ABSTRACT
The chapter considers how the “authority of tradition” can be viewed as an intellectually enabling (not just authoritarian) principle, invoking for this purpose a “naturalism of second nature” in which rational capacities are understood as embedded in a quasi-Wittgensteinian “form of life”; and hence, as grounded ultimately in a certain contingent like-mindedness which exceeds what we can make explicit (or “codify”). However, we need to enquire further into what is meant by “codification”. It is misleading to suggest that there is no middle way between codes and rules (1) as algorithms that would release us from the burden of judgement, and (2) as mere restatements of the obvious. If we can locate this middle way, the kind of authority that does genuinely inhere in (cultural) tradition will prove not to be at variance with the demands of independent or critical thought. The Wittgensteinian observation that justification comes to an end, or that we eventually reach “bedrock” in stating reasons for our actions, does not lend itself to any attempted suppression of questions about the legitimacy (or otherwise) of particular aspects of a current “form of life”; (metaphysical) “quietism” is not to be confused with (political) conservatism.
