Consequences of forgetting Austin (conceptions of context and varieties of contextualism)

Abstract

Although it was in his work that several important ideas regarding contextualism originated, J. L. Austin is a classic of the history of analytical philosophy often absent in recent discussions. My intention in this article is to identify some (bad) consequences of forgetting Austin when one is a self-professed contextualist. One further goal is to examine the conceptions of context being used within different varieties of contextualism. In A Plea for Excuses Austin claimed, "When we examine what we should say when, what words we should use in what situations, we are looking again not merely at words (or "meanings", whatever they may be) but also at the realities we use words to talk about". In this article I will look at the way Michael Williams (Williams 2019) follows this lead in criticizing another epistemologist, Duncan Pritchard (Pritchard 2016).