Hossein Dabbagh's Essay 'Hume: Wittgenstein's Prophet'

An essay by Dr. Hossein Dabbagh on the occasion of the birthday of two eminent philosophers: David Hume and Ludwig Wittgenstein

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The good departed, and their traditions remained Rumi

Philosophers ought to celebrate and honor the twenty-sixth of April as a blessed day. Two first-rate figures of Western philosophy, separated by nearly two centuries, happen to have both been born on this day. The first is David Hume, the renowned Scottish philosopher, and the second is Ludwig Wittgenstein, the celebrated Austrian philosopher. The former has been dubbed the grandfather of analytic philosophy, and the latter the heir to his tradition. The former transformed moral philosophy, and the latter the philosophy of language. The former lived 65 years by the grace of a God he did not believe in, and the latter spent 62 years in the struggle of finding a God, running after the sound of truth.

As a student of philosophy, I consider myself indebted to these two figures more than I can write. Not a day goes by that these two weighty philosophical personalities do not occupy my mind and consciousness, and that I do not praise and admire their brilliant minds in my heart. For this reason, I thought I would pay a small tribute to them in a short essay, and whisper in the ears of others that the worth of great figures must be honored, even if we are not in agreement or sympathy with them:

The wise will not call him great Who sullies the name of the great

Let me begin with Hume. Much has been said of the virtues and merits of his works. Works that, in his own words, "fell dead-born from the press," yet gradually took the world by storm. For instance, Albert Einstein said that in developing the theory of special relativity, he was influenced and inspired by Hume's "positivism." Karl Popper, in Conjectures and Refutations, considers himself indebted to Hume regarding the "problem of induction" and deems his argument justified. David Norton, the translator of Hume's enduring work, A Treatise of Human Nature, also said (1993) that Hume is "the first post-skeptical philosopher of the modern period." But the description by Nicholas Phillipson, professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh and commentator on Hume's works, is of a different kind, unveiling an important truth. He once (1989) wrote of Hume that he could be considered "the prophet of the Wittgensteinian revolution." The meaning of this statement is that the empiricism Hume defended, its effects and results can be found in the linguistic and semantic perspective of Wittgenstein in the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. One might say that the empiricism Hume championed was crystallized and manifested in a logical-mathematical manner in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Wittgenstein, who reduced language to mathematics and logic, believed that since logic and mathematics have no connection with the external world, language also possesses this characteristic. But Hume's nominalist view can also be traced in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations; in such a way that he transforms Hume's ontological nominalism into linguistic nominalism.

In truth, it can be said that Hume awakened two people from their "dogmatic slumber": one was Kant, who himself acknowledged it, and the other was Wittgenstein, who, of course, never uttered such an expression. Hume's empiricism helped Kant to pursue the limits and boundaries of the faculty of understanding. But Wittgenstein, following Hume and Kant, endeavored to discuss the limits and boundaries of the faculty of speech.

The establishment of a field called "moral psychology" must also be credited to Hume. The discussions he initiated about the relationship between desires, emotions, and motivations with moral beliefs had such a blessed outcome. The result of his theories was that after him, in moral philosophy, philosophers were divided into Humean and anti-Humean camps: some, like Michael Smith, following Hume, insisted that there is a firm relationship between moral beliefs, moral emotions, and moral action, and reduced moral motivations entirely to psychology. In contrast, others, like Tim Scanlon, consider emotions superfluous and build a bridge directly between moral belief and action.

Wittgenstein, too, had a similar fate to Hume. It was not without reason that Russell said of him that he was the best example of a genius. His influence was no less than Hume's. The difference was that he experienced and tasted the impact of his own ideas during his lifetime. His influence on the philosophy of language can be compared to Hume's influence on moral philosophy. After the later Wittgenstein, philosophers of language are also divided into two camps: Wittgensteinians and anti-Wittgensteinians: those (like Peter Hacker) who followed the Philosophical Investigations and preferred and defended an empirical-nominalist view of language. And in contrast, figures like the early Kripke and Putnam spoke of essentialism in language and did not tolerate the empirical view.

Another strange connection between Hume and Wittgenstein goes back to one of Russell and Wittgenstein's mutual friends, namely David Pinsent. David Pinsent was a mathematics student at Cambridge University whom Russell introduced to Wittgenstein. Pinsent assisted Wittgenstein in some of his psychological experiments, and this led to their friendship continuing, to the point where, due to Wittgenstein's homosexual tendencies, Pinsent is considered Wittgenstein's lover. Later, when Pinsent was killed in the First World War at the age of 27, Wittgenstein, out of affection, dedicated the Tractatus to him. But the interesting thing to note here is the relationship between David Pinsent and David Hume. As historians have recorded, Pinsent was a descendant and relative attributed to David Hume, and his full name was "David Hume Pinsent." By this account, David Hume, without knowing it, also establishes a causal-kinship! link with Wittgenstein in later generations, and thus his legacy—both philosophically and genetically—reaches Wittgenstein.

Both Hume and Wittgenstein experienced tumultuous lives. The highs and lows, the epistemic vicissitudes in the works and memoirs left behind by them testify to this claim. Emigration from their country of birth, a controversial sex life, skepticism (especially towards metaphysics), attention to the existential problems of human beings, etc., all show the similarities between these two, despite their numerous differences. An important point among these similarities is the certainty and conviction that sometimes gripped their restless spirits and sometimes released them. Hume, for example, in his dispute with metaphysics, sometimes grew so bold that he confessed all books containing any trace of metaphysics should be consigned to the flames. Wittgenstein, too, after finishing the Tractatus, was filled with such confidence in his work that he abandoned philosophizing and, thinking he had finished philosophy, went off to become a gardener, until Frank Ramsey, his friend, as he himself put it, roused him from his slumber and encouraged him to take up philosophizing again at Cambridge.

Both Hume and Wittgenstein died on English soil. Interestingly, both of them met death with peace of mind and no wave of fear stirred within them. As James Boswell recorded, David Hume's last days were spent on his sickbed (bowel cancer) in Edinburgh. Apparently, Boswell asked him whether he still believed that this world ends after death? And how he thought about death. He replied that we, like a piece of coal that burns in the fireplace and is consumed, come to an end and nothing of us will remain. He also acknowledged that he was ready for death and had no fear. Wittgenstein, too, as they have recorded, on his sickbed (prostate cancer) in Cambridge, told his landlady to tell everyone he had had a wonderful life. On his gravestone in Cambridge, a very small ladder has been placed, recalling his saying: My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)

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Hume: Wittgenstein's Prophet

On the occasion of the birthdays of two eminent philosophers; David Hume and Ludwig Wittgenstein

Author: Hossein Dabbagh | May 2016

PhD in Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford and Reading, England

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