Summer School Description

Possibly no topic has received more attention in the secondary literature on Wittgenstein than that of rule following. In this year’s Kirchberg’s Summer School, we will examine this topic from a fresh perspective by considering how Wittgenstein’s actual treatment of it is intertwined with three further topics: (1) the relation of sign to symbol, (2) the logical character of human expression, (3) the second person. A treatment of (1) precedes the stretch of sections in Philosophical Investigations standardly singled out as containing the “rule following considerations”—namely, §§185 – 201. (2) is often thought only first to come in for detailed examination in the stretch of sections in Philosophical Investigations standardly singled out as containing the “private language argument”—namely, §§243 – 305. That (3) is central to any portion of the book often goes completely unnoticed.

The shared overarching goal of this year’s Klagenfurt Workshop and this year’s Kirchberg Summer School will be to show how Wittgenstein’s treatment of rule following aims to bring the important and complex interrelations between these three topics into philosophical focus. The Klagenfurt Workshop will seek to do this in connection with the secondary literature on rule following, while the Kirchberg Summer School will involve a close reading of Wittgenstein’s text, focusing on the gradually unfolding dialectical structure of the rule following sections themselves. (The latter may be fruitfully attended without participating in the former.)

Beyond those that will lie at the center of our field of attention—namely, the “rule-following” passages themselves—further sections of Wittgenstein’s Investigations that we will touch on will include some that are drawn from an equally famous portion of the book: namely, that in which the possibility of a so-called “private language” is explored. However, we will also look at numerous passages that have been relatively neglected in the commentary but that allow one to see more clearly how Wittgenstein’s treatment of our trio of topics are interconnected. Where helpful and appropriate, we will supplement our readings from the Investigations with brief excerpts from the Blue and Brown Books, Zettel, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, and Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology.

Location:

Elementary school
Markt 300
A-2880 Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria

Dates:

August 4-8, 2026