Shoring Up Foundations 143As argued previously, one critical way of reading the above argument is that it
collapses into relativism and conceptual incommensurability. This led theorists to try
to overcome the bugbear of relativism. One strategy has been to search for some kind
of thinned down universalism compatible with a constrained contestability. Elements
of the above argument were linked with a theoretical construction of a more universal
epistemology. This formed the major underpinning for the justice-based arguments.
However, the Wittgensteinian argument posits a more far-reaching epistemology. It
suggests that there arenoneutral Archimedean points,nofinal resolutions, andno
universal manna. There is neither a universal potential for global reasonableness, nor
any possibility of a common moral Esperanto to refer to. There arenouniversal human
interests or needs, unmediated by forms of life and linguistic conventions. Reason and
human knowledge are always particularized. This epistemology denies the possible
resolution of the thin universalist argument and configures knowledge, morality,
and reason as situated or conventional. It is in this context that the neo-Kantian,
Onora O’Neill, for example, takes the philosophical work of the late Wittgenstein
as exemplifying, as she puts it, particularity ‘with a vengeance’. In Wittgenstein, we
therefore learn all our words, concepts, and values in certainparticularcontexts or
‘forms of life’ (O’Neill 1996: 12). Particularity is thus embedded in language and the
whole manner in which we deal with and filter the world. In effect, what we find
in Wittgenstein’s epistemological thesis is the groundwork forbotha critique of thin
universalism and justice theory,anda sketch for an essentialist alternative. Thus a
common set of arguments gives rise totwodifferent warring perspectives.
The above particularist or conventionalist critique, present in Wittgenstein’s later
writings, specifically concerning essential contestability, is, in fact, part of a much
broader argument, which has multiple repercussions for late twentieth century polit-
ical theory. These repercussions, in fact, stretch well beyond this present chapter. The
concept of ‘conventionalism’ covers much of the ground here as a linking device to
establish overall coherence. The idea has a long prehistory, specifically in terms of
what ‘kinds’ of theories it denotes.
Conventions
On a simple clarificatory level, the word ‘convention’ can imply a number of things. It
can signify something, which is orthodox or in conformity with pre-established rules.
This can simply intimate ‘etiquette’ or social propriety. Alternatively, in some legal
doctrines, convention can imply practices and rules, which are distinct from clear
legal rules. Further, a convention can be a meeting, treaty, compact or agreement.
Finally, it can denote a continuous or established practice or rule. It is the latter
meaning, which will be appropriated for this discussion.^2
The debate over conventions arose in mainstream philosophy, social science,
and political theory in mid-twentieth century debates concerning human action.
Conventionalism was one possible broad answer to the question as to how to dif-
ferentiate action from behaviour. A convention, for many proponents, is an agreed