Wittgenstein’s Remarks Concerning the Accessibility of Foreign Cultures

Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was highly disapproving of scholars whom he thought unable to properly acknowledge diversity amongst cultures or take due note of the enormous differences separating them from tribes living in radically heterogeneous cultural environments. The best known and paradigmatic example of his attitude to such differences is to be found in his Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’, where he wrote: “[…] how impossible for him [Frazer, J.B.] to understand a different way of life from the English one of his time”. But to cut a long story short, whether Wittgenstein saw this “impossibility” as an intrinsic feature of the task or not is by no means unambiguously clear. To resolve this question, I shall take as my point of departure the socio-anthropological writings of B. Malinowski (1884-1942), who spent several years amongst one of the Pacific island tribes - the Trobriands. In his “field studies”, Malinowski focused on the tribe’s “form of life”: i.e. on their belief in ritual and magic, and on how their customs interlinked with kinship and with their economy. Taking into account Malinowski’s own pragmatic conception of language and his notion of the divergent character of scientific and magical forms of belief, I then outline Wittgenstein’s notions of “language game”, “family resemblance” and “form of life”. The usage of these concepts will show in what sense Wittgenstein would have recognized the similarities within and between different cultures and human societies - but, equally, just how far we can understand a human way of life deeply different from our own.