ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I shall show both that, some recent critics notwithstanding, Wittgenstein does hold a community view of rules, the view that the objectivity of rule-following is essentially social, and that that view is quite plausible. Indeed I think it is correct. By the “objectivity of rule-following,” I mean the fact that rules distinguish between correct and incorrect applications (what I shall call the “normativity of rules”) and that they impose a constraint on the behavior of the individual that is independent of his mere say-so (“the necessity of rules”). The community view is strikingly at odds with our traditional understanding of language, for which the number of people speaking is irrelevant to accounts of the objectivity of meaning and rule-following. This individualistic assumption is so deeply rooted as to make the community view of rules, to many philosophers, obviously wrong. I shall argue that it is only through a community view of rule-following that space can be made for the basic normative distinction between correct and incorrect action and for the power of rules to constrain the individual’s behavior.
