Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy

My aim in this article is to draw our attention to, and so enable us to free ourselves from, a widespread but mistaken convention of contemporary political thought: that our way of political life is free and rational only if it is founded on some form or other of critical reflection. I do this by means of a survey of two well-known practices of critical reflection that have been presented as candidates for this foundational role: the justificational or validational form advanced by Jiirgen Habermas and the interpretational or hermeneutical form advanced by Charles Taylor. It is our engagement in the discussion itself-the discussion in the philosophy of social science between critical theory and hermeneutics, among others, about which sort of critical reflection is essential to political freedom and reason-that tends to hold in place, beyond question, and thereby render conventional, the rule that some form must be foundational. In surveying and clarifying language-games of critical reflection we can see that no form of critical reflection can (or need) play the role presupposed for it in this discussion. The survey thus dissolves the problem around which the discussion turns. In so doing, it also gives us a clearer view of the many important but nonfoundational roles that the plurality of activities of critical reflection play in our political life-including the role of the critically reflexive survey in freeing us from customary misunderstandings of critical reflection.