Republicanism and Rule-Following: Subjectivity in the Late Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language and Philip Pettit's Theory of Freedom

The work is devoted to the study of the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory of rule-following on Philip Pettit's idea of ​​freedom as the non-domination. Pettit proposed his own solution to the paradox of rule-following presented by Wittgenstein and as the author believes used this solution in his political philosophy. However, in his political works he does not directly refer to Wittgenstein and hence their connection is not obvious. Tracing this connection makes it possible to supplement Pettit's political theory with the discoveries made by Wittgenstein in the field of language philosophy. In particular, Pettit mostly ignores Wittgenstein's argument about the impossibility of private language, which is the flip side of rule-following, taking it for granted. Because of this, proposing his political ideal of non-dominance he takes it for granted as well not telling why one should strive for its ideal and what is the problem with domination that makes it non-ideal. This paper is an attempt to solve this problem by proposing an epistemological argument against domination based on Pettit’s theory of non-dominance and Wittgenstein’s argument against private language.