry to have to keep reminding you of this!)  He tries to judge the mythologicalish errors we are likely to fall into, in part by looking at errors (e.g. Evans-Pritchard\rquote s, or similarly Frazer\rquote s, Pareto\rquote s, or Levy-Bruhl
\rquote s) that actually have been influentially fallen into. (Take for instance the following disastrous confusion of perspectives within one sentence, to be found on p.43 of the abridged (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976) edition of Evans-Pritchard\rquote 
s classic text; \'93We must remember that since witchcraft has no real existence a man does not know that he has bewitched another, even if he is aware that he bears him ill will\'94.)
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 And it is perhaps important to reiterate that my reading of Winch }{\i\f28 resists}{\f28  }{\i\f28 assimilating }{\f28 his view to that of most }{\i\f28 'Verstehen' }{\f28 
theorists of the social sciences, and Weber. Our view, based upon the letter of the kind of quotations from Winch given above, is that Winch's thought is falsified if one fails to recognize the difference he finds between }{\i\f28 descriptions}{\f28 
 on the one hand and}{\i\f28  interpretations  / explanations on the other. }{\f28 
Winch had a lot of time and sympathy for the Idealist tradition, for the work of Dilthey and Collingwood for example. He felt that they essentially grasped certain important philosophical points which eluded
 their Positivist foes then and now. Likewise, Winch can be drawn close at various points to certain schools of conventional sociology, such as the }{\i\f28 verstehenlich }{\f28 
moments in Weber, and some classical Social Interactionism. But I want to insist again that in the main Winch resolutely refused to take up a position -- to have a view -- on debates in social theory. He is not advocating a particular \lquote picture
\rquote  of the human being, or of (the) human society }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 He is not for example directly following Collingwood\rquote s over-intellectualist vision of human society and history -- see his careful words on p.131 of}{\f5\ul  ISS}{\f5  (and again at the close of the }{\i\f5 Preface}{\f5 ).
\par }}}{\f28   -- except insofar as he sometimes recommends certain pic
tures for certain prophylactic purposes. He is not, for example, asserting the truth of a picture of human beings as rule-following animals. He rather follows Wittgenstein in pointing out how easy it is to be confused in attempting to understand other hum
an beings who are perhaps strange to us if instead of taking account of their practices as already having an order, we rather interpret them merely \lquote positivistically\rquote 
, as merely acting in accord with rules; or if we fail to understand how different (say) th
eir understanding of the effects of an alleged contradiction within their practices is to what we might have expected. Thus we think it unwise and unhelpful to try to read Winch as (say) a philosophical social interactionist, with a particular theory of w
hat human interaction is and of how important it is. If we are to associate Winch with any sociological \lquote school\rquote 
, it would have then to be, as already suggested, with the non-scientistic, Wittgensteinish and resolutely non-theoreticised, resolutely local practices of \lquote ethnomethodology\rquote 
. If Winch has an ally in sociology, it can we think only be Garfinkel and his followers, who do not advocate a substantive theory of society. We might then think of ethnomethodological practice, in the work of Garfinkel, Livin
gston, the early Sacks, Heritage, Michael Lynch, Wes Sharrock, Rod Watson and more besides, as being a fine-grained ethnographically-oriented non-fictional version of what Winch and Wittgenstein are up to with their examples, prophylactics and reminders. 
(See for instance Sharrock and Watson\rquote s \'93Autonomy among social theories\'94, which makes clear just how different the task of ethmethodology (and, by extension, of Winch) is from that of mainstream sociology or social theory.)
\par \tab If Winch were aiming to describe a positive state of understanding, then he would be an Idealist or a Verstehen-theorist. For all his affinities with these, he is neither. If it be responded, \'93
Well then, if he is not aiming to describe a positive state of understanding, then why is the crucial section of ISS entitled \'93Understanding social institutions\'94, and why is his great essay entitled \'93Understanding a primitive society?\'94
, the answer is threefold:
\par {\listtext\pard\plain\s18 \f28\lang2057\langfe2057\langnp2057\langfenp2057 \hich\af28\dbch\af0\loch\f28 I)\tab}}\pard \s18\ql \fi-720\li1080\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\jclisttab\tx1080\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\ls1\adjustright\rin0\lin1080\itap0 {\f28 The \'93understanding\'94 in Winch\rquote s titles is better heard as a }{\i\f28 process}{\f28 
, or an }{\i\f28 activity}{\f28 , not as a }{\i\f28 state}{\f28 ! He is interested in how to go about understanding others.
\par {\listtext\pard\plain\s18 \f28\lang2057\langfe2057\langnp2057\langfenp2057 \hich\af28\dbch\af0\loch\f28 II)\tab}Furthermore, Winch is writing }{\i\f28 about}{\f28 
 this process or activity, and not, except in the most schematic and exemplificational of ways, actually }{\i\f28 undertaking}{\f28  it. He isn\rquote t to more than a very limited degree engaging in the activity }{\i\f28 himself}{\f28 
; he is not an anthropologist, or a practicising ethnographer. This should be obvious.
\par {\listtext\pard\plain\s18 \f28\lang2057\langfe2057\langnp2057\langfenp2057 \hich\af28\dbch\af0\loch\f28 III)\tab} Finally, the activity he is talking about is one he is least likely to mislead, to encourage a wrong assimilation with phil
osophical approaches or with methodologies that were not his, if we put his endeavour in negative terms. He was chiefly concerned to remove misunderstandings, for the sake of better pursuit of the activity intimated in (I) and (II), above. \'85
He wants those 
engaging in the activity to appreciate better the extent to which their fieldwork needs to be informed by philosophy or at least analogous in certain respects to philosophy, rather than analogised to science. This should be clear, in the case in which Win
c
h goes into most detail: that of Evans-Pritchard. Winch offers tools for avoiding misunderstanding what Evans-Pritchard has actually given us, by way of an insight into the Azande; and these in turn yield conceptual tools which may be to other anthropolog
ists\rquote  benefit. In short: while  }{\i\f28 ISS\rquote s }{\f28 point}{\i\f28  }{\f28 could be signalled more clearly by shifting to a title such as \lquote The very idea of a social science\rquote , \'93Understanding a primitive society\'94
 could be perspicuously retitled as \'93Avoiding misunderstandings of primitive societies\'94, or \'93On primitive misunderstandings of \lquote primitive\rquote  societies\'94.
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 And so now we are justified in venturing that a key \lquote mistake\rquote  which Schatzki makes -- and Phillips and Lerner after him -- is to treat Winch as a social theorist, who put us in the 
alleged position of possessing an understanding either of particular societies or of society in general. Thus Schatzki in fact covertly }{\i\f28  treats Wittgenstein as a social theorist too.}{\f28 
 When we see clearly how the Winch/Wittgenstein approach eviscerates generalistic abstract questions such as for instance \lquote How great do the commonalities between persons need to be for understanding between them to be possible?\rquote 
 of content, we see, among other things, how futile the debates over Winch have tended to be.}{\i\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 It is worth adding that salient and we think sensible support for distinguishing for prophylactical}{\i\f28  etc.}{\f28 
 purposes, as we have done above, after Winch, not just between description and explanation, but between description (and understanding) }{\i\f28 on the one hand}{\f28  and interpretation }{\i\f28 on the other,}{\f28 
 can be found in the etnomethodologist Jeff Coulter's paper, "Is contextualizing necessarily interpretive?": "It is undoubtedly true that some readings of texts...are best construed as 'interpretive', as (involving) the making of 
'interpretations', but this is not true for each and every facet of a reading of -- or of reading-and-understanding -- a text[, for example] a psychiatric clinic record." }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0
\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  }{\f28  }{\i\f5 
Journal of Pragmatics}{\f5  21 (1994)), p.692ff. See also p.442 of his "A logic for 'context'" (}{\i\f5 J. of Pragmatics}{\f5  25 (1996)): "[One] ought to distinguish between 'reading' a text and 'having (or arriving at, }{\i\f5 etc.}{\f5 
) a reading of a text', between ordinary cases of 'understanding' what a text says or what it means and cases in which 'interpreting' may be involved."
\par }}}{\cs16\i\f28  }{\cs21\f28 If the reader continues to require further detail concerning how it is that it is \lquote }{\cs21\i\f28 possible\rquote }{\cs21\f28  for there to be plain (self- etc.) description (ore \lquote presentation\rquote 
), and how interpretation is not ubiquitous, then the place to go is to ethnomethodologists\rquote  concept of the \'93accounting\'94 and \'93accountability\'94 of human practices/actions. Winch is much closer to ethnomethodology than to \lquote 
symbolic interactionism\rquote , \lquote Verstehen\rquote -theory or philosophical Idealism, in this vital regard.
\par \tab In sum, rather than as usual assimilating interpretation to the description side of Wittgenstein's famous opposition between description and explanation,}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See Wittgenstein\rquote s }{\f5\ul PI }{\f5 
para.109, and para.654.
\par }}}{\cs16\f28  thus risking concealing the important disanalogies between description and interpretation, we might usefully try out assimilating it rather to the explanation side instead, and notice the similarities there. This is, we th
ink, the main moral of thinking through oppositions (a) and (b), with which we began the paper, above. (Again, the terms themselves are not vital -- and all these concepts are of course \lquote family-resemblance concepts\rquote 
, there being for example many \lquote kinds\rquote  of description }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See for instance }{\f5\ul PI }{\f5 
para.291; also }{\f5\ul PI}{\f5  para.24 and p.200.
\par }}}{\cs16\f28   -- but the points we are trying to make here, therapeutic and prophylactical, are we think sound.)}{\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 If this is right, then the best one can do, one might say, is }{\i\f28 present}{\f28  (rather, one might say, than }{\i\f28 re-}{\f28 present) the thought and language of an 'alien'.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  }{
\f28  }{\f5 Of course, in a trivial sense even this must be a recontextualisation -- but the point is, it needn't be anything like a translation or an interpretation. 'Translation' -- Quine's term; 'Interpretation' -- Davidson's. Both risk leaving quit
e out of account the aspects of language, which J.Guetti calls 'grammatical effects' (see his }{\f5\ul Wittgnstein and the Grammar of Literary Experience}{\f5 
 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Pr., 1993)), which make all the difference between simply extracting one's o
wn version of what someone is saying on the one hand, and doing what can justly be called 'understanding what they are saying' on the other (or at least understanding what one }{\i\f5 can}{\f5  of it and 'witnessing }{\f28 / }{\f5 
letting be' the rest). Our point is that genuinely understanding even what one can of something strange, and letting its nuances and style and otherness be, is not well-subsumed under the heading even of 'interpretation' (let alone of 'translation').

\par }}}{\f28  But, if it 'hangs together', in the way Winch suggested Azande thought in the final analysis }{\i\f28 does;}{\f28  if it can be made sense of without being imposed upon; if its character is such that one can come to }{\i\f28 describe}{\f28 
 it accurately, in important part through understanding it as they understand it:}{\i\f28 then}{\f28  one need not thereby falsify it -- and then one really can present it. (And need not necessarily interpret it.)
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl600\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\b\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\b\i\f28 An\rquote  example\rquote : hard cases of schizophrenia}{\f28 

\par   Let us now take a \lquote case\rquote  with which to test our 
presentation of Winch, an example drawn from the work of the philosophically-inclined clinical psychologist Louis Sass, from his bold recent attempt to provide an interpretation of something very alien, namely (hard cases of) schizophrenia. (We take this 
example }{\i\f28 for the sake of argument;}{\f28  there is no space here to argue conclusively over whether Sass\rquote 
s line on schizophrenia is basically correct or not.)  Sass argues that, far from being a disease of primitivity or cognitive deficit, much of schizophrenia is a \lquote disease\rquote 
 of hyper-reflexivity, even hyper-rationality, and alienation. His critique of traditional scientistic (and psycho-analytical) accounts of the nature of schizophrenia, which we invite the reader to consult for themselves,}{\fs18\up6 \chftn 
{\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {
\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  The best place to start is perhaps with his }{\f5\ul Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the light of Modern Art, Literature and Thought}{\f5  (NY: Basic Books, 1992). 
\par }}}{\f28  is, arguably, highly-effective. He argues that we can understand schizophrenia, if we follow Wittgenstein\rquote 
s diagnosis of solipsism as a disease of the intellect, a disease of hyper-thinking in which the consistent solipsist moves seamlessly from thinking of themselves as the ce
ntre of everything, to thinking of themselves as nothing at all, to the pragmatic absurdity of thinking of themselves as requiring the existence of another mind, and so on, interminably back around this merry-go-round of philosophical \lquote positions
\rquote .}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  For detail, consult chapters 1 and 2 of Sass\rquote s }{\f5\ul The Paradoxes of Delusion}{\f5  }{\i\f5 (op.cit.),}{\f5  wherein Sass, drawing particularly on Schreber
\rquote s }{\i\f5 Memoirs}{\f5  of his nervous illness, presents a compelling reading of Wittgenstein on solipsism }{\i\f5 etc. }{\f5 as less a univocal and stable \lquote egocentric\rquote 
 doctrine than a continually self-deconstructing impulse, with a logic that defeats any effort to stabilize itself at \lquote egocentrism\rquote . For sympathetic exposition and critique, see Read\rquote s \'93On approaching schizophrenia via Wittgenstein
\'94, in }{\i\f5 Philosophical Psychology}{\f5  2001, from which some of the next few pages are loosely adapted.
\par }}}{\f28  We can interpret the severe schizophrenic, e.g. Daniel P. Schreber, as strictly analogous to such a solipsist, Sass claims. And thus we can understand schizophrenia, understand why it is like it is and what it is like.
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 We want to ask, of what Sass re-presents for us: 
\par (i) Is his account, as he wants it to be, likely to be }{\i\f28 Wittgensteinian}{\f28 ?;  and
\par (ii) If not, could Winch offer an alternative and efficacious \lquote account\rquote  (i.e. an orientation of how not to misunderstand) of the phenomena under investigation here, as we have claimed he can essay of (e.g.) the Azande?
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 Here is an example of what issues from Sass\rquote s \lquote 
hermeneutic\rquote , his account of schizophrenia. He writes, of the famous paranoid schizophrenic, Schreber:
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 "}{\f28\fs20 Schreber's }{\f28\fs20\ul dream}{\f28\fs20  is that spirits should be drawn down toward him and perish therein. For example, he sometimes hears the spirit of his wife saying (}{\f28\fs20\ul 
more precisely, he hears it "represented as saying"}{\f28\fs20 ) "Let me" -- words which he knew to mean let me "dissolve in my husband's body". Since the spirits of Schreber's cosmos }{\f28\fs20\ul represent}{\f28\fs20 
 potentially rivalrous conscious centres, their perishing in him }{\f28\fs20\ul can be interpreted as}{\f28\fs20  a conceding of defeat in the competition of consciousness."     (P.120 of}{\i\f28\fs20  Paradoxes, }{\f28\fs20 underlining our\rquote s)

\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl600\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28\fs20 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 Well, indeed, it }{\i\f28 can}{\f28  be interpreted that wa
y, a way consistent with Sass\rquote s \lquote hermeneutic\rquote 
 for schizophrenia, of a rigorously-pursued analogy with consistent solipsism, and the inevitable confusions concerning the nature of consciousness which solipsism (according to Wittgenstein) involves. Other at 
least somewhat plausible interpretations are available: e.g. that the wish of the spirit of Schreber's wife to dissolve in him is actually an expression of his wish to have her (womanly) 'voluptuousness' literally become a part of him. But... why ought we
 to be }{\i\f28 interpreting}{\f28  here at all? Oughtn't we to start with Schreber's experience }{\i\f28 simpliciter,}{\f28  with his experience in his/its own terms? }{\i\f28 Within }{\f28 
those terms, that frame, nothing represents anything unless Schreber takes it to do so  (As he }{\i\f28 does}{\f28  evidently take
 certain words (a little bizarrely) to symbolize certain sentences, as in this example; and he experiences this symbolisation pretty much passively.). }{\i\f28 In}{\f28  Schreber's experience (N.B.: "dream", again, is a prejudicial word), spirits }{
\i\f28 are}{\f28  drawn down toward him. (No matter that it is hard to see how we can begin to take this remotely seriously. We have nevertheless to (try to) see what, if anything, it }{\i\f28 means.}{\f28  )
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 One might argue then that Sass's turn of phrase here betrays that he is palpably offering an interpretation of Schreber's experience,}{\cs21\f28\up6  }{\f28 
rather than trying as hard as he (Sass) might to 'let that experience speak for itself'; as for instance it might be argued to get a chance to so speak (so to speak) not only in Schreber\rquote s }{\i\f28 Memoirs, }{\f28 but also in his various o
ther writings }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28 
 . And one might again take as a partial and comparatively-useful analogy here an anthropologist trying to let (the experiences of) a very different people speak for themselves. Thus compare (and contrast...) Wittgenstein's attitude, in h
is "Remarks on Frazer's }{\i\f28 Golden Bough}{\f28 " (or similarly Peter Winch's approach }{\i\f28 vis-a-vis the Azande's}{\f28 
 quasi-'doublebookkeeping', in his "Understanding a Primitve Society"). Apparently deeply-bizarre and/or contradictory beliefs can proceed perfectly happily in tandem with a practical workaday attitude toward growing crops, }{\i\f28 etc. etc.}{\f28  . 

\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 A salient contrast to Sass is: Winch, after Wittgenstein, does not aim to say, for example, what the Azande are}{\i\f28  'really'}{\f28  doing -- 'behind' the appearances -- when they use their poison-oracles}{\i\f28  etc.}{\f28 
  . Not at }{\i\f28 all. }{\f28 Except of course in the (vital) sense that Winch aims at a description which would reasonably well satisfy the Azande (were they to be interested in one's activity of describing them). Winch holds that wherever social st
udy is carried out, it must aim to give a version, an account, that could in principle satisfy the criterion of being accepted by those being 'accounted for'. A very important difference of nuance here from the case of schizophrenics now suggests itself: 
w
ithout, we hope, giving offence, one can I think say that, often tragically, there is a serious question as to whether in serious cases of schizophrenia there can be any question of taking seriously any affirmation which a schizophrenic were to make of on
e's interpretation of their condition/feelings or whatever. Because their schizophrenia (launching them as it does, according to Sass himself, on a hyperrational/ hyperreflexive journey which issues in nothing consistent) }{\i\f28 deprives}{\f28 
 them of the position of being able to be taken seriously in any such affirmation (or denial); unlike, surely, the Azande. This raises a general question about what the }{\i\f28 criteria}{\f28 
 of correctness of interpretation could possibly be, in the case of anyone attempting to hermeneuticise schizophrenia, and ought to make us worry about whether an 'interpretation' could possibly be what we ought to look for. 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 If one is 'hovering', or flip-flopping, between alternative ways of expressing oneself, or between different ways of being understood w
hich one is being invited to assent to or deny, there will normally be a resolution to such hovering available. Typically, one will settle on some form or forms of words. There is a qualitative difference between 'hovering' when at least in principle a }{
\i\f28 resolution}{\f28  of the hovering is available in one of these forms -- and when it }{\i\f28 isn't.}{\f28 
 In the latter kind of case -- as, arguably, in much severe schizophrenia -- we lack a basis for rendering the humans in question genuinely intelligible.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 Arguably, much more than 'consistency' and order in logic, belief 
and visible action are required in order for a person to be intelligible. The full panoply of human expression and action, including perception, desire and affect, is needed. Where one of these is wholly lacking, as arguably in some Autism and Schizophren
ia, we think we just don't know what to say about the experience of the persons concerned -- we don't have grounds for saying one thing rather than another. What we can unmisleadingly be said to understand is I think }{\i\f5 (ordinary)}{\f5 
 human psychology, }{\i\f5 just as Wittgenstein says,}{\f5  on p.77 of }{\f5\ul Culture and Value}{\f5  (}{\i\f5 op.cit.}{\f5 
): "Man's greatest happiness is love. Suppose you say of the schizophrenic: he does not love, he cannot love, he refuses to love -- what is the difference?!" (Cf. p.89 of Guetti's }{\i\f5 (op.cit.):}{\f5  "...what is "
possible" in Benjy's story are not merely "meanings" but feelings themselves.")  One can understand -- or fail to understand -- a friend. But one\rquote s failure to understand Schreber is, sadly, fated to be more 'absolute'.
\par }}}{\f28  
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\i\f28 Perhaps,}{\f28  the locus of the difference between Sass and Winch is in fact then largely }{\i\f28 this: }{\f28 that }{\i\f28 the Azande way of life, }{\f28\ul strange}{\f28 
 to us as it is, and its strangeness needs emphasizing as Winch emphasizes it (this strangeness being, Winch thinks, underplayed even by Evans-Pritch
ard, as he characterizes the Azande as irrational -- for Winch thinks that the true strangeness of the Azande is that they may be doing and saying just the very odd things that they apparently do and say and yet }{\f28\ul not}{\f28 
 be accurately and without interpretive violence fitted into boxes marked by us with the labels "irrational" or "mistaken"); that this way of life nevertheless}{\i\f28  }{\f28 can in principle be understood.  While }{\i\f28 the severe schizophrenic }{
\f28\ul cannot.}{\f28  Because while the form of the former can be comprehended provided one takes on board Wittgensteinian lessons about the context-relativity of the meaning of 'logical contradiction'}{\i\f28  etc., }{\f28 
and about this game (of language, of life) being collectively played, the form of the latter goes \lquote beyond\rquote  what can strictly be compreh
ended, and into what can only (again, after Wittgenstein) at best be diagnosed. While there is, perhaps, something one can call a Zande \lquote \lquote belief\rquote -system\rquote  }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 The scare quotes are to indicate that one courts a serious misunderstanding if one even uses the term \lquote belief\rquote  to refer to the Azande\rquote s \lquote magical\rquote 
 notions and practices. In particular, Sharrock and Anderson invite us to consider the suggestion (made originally by J. Cook, in his \lquote Magic, Witchcraft and Science\rquote ,}{\i\f5  Philosophical Investigations}{\f5  6:1 (Jan. \lquote 
83), pp.2-36) that because magical \lquote systems\rquote  \lquote ...do not involve beliefs they do not involve beliefs which can be mistaken.\rquote  And we think they are right when they go on to say that \lquote Wittgenstein [and W
inch are] not suggesting that magical practices do not have anything to do with beliefs but that they are not }{\i\f5 founded}{\f5  in them.\rquote  (\lquote Magic, Witchcraft and the Materialist Mentality\rquote  (unpublished), p.7)
\par }}}{\f28  in action, albeit by our lights a pretty peculiar 'system', there is often in schizophrenics only the illusion of a system}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Cf. Laing, on pp.33-34 of }{\f5\ul 
The Divided Self}{\f5  (Harmondswo
rth:Penguin, 1965): "[T]he expositor of a text has a right to presume that, despite the passage of time, and the wide divergence of world view between him and the ancient author, he stands in a not entirely different context of living experience from the 
o
riginal writer. He exists, in the world, like the other, as a permanent object in time and place,with others like himself. It is just this presupposition that one cannot make with the psychotic. In this respect, there may be a greater difficulty in unders
tanding the psychotic... [than] in understanding the writer of a hieroglyphic dead for thousands of years."  
\par }}}{\f28  -- almost invariably with no like-minded community to sustain it --}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 Should we regret the lack of such a community to sustain a schizophrenic's world-view? I feel the force of this ethical}{\f28 /}{\f5 emotional question, but it may be moot, because in serious cases we have good grounds for thinking that}{\i\f5 
 there could not be}{\f5  a community to sustain it. Thus, using the term 'form of life' somewhat metaphorically, we might risk saying that severe schizophrenics }{\i\f5 don't have}{\f5  a form of 
life. Cf. Jaspers: "Schizophrenics...are not surrounded by a single schizophrenic world, but by a number of such worlds. If there were a single, uniform world-formation schizophrenics would understand each other and form their own community. But...[t]hey 
h
ardly ever understand each other...A healthy person understands them better... A community of schizophrenics is almost certainly an impossibility, since in every case it has to grow artificially and is not there naturally... In acute psychoses lack of awa
reness excludes any communal life anyway." (}{\i\f5 Op.cit.,}{\f5 pp.282-3; cf. also paragraph 957 of Wittgenstein's }{\f5\ul Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology }{\f5 1 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980))  So we can\rquote t endorse W.Blankenburg's view, in }
{\f5\ul Der Verlust der Naturlichen Selbstvertaendichkeit }{\f5 (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke V., 1971); for while (like Sass) he argues well that schizophrenia constitutes more a }{\i\f5 different}{\f5  than a }{\i\f5 deficient}{\f5 
 way of being-in-the-world, he does not adequately consider a third possibility: that 'it' rather 'constitutes' various ways of }{\i\f5 not}{\f5  being-in-the-world }{\i\f5 at all.
\par }}}{\f28  and a \lquote system\rquote  furthermore within which one can find no real resting-place.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 As argued by Sass himself in Chapters 1 and 2 of his }{\f5\ul Paradoxes}{\f5 ; Sass argues, following Wittgenstein\rquote s diagnosis of solipsism, that there is an absolutely unstable dialectic inherent to schizophrenic thinking, as to solipsism.
\par }}}{\f28  And while the Zande do not press their thinking to what others try to impose on them as its 'logical conclusion', Schreber }{\i\f28 et al }{\f28\ul do}{\i\f28  }{\f28 
so press their thinking (whether deliberately or non-voluntarily, it is hard to say -- even perhaps in principle impossible, and this too is an important fact). Thus it is that Schreber continually finds himsel
f in a continually-puzzling circular paralyzing paradoxicality.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 See for instance the example given on pp.60-61 of Sass\rquote s }{\f5\ul Paradoxes.
\par }}}{\f28  In an absence of self-understanding, in spite (indeed, perhaps }{\i\f28 because}{\f28 ) of all his efforts at reflection.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 All this would have the implication that, in the cases which most puzzle us, there c
ould not be a successful interpretation of schizophrenia, for the simple but deep reason given just above: that there simply aren't any true self-understandings available, in this case. That such sufferers from schizophrenia do not at key moments exhibit 
the understanding-in-practice of their own talk, the kind of everyday \lquote rule-governedness\rquote  in that talk and action, which in everyday human contexts we can and normally must take for granted.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 The kind of understanding-in-practice of daily life which the ethnomethodologist D. Francis is referring to in the following discussion of the \lquote primitive society\rquote  of the Dene Tha: \lquote [T]o speak of \lquote Dene Tha reality\rquote  }{
\i\f5 in the singular}{\f5  is to obscure the fact that the Dene Tha have what Alfred Schutz...referred to as \lquote multiple realities\rquote  -- different orders of experience between which they move. In this respect they are \lquote like us\rquote 
. But as Schutz was at pains to point out, the wide-awake reality of daily life is the}{\i\f5  paramount reality, }{\f5 phenomenologically speaking... . The world of daily life is paramount in that it is \lquote home\rquote  to our sense of the }{\i\f5 
taken-for-granted;}{\f5  it is the order of experience in which much is simply }{\i\f5 there}{\f5  and can be acted towards unreflectively and counted upon unproblematically.\rquote  (P.106 of \lquote The golden dreams of the social constructionist
\rquote , }{\i\f5 Journal of Anthropological Research }{\f5 50:2 (Summer 1994), pp.97-108)  The paramountcy of daily life just cannot be counted on in the case of -- by -- Schreber. (But no more should the \lquote multiple realities\rquote 
 element of the picture here be ignored. Perhaps, again, some people think that it is \lquote relativistic\rquote  to take this Schutzian}{\f28 /}{\f5 Winchian line on reality; for an efficient argument against this thought, see Lyas }{\i\f5 (op.cit.)}{
\f5 , e.g. p.24-25; and also below.)
\par }}}{\f28  We might even say that there cannot, logically, be true self-understandings in severe schizophrenics (to facilitate criteria for accurately understanding their words and actions).}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 For severe schizophrenia is in practice quite largely }{\i\f5 defined}{\f5  by the absence of same.
\par }}}{\f28  And without those, there can be no production of descriptions which could be the basis for interpretation(s).}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  We might then risk the following q
uasi-Wittgensteinian remark: "If a severe schizophrenic were to speak, we could not understand them." (Cf. p.54, p.65 and p.67 of S. Glendinning\rquote s }{\f5\ul On Being with others: Heidegger, Derrida, Wittgenstein}{\f5 
 (London: Routledge, 1998). On occasions, it may be just as reasonable to say that people with schizophrenia have no world as to say what Jaspers says about their 'worlds' -- see above, e.g. n.68.)
\par }}}{\f28  
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 "But isn't there a huge ten
sion here between what follows from a Wittgensteinian/Winchian/Ethnomethodological approach on the one hand, and Sass's version of schizophrenia and solipsism on the other. For the former emphasizes the importance of the deed, of practice, while the latte
r
 involves a perhaps-excessive interpretivism. The schizophrenic interprets everything, according to Sass -- that's hardly Wittgensteinian!" This 'objection' is to the point. But Sass is describing the exception which tests the rule -- it may well be that,
}{\i\f28  contra}{\f28  the 'interpretivists', Wittgenstein }{\i\f28 et al}{\f28  are quite right on human beings in general, but that, }{\i\f28 contra}{\f28 
 traditional understandings of schizophrenia, sufferers from this complaint (somewhat like most philosophers?!) precisely intellectualize and inter
pret in the manner which the interpretivists wrongly take to be the norm for humans in general! And we may follow Heidegger in suspecting that the reason philosophers are prone to misunderstand human being is that they are precisely those people prone to 
over-intellectualize, to think that what is happening is only mentation where actually something rather different -- typically, involving other forms of }{\i\f28 doing}{\f28  -- is going on instead. 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 So, in thinking through the 'objection', just offered, a question we may well want to ask is: Just exactly how appropriate is Sass's hermeneutic for the special case (of schizophrenia, analogized to solipsistic }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28 
 philosophy) under consideration? Does Sass still perhaps over-interpret? Does he thereby, for instance, blind us
 to aspects of 'schizophrenic' life and talk -- and there are typically many -- which are perfectly ordinary and normal? An important possibility. Or, very differently, and equally importantly: Does he risk interpreting into sense something which is in th
e
 final analysis such an apotheosized and sublimed transmogrification of the interpretive aspects of our mental life that it can be 'successfully' interpreted into terms which we can comprehend only at the cost of radically and violently falsifying it? We 
m
ight even, then, pose the following question: In Sass's effort to comprehend schizophrenia, is there not a real danger that he goes too far in the opposite direction to the orthodoxy (that schizophrenia, insofar as it is comprehensible at all, is only so 
as primitivity,}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Construed, of course, in something more like a Levy-Breuhlian than a Winchian way.
\par }}}{\f28  or as regression, or as mental deficit, }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28 ) which he is overturning -- that he makes schizophrenia hang together / make rational sense }{\i\f28 more}{\f28  than it in fact does?
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 
One possible promising project then, which Sass pursues to some extent but unfortunately tends to drop when he is endeavouring to draw conclusions or generalize from Schreber's case, would be this: To find the points where }{\i\f28 Schreber}{\f28 
 is self-consciously puzzled by his bizarre world and 'dialogically' engage them... . Such points may be of crucial importance in testing critically whether any sense can be made of Schreber's 'world'.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 An interlocutor might counter-object against me here: "Do we have then to take Schreber's 'beliefs' at face value?}{\i\f28  Can we not }{\f28 re-present them / ironize 
them in the slightest? You will find avoiding doing so difficult to carry off, to say the least!"  Undoubtedly true, and we will not pretend thus far or in what follows to have succeeded, or even to have tried to as completely as we might.  "Well then, ho
w can you object to Sass's methods?!?"  Well; we will at least make an effort on this count. In particular, we claim that we must take Schreber's beliefs at face-value}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0
\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Which, incidentally, doe
s not require us to be credulous about them -- see my 'taxonomy' of interpretive options, later.
\par }}}{\f28  }{\i\f28 if we can.}{\f28  We must at least present his sentences and paragraphs, make a serious Winch-s
tyle effort with regard to them, and then ask ourselves honestly whether we can understand them. We must try to do so -- and then perhaps recognize that in this case we simply can't succeed, and that we'd be wasting our time were we to just press on endle
ssly, regardless. Our worry is this: }{\i\f28 that 'interpretation' of them is a dubious half-way house here between }{\f28 the claim to understand}{\i\f28  and }{\f28 the admittance of incomprehension. It gives the}{\i\f28  illusion}{\f28 
 of understanding, while changing the subject.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Let us take another example to illustrate our controversial point here. This is the famous schizophrenic patient, 'Renee':
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28\fs20 "...I [complained] bitterly that things were tricking me and [of] how I suffered because of it. // As a matter of fact, these "things" weren't doing
 anything special; they didn't speak, nor attack me... It was their very presence that made me complain... When...I looked at a chair or a jug, I thought not of their use or function -- a jug not as something to hold water and milk, a chair not as somethi
ng to sit in -- but as having lost their names, their functions and meaning; they became things and began to take on life, to exist.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28\fs20 This existence accounted for my great fear. In the unreal scene, in the murky quiet of my perception, suddenly "the thing" 
sprang up. The stone jar, decorated with blue flowers, was there facing me, defying me with its presence, with its existence. To conquer my fear I looked away. My eyes met a chair, then a table; they were alive, too, asserting their presence. I attempted 
t
o escape their hold by calling out their names. I said, "chair, jug, table, it is a chair." But the words echoed hollowly, deprived of all meaning: it had left the object...so much so that on the one hand it was a living mocking thing, on the other, a nam
e, robbed of sense, an envelope emptied of content. Nor was I able to bring the two together, but stood there rooted before them, filled with fear and impotence." }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Renee's }{\f5\ul 
Autobiography of a schizophrenic girl}{\f5  (NY: Meridian, 1951), p.56. 'Renee's' 'world' here bears striking resemblances to the 'world' of the philosoph
er as depicted critically by the early Heidegger, and to the 'world(s)' dramatized in some of W. Stevens's poetry. (And note the peculiar use of the word "it", in the penultimate sentence of the quote.)  For more detail, see Read\rquote 
s debate with Sass and Coetzee, in the pages of }{\i\f5 PPP.}{\f5 
\par }}}{\f28\fs20  
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par Up to this point in Renee\rquote s discourse, it is perhaps very tempting to offer an interpretation of what Renee is saying, to try to give sense to what is evidently scaring and confusing her. One }{\i\f28 might}{\f28 
 even see what she says next as hardening -- firming up -- such an interpretation: "When I protested, "Things are tricking me; I am afraid," and people asked specifically, "Do you see the jug and chair as alive?" I answered, "Yes, they are alive." "

\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 But one should be very wary. For the kicker is that Renee goes on immediately to undercut our interpretation or understanding: "And they, the doctors, too, thought I saw these things as humans whom I heard speak. But it was not that. }{
\i\f28 Their life consisted uniquely in the fact that they were there, in their existence itself.}{\f28 " }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  }{\i\f5 Ibid., }{\f5 
p.55-6. (Italics mine)  Cf. also p.42, & p.121.
\par }}}{\f28  
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 This, it seems to us, stops one in one's tracks. The chance one seemingly had of coming to understand Renee's strange world (}{\i\f28 via}{\f28  the concept of 'personification', }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28 
) finally disappears fairly precisely at this moment. She has specifically ruled it out. Any way that she has of expressing her experience is 'inadequate', and so it goe
s without saying that she is 'not understood'. Her confusion is irredeemable, irrevocable. For there just isn't anything it can be for the}{\i\f28  life}{\f28 
 of objects to consist uniquely in their existence. This inchoate notion is stranger than anything in (say) Zande
 practices. For sure, one can and must look for context to ground one's understanding of something strange -- but we defy anyone to find a context in Renee's text or life for this remark. By which we mean: a context which results in its being able }{
\i\f28 to be made sense of.}{\f28  We don't see how there is }{\i\f28 anything}{\f28  left which one can hear her as saying with those words...
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 And let us not be under the illusion that we empathically understand Renee's state here by virtue of being \lquote systematically\rquote  confused, like she eviden
tly was. For while I have maintained it is certainly the case that we need to understand understanding as normally nested in a taken-for-granted intersubjectivity (and not as the interaction of two or more essentially isolated entities), and while it may 
be true that sometimes the closest we can get to intersubjectively understanding a sufferer from schizophrenia is in the 'counter-transference', in noting how they make }{\i\f28 us}{\f28  feel and so on, this latter is yet very much a second-best \lquote 
understanding\rquote  (at best). For confusion is not a mode of understanding. Or, more precisely, a thoroughly confused understanding is not an understanding of thorough confusion...
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 In answer to the questions we raised at the opening of this section concerning Sass, then, we can then say the following:
\par i) Sass\rquote s account is }{\i\f28 not}{\f28  as effectively Wittgensteinian as it might appear at first sight. This becomes evident, when we see how }{\i\f28 interpretivistic,}{\f28  and thus non-Winchian, his account is.
\par ii) However, it may not follow that even someone who understands Winch will be able to offer anything worth calling a Winchian account of serious cases of schizophrenia. 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 We will now explore these two points a little more fully, in order to reach a judgement on exactly what lessons we should take from the
 example of schizophrenia with regard to our fundamental concern, the reassessment of the achievement of Peter Winch in the philosophy of \lquote the human sciences\rquote .
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl720\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\b\i\f28 A provisional conclusion}{\f28 
\par To reiterate: like Winch, like any good Wittgensteinian (or indeed an
y good 'human scientist'), we are keen indeed to not misunderstand other human beings; we are interested in understanding what they say, in making sense of it insofar as it's possible to do so. Like Winch, and many others, we are convinced that it is ofte
n
 the case that insufficient effort is taken by philosophers and psychiatrists and historians of science (and so on) to understand the strange. (And, rather like Sass, we are impressed by the lucidity and (in a certain sense) logicality of the patterns of 
life and language we sometimes find even in the midst of the floridity}{\i\f28  etc.}{\f28  of people with (e.g.) schizophrenia.)  But sometimes, after much trying, one ends up judging that it's not possible to do what Winch }{\i\f28 et al}{\f28 
 would want us to; in which case one ends up instead noting the patterns in a discourse but concluding that nevertheless there is an }{\i\f28 irrevocable}{\f28  incoherence in that discourse.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 Here I presuppose a Cavellian rather than Rortian reading of Wittgenstein. That is, a non-absolute distinction for certain 'practical' purposes between speaking 'inside
' and 'outside' language-games. For detail, see the papers by Crary, Cavell, and Conant in Read & Crary (eds), }{\f5\ul The New Wittgenstein: readings in the philosophy of Wittgenstein}{\f5  }{\i\f5 (op.cit.);}{\f5 
 and on the distinction's non-absoluteness, see N.Scheman's paper in the }{\f5\ul Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein}{\f5  (eds. Sluga & Stern, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1996).
\par }}}{\f28  An incoherence that, of course, cannot be understood -- for there is nothing to understand in incoherence, in nonsense.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 W
hen there is nothing to understand, then the Winchian project of avoiding theoretistic misunderstandings is not open to one. We might try putting this point as follows: there's no such thing as succeeding in not misunderstanding nonsense. (The likes of th
is, as is we hope becoming clear to the reader, is itself \lquote only\rquote  a grammatical remark -- a transitional remark -- itself highly-susceptible of misunderstanding. We are not for example asserting, as part of a philosophical theory, \lquote 
Schizophrenics\rquote  sentences, because of how they are put together, are as a matter of fact nonsense.\rquote 
 We are simply suggesting that one attend closely to the features of the discourse of many sufferers from severe schizophrenia which, their superficial appearance notwithstanding, are
 usefully seen as quite deeply different from ordinary purposive sentences in context. This seeing-as, as J. Koethe has argued in his }{\i\f28 The continuity of Wittgenstein\rquote s thought}{\f28 ,}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1996,}{\i\f5  passim, }{\f5 especially chapter 4.
\par }}}{\f28  is normally best strictly distinguished from the seeing of facts.)
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 So, we have argued that Winch\rquote 
s philosophical suggestions, his hints and reminders, are extremely effective. The limits of Winch\rquote s reach -- the case we have briefly laid out for saying that there are cases where Winch\rquote s thought as found in his major works will not s
ignificantly assist us in avoiding misunderstanding (a small minority of) human actions and words -- only throws }{\i\f28 into clearer relief}{\f28 
 how very subtle and useful his thought is in the great majority of cases, and in particular in cases of significant difference which are liable to lead to philosophical puzzlement. The exception really does test the rule \endash  and confirms it.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 We see no grounds whatsoever for thinking that Winch\rquote s committments hereabouts -- the committments that have informed our discussions here -- involve any relativism. No more, though, do they involve any of the other \lquote isms
\rquote  that have been bandied about by Winch\rquote s \lquote interpreters\rquote . 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl360\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\b\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\b\i\f28 A taxonomy of \lquote interpretive options\rquote }{\f28 

\par [A cautionary note: We use the word \lquote interpretive\rquote  here only for lack of a better and more obvious one -- some of the \lquote options\rquote  which follow, we want to say, do }{\i\f28 not}{\f28  actually involve }{\i\f28 interpretation}{
\f28  as that word is often used in philosophy.]  
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Let us take stock. Let us lay out what have emerged as the 'interpretive options' facing the would-be social student of the strange; say, the reader of Schreber. The options may be taxonomised roughly as follows:
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl240\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 0) }{\f28\ul Non-interpretation}{\f28 , and }{\f28\ul explanation 
}{\i\f28\ul simpliciter.}{\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 At one extreme end of the spectrum of available options, here, we have schizophrenics\rquote 
 utterances construed simply as word-salad, and the suggestion is that any apparent order here is utterly illusory, and that only scientific explanation based on there being a deficit, a brain malfunction }{\i\f28 etc.,}{\f28 
 can help us to give any kind of account of the phenomena in question. [There is a respect in which our own view on these matters, as sketched above, bears }{\i\f28 some}{\f28 
 relation to (0), while avoiding its obvious and crude reductionism and its abject refusal to }{\i\f28 try}{\f28  looking at and hearing the actions
 and words of people with schizophrenia. The originality of our approach, in any case, lies in our claiming that much schizophrenia is uninterpretable}{\i\f28  even from a Wittgensteinian -- that is, radically non-scientistic  -- perspective.}{\f28 ]

\par 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28  1) }{\f28\ul Literalist 'interpretation'. }{\f28 Taking the patient at his/her word.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 This approach [which is potentially attractive on the grounds of its endeavours to avoid (over-)interpretation] splits into two further options, which, while very much opposed, are in fact crude mirror-images of one another, }{\i\f28 
sharing}{\f28  as they do a certain 'literalistic' approach to (in this case) 'schizophrenic language':
\par i) '}{\f28\ul Massive Error.'}{\f28   The classic version of the account of schizophrenics as exhibiting 'poor-reality-testing'; Schreber is simply making massive and horrible }{\i\f28 mistakes}{\f28 
 in his reasoning all over the place. [Again, Sass has shown effectively the massive limitations of this option, which usually shades into (0), above.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See p.3f. of }{\f5\ul Paradoxes.
\par }}}{\f28  The analogous option in cultural anthropology is that of Frazer and his \lquote descendants\rquote .]
\par ii) }{\f28\ul 'Credulousness toward the strange (towards, in this case, the patient)'.}{\f28 
 In which again no ironizing of Schreber's words is undertaken, but at the drastic cost of our being committed to believing in what Schreber believes in. He doesn't mak
e errors because, incredibly, what he says may well be true! [Something like this is often attributed to Winch. But, Winch no more thinks that \lquote There simply really are witches, if they say there are\rquote  than he thinks \lquote 
If they say there are witches, then there simply really are witches, for them\rquote . (It is worth noting that \lquote relativism\rquote 
 hereabouts is normally systematically ambiguous between these two, is itself drastically unstable!)]  Winch thinks that the general mistake in (1) is that one}{\i\f28  assumes}{\f28  that one kn
ows what they -- those who are an enigma to one -- are saying: but the whole point of social study, for Winch, is }{\i\f28 to find out }{\f28 what we can intelligibly say (about what) they are saying.
\par 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 2) }{\f28\ul The apparently-strange is actually not (in this case: the patient is not insane)}{\f28 \'85.And is merely engaging in acting out, }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28  . One has to say nonsensical things to appear to be a good patient, }{
\i\f28 etc.}{\f28 \tab 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 This perhaps-Goffmanian 'interpretation' appeals to some who are Anti-Psychiatriacally inclined, and has some affinities w
ith (1(ii)), above. Both can seem humane -- both run severe risks of romanticising and of failing to acknowledge the real depth of the problem, in severe cases. [There may be some truth in option (2) (as indeed with all of these options); but it is extrem
ely implausible that (2) could be anything like a complete account, in many cases. To say that it was would indeed be \lquote monistic\rquote ,}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  We allude here to Lerner\rquote 
s bizarre attribution to Winch of the doctrine of \lquote instrumental monism\rquote , the doctrine that \lquote all societies share the same basic criteria of instrumental rationality ond intelligibility. ... Winch\rquote 
s doctrine requires that if a given interpretation of a set of social practices finds them to be systematically irrat
ional, we may only conclude that that interpretation has applied criteria of intelligibility which are inappropriate to the practices being studied.\rquote  (}{\i\f5 Op.cit.,}{\f5 
 pp.183-4)  One of the mistakes here is the assumption, which I am currently questioning, that Winch must hold that all behaviour by all humans is intelligible. 
\par }}}{\f28  would indeed be taking \lquote charity\rquote  too far.]
\par 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 3) (}{\f28\ul Strong) Interpretation.}{\f28   As manifested prototypically by psychoanalytic appro
aches, but also by various other psychodynamical and psychological readings (see e.g. some Anti-Psychiatry).  [Sass usually takes his main opponents to be following either option (0), option (1(i)), or (perhaps most ubiquitously) this option ((3)), that o
f
 interpretation proper. But we have suggested above that Sass himself does not escape from engaging in just such (impositional) interpretation. And a substantial part of that argument has involved setting out our worry that, if Sass is roughly right, as w
e suspect he may well be, in taking the word 'delusion' if applied to many cases of schizophrenia to be possessed of a grammar quite unlike that of 'mistake',}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See p.24f. of }{\f5\ul Paradoxes}{\f5 
; Sass argues that delusions are no more simple cognitive errors than \lquote solipsism\rquote  is a straightforward stable doctrine. Schizotypal delusions, he suggests, are not believed univocally, and form a delusional \lquote system\rquote 
 alternative to that of daily life, }{\i\f5 etc.}{\f5  .
\par }}}{\f28  then the problem -- as we saw earlier, in the course of discussing the complete and troubling absence usually, }{\i\f28 vis-a-vis}{\f28 
 schizophrenic psychoses, of a criterion like that of the person agreeing with the diagnosis, a criterion present in the Wittgensteinian approach to philosophy, in some non-authoritarian psychodynamic }{\i\f28 etc. }{\f28 accounts of neuroses}{\i\f28 
 etc.,}{\f28  and in methodologically-sound anthropology }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28  -- the problem is that there is no longer a criterion available to distinguish an adequate interpretation of such language and action from an inadequate one.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn 
{\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {
\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  One starts to realize that it is }{\i\f5 too}{\f5  easy for Sass's interpretation of schizophrenia to 'deal with' just about any objections to it.
\par }}}{\f28  If we can't know when someone is making a mistake (because they could plausibly be 'delusional' in any given instance, (and) in their reflexive accounting of it), we simply cannot be meaningfully said to understand them.]
\par 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 4) }{\f28\ul Winchian }{\i\f28\ul description.}{\i\f28   }{\f28 One attempts to avoid interpretation, so as to avoid im
posing, and avoid making the patient appear either just like oneself after all, or so radically different that imposition upon them will be unavoidable if one is to say anything about at all them. One attempts, that is, to understand a strange system or p
ractice by understanding it}{\i\f28  as}{\f28  a strange and }{\i\f28 different}{\f28  system (unlike (1) or (2), above), but not one so different that it simply cannot be understood, and, in an important sense,}{\i\f28  simply}{\f28 
 understood (and this is where (4) differs from (3)). One might then attempt (e.g.) to avoid ironizing (ironizing }{\i\f28 via}{\f28  talk of solipsism, }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28 
) Schreber's talk of the supernatural, but not through credulousness ((1(ii)), above); rather one would not assume too quickly that one understands what 'the supernatural' }{\i\f28 is,}{\f28  and would attempt }{\i\f28 to find out }{\f28 
through understanding-in-process the rules of the language-game being played.  [We have argued that this is genuinely the most attractive option, for most apparently-strange practices, and that it works very well for the cases which hav
e dominated the philosophical literature (most notably, the Azande); but we have suggested reasons why Winchian description and understanding does }{\i\f28 not}{\f28  do for us with regard to some }{\i\f28 'schizophrenic }{\f28 
language' what it does for us with regard to much other apparently 'alien' language and life (such as that of the Azande, who at least engage in dialogue, and have a shared world; or, to give another example which would be interesting to explore,}{
\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  And that, we explore in our }{\f5\ul Kuhn}{\i\f5  (op.cit.).
\par }}}{\f28  that of completely outmoded sciences or scientists, who at least had something like a 'research tradition', to use Kuhn's valuable term.).]
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl360\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 5) }{\f28\ul It's nonsense.}{\f28  
\par ...Thus one is reluctantly pushed, having worked through the options listed above, toward this one, (5), toward the surprising and at first very unattractive view that the upshot of a careful consideration of Sass }{\i\f28 et al}{\f28 
 is that sometimes we will simply have to conclude that certain central strange -- genuinely 'alien' -- phenomena are in the end only in appearance interpretable; and that describing them does not iss
ue in understanding. That sometimes (one should not say too often -- (5) is an option of last resort, not only for philosophical but also, certainly, for ethical and socio-political reasons) Schreber }{\i\f28 et al}{\f28 
 exhibit language which, in spite of its having a kind of systematicity, is (latently) nonsense, is (ultimately) }{\i\f28 plain}{\f28  nonsense. This is our provisional conclusion, on the issue of whether there can be exceptions to the Winchian rule.}{
\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Again, we trust that the }{\i\f5 differences}{\f5  between my view (5) and a}{\i\f5  scientistic}{\f5  non-interpretivism ((0), or (1i)), are clear. Our
 view is not Kraepelinian}{\f28  nor even }{\f5 Bleulerian, for we think that }{\i\f5 sometimes}{\f5  silence (or even word salad, or Schreberian speech) can, as Laing maintained (see his (}{\i\f5 op.cit.), passim), }{\f5 be an eloquent means of }{\i\f5 
communication;}{\f5  and because it is not just some portion of schizophrenic language that is best judged to be nonsensical, but also most philosophy. My view, my conclusion
, is provisional only in the sense that a full investigation of these matters would take more space than I can allow here -- for a somewhat fuller investigation, see Read\rquote s \lquote 
There is no good reason to believe that Philosophical Counselling will be effective in curing schizophrenia\rquote  (}{\i\f5 Contemporary Philosophy}{\f5  XX:5&6 (1998), pp.59-62).
\par }}}{\f28  
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl360\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 
So, we have concluded that approach (5) may on occasion be the right one. }{\i\f28 Sometimes,}{\f28  Schatzki says, Wittgenstein thought that others would remain a complete enigma to one -- here is a set of real cases where arguably he was quite }{\i\f28 
evidently}{\f28  right to do so.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See n.65, above.
\par }}}{\f28  There is no good reason to think that every single human/social phenomenon must be comprehensible, or indeed intelligibly interpretable.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 But taking approach (4) above whenever it is necessary and possible to do so seems to me, again, rather plainly to overcome the various \lquote isms\rquote  mentioned in the title of my paper, and more besides. Normally, }{\i\f28 if}{
\f28  some social study is required, it will be able to issue in some useful description and the avoidance of certain misunderstandings. This is Winch\rquote s way. And so we can state there is an additional reason, which we will come to in a m
oment, why Winch has so often been misunderstood, beside those already mentioned.
\par  We have already mentioned the following:
\par > the ignoring of his \lquote recent\rquote  work, by which is meant in this context, unfortunately, all or all bar one of his papers and books since 1958 (including notably the \lquote Preface\rquote  to the revised edition of his \lquote seminal\rquote 
 book), 
\par > the ill-advised }{\i\f28 assimilation}{\f28  of him to \lquote interpretivist\rquote  and \lquote hermeneuticist\rquote  approaches, 
\par > the failure to emphasize that his task is primarily }{\i\f28 negative}{\f28  (i.e. his task is the avoidance of }{\i\f28 \lquote philosophically\rquote -engendered}{\f28  (thinking of the word \lquote philosophically now in a very broad sense)}{\i\f28 
 misunderstanding,}{\f28  nothing more \endash  for, after all, to have done more would have taken much more space than was present in the short book he wrote!), 
\par > the frequent lack of understanding of the work and conception of philosophy of Wittgenstein which usually gives the \lquote rule\rquote 
 that Winch is following (and in particular a lack of understanding of the very great extent to which Winch tends to follow Wittgenstein\rquote s work understood fairly resolutely (and) }{\i\f28 as a whole,}{\f28 
 and not only a certain problematic rendition of his \lquote later\rquote  philosophy),   and
\par > a failure sometimes to differentiate carefully between different cases to which Winch\rquote s particular interventions in the philosophy of the social sciences to a greater }{\i\f28 or}{\f28 
 lesser extent can be analogously applied (i.e. a failure for instance to see not just the similarities but also the differences between understanding a local sub-culture, understanding a \lquote primitive\rquote  society and \lquote understanding\rquote 
 a serious case of schizophrenic).
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 The additional reason that Winch has, we contend, been misunderstood, is this:
\par > that readers think that, because he writes in more ordinary prose and with more ordinary discursive structures than Wittgenstein, therefore it is less dangerous with him (Winch) to \lquote translate\rquote  what he says into the lingo of \lquote 
analytic\rquote  theoreticistic philosophy.  In short, even most of those (still, regrettably, the minority) who are leery of telling us what the \lquote theses\rquote  are which }{\i\f28 Wittgenstein}{\f28 
 advocates have no such caution or compunction when it comes to }{\i\f28 Winch.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 Interestingly, this cause of Winch being misunderstood has much to do with the misunderstanding of religion, \lquote primitivity\rquote  }{\i\f5 etc.}{\f5  in the first place. For religio
us people, for example, mostly use the same words as non-religious people, even in the course of their religious practices. E.g. words like \lquote love\rquote , \lquote hope\rquote , \lquote death\rquote , }{\i\f5 etc.}{\f5 
 . To the unwary, these can seem an invitation to spring to a conclusion as to what it is that they are saying, doing, and so on; the kind of hastiness that Wittgenstein found in Frazer, and Winch in Evans-Pritchard. (Cf. also }{\f5\ul PI}{\f5 
 para. 11, and }{\f5\ul Culture and Value}{\f5  p.15)  Winch\rquote s writing may look to the casual observer much like Fodor\rquote s or Davidson\rquote s; but it ain\rquote 
t so. We can succeed in reading Winch as not advancing theses, if we accept the invitation I am proferring here: to re-read Winch\rquote s early in the light of his later work, especially, in the late of the later work that he himself intended a
s re-contextualising his early work: especially, the 1990 Preface and his \'93Understanding ourselves\'94 (}{\i\f5 op.cit}{\f5 .), a vital \lquote sequel\rquote  to \'93Understanding a primitive society\'94.
\par }}}{\f28  They assume that he can be read as having a theory, as putting forward various theses ... they fail to see what his methods in philosophy are, and what his conception of the subject is. How it is, we have suggested, truly a Wittgensteinian 
\lquote methodology\rquote  that he follows -- such that it is more helpful to say of Winch that he is not asserting anything at all than to say that he asserts various \lquote controversial\rquote  philosophical theses (e.g. \lquote pluralism\rquote , 
\lquote monism\rquote , \lquote relativism\rquote , or whatever). Winch }{\i\f28 doesn\rquote t say anything at all,}{\f28 
 in the sense that he merely tries to offer a cure to his readers, be they professional philosophers or professional social scientists or whosoever, a cure of intellectual diseases which they may be suffering from. And a \lquote cure\rquote 
, a set of targeted hints, questions, provocations and so on, }{\i\f28 is no set of assertions at all.}{\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl360\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\f28 To recapitulate briefly, then, our take on Winch\rquote 
s approach to \lquote social study\rquote : We have noted that in the first instance we understand only the 'ordinary' or 'everyday' things that others do (i.e. nearly everything). Unusual, 'extraordinary' things -- perhaps }{\i\f28 some}{\f28 
 of what happened in the Holocaust, or in Milgram's experiments,
 and certainly much religion, and much of what is done and thought in 'primitive' societies -- can, if we try and are fortunate, be understood through instances of social or socio-historical study ((4), in the taxonomy above). There is no task for a gener
al social science here, merely particular tasks of repairing breaches in our ability to 'grasp' or meet others. The utterly bizarre, the irreparably Other, the residuum which unfortunately }{\i\f28 cannot be understood at all,}{\f28 
 there are arbitrarily many ways we can describe (or 'interpret') -- and thus, unmisleadingly,}{\i\f28  none}{\f28 
  (This is (5), in the taxonomy above). In fact -- as we explain in slightly greater detail below -- when we really understand this, we may well find it most useful, least misleading, least confusing, to say:}{\i\f28  There's nothing there to understand. 
}{\f28 We are faced with nonsense.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\i\f28 What}{\f28  Sass analogises to schizophrenia is thus crucially different from what Winch analogises (and disanalogises) to the Azande. Solipsism, unlike (say) Christian prayer, or scien
ce, is sheer nonsense, a restless and relentless failure to mean. So we\rquote re not primarily in the business of denying that Sass\rquote 
s analogy works -- though we are suspicious of it, as explained above; and we are suspicious of his mode of presentation of it, as a successful interpretation, rather than simply as a comparison (see }{\i\f28 PI}{\f28 
 para. 130), a comparison which may lessen our misunderstanding of something deeply strange. What we are primarily in the business of is suggesting that even if the Sassian analogy \lquote works\rquote 
, even if schizophrenia can be said to be analogous to solipsism, still the analogy is }{\i\f28 no good}{\f28  to us in a central respect. For it has }{\i\f28 no}{\f28 
 positive analogical content. (Nonsense has no content. So the idea that we understand solipsism as a doctrine, with
 a distinctive and determinable phenomenology, is an illusion.) This breach, unlike the breaches dividing us from people we find odd, such as perhaps Christians, or football fans, or \lquote primitive\rquote  peoples, is irreparable.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 At the heart of Winch\rquote s conception, as we have seen, is the idea of looking at the game, and looking for both what is helpful and what is }{\i\f28 wrong}{\f28  with possible analogies for it. Not looking for }{\i\f28 the}{\f28 
 analogy which \lquote gets it dead right\rquote  -- which \lquote successfully interprets\rquote  it. Insofar as someone claims, \lquote Here\rquote s how to understand }{\i\f28 x}{\f28  fully!\rquote , where }{\i\f28 x}{\f28 
 is a society (or a practice, or a person), one ought to be very wary. Especially if involved in the claim is something which can arguably not be rendered effectively as anything other than nonsense!
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Where Winch casts light on some object of social study, he does it to help repair a particular breach.}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Similarly, and }{\i\f5 contra }{\f5 John Cook
\rquote s}{\i\f5  (op.cit.),}{\f5  Sharrock and Anderson observe (on p.10 of their }{\i\f5 (op.cit.)}{\f5 ): \lquote In rejecting Frazer\rquote 
s theory, Wittgenstein is not mounting an emotivist or symbolic alternative of his own. Some magic may turn out to be symbolic but equally other forms may not.\rquote 
\par }}}{\f28  That\rquote s all. He has no \lquote grander\rquote  quasi-scientific (\lquote social scientific\rquote ), epistemic or metaphysical task in the philosophy of the social sciences. If it looks 
otherwise, that is because of certain ill-advised formulations in the 1958 edition of }{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28  \'85 and because commentators forget that Winch throughout his work }{\i\f28 presupposes}{\f28  Wittgenstein\rquote s conception of philosophy, and }
{\i\f28 enacts}{\f28  it. That is what we have tried to bring about in this paper: recognition of the Wittgensteinianism latent throughout Winch\rquote s corpus.
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl600\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\b\i\f28 A final objection, based on Winch\rquote s own text}{\f28 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 An objection must be dealt with here, an objection which if valid would apply to quite a lot of what we have argued in this paper. The objection comes from the thought, which some readers of }{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28 
 may have, that it cannot be right to say that Winch is truly post-metaphysical and against theses in philosophy, because }{\i\f28 he}{\f28  begins }{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28  with a kind of defence of metaphysics (and epistemology) against the \lquote 
underlabourer\rquote  conception of philosophy, the conception according to which philosophy gets all its problems from other disciplines. 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 But if one actually looks at the conception which, against both the \lquote underlabourer\rquote  and \lquote master-scientist\rquote 
 conceptions, Winch favours, one finds it once again to be pretty resolutely Wittgensteinian. Winch thinks that Wittgensteinian thought inherits the mantle formerly possessed by metaphysics:
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 \lquote To ask whether reality is intelligible is to ask about the relation between thought and reality.\rquote  So far, so \lquote metaphysical\rquote , perhaps one might think. But one needs to note how Winch goes on: \lquote 
In considering the nature of thought one is led also to consider the nature of language. Inseparably bound up with the question whether reality is intelligible, therefore, is the question of how language is connected with reality, of what it is to }{
\i\f28 say}{\f28  something. In fact the philosopher\rquote s interest in language lies not so much in the solution of particular linguistic confusions for their own sakes, as in the solution of confusions about the nature of language in general.\rquote 
 (}{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28  pp.11-12)  Confusions which lead one to mistake what it is to say something, and what it makes sense to say. And what it makes sense to say is something which there is }{\i\f28 no such thing as literally saying }{\f28 
or in any way theorizing -- the logic of our language must ultimately take care of itself.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Winch goes on to explain that in Wittgenstein, early }{\i\f28 and}{\f28  late, there is a studied antipathy to the notion that philosophical problems are specifically and narrowly about the nature of reality (\lquote metaphysics\rquote 
) or specifically and narrowly about the nature of language (\lquote philosophy of language\rquote ). The very idea of }{\i\f28 saying}{\f28  a rigorous philosophic distinction between l
anguage and world (and then worrying about their connection) is bankrupt: \lquote We cannot say then...that the problems of philosophy arise out of language }{\i\f28 rather than}{\f28 
 out of the world, because in discussing language philosophically we are in fact discussing wha
t counts as belonging to the world. Our idea of what belongs to the realm of reality is given for us in the language that we use... . It may be worth reminding ourselves of the truism that when we speak of the world we are speaking of what we in fact mean
 by the expression \lquote the world\rquote : there is no way of getting outside the concepts in terms of which we think of the world.\rquote  (}{\i\f28 ISS}{\f28  pp.14-15 }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0
\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 And it is, tellingly, at exactly this point in his book that Winch commences to consider the way that much academic work outside Philosophy is beset by philosophical confusions: \lquote 
Conceptual and empirical enquiries: ...[M]isunderstanding...the way in which philosophical treatments of linguistic confusions are also elucidations of the nature of reality leads to inadequacies in the actual methods used for treating such questions.
\rquote  }{\f5\ul ISS}{\f5  p.15.
\par }}}{\f28 )  There is no such thing as getting outside of our concepts. This is }{\i\f28 not}{\f28  a relativistic or Idealist thesis; this is a t
ruism. Which means: it says nothing; it tells us nothing. (We can only be reminded of it usefully on an occasion (if and) when we are liable to be mired in nonsense, as Winch thinks we almost continually are, in thinking about society. It is to be employe
d \lquote against\rquote  the }{\i\f28 fantasy}{\f28  of the viewing the world \lquote from sideways on\rquote .)
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 Perhaps some readers laugh at the idea that a philosopher would be praised, as we are praising Winch, for not asserting anything. Such readers have}{\i\f28  completely}{\f28  failed to understand the thrust of Wittgenstein\rquote s work.
}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 
\f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  Even, Read claims elsewhere, of }{\i\f5 most}{\f5  of the work of the }{\i\f5 great }{\f5 philosophers since about Berkeley. Read argues this case -- that one can r
ead Hume, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Austin, Foucault and Derrida as wonderfully alike in having nothing to say, in truly trying to assert no thing -- in his \lquote The hidden greatness of the canon\rquote  (forthcoming).
\par }}}{\f28  It does indeed take a certain amount of }{\i\f28 nerve}{\f28  actually to stick with Wittgenstein\rquote 
s approach to philosophy. It takes nerve truly to come out from behind the scientificish facade of having a theory, a systematic account of some
 kind or another, as almost all philosophy to date has done, and to admit rather that one has no theory to offer, that one cannot underpin one\rquote 
s assertions with facts -- that, in fact, one is not even making any assertions. We think that Winch very largely
 managed to keep his nerve. This is a key reason why he has been misunderstood; but also a key reason why he can hope to have an enduring legacy.
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 We hold that Winch\rquote s approach, (centred around (4), above), is innocent of the calumnies that have been heaped upon it, that it is \lquote properly Wittgensteinian\rquote 
, and that it is in addition about the most helpful idea ever dreamed up by someone in an armchair concerning happenings out in the field -- but that it has, as we should expect, limits. As the reassessment o
f Winch goes on, we hope that the exploration of those limits -- limits which Winch himself explored in his later work,}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5  See for instance }{\f5\ul ISS}{\i\f5  }{\f5 
p.xvii-xviii; Winch\rquote s }{\f5\ul Simone Weil, the just balance}{\f5  (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1989); and pp.90-93 and p.99 of Lyas\rquote s }{\i\f5 (op.cit.).
\par }}}{\f28  and limits such as we have seen are probably encountered in hard cases of schizophrenia -- will be furthered. That seems to me a much more interesting activity than the kind of Winch-rubbishing and Winch-\rquote interpretation\rquote 
 which have hitherto largely dominated the literature. 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl720\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f28 
\par }\pard \s18\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f5 \tab }{\b\i\f28 Conclusion}{\f28 
\par   We have here sketched a reading of Peter Winch\rquote s mature philosophy of the social sciences, according
 to which Winch is surprisingly congenial to Wittgenstein (on a resolutely therapeutic reading of the latter, even), and to much ethnomethodology (on a Wittgensteinian reading of latter, following \lquote the Manchester school\rquote 
 of ethnomethodology, particularly).
\par   Those who would read ethnomethodology as advancing lots of positive theses }{\i\f28 about society and about structure/action}{\f28 , as having for instance a particular, controversial stance on the spectrum laid out in the standard \lquote 
structure vs. agency\rquote  debate, will likely be unsympathetic. As will those who would read the later Wittgenstein \lquote irresolutely\rquote  }{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain \s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar
\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 The term is due to Warren Goldfarb, who takes the Diamond}{\f28 /}{\f5 Conant reading of Wittgenstein, with which Winch was thoroughly if guardedly impressed (see his \lquote Persuasion\rquote  }{\i\f5 (op.cit.)}{\f5 
 for detail) to involve in particular a \lquote resolute\rquote  understanding of the }{\f5\ul Tractatus}{\f5 \rquote s austere hard-line on the tendency toward nonsensicality of}{\i\f5  all}{\f5  philosophy.
\par }}}{\f28  -- as having substantial things to say about the form of (bits of) language, }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28  . But any such readers }{\i\f28 need}{\f28  we think to }{\i\f28 reckon}{\f28  with the exegetical and substantiv
e argument that we have been making. An argument which attributes to Wittgenstein no theses or theories whatsoever, and which suggests that followers of Wittgenstein such as Winch have been cruelly used by those who have taken them to have implicit social
 theories, philosophical anthropologies of the human, }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28  . There is no substance to the \lquote idea\rquote  that human beings are all essentially the same; nor to the \lquote idea\rquote 
 that they are fundamentally different, community by community. Winch would not be caught dead suggesting that communities are as a matter of fact \lquote cognitively closed\rquote 
 to one another -- which makes the commonplace attribution of such a view to him, a dead man, and so unable to reply, himself, all the more disappointing. (Nor of course would Winch su
ggest that as a happy happenstance of metaphysical fact there is enough commonality between communities for communication to be possible, }{\i\f28 etc.}{\f28 ). These kinds of \lquote Kantian\rquote  games -- }{\i\f28 they}{\f28 
 are what are, or should be, dead. 
\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 \lquote Rationalism\rquote , metaphysical realism, relativism, Davidsonianism, even Kantianism -- the trouble with these is not that they are \lquote false\rquote 
. The trouble, to say it once more, is that they exhibit a loss of nerve. Yes, even Kantianism, Transcendentalism, and possibly Wittgenstein\rquote s }{\i\f28 Tractatus}{\f28  -- a
t any rate, according to the dominant ineffabilist interpretation of it (an interpretation which Winch was the very first to point us beyond, in his }{\i\f28 Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein}{\fs18\up6 \chftn {\footnote\ftnalt \pard\plain 
\s20\ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\fs18\up6 \chftn }{\f5 
 London: Routledge, 1969 (Peter Winch, ed.). Winch thus laid a }{\i\f5 key}{\f5  piece of groundwork for the Diamond}{\f28 /}{\f5 Conant \lquote continuist\rquote  or \lquote resolute\rquote  reading of Wittgenstein.
\par }}}{\i\f28  }{\f28 ) -- exhibit a loss of nerve, in that they still say things about what they themselves proclaim there is nothing to say anything about. They fail to shut up, or at least to point a way to our being able to be satisfied in shutting up.

\par }{\f5 \tab }{\f28 To keep one\rquote s nerve; to keep, despite the insults and the incomprehensions of others, to philosophy\rquote s task of not, absurdly, }{\i\f28 saying}{\f28  anything -- this, we suggest, was the heart of Peter Winch\rquote 
s tremendous and partially-completed task. Until this is recognized in the philosophy of the social sciences, we will all be the poorer for it. And, even if the interpretation we have offered of Winch here seems to you partial, it will at }{\i\f28 least}{
\f28 , we hope, make a (later) Winchian perspective on the philosophy of the social sciences }{\i\f28 possible}{\f28 , by displacing or at least seriously complicating the \lquote received view\rquote  of Winch\rquote s alleged \lquote position\rquote 
 on \lquote social study/theory/science\rquote . If it has only that much effect, it will have been worth writing.
\par 
\par }\pard\plain \ql \li0\ri0\sl480\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx0\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f7\fs20\lang2057\langfe2057\cgrid\langnp2057\langfenp2057 {\f28\fs24 
\par 
\par }}