The Nature of Political Theory

96 The Nature of Political Theory

this domestic radicalism was set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. This gal-
vanized a significant grouping of younger people. Issues such as just war theory,
imperialism, colonialism, the rights of individuals, moral and civil obligations, rights
to freedom, justice, and the like, took on a very personal urgency for a generation.
Coupled with this, in the academic politics discipline, behaviouralism was beginning
to falter. It had no resources to address the deep moral and social anxieties of this
period, its repudiation of moral discourse being well established by now. Its norm-
ative cupboard was bare and uninviting. A number of the then newer generation of
political theorist, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Peter Winch, were
also vigorous critics of positivist social science. Despite still being largely rooted, at
this stage, in the analytic and ordinary language tradition these theorists took up the
moral and normative dimension, signalled by Berlin, with great vigour. There were
two theoretical aspects to this recovery of the normative dimension. The first fits
more neatly with the ordinary language tradition discussed so far. This is the impact
of the later Wittgenstein and the ‘essential contestability argument’. The second is the
Rawlsian contractarian arguments of the 1970s. The latter development will be taken
up in Chapter 4.
The crucial figure in the transition from ordinary language philosophy towards
the recognition of the importance of normativism was Wittgenstein, particularly his
late work thePhilosophical Investigations. This, and other works, were profoundly
influential on a whole range of philosophical positions. For the moment the focus
will remain on the impact on ordinary language philosophy and particularly on the
idea of essential contestability.
The central theme again is language. Language is seen as the carrier of human
culture. To master a language is to take on a culture. It is only in language—and
therefore in a culture—that we can mean something (Wittgenstein 1963: part 1,
section 38). Meaning neither (as in theTractatus) tries to picture the world, nor
does it lie within ideas or concepts. Meaning is not independent of language, it is
embedded within it. Words are seen to embody a rich profusion of meanings in
different linguistic contexts. Philosophical problems will often grow out of the rich
profusion and vagaries of language itself. However, words in themselves have no
essence, rather as Austin and others argued, they have diverse ways of being used.
Using a concept implies nothing in addition to its use. The meaning liesinthe use,
namely in what speakers actually do with it in different contexts. Concepts thus do
not necessarily refer to palpable things in the world at all. There is nothingoutside
language. Words do inhere in objects in the world. This might be considered a form
of linguistic idealism (see Pitkin 1972: 120), although it is doubtful that Wittgenstein
would have been happy with this label.
Insofar as language has a use function, it has a social dimension. We do not invent
purely private uses of words; otherwise there would be no communication. This is a
much debated argument in Wittgenstein—he denies that there could ever be such a
thing as a private language. What enables us to identify a meaning in use is that there
are public (not private) rules governing the use of concepts. Public rules function like
conventions in Austin. Words have a meaning because they relate to certain shared