On trying to say what “goes without saying”. Wittgenstein on certainty and ineffability

Abstract

This paper offers a philosophical outlook on the subject of the communication of
certainty and uncertainty, by focusing on the later Ludwig Wittgenstein’s image of
“hinges”. Hinges are basic common sense certainties which ordinarily “go without
saying”. In a sense, they even require not to be said. Lingering over the debate on
the ineffability of hinges which is at the core of the Wittgensteinian secondary literature,
but also hinting at some studies in psychopathology, the paper argues that
in extraordinary contexts to assert explicitly a hinge-certainty is possible and may
be important, while in ordinary contexts certainty can only be communicated
through silence: when a certainty which “goes without saying” is explicitly said, the
situation paradoxically results in uncertainty.