This paper compares the treatment of private sensations in the works of Wittgenstein and Klossowski. Its aim is to show that, despite the differences between their traditions and methods, they align in at least one important respect: rejecting relations of reference between signs and private sensations. The paper briefly contextualises their lines of attack on these relations, situating the two thinkers’ commonalities amidst what are undeniably divergent wider purposes. It proceeds to argue for two more specific conclusions. Firstly, Klossowski’s own (...) rejoinder directed at reference to private sensations is rooted in his comparison of linguistic meaning to economic valuation in Living Currency. Secondly, Klossowski goes beyond Wittgenstein in arguing that, regardless of the status of reference of this sort, no complete account of sensation can view it only as private. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that, like the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, Wittgenstein’s response to negative–dogmatic skepticism in On Certainty turns on the attempt to free us from the demands of traditional philosophy and is therefore not a philosophical position, strictly speaking. Rather, it is a therapeutic metaphilosophy designed to bring into view (i.e., to illumine) the relationship between our everyday epistemic practices and those of philosophy such that we simultaneously come to recognize (a) what I call the pragmatic–transcendental self–standingness (...) of the everyday and (b) its philosophical–rational groundlessness. The Pyrrhonian illumination of the everyday is therapeutic in that it aims to purify our metadoxastic attitudes of dogmatism. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to show, first, that there is a misconception underlying two opposing readings of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, notably Kripke’s sceptical reading and Baker and Hacker’s reading. I believe that the correct characterization of this misunderstanding is the first step towards the correct way to read the rule-following considerations, since these readings are still subject to a philosophical confusion that Wittgenstein wants to dissolve. Then I present a commentary on the rule-following considerations inspired by the so-called resolute (...) reading, more precisely, by the idea that Wittgenstein’s main purpose is to undermine the philosophical illusion according to which we could contemplate our own practices from sideways on, that is, from a standpoint independent of all the human activities and reactions. In my reading I stress an often-neglected aspect of the rule-following considerations, namely the temporal aspect of language. (shrink)

cannot understand the language.”[1] This is not intended to cover (easily imaginable) cases of recording one's experiences in a personal code, for such a code, however obscure in fact, could in principle be deciphered. What Wittgenstein had in mind is a language conceived as necessarily comprehensible only to its single originator because the things which define its vocabulary are necessarily inaccessible to others.

This article presents an edition of unpublished notes by Sraffa on Wittgenstein’s “Blue Book”, written about 1941 and housed at Trinity College Library, Cambridge. The article includes an introduction to the relationship between Sraffa and Wittgenstein and concludes with an interpretation of various philosophical issues addressed in the notes, namely that of solipsism. Various connections between the “Blue Book” and the Philosophical Investigations are traced.