1 - “Such understanding as I have”: The influence of Wittgenstein

Summary

Anything I have had to say … is grounded in such understanding as I have of Wittgenstein's philosophy. … My attitude to Wittgenstein's work has always been one of gratitude for the help it has given me in seeing what are the important questions and what kind of questions they are.

(Winch 1987: p. 1)

Influences

No active philosophers come innocent to their enquiries. Even a philosopher as apocalyptic in rejecting the past as Nietzsche aspired to be, comes to that task equipped with a knowledge of the problems that have constituted the subject matter of philosophical enquiries, of the methods by which these problems have been approached and of the kinds of solutions that have been proposed for them. The beginning of wisdom in understanding this or that contemporary philosopher is, therefore, the discovery of the relation of that philosopher to the history, both recent and more distant, of the subject.

With Peter Winch the question of influence is easy to determine. Wittgenstein was the philosopher to whom Winch gave his categorical allegiance, to the extent of believing anything he had to say to be “grounded in an understanding” of that philosopher.

Some of Winch's writings sought to give exegeses of various aspects of the work of Wittgenstein and to correct what he thought to be mistaken accounts of that work. Others, which constitute Winch's own distinctive contribution to philosophy, sought to apply what he learned from Wittgenstein to questions not always explicitly or fully dealt with in Wittgenstein's work; questions, for example, about ethics, the nature of social science and religion.