But notice: pointing out the difficulty here has the form of saying that the orthodox thinker has lapsed into nonsensicality. That is, it has the form of saying that the orthodox reader has made no coherent claim. If that is the case, however, then what claim is the resolute reader supposed to be criticizing exactly? – It very much seems that merely by trying to point out that the orthodox reader has entangled herself in a pot paradox, the resolute thinker has entangled herself in a pot paradox of her own. There is a kind of bogginess that characterizes pot paradoxes.
Resolute thinkers have no magic shield to protect themselves against pot paradoxes. They come up against them too from time to time—and not only in the context of mounting criticisms against substantial readings of Wittgenstein. The battle with nonsense in general—against the kind of bogginess that characterizes discussions of nonsense—is the bread and butter of the resolute thinker; and pot paradoxes in particular are not the sole property of the substantial thinker. The problem is common property.
Still, the resolute thinker is different. What distinguishes the resolute thinker is first her ability to own the paradox: to recognize that a line of thought has been derailed into incoherence and is now locked, or soaked, in a battle with nonsense—like a man wrestling with an angel. Second, the resolute thinker is distinguished by her willingness to recognize the problems we face when dealing with this paradox—when wrestling with nonsense—their shape, their dimensions, their bogginess. And third, the resolute thinker is distinguished by her willingness to wrestle. Of course, the willingness of any particular resolute thinker—their patience—may run out. In a future post I plan to discuss this issue of patience in connection with Alice Crary's Wittgensteinian ethics. In any case, in general her willingness to keep wrestling with nonsense is a measure of the resoluteness of a thinker.
Let me say something about the willingness I just spoke of to wrestle with nonsense: the willingness to appreciate the reasons and consequences of a line of thought being derailed into nonsensicality. Since such wrestling is itself exposed to entanglement in pot paradoxes—this was the moral above about the fate of the resolute criticism of substantial claims about nonsense—such wrestling typically requires and thus involves a particular use of the imagination: pretending that a particular bit of nonsense makes sense, stepping into frame of mind from which it seems as if nonsensical claims could mean something.
Typically, therefore, resolute dealing with nonsense involves refusal to dismiss a nonsensical expression: “I wish you could feel my pain,” “I wish I could turn back time,” and an insistence on finding a way to capture what is yet humanly important in those all-too-natural forms of expression: For the person coming up with those expressions, confused as she may be, may still be experiencing something real. It may even be part of her complaint that she cannot find a straight and secure way to express herself—her words keep imploding, and she is helpless also to make others acknowledge her distress. She is not merely distressed; she is bogged down by her own needs. Typically, to acknowledge such distress requires readiness to implicate one’s own line of thinking, oneself, in nonsense—willingness to imaginatively step into the frame of mind from which nonsense looks like sense.