ABSTRACT
Stanley Cavell sees in Wittgenstein’s thought a ‘new form of criticism’, not ‘trying to argue a given statement false or wrong, but . . . showing that the person making an assertion does not really know what he means, has not really said what he wished’.2 This mode of criticism does not claim that the words the sceptic uses don’t mean anything (how could he, another competent language speaker, be so wrong about that?) but rather that he doesn’t: ‘the point of saying them is lost’ so that ‘we no longer know what we mean’.3 It is not that what the sceptic says is mistaken: rather, he appears to be making a claim in a situation where no claim (claiming being a human activity with its own conditions) can be made. He fails to say anything, not fails to say anything. How, then, does scepticism arise?
