Shared Grounds, Shifting Agreements: On the Liminal Structure of Deep Disagreements
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34739/Keywords:
deep disagreement, form of life, Wittgenstein, acknowledgmentAbstract
This paper explores the nature of deep disagreements through a reinterpretation of Wittgenstein’s concept of form of life. Rather than adopting skeptical or relativist positions, it questions the assumption that disagreement marks a failure of rational communication. The central claim is that deep disagreements are liminal in structure: they unfold at the threshold between shared and divergent backgrounds of understanding, and must be approached as such. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and related remarks, the paper argues that disagreement and understanding are made possible by the same background conditions. The possibility of partial understanding depends not on reaching a final consensus, but on our ability to recognize and respond to unfamiliar ways of speaking and acting. This account shifts the focus from resolution to acknowledgment, and from epistemic closure to the ongoing conditions of mutual intelligibility.
Downloads
References
Arrington, R.L. (1989). Rationalism, Realism, and Relativism: Perspectives in Contemporary Moral Epistemology. Cornell University Press.
Arroyo. G.J. (2024). “What are Deep Disagreement”, Informal Logic, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 604-635.
Ashton, N.A. (2019). “Rethinking epistemic Relativism”. In Metaphilosophy, Vol. 50(5), pp. 587-607.
Ashton, N.A. (2020). “Scientific Perspectives, Feminist Standpoints, and Non-Silly Relativism”. In Ana-Maria Crețu and Michaela Massimi (eds.), Knowledge from a Human Point of View (Synthese Library), Cham: Springer.
Baghramian, M. (2015). Relativism and disagreement. Oxford University Press.
Baghramian, M., Carter, J.A., & Rowland, R. (eds.). (2025). Routledge handbook to philosophy of disagreement. Routledge.
Baghramian, M. and Coliva, A. (eds.) (2019). Relativism. Routledge.
Baker, G.P. (1991). “Philosophical Investigations Section 122: Neglected Aspects”. In R. Arrington and H.- J. Glock (eds), Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: Text and Context, London: Routledge, 1991, pp. 35–68
Baker, G.P. (2009). Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity. Volume II of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations: Part II – Exegesis §1-184, 2nd edition, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
Bernstein, R.J. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism: Science, hermeneutics, and praxis. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Bernstein, R.J. (1992). The new constellation: The ethical-political horizons of modernity/ postmodernity. MIT Press.
Boncompagni, A. (2020). Wittgenstein on Forms of Life. Cambridge University Press.
Cappelen, H., Hawthorne, J. (2009). Relativism and Monadic Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cavell, S. (1979). The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, Oxford University Press, New York.
Cavell, S. (1989). “Declining Decline. Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Culture”. In This New Yet Unapproachable America, Lectures after Emerson after Wittgenstein, Living Butch Press, Albuquerque, pp. 29-75.
Chauviré, C. (2020). “Is There a relativism of forms of life in Wittgenstein’s Work?”. Revue de métaphysique et de morale. Vol. 2, nº 106, pp. 271-288.
Christensen, D. and Lackey, J. (eds.). (2013). The epistemology of disagreement: New essays. Oxford University Press.
Coliva, A. (2025). “Deep disagreements and the genealogical challenge”, Synthese, vol. 205, 235.
Conway, G. (1989). Wittgenstein on Foundations. NJ: Humanities Press.
Fogelin, R.J. (1985). The logic of deep disagreements. Informal Logic, 7(1), 1–8.
Gennep, A. v. (1960). The Rotes of Passage, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Gellner, E. (1998). Language and Solitude, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Glock, H.-J. (1996). A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell.
Glock, H.-J. (2008). “Relativism, Commensurability and Translatability”. In J. Preston (ed.), Wittgenstein and Reason, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 21-46.
Godden, D., & Brenner, W.H. (2010). “Wittgenstein and the logic of deep disagreement”. Cogency: Journal of Reasoning and Argumentation, 2(2), 41–80.
Hales, S.D. (2025). “Varieties of Disagreement”. In M. Baghramian, J.A. Carter & R. Rowland (eds.). (2024). Routledge handbook to philosophy of disagreement. Routledge.
Hanfling, O., Wittgenstein and the Human Form of Life, London & New York, Routledge, 2002.
Kant, I. (1998). Critique of pure reason (P. Guyer & A. W. Wood, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.
Kuhn, T.S. (1996). The structure of scientific revolutions (3rd ed.). University of Chicago Press.
Kusch. M. (2016). “Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and Relativism”. In Rinofner-Kreidl (ed.) Analytic and Continental Philosophy, Berlin Boston, Walter de Gruyter, pp. 29-46.
Kusch. M. (2018). “Disagreement, Certainties, Relativism”, Topoi , Vol. 40, pp. 1097-1105.
Lavorerio, V. (2020). “Fogelin's theory of deep disagreements: A relativistic reading”. Philosophical Investigations, 43(4), 346–362.
Lavorerio, V. (2021). “The Fundamental Model of Deep Disagreements”. Metaphilosophy, 52(3-4), 416–431.
MacFarlane, J. (2007). Relativism and Deep Disagreement, Philosophical Studies 132 (1): 17-31.
MacFarlane, J. (2009). Varieties of Disagreement. Available at: johnmacfarlane.net.
Melchior, G. (2024). “The methodologically flawed discussion about deep disagreement”. Episteme. Published online 2024: 1-17.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2015). “Wittgenstein on Forms of Life, Patterns of Life”, Nordic Wittgenstein Review, Special Issue, pp. 21-42.
Octav Popa, E. (2022). “On the rational resolution of (deep) disagreements”. Synthese, 200(4), 1-15.
O’Grady, P. (2004). “Wittgenstein and Relativism”. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Vol. 12(3), pp. 315-337.
Pritchard, D. (2018). “Wittgensteinian Hinge Epistemology and Deep Disagreement”. Topoi, 37(3), 521–531.
Pritchard, D. (2024). “Deep Disagreement”. In M. Baghramian, J.A. Carter, & R. Rowland (eds.). Routledge handbook to philosophy of disagreement. Routledge.
Ranalli, C. (2018). “What is Deep Disagreement?” Topoi. https://d-nb.info/1173670092/34.
Ranalli, C. (2020). “Deep disagreement and hinge epistemology”. Synthese, 197, 4975-5007.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Authors
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
