The Impact of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy on the Development of Pragmatism

On the crucial topic of the intellectual connection between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and pragmatism, some neo-pragmatists include Wittgenstein in their camp. This approach has caused many debates. This article revisits this topic from the pragmatist perspective, arguing that Wittgenstein cannot be considered a classical pragmatist in any sense. Still, we can understand him in the context of neo-pragmatism and even propose a version of Wittgensteinian pragmatism (rather than Wittgenstein’s pragmatism). This version of pragmatism reveals that neo-pragmatism has authentically inherited Wittgenstein’s insights in his talks on linguistic games, rule-following, and the theory of meaning. Thus he indeed played a positive role in the development of pragmatism. At the same time, this unique formulation also implies that the neo-pragmatists have departed more or less from Wittgenstein’s original intentions in developing Wittgenstein’s thoughts. In this sense, pragmatists need to be more responsible when classifying Wittgenstein as a peer of them and avoid confusing the pragmatist reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy with Wittgenstein’s thought itself.