The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
Bouwsma, Oets Kolk, (1898 - 1978), preeminent
practioner of ordinary language philosophy and teacher. Through work on G.E. Moore and through
contact with students such as Malcolm and Lazerowitz whom he sent to work with
Moore from Nebraska, Bouwsma discovered Wittgenstein. He became known as one who conveyed an understanding of
Wittgenstein`s techniques of philosophical analysis through his own, often
humorous, grasp of sense and nonsense.
Focusing on a particular pivotal sentence in a philosophical argument,
he would provide imaginative surroundings for it, showing how the sentence
failed to make sense in the philosopher`s mouth. He sometimes described his method as ``the method of
failure.`` In connection with
Descartes` evil genius, for example, Bouwsma invents an elaborate story in
which the evil genius tries but fails to permanently deceive by means of a
totally paper world. The inability
to imagine such a deception undermines the sense of the evil genius
argument. His writings are replete
with similar invented stories, analogies, and teases of sense and nonsense for
such philosophical standards as Berkeley`s idealism, Moore`s theory of sense-data,
and Anselm`s argument. He did not
advocate theories, nor did he put forward refutations of other philosopher`s
views. His talent lay rather in
his ability to expose some central sentence in an argument as a piece of
disguised nonsense. In this, he
went beyond Wittgenstein, actually working out the details of the latter`s
insights into language. In
addition to this appropriation of Wittgenstein, Bouwsma was also an
appropriator of Kierkegaard, understanding him too as one who dispelled
philosophical illusions - here the illusions arise from the attempt to
understand Christianity. The
ordinary language of religious philosophy was the stories, histories, psalms,
etc. of the scriptures. He drew
upon this language in his many essays on religious themes. The religious dimension in Bouwsma made
whole this person who gave no quarter to the slightest smell of traditional
metaphysics. His papers are
collected and published under the titles Philosophical Essays, Toward a New
Sensibility, Without Proof or Evidence, and Wittgenstein Conversations 1949-51. His
philosophical notebooks are housed at the Humanities Research Center in Austin,
Texas.