ABSTRACT
The introduction first describes the origins of the book from my earliest work on Wittgenstein, which challenged Stanley Cavell’s claim that skepticism constitutes part of the human condition. I then turn to the resistance to interpretivism that I encountered during my research for the essays, both in social anthropology and in the philosophy of the social sciences. The relevance for the book of the so-called “New Wittgenstein” is then broached. A sketch is presented of how a key idea of the resolute reading of the Tractatus frames the logic of the arguments and conclusions of each essay in the book. The idea is that we do not know what an a priori criterion of meaning would be. The introduction also emphasizes, however, that none of the arguments in the book depend on the resolute reading being a correct interpretation of Wittgenstein. In addition to defending the very legitimacy of the concept of culture as an important term of criticism, a crucial distinction is introduced between two levels at which this and related terms should be understood as operating in the three essays. The fundamental level is conceptual or logical. The second level retains this conceptual role, but also has the kind of identifiable empirical content one normally associates with the word “culture” both in its everyday uses and in its social scientific contexts. Finally, I suggest that the philosophical anthropology limned in each essay should also be read as a defense of the interpretivist and hermeneutic traditions in the social sciences.
