Taking up Tony Lloyd’s comment on Ryle’s review of The Open Society and its Enemies, and the hint that there were juicy anti-Wittgenstein notes. One of Wittgenstein’s followers, Rush Rhees, was so angry with Ryle’s review that he sat down and produced a hot and hasty diatribe against Popper and his book. I have it in my filing cabinet, it first appeared in the journal where Ryle placed his review (probably Mind) and it is reprinted in a book of Rhees essays. This was a gross over-reaction because I recall next to no criticism of Wittgenstein apart from the note that I recycled, there may have been other comments but they were not the point of the book as a whole.
The amusing thing about the Rhees critique is that he was so determined to find fault with Popper that he rubbished Popper for views that Popper had himself criticised, like the idea that all our institutions were consciously devised. This he did without page citations which is not surprising because if he had read closely enough to take note of the page numbers he might have got the argument right and retracted that part of his critique.
Ryle was put out that Wittgenstein had such a high profile because he (Ryle) felt that he was being upstaged on his own turf, so he would have enjoyed the 3 pages of notes that were critical of Wittgenstein – but 3 pages out of 800! Not a very prominent part of the book.
A google of Rush Rhees+Popper turned up a paper on the debate between Wittgenstein and Popper with a quote from a note from Wittgenstein to Rhees rubbishing Popper as an ass. There is no need to take that too seriously, Wittgenstein habitually rubbished people who he disliked or disagreed with.
Anyway, getting to the point of the heading, I spent some time on a Wittgenstein email list with over 200 members. As usual there was a leader of the pack who was the authority, he initiated most of the threads and he ruled in correct and incorrect interpretations. When he found that I was keen on Popper (I wonder how long that took) he was pleased to refer to the Rhees paper and also the paper that Peter Winch contributed to the Schillp volume. He pointed out that these had shredded Popper, although when asked to explain more he was caught a bit short. Nobody protested that view, clearly nobody else on the list had read Popper or if they had done so they were not going to get into a dispute with the leader.
Being young and enthusiastic in those days, and thinking that students of philosophy would be prepared to learn from email discussions, I quoted some stuff from Rhees and then some stuff from the OSE to demonstrate that Rhees was quite wrong on his major points, then I did much the same with Winch, which was more difficult because the points in his paper were more complicated. I did not get the impression that the leader changed his mind, I think he changed the subject. Not an encouraging experience and one that I gave up after a few weeks.
