Changing the subject in postmodernity: Narrative ethics and philosophical therapy in the works of Stanley Hauerwas and Ludwig Wittgenstein

An examination of the Wittgensteinian corpus establishes a series of stopping points in Wittgenstein's intellectual travels that together determines the trajectory of his conceptual journey. In particular, Wittgenstein's quest entailed steadily transformed notions of subject, form, and theory. I maintain that had Wittgenstein lived longer his thinking would have continued to develop in similar directions. However, each aspect of his conceptual evolution was also beset by a problem--ethical individualism, fideism, and relativism--that Wittgenstein failed to surmount by life's end. I argue that the Christian ethics of Stanley Hauerwas bears an unmistakable resemblance to Wittgenstein's therapeutic philosophy. This resemblance provides the key for unlocking what so many find enigmatic in Hauerwas's works. Moreover, Hauerwas's thinking evolved in three identifiable stages--ethics as aesthetics, politics, and grammar--each of which overcomes a lingering problem in Wittgenstein's thinking. By making these connections explicit I will show not only that Hauerwas is a legitimate heir to the Wittgensteinian line but that he has shown the way forward as well.