Abstract

Meaning is always threatened by chaos. This is true for semantic meaning as well as for meaning in the sense of significance. The desire to defend meaningfulness usually takes the form of trying to find unshakeable foundations for meaningfiilness ; if such foundations cannot be found one ends in scepticism. In this paper it is shown how Wittgenstein's reaction to scepticism concerning semantic meaning does not stop at showing the inconsistencies in this form of scepticism, but tries to get at its real roots by relating it to the problematic of significance. This supposes that there is some linkage between the two concepts of meaning : it is suggested that there is indeed in Wittgenstein the beginnings of a general anthropological conception of meaning . It is argued that it is not this general conception of meaning which is the main target of Wittgenstein's philosophy, but rather the attainment and propagation of a kind of wisdom consisting in a capacity to live with the absence of solid foundations of significance thanks to the wonderment at human life given in his kind of philosophical reflection