David Charles on Wittgenstein, Aristotle, and Artisans

Abstract This chapter reflects critically on some ideas that David Charles has formulated in a comparison between Wittgenstein’s and Aristotle’s views of the unlikely trio of concepts, understanding, and manual workers. The main disagreement with Charles is whether the master craftsperson is a clearcut model of realist thinking, as Charles contends. Charles’ Aristotle holds that the master craftsperson’s grasp of concepts such as ‘elm wood’ consists (inter alia) in understanding part of the nature of the kind elm wood as such and that this explanatory grasp richly informs their various craft practices. The chapter, however, argues that the master craftsperson’s practices are compatible with, and thus fail to undermine, Wittgenstein’s anti-realist account of language learning and concept mastery.