ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the John McDowell’s interpretation of L. Wittgenstein’s discussion of normative rules that govern, among other things, the meaning of words. It examines McDowell’s disagreement with Wright over the description of speech behaviour. McDowell assumes that the practice-based alternative to the master thesis requires communal practice. Metaphilosophically, McDowell’s account of Wittgenstein serves as a model of his own therapeutic conception of philosophy in general. Post-Kantian philosophy shapes McDowell’s thinking in Mind and World and the implicit picture of nature developed in much of McDowell’s later philosophy. McDowell goes on to suggest that an insight of broadly Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy is that the world has an intelligible structure and that the only way to capture this thought is partially to re-enchant the world. McDowell’s rejection of S. Kripke’s and Crispin Wright’s master thesis turns in part on considering other cases of normative relatedness.
