Bouwsma`s work and development overlays with Wittgensteins`s in a seamless whole. They had different starting ponts, Wittgenstein with Russell and the project of developing a symbolic language, and Bouwsma with idealism, traditional philosophic problems, and an ear for language. Each moved toward an appreciation of the clash of sense and the use of language by philosophers. Russell`s project could not succeed because the ideal language he proposed forced the richness and variety of uses of natural language into formalisms that could not carry them. Wittgenstein saw this and his recognition of it led to his initial split from Russell`s project and then to a full blown appreciation of it in the Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein learned how to give general guidelines for this understanding in interesting and indirect ways that engaged his readers in a dialectic that unfolds understanding in the one who is willing to do the work for himself Ð no spoonfed theories, principles, or claims here. ``Understanding`` in Wittgenstein`s readers means that one knows how to go on for oneself, can hear the nonsense of philosophical expressions, can provide the illucidating example, can uncover a hidden analogy driving one`s thoughts, and, in general, has developed a set of ``new sensibilities`` in doing philosophy.
Bouwsma, in writing about Wittgenstein, something he continually did for himself but seldom for publication, wrote of these skills that Wittgenstein attempted to engender in his reader. Bouwsma wrote of this from his own experience as a practiced and practicing reader. He calls our attention not to what Wittgenstein says, but to what Wittgenstein does or is trying to do in ``midwifing`` his readers. Wittgenstein is writing for those who want to practice philosophy. He wants to actually engage his reader in a philosophical dialogue. Bouwsma sees and admires this existential dimension to Wittgestein`s work. In Wittgenstein`s mission, he is, for Bouwsma, something like a Socratic midwidwife. On Bouwsma`s reading, he does not serve up another theory of mind, perception, or language, but engages the philosopher, gets him to practice philosophy in certain ways Ð with methods based on a new understanding of language Ð with ``new sensibilities.`` These new sensibilities involve becoming attentive to the tempting power of generalizations, to the clashing cacaphony of the words of a philosophical theory with those ordinary uses, and to the analogies embedded in our language. So the philosopher, in a sense, learns to live philosophically in a new way. He has a kind of philosophical metanoia. Under the influence of Witggenstein, like that of Socrates, the new sensibility philosopher lives Ð philosophically, i.e., philosophizes in a way consistent with what he has come to understand. He no longer produces philosophical theses about universals and sense-data, etc., but also asks how one comes to produce claims affirming or denying such claims and their necessary relationship to knowledge. He no longer asks how it is possible for one`s thought to be caused and free at the same time or, with respect to time, where the present is if the past is past and the future has not yet happened. Instead of such questions he asks for the question analogous to ``What is virtue?`` that leads one to look for something Ð a universal Ð that virtue names. And he asks what there is about the word ``appearance`` that makes it sound as if there is a something that exists between my eye and the tree when the tree makes an appearance to a philosopher. He notices that I do not say: ``I see an appearance of the tree.`` And he remembers that he goes to the movies freely, though with a guilty conscience, knowing that he might have and should have stayed home to finish his work. And he remembers, when confronted with the puzzle of time, that he knows how to use his watch and estimate the time of arrival of a train from a table. The ``How is it possible?`` question about time now looks very different. ``My mother taught me how to use a watch and my father taught me how to read a train schedule. What more is there to it?``
Bouwsma did, for the most part, what Wittgenstein gave guidelines for. While Wittgenstein warned about the tempting power of generalization, the search for reference, and the hidden analogy, Bouwsma uncovered analogies, provided examples for generalizations, and played with philosopher`s words in accordance with their actual uses. If Wittgenstein`s work can be characterized as preparing us for the fight against the bewitchment of our intelligence by language, then Bouwsma`s work can be characterized as actually fighting off the bewitchment. Wittgenstein is a kind of coach. Bouwsma is a player Ð one who plays with understanding. Playing or playfulness is an apt metaphor in several ways, because Bouwsma reflects playfulness and a lack of seriousness in his work. In addition to the humor, he feigns an ``I don`t see what more there is to it,`` look in his playing out the real grammar of the words the philospher has cramped up on. He feigns the lack of puzzlement, knowing full well what led the philosopher into that puzzlement. But the way out of the puzzlement Ð the rehersal of the way a word is actually used Ð looks to the puzzled thinker as if the one who offers it could not possibly be serious in offering it. So the feigning. Bouwsma was a great actor. Pretending not to see a puzzle, after the way to relax the puzzlement is provided, is a way of taking the treatment of the puzzle seriously.
When Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in the 1930`s, he had philosophical interaction with Moore Ð more so than with Russell. Moore attended his lectures: they had regular discussions. Alice Ambrose, who studied with both Wittgenstein and Moore recounted that Moore would not pretend to understand something Wittgenstein said when he in fact did not. This would prompt Wittgenstein to explain further. Wittgenstein, in The Blue Book, remarks that there is no common sense answer to a philosophical problem Ð a remark addressed to Moore. My point is that Wittgenstein was engaged with Moore in thinking about both the philosophical problem of realism and Moore`s ``common sense`` method. Wittgenstein was thinking about the issues of realism, idealism, sense-data, time, self, skepticism, and Moore`s method of analysis. Later, when Wittgenstein is visiting in America, Malcolm engages Moore`s `` I know this is a hand.`` Ð and the notes now called On Certainty were the result. Here, late in his life, Wittgenstein is still engaged with ideas stimulated by Moore.
There is a way then of seeing Wittgestein`s work as reacting to Ð thinking over against Ð Moore. Moore is onto something. He sees that philosophy is entangled in skepticism. It cannot free itself, and yet it is as clear as day that we are not skeptics in our everyday lives. So Moore wants to reconcile our ordinary beliefs about the world with our philosophical beliefs. And to Moore, this reconciliation comes in the form of insistence that we do know what the philosopher has become skeptical about. Mooore`s insistence, without argument, comes to be supported by ``common sense.`` Wittgenstein might be thought of as prompted by Moore`s right-headed instincts that the philosopher`s skepticism and the everyday world need to be reconciled. Prompted by Moore`s wrong-headed common sense solution, Wittgenstein finds a way to think through the reconciliation. It is not common sense, whatever that is, that answers the skeptic. It is the diagnosis of the skeptic`s bewildered intelligence by everyday language that dissolves the skeptic`s problems. The diagnosis is done by means of uncovering the tempting power of generalization, the surface grammar similarities, the hidden analogies, etc. The generation of the entities of sense-datum, belief states, and time is exposed. These ghosts are productive of skepticism. When they are laid to rest, there is nothing left to reconcile. There is no need of a proof of the external world or for the reliability of my memory or of the reality of time.
Bouwsma`s history with Moore goes back to Bouwsma`s early commitment to idealism. His doctoral dissertation was done under the idealist Brand Blandshard at Michigan. Probably under the influence of the logician Langford, Bouwsma came to rely on Moore`s help in thinking through idealism. But Bouwsma did not go from idealism to realism, as Moore`s influence might suggest. In fact it would be difficult to say exactly how he found Moore helpful. There is, in Moore`s method of analysis, the element of recalling the philosopher back from abstract implausibilities to the ordinary man`s view of the world. And Bouwsma shared a feeling of that element with Moore. Bouwsma, however, can not be read as insisting on a ``common sense`` answer to a philosophical question. Bouwsma was always fascinated by the language of the ordinary man, of the poet, and of the philosopher. It was always the language Ð what one would or might say in ordinary settings, what would follow next in a conversation if the word ``appearance,`` ``time,`` ``illusion,`` or ``dream,`` were used. Bouwsma did not hold a common sense view of dreams and time, he rather, held up the uses of words, made up stories, applied analogies as reminders of how the ordinary and even the extra ordinary person speaks using these words. He recalls us to word usage, for a particular point. In this he was in harmony with the guidelines that Wittgenstein was providing for doing philosphy. And while it is true that Wittgenstein was a great influence on Bouwsma`s thought from his reading The Blue Book in 1939 to Bouwsma`s last days, it is impossible to sort out how much Wittgenstein changed the direction of Bouwsma`s thought. I do not believe that Wittgenstein did change Bouwsma`s direction. Bouwsma was attentive to and focused on language before his encounter with Wittgenstein. Bouwsma found Wittgenstein and he found him through his students whom he sent to work with Moore. He found Wittgenstein as a guide to his own developing thoughts. Wittgenstein helped him in developing strategies in pursuing directions that he, Bouwsma, had already taken. It is as if Bouwsma were sleepwalking and moving in the right direction instinctively, when Wittgenstein awoke him from the sleepwalk and gave him a map of where he was going. Wittgenstein`s map Ð overview Ð shows why it is important to study language: the meaning of a word is not its mental referent, gained by asking the generalized question, ``What is the meaning of X?`` What is the meaning of ``meaning``? So Bouwsma`s awakening through reading and working these ideas in The Blue Book, was not, as it were, an awakening to a new philosophy that someone else produced, but rather a self-awakening to what it was that he was already doing and already knew how to do. Bouwsma was already attending to usage. Now, reading The Blue Book, he undewrstood why. He understood the misleading power of the question: ``What is the meaning of a word?`` He now understood why it was important to ask for the hidden analogy. He now saw why and how his comparison of use to the abstraction of the philosopher could dissolve, not simply the confusion, but the question that generated it. And so on. Bouwsma did not take Wittgenstein`s philosophy and make it his own. He was already following his own leads, developing his own style, and Wittgenstein showed him in Socratic fashion Ð an exercise if midwifery Ð what he was doing. Wittgenstein coaxed out what was already in gestation. This is the reason why Bouwsma is so different from Wittgenstein himself. It also explains why Wittgenstein was interested in Bouwsma Ð attracted towards him almost as a confessor Ð and could remark in a low and unproductive time: ``I am only good enough to eat applesauce with a philosopher [Bouwsma].``