Saul Kripke, among others, reads Wittgenstein’s private-language argument as an inference from the idea of rule following: The concept of a private language is inconsistent, because using language entails following rules, and following rules entails being a member of a community. Kripke expresses the key exegetical claim underlying that reading as follows.

Joining a vast Wittgensteinian anti-theoretical movement, John Canfield has argued that it is possible to read the claims that (1) “language is essentially communal” and (2) “it is conceptually possible that a Crusoe isolated from birth should speak or follow rules” in such a way that they are perfectly compatible, and, indeed, that Wittgenstein held them both at once. The key to doing this is to drain them of any theoretical content or implications that would put each claim at (...) odds with the other. I argue here, first of all, that it is not possible to detheorize both (1) and (2) and still hope to say anything illuminating about the nature of language. In fact, Canfield himself does not succeed in detheorizing both (1) and (2) but ends up trivializing (1) and leaving (2) with quite a bit of theoretical content. I further argue, however, that this is getting the matter the wrong way around. Contra Canfield et al., it is only when we recognize this that we can appreciate how radical and innovative Wittgenstein's claims about language really are. (shrink)

Saul Kripke, among others, reads Wittgenstein’s private-language argument as an inference from the idea of rule following: The concept of a private language is inconsistent, because using language entails following rules, and following rules entails being a member of a community. Kripke expresses the key exegetical claim underlying that reading as follows.

Wittgenstein's role was vital in establishing mathematics as one of this century's principal areas of philosophic inquiry. In this book, the three phases of Wittgenstein's reflections on mathematics are viewed as a progressive whole, rather than as separate entities. Frascolla builds up a systematic construction of Wittgenstein's representation of the role of arithmetic in the theory of logical operations. He also presents a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations - the `community view of internal (...) relations'. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's role was vital in establishing mathematics as one of this century's principal areas of philosophic inquiry. In this book, the three phases of Wittgenstein's reflections on mathematics are viewed as a progressive whole, rather than as separate entities. Frascolla builds up a systematic construction of Wittgenstein's representation of the role of arithmetic in the theory of logical operations. He also presents a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations - the `community view of internal (...) relations'. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's role was vital in establishing mathematics as one of this century's principal areas of philosophic inquiry. In this book, the three phases of Wittgenstein's reflections on mathematics are viewed as a progressive whole, rather than as separate entities. Frascolla builds up a systematic construction of Wittgenstein's representation of the role of arithmetic in the theory of logical operations. He also presents a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations - the `community view of internal (...) relations'. (shrink)

If Wittgenstein's later account of language is applied to music, what seems to follow is a version of musical formalism. This is to say that the meaning of music is constituted by the rules of a given system of music, and the understanding of music is the ability to follow these rules. I argue that, while this view may seem unattractive at the outset, Wittgenstein actually held this view. Moreover, his later notion of a rule gives (...) us resources to answer some of the traditional criticisms directed against formalism. (shrink)

The essays in the book have two main emphases. Regarding the late Wittgenstein, they focus on the idea that skepticism about rule-following is undermined, indeed incoherent, in virtue of Wittgenstein's emphasis on context of utterance and "forms of life" (roughly the "community" view of his later work). In the early Wittgenstein they take a "resolute" position on nonsense, saying that he did not believe there was some ineffable or informative nonsense, but only pure and utter (...) nonsense, including everything in the Tractatus. Although many of the essays are interesting and insightful, they do not amount to a demonstration that Wittgenstein held the positions attributed to him; moreover the positions are counterintuitive, and appear to be undermined by historical evidence regarding Wittgenstein's own view of his work. (shrink)

Starting from an analysis of Wittgenstein's reasons for placing all true-seeming sentences about the relation between language and the world in the class of utterances that lack a truth-value and can only communicate in the privileged way, the doctrine of showing is investigated in Wittgenstein's later writings. In contrast to the view that the concept of showing simply disappeared with the abandonment of the picture theory of the sentence it is argued that much of his erarly doctrine (...) of showing survives in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. (shrink)

One of the problems religious men and philosophers often face is how to convey enlightenment or wisdom to others so that sentient beings can be enlightened or awakened from dogmatic views. This problem is also the question of how truth is made known to men. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the problem of communicating truth in Ch'an Buddhism.

Starting from an analysis of Wittgenstein's reasons for placing all true-seeming sentences about the relation between language and the world in the class of utterances that lack a truth-value and can only communicate in the privileged way, the doctrine of showing is investigated in Wittgenstein's later writings. In contrast to the view that the concept of showing simply disappeared with the abandonment of the picture theory of the sentence it is argued that much of his erarly doctrine (...) of showing survives in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. (shrink)

According to Dummett's interpretation, one finds Wittgenstein denying the existence of a general linguistic action of “communicating something” at many places in the Investigations. In Wittgenstein's view, however, the author errs when (in philosophical contexts) he ignores the projective step and concludes from the meaningful applicability of the expression that he is speaking here of an “inner object of feeling” that should arouse the epistemological interest. The author proposes the middle passage of § 363, which is so (...) important for Dummett's interpretation: Wittgenstein certainly does not want to deny that linguistic actions do include speech acts of communicating something or informing. (shrink)

The focus is on two texts by Wittgenstein where ‘forms of life’ constitute the pivot of an extended argument: ‘Cause and Effect’ and the discussion of colour concepts in ‘Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology’. The author argues that forms of life are above all Wittgenstein's response to the question what it is to analyse a concept. The remark that forms of life are ‘given’ and must be ‘accepted’ is a natural corollary of Wittgenstein’s antireductionism and his (...) idea of philosophy as a descriptive enterprise. Wittgenstein is, however, not offering forms of life as the ultimate foundation of our statements about causation or colour. He shifts the focus to the questioning activity itself. Our inquiries and descriptions imply conceptions of how to look and what to accept as verification. Forms of life are given, not because they cannot be analysed further, but because the investigation will take them as given. Comparisons are made, on the one hand, with G.H. von Wright’s interventionist account of the concept of causation and, on the other hand, with the two currently dominant interpretations of ‘forms of life’: the ‘linguistic community’ view and the ‘naturalist’ view. (shrink)

Language is indisputably in some sense a social phenomenon. But in which sense? Philosophical conceptions of language often assume a simple relationship between individual speakers and a language community, one of which is attributed primacy and used to understand the other. Having identified some problems faced by two such conceptions—social holism and individualism—this article outlines an alternative phenomenological view of shared language by focusing on two principal ways that language is shared. First, it draws on the late (...) class='Hi'>Wittgenstein to characterize how shared practices ground linguistic communities. Based on the link between language-games and corresponding subcommunities of language users, I argue that pragmatic language sharing is more fragmented than social holism suggests but more cohesive than individualism intimates. Second, it considers how linguistic community is grounded in shared sign systems. Merleau-Ponty’s appropriation of Husserl’s notion of institution is used to highlight that existing linguistic structures are adopted in an open process that allows varying degrees of differentiation. Combining these two perspectives, I conclude that who we are in linguistic community with and how closely we converge varies over different parts of language. Our linguistic communities are thus complex in the sense of being fragmented, differentiated and nonuniform. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege’s conception of works of art has received scant notice in the literature. This is a pity since, as this paper undertakes to reveal, his innovative philosophy of language motivated a theoretically and historically consequential, yet unaccountably marginalized Wittgenstinian line of inquiry in the domain of aesthetics. The element of Frege’s approach that most clearly inspired this development is the idea that only complete sentences articulate thoughts and that what sentences in works of drama and literary art express are (...) ‘mock thoughts’ (Schiengedanken). The early Wittgenstein closely followed Frege’s lead on this theme. One sees this, for example, in the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein announces that only sentential propositions model (‘picture’) states of affairs whereas works of art are objects we perceive sub specie aeternitatis (1961, 83). By the 1930s, however, Wittgenstein began to revise his view beyond his initial Frege-inspired standpoint. He came to insist that works of art can convey thoughts as well, but that thoughts do not model (picture) the world of facts and hence do not convey information about measurable objects and events. Rather, his contention was that aesthetically configured thoughts that artworks communicate impart information about our perspective on reality and reconfigure our view of life. To be more explicit, successful (gelungene) or ‘good’ works of art (ibid.), in Wittgenstein’s view, can supply aesthetically instructive ‘gestures’ that open to living experience promising new ways of being. It is in this respect, he held, that artists ‘have something to teach’ (1980, 36). (shrink)

This paper offers a Kantian reading of Wittgenstein’s later conception of rules. Building on the continuity of Wittgenstein’s comparison between a sentence and a musical theme, the paper argues that central elements of the Kantianism one may find in Wittgenstein’s early philosophy carry over to his mature conception of grammar. Moreover, this Kantian reading offers a novel perspective on the puzzle about the normativity of Wittgenstein’s later notion of rules. It is argued that the normativity of (...) an aesthetic judgement, understood in a specifically Kantian sense, offers a good model for construing the necessity of rule-following in his later philosophy. In analogy with the necessity of Kantian aesthetic judgements, the necessity of rule-following, while less than objective from a transcendental point of view, may be treated as objective for the members of the linguistic community under the assumption of a shared form of life. (shrink)

This work explores the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics in relation to Lakatos’ philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of mathematical practice. I argue that, while the philosophy of mathematical practice typically identifies Lakatos as its earliest of predecessors, the later Wittgenstein already developed key ideas for this community a few decades before. However, for a variety of reasons, most of this work on philosophy of mathematics has gone relatively unnoticed. Some of these ideas and their significance (...) as precursors for the philosophy of mathematical practice will be presented here, including a brief reconstruction of Lakatos’ considerations on Euler’s conjecture for polyhedra from the lens of late Wittgensteinian philosophy. Overall, this article aims to challenge the received view of the history of the philosophy of mathematical practice and inspire further work in this community drawing from Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. (shrink)

I consider Plato’s argument, in the dialogue Cratylus, against both of two opposed views of the “correctness of names.” The first is a conventionalist view, according to which this relationship is arbitrary, the product of a free inaugural decision made at the moment of the first institution of names. The second is a naturalist view, according to which the correctness of names is initially fixed and subsequently maintained by some kind of natural assignment, rooted in the things themselves. (...) I argue that: 1) Plato’s critical challenge to both views anticipates considerations introduced by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations ’ consideration of rules and rule-following; 2) Understanding Plato’s appeal to the “form” [ eidos ] of a thing in resolving the problems of both views helps to explicate Wittgenstein’s own appeal to “forms of life” as the “given” ground of linguistic practice; and 3) We should not understand the grounding of language in form-of-life either as a basis in the plural practices of different communities, or as a biological/anthropological basis in the specific nature of the human organism. Rather, it points to an autonomous dimension of form, which articulates the relationship between language and life as it relates to the possibility of truth. (shrink)

Remodel[l]ing Reality is an inquiry into Wittgenstein's notion of übersichtliche Darstellung and the phenomenon of installation in visual art. In a sense, both provide a perspicuous overview of a particular part of our complex world, but the nature of the overview differs. Although both generate knowledge, philosophy via the übersichtliche Darstellung gives us a view of how things stand for us, while the installation shows an unexpected, exiting point of view. The obvious we tend to forget and (...) the ambiguity of reality are related to each other in a dynamic way. It is in this reflexive dynamics that we constantly remodel our reality. Tools we use are our creative abilities and our powers of imagination. In our choices and solutions we show which aspects of reality we find important and how we communicate these values. The outcome of this investigation is a new perspective on the art of installation and a new insight in Wittgenstein's notion of übersichtliche Darstellung. Because of this combination, the book is itself an artwork: an InstallationPackage. The book is distributed by Ideabooks Amsterdam, Isbn 978 90 804240 3 6. Remodel[l]ing Reality is included in Special Collections, Allard Pierson Museum Amsterdam. (shrink)

Intersubjectivity, the cooperation of two or more minds, is basic to human behavior, yet eludes the grasp of psychiatry. This paper traces the dilemma to the “problem of other minds” assumed with the epistemologies of modern science. It presents the solution of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, known for his treatment of other minds in terms of “human agreement in language.”Unlike recent studies of “Wittgenstein's psychology,” this one reviews the Philosophical Investigations' “private language argument,” the crux of his mature views (...) on mind. It reads that argument as recording his shift from the modern egocentric paradigm of mind to an intersubjective one.The paper contrasts the merits of Wittgenstein's reduction of subject and object to grammar with the problems of Freud's metapsychological reduction. It shows how Wittgenstein's intersubjective method avoids the excesses of behaviorism and phenomenology, offering a specifically human way to adapt mechanistic and interpretive means to the communicative ends of psychiatry. (shrink)

Analytical commentary -- Fruits upon one tree -- The continuation of the early draft into philosophy of mathematics -- Hidden isomorphism -- A common methodology -- The flatness of philosophical grammar -- Following a rule 185-242 -- Introduction to the exegesis -- Rules and grammar -- The tractatus and rules of logical syntax -- From logical syntax to philosophical grammar -- Rules and rule-formulations -- Philosophy and grammar -- The scope of grammar -- Some morals -- Exegesis 185-8 -- Accord (...) with a rule -- Initial compass bearings -- Accord and the harmony between language and reality -- Rules of inference and logical machinery -- Formulations and explanations of rules by examples -- Interpretations, fitting and grammar -- Further misunderstandings -- Exegesis 189-202 -- Following rules, mastery of techniques and practices -- Following a rule -- Practices and techniques -- Doing the right thing and doing the same thing -- Privacy and the community view -- On not digging below bedrock -- Private linguists and private linguists : Robinson Crusoe sails again -- Is a language necessarily shared with a community of speakers? -- Innate knowledge of a language -- Robinson Crusoe sails again -- Solitary cavemen and monolinguists -- Private languages and private languages -- Exegesis 203-37 -- Agreement in definitions, judgements, and form of life -- The scaffolding of facts -- The role of our nature -- Forms of life -- Agreement : consensus of human beings and their actions -- Exegesis 238-42 -- Grammar and necessity -- Setting the stage -- Leitmotifs -- External guidelines -- Necessary propositions and norms of representation -- Concerning the truth and falsehood of necessary propositions -- What necessary truths are about illusions of correspondence : ideal objects, kinds of reality, and ultra-physics -- The psychology of the A priori -- Knowledge -- Belief -- Certainty -- Surprise -- Discoveries and conjectures -- Compulsion -- Propositions of logic and laws of thought -- Alternative forms of representation -- The arbitrariness of grammar -- A kinship to the non-arbitrary -- Proof in mathematics -- Conventionalism. (shrink)

Wittgenstein mentions “forms of life” only on a limited number of occasions in his writings; however, this concept is at the core of his approach to language, as the vast literature on the subject shows. My aim in this paper is neither to adjudicate which of the many competing interpretations of “forms of life” is correct nor to propose a new one. I start with a methodological take on this notion and test it by applying it to a specific (...) case. In my view, the notion of forms of life is a methodological tool that Wittgenstein uses to draw attention to the embeddedness of language in our lives and practices. This reading, I suggest, allows us to oppose those who want to see in Wittgenstein a conservative thinker, based on his remark on forms of life as “the given” that must be accepted. In particular, it becomes possible to put his notion to use in the study of linguistic and social change. Hence, I propose as an example the case of innovative language games in trans communities. In this context, the notion of forms of life enables us to see with more clarity how linguistic change occurs, which also helps us better understand phenomena such as disagreement, conflict, and hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege’s conception of works of art has received scant notice in the literature. This is a pity since, as this paper undertakes to reveal, his innovative philosophy of language motivated a theoretically and historically consequential, yet unaccountably marginalized Wittgenstinian line of inquiry in the domain of aesthetics. The element of Frege’s approach that most clearly inspired this development is the idea that only complete sentences articulate thoughts and that what sentences in works of drama and literary art express are (...) ‘mock thoughts’. The early Wittgenstein closely followed Frege’s lead on this theme. One sees this, for example, in the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein announces that only sentential propositions model states of affairs whereas works of art are objects we perceive sub specie aeternitatis. By the early 1930s, however, Wittgenstein began to revise his view beyond his initial Frege-inspired standpoint. He came to insist that works of art can convey thoughts as well, but that thoughts do not model the world of facts and hence do not convey information about measurable objects and events. Rather, his contention was that aesthetically configured thoughts that artworks communicate impart information about our perspective on reality and reconfigure our view of life. To be more explicit, successful or ‘good’ works of art, in Wittgenstein’s view, can supply aesthetically instructive ‘gestures’ that open to living experience promising new ways of being. It is in this respect, he held, that artists ‘have something to teach’. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege’s conception of works of art has received scant notice in the literature. This is a pity since, as this paper undertakes to reveal, his innovative philosophy of language motivated a theoretically and historically consequential, yet unaccountably marginalized Wittgenstinian line of inquiry in the domain of aesthetics. The element of Frege’s approach that most clearly inspired this development is the idea that only complete sentences articulate thoughts and that what sentences in works of drama and literary art express are (...) ‘mock thoughts’. The early Wittgenstein closely followed Frege’s lead on this theme. One sees this, for example, in the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein announces that only sentential propositions model states of affairs whereas works of art are objects we perceive sub specie aeternitatis. By the early 1930s, however, Wittgenstein began to revise his view beyond his initial Frege-inspired standpoint. He came to insist that works of art can convey thoughts as well, but that thoughts do not model the world of facts and hence do not convey information about measurable objects and events. Rather, his contention was that aesthetically configured thoughts that artworks communicate impart information about our perspective on reality and reconfigure our view of life. To be more explicit, successful or ‘good’ works of art, in Wittgenstein’s view, can supply aesthetically instructive ‘gestures’ that open to living experience promising new ways of being. It is in this respect, he held, that artists ‘have something to teach’. (shrink)

Une question très discutée parmi les commentateurs des Recherches philosophiques de Wittgenstein est celle de savoir s'il souscrit à une conception « communautaire » ou, plutôt, à une conception « individualiste » des notions de signification et de ce que c'est que « suivre une règle ». J'examine cette question en la plaçant dans le contexte d'une interprétation de l'argument qu'il avance contre la possibilité d'un langage privé. J'essaierai de montrer que, malgré les objections soulevées par les tenants de (...) l'interprétation « individualiste », on peut donner une lecture plausible de son argument dans la cadre d'une conception « communautaire » des règles.Whether Wittgenstein subscribes to a " community " or an " individualist " view of meaning and of rule following is a much debated question among students of the Philosophical Investigations. I will discuss this question by relating it to the issue concerning the correct interpretation of his well-known argument against the possibility of a private language. I will argue that, despite objections which have been raised by proponents of the " individualist " interpretation, a plausible reading of Wittgenstein's argument can be given within a " community " view of rule following. (shrink)

Although Wittgenstein is famously skeptical about the possibility of making substantial philosophical claims, he can be said to offer significant insights into the difference between inner and outer as well as the difference between self and other.1 He consistently reminds us that inner and outer are intimately connected instead of only causally related, as well as that the self—far from being a wholly independent entity—always already finds itself constituted by its relationships with others. In thus contesting the Cartesian (...) class='Hi'>view on subjectivity, however, Wittgenstein may appear to simply reduce the inner to the outer and the self to the other.. (shrink)

Modern philosophical analyses of mysticism impoverish mysticism with a common understanding that the life and the language of the mystic is a separate category from that of the mystical experience. It is my contention, however, that such an understanding runs counter to what the mystics themselves attest to. ;William James's understanding of mysticism is that it serves as the means towards the circumvention of an individual's religious tradition. This view is contrary to the understanding of mysticism put forth by (...) the sixth century Christian mystic, Dionysius the Areopagite, who stressed the communal nature of the mystical life. Related to this is the analysis of the mystic's language suggested by W. T. Stace. For Stace, the mystic enters into a peculiar mystical state of consciousness, one that is characterized as inherently paradoxical. Because of this, the mystic is "embarrassed" by the language he or she employs. But in contrast, the 13th century Dominican, Meister Eckhart, employs a deliberate apophatic strategy in his use of the paradox. And finally, Steven T. Katz argues that the mystic's life and language "shapes" the mystical experience. But such a view, again, only separates the life and language of the mystic from that of the experience. St. John of the Cross taught that only through a life of love can one come to know God. This is not a contingent relationship for St. John. ;In contrast to these modern philosophical analyses of mysticism, Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical work can be seen to be in concert with much of what the mystics themselves attest to. Wittgenstein urges one to attend to the "grammar" of a language in order to understand its meaning. Therefore, with an examination and application of Wittgenstein's thought, the philosophical impositions cited above can be avoided. Such an approach is thus more promising to the study of mysticism for it pays attention to the life of the mystic in which the mystic's words ultimately have their meaning. (shrink)

Traditional accounts hold that reference consists in a relation between the mind and an object; the relation is effected by a mental act and mediated by internal mental contents (internal representations). Contemporary theories as diverse as Fodor’s [Fodor, J.A., 1987. Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] language of thought hypothesis, Dretske’s [Dretske, F., 1988. Explaining Behaviour: Reasons in a World of Causes. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] informational semantics and Millikan’s [Millikan, R.G., 1984. (...) Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] teleosemantics share this act– content–object picture (which was also held by several early modern philosophers, in particular Locke). The core of the traditional view is the thesis that reference and intentionality are relational (‘thesis RR’). Although deeply problematic, RR is entrenched also in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science and Artificial Intelligence. Using for the most part arguments employed by Wittgenstein, we mount a case against RR and advance a deflationary account of reference and intentionality according to which neither is relational. (shrink)

The paper examines Johann Georg Hamann’s influence on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. Wittgenstein’s letters, diaries and Drury’s memoirs show that Wittgenstein read Hamann’s writings in the early 1930s and 1950s. Wittgenstein’s diary notes and the Cambridge lectures show that Wittgenstein’s discussion of Hamann’s views in 1931 corresponds to adopting a Hamannian view of symbols and rule-following. The view of language as an intertwining of signs, objects and meanings in use forms a common core (...) in the philosophies of Hamann and Wittgenstein. The harmony of language and reality takes place in communicative use, so non-communicative private languages and pre-linguistic ideal forms of representation are not possible. Language is a free response to reality, and it involves belief-systems and trust. (shrink)

En la primera parte de este artículo se quiere exponer la posición de Ludwig Wittgenstein en las Investigaciones filosóficas donde ya se percibe un importante giro respecto a la concepción semántica del Tractatus. El Wittgenstein tardío asume el lenguaje y su significado no como el resultado aislado de una conciencia monológica sino el producto una praxis social mediada por reglas. Sin embargo, al pensador austríaco le falta aun el espacio para el encuentro con la otredad que se muestra (...) en la posibilidad de la traducción de las reglas de otros juegos de lenguaje al propio, ya sean entre comunidades distintas o dentro de una misma cultura en épocas diferentes. En la segunda parte se muestra como en la hermenéutica filosófica de Hans-Georg Gadamer se abre el lugar para la comprensión en inclusión de estos otros juegos gracias al despliegue de los modos que le son propios como son la asunción del círculo hermenéutico, la dialéctica de la pregunta y respuesta, la fusión de horizontes y el juego. En especial, se hace referencia a cómo la otredad que se presenta como tradición histórica produce en el sujeto que comprende y de la tradición interpretada, un mayor enriquecimiento. Esto es el centro de la comprensión hermenéutica y sucede cuando el sujeto incorpora en su horizonte las perspectivas y puntos de vista de otros horizontes gracias al vaivén inacabado y abierto de la comprensión.The first part of this paper presents the position of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations where it can see a significant turn respect to the semantic conception of the Tractatus. The later Wittgenstein takes language and its meaning not as an isolated result of a monological consciousness but the product of a social practice mediated by rules. However, the Austrian philosopher lacks even the space for the encounter with otherness that is displayed on the possibility of translation of the rules of other language games to the own, whether between different communities or within the same culture in different times. In the second part is shown as in the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer is open the space for the understanding of these other games through the deployment of the modes of its own such as the assumption of the hermeneutic circle, the dialectic of question and answer, the fusion of horizons and the play. In particular, it refers to how otherness, presented as historical tradition produce in the subject that comprehend and in the tradition interpreted greater enrichment. That is the center of the hermeneutic comprehension and happens when subject includes on his horizon the perspectives and views of other horizons thanks to unfinished and open sway of understanding. (shrink)

In this essay, I seek to demonstrate the interplay of philosophical voices – particularly, that of a platonist voice and a community-agreement-view voice – that drives Wittgenstein’s rule-following dialectic forward; and I argue that each voice succumbs to a particular form of dialectical oscillation that renders its response to the problem of rule-following philosophically inadequate. Finally, I suggest that, by seeing and taking stock of the dilemma in which these responses to the skeptical problem are caught, we (...) can come to appreciate Wittgenstein’s own view of what might constitute a proper a response to the so-called problem of rule-following. This view can be preliminarily characterized by saying that Wittgenstein’s aim is to dissolve the temptation to philosophically rebut the skeptical challenge posed by the rule-following dialectic, an aim he achieves by revealing the semantic emptiness of the apparent sentences that raise the skeptical problem. (shrink)

The article examines some well-known attempts to consider Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations in the context of transcendental idealism. The main purpose of these attempts is to protect Wittgenstein’s later philosophy from the relativistic interpretation of such concepts a “language games” and “forms of life.” Thus, Bernard Williams, noting the ambiguity of the pronoun “we” in Philosophical Investigations, believes that such a “we” has a transcendental rather than empirical character. This approach allows Williams to argue that there is no (...) meaningful alternative to the general perspective on the world that is embodied in this “we.” However, the main disadvantage of this approach is that Williams views such a “we” in much the same way as a conceptual schema. However, as many authors point out, this idea does not find its confirmation in the later works of Wittgenstein. Jonathan Lear, in turn, suggests that we should consider such a non-empirical “we” as a special kind of “mindedness.” Such a mindedness could be considered as analogous to a Kant’s analytical principle of apperception. Lear believes that it is this principle that gives meaningful unity to human behaviour and makes possible any communication with other people. Following Williams and trying to correct the shortcomings of his position, Lear proposes to consider the ambiguous status of “we” in Philosophical Investigations as an argument in favour of the “disappearance” of the transcendental “we,” and with it the disappearance of the threat of relativism. John McDowell, however, agreeing with the need to get rid Wittgenstein's philosophy of relativistic interpretations, critically assesses the idea of using transcendental idealism for this purpose. Instead, McDowell proposes to return to Hegel’s thesis about the unboundedness of the conceptual, which makes it unnecessary to appeal to the transcendental justification of harmony between reason and the world. The article, therefore, also examines McDowell’s arguments against attributing to Wittgenstein any versions of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

A milestone in Wittgenstein scholarship, this collection of essays ranges over a wide area of the philosopher's thought, presenting divergent interpretations of his fundamental ideas. Different chapters raise many of the central controversies that surround current understanding of the Tractatus, providing an interplay that will be particularly useful to students. Taken together, the essays present a broader and more comprehensive view of Wittgenstein's intellectual interests and his impact on philosophy than may be found elsewhere.The thirteen chapters treat (...) topics from both periods of Wittgenstein's work: More than half are devoted to his early thought, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of 1921, reflecting a growing interest today among philosophers in reexamining this seminal book, while three chapters treat the Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953. The remaining chapters discuss such "nonstandard" topics as philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and anthropology.Contents: The Early Wittgenstein and the Middle Russell, Kenneth Blackwell; Frege and Wittgenstein, Michael Dummett; Wittgenstein and the Theory of Types, Hide Ishiguro; The So-called Realism of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Brian McGuinness; The Logical Independence of Elementary Propositions, David Pears; The Rise and Fall of the Picture Theory, Peter Hacker; The Picture Theory and Wittgenstein's Later Attitude to It, Erik Stenius; Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy of Mind, Anthony Kenny; A Theory of Language?, G. E. M. Anscombe; Im Anfang war die Tat, Peter Winch; Wittgenstein's Full Stop, D. Z. Phillips; Quote: Judgments from Our Brain, Paul Ziff; Wittgenstein and the Fire Festivals, Frank Cioffi, Index.Irving Block is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at The University of Western Ontario. (shrink)

Saul Kripke, in his celebrated book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982), offers a novel reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s main remarks in his later works, especially in Philosophical Investigations (1953) and, to some extent, in Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956). Kripke presents Wittgenstein as proposing a skeptical argument against a certain conception of meaning and linguistic understanding, as well as a skeptical solution to such a problem. Many philosophers have called this interpretation of (...) class='Hi'>Wittgenstein Kripke’s Wittgenstein or Kripkenstein because, as Kripke himself emphasizes, it is “Wittgenstein’s argument as it struck Kripke, as it presented a problem for him” (Kripke 1982, 5) and “probably many of my formulations and re-castings of the argument are done in a way Wittgenstein would not himself approve” (Kripke 1982, 5). Such an interpretation has been the subject of tremendous discussions since its publication, and this has formed a huge literature on the topic of meaning skepticism in general and Wittgenstein’s later view in particular. -/- According to the skeptical argument that Kripke extracts from Wittgenstein’s later remarks on meaning and rule-following, there is no fact about a speaker’s behavioral, mental or social life that can metaphysically determine, or constitute, what she means by her words and also fix a determinate connection between those meanings and the correctness of her use of these words. Such a skeptical conclusion has a disastrous consequence for the classical realist view of meaning: if we insist on the idea that meaning is essentially a factual matter, we face the bizarre conclusion that there is thereby “no such thing as meaning anything by any word” (Kripke 1982, 55). -/- According to the skeptical solution that Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein, such a radical conclusion is intolerable because we certainly do very often mean certain things by our words. The skeptical solution begins by rejecting the view that results in such a paradoxical conclusion, that is, the classical realist conception of meaning. The skeptical solution offers then a new picture of the practice of meaning-attribution, according to which we can legitimately assert that a speaker means something specific by her words if we, as members of a speech-community, can observe, in enough cases, that her use agrees with ours. We can judge, for instance, that she means by “green” what we mean by this word, namely, green, if we observe that her use of “green” agrees with our way of using it. Attributing meanings to others’ words, therefore, brings in the notion of a speech-community, whose members are uniform in their responses. As a result, there can be no private language. -/- This article begins by introducing Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s skeptical problem presented in Chapter 2 of Kripke’s book. It then explicates Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s skeptical solution to the skeptical problem, which is offered in Chapter 3 of the book. The article ends by reviewing some of the most important responses to the skeptical problem and the skeptical solution. (shrink)

In "Wittgenstein in relation to his times" Von Wright1 poses a dilemma regarding the relationship between three wittgensteinian tenets: (i) the view that individual's beliefs and thoughts are entrenched in accepted language games and socially sanctioned forms of life (ii) the view that "philosophical problems are disquietudes of the mind caused by some malfunctioning in the language games, and hence in the way of life of the community". (iii) the "rejection of the scientific-technological civilisation of industrialised (...) societies". The dilemma is the following: is Wittgenstein's rejection of technological civilisation strictly linked to his general view of philosophy? Or is it "only contingently - that is for historical and psychological reasons, connected with the other two in Wittgenstein's thought"? Von Wright argues, even with some doubts, for a strong link between Wittgenstein's rejection of technological society and his general approach to philosophy; the argument is as follows: "because of the interlocking of language and ways of life, a disorder in the former reflects disorder in the latter. If philosophical problems are symptomatic of language, producing malignant outgrowths which obscure our thinking, then there must be a cancer in the Lebensweise, in the way of life itself" (p.119). The argument seems to be not compelling; among some of the main philosophical problems Wittgenstein is willing to "cure" there are misunderstandings lying in the history of our language much time before our technological civilisation (Wittgenstein refers to Augustine and Plato as suffering these disorder of language). We should generalise the criticism to technological society to the effect of enclosing ancient Greece. In this way the criticism seems to loose all its polemical vein, becoming a generic criticism of the structures of western thought since Greece. But probably this was the point Wittgenstein wanted to make in his criticism of the idea of progress and technological civilisation. I will argue therefore for the second horn of the dilemma, relying on another kind of de facto argument: contemporary technological civilisation is embodying some of Wittgenstein's main ideas (we might also note that these ideas are among the strongest points Wittgenstein gives against Greek classical tradition in philosophy).. (shrink)

In "Wittgenstein in relation to his times" Von Wright1 poses a dilemma regarding the relationship between three wittgensteinian tenets: (i) the view that individual's beliefs and thoughts are entrenched in accepted language games and socially sanctioned forms of life (ii) the view that "philosophical problems are disquietudes of the mind caused by some malfunctioning in the language games, and hence in the way of life of the community". (iii) the "rejection of the scientific-technological civilisation of industrialised (...) societies". The dilemma is the following: is Wittgenstein's rejection of technological civilisation strictly linked to his general view of philosophy? Or is it "only contingently - that is for historical and psychological reasons, connected with the other two in Wittgenstein's thought"? Von Wright argues, even with some doubts, for a strong link between Wittgenstein's rejection of technological society and his general approach to philosophy; the argument is as follows: "because of the interlocking of language and ways of life, a disorder in the former reflects disorder in the latter. If philosophical problems are symptomatic of language, producing malignant outgrowths which obscure our thinking, then there must be a cancer in the Lebensweise, in the way of life itself" (p.119). The argument seems to be not compelling; among some of the main philosophical problems Wittgenstein is willing to "cure" there are misunderstandings lying in the history of our language much time before our technological civilisation (Wittgenstein refers to Augustine and Plato as suffering these disorder of language). We should generalise the criticism to technological society to the effect of enclosing ancient Greece. In this way the criticism seems to loose all its polemical vein, becoming a generic criticism of the structures of western thought since Greece. But probably this was the point Wittgenstein wanted to make in his criticism of the idea of progress and technological civilisation. I will argue therefore for the second horn of the dilemma, relying on another kind of de facto argument: contemporary technological civilisation is embodying some of Wittgenstein's main ideas (we might also note that these ideas are among the strongest points Wittgenstein gives against Greek classical tradition in philosophy).. (shrink)

Against the view that the normativity of mental content is social content, I argue that it is not, examining the views of Wittgenstein, Davidson, Brandom and Pettit.

This paper explores the relevance of Wittgenstein’s philosophi- cal psychology for the two major contemporary approaches to the relation between language and cognition. As Pinker describes it, on the ‘Standard Social Science Model’ language is ‘an insidious shaper of thought’. According to Pinker’s own widely–shared alternative view, ‘Language is the magnificent faculty that we use to get thoughts from one head to another’. I investigate Wittgenstein’s powerful challenges to the hypothe- sis that language is a device for (...) communicating independently constituted (or individuated) thoughts. I argue that Wittgenstein offers instead a subtle version of the thesis that language determines thought. (shrink)

Davidson’s later philosophy of language has been inspired by Wittgenstein’s Investigations, but Davidson by no means sympathizes with the sceptical problem and solution Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein. Davidson criticizes the sceptical argument for relying on the rule-following conception of meaning, which is, for him, a highly problematic view. He also casts doubt on the plausibility of the sceptical solution as unjustifiably bringing in shared practices of a speech community. According to Davidson, it is rather success in (...) mutual interpretation that explains success in the practice of meaning something by an utterance. I will argue that Davidson’s objections to the sceptical problem and solution are misplaced as they rely on a misconstrual of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s view. I will also argue that Davidson’s alternative solution to the sceptical problem is implausible, since it fails to block the route to the sceptical problem. I will then offer a problematic trilemma for Davidson. (shrink)

Against the view that the normativity of mental content is social content, I argue that it is not, examining the views of Wittgenstein, Davidson, Brandom and Pettit.

It is often said that literature is cognitively valuable, and that there are many things that we learn from literary fiction. But it is hard to say how exactly this process of acquiring new beliefs and expanding our knowledge takes place through engagement with literature. In this paper, I develop an account of this process, claiming that literary works are a special kind of testimony. I then go on and claim that testimony can not only transfer knowledge from one person (...) to another (this is the role testimony is traditionally given), but can also help an audience in reaching some other cognitive states considered valuable, such as understanding. Grounding literature in its social (institutional) setting and insisting on its humanistic aspect, in the last part of the paper I develop the roles of author-as-testifier and reader-as-audience and try to show how a reader can in fact learn from literary fiction. (shrink)

Richard Rorty has drawn a distinction between three ways philosophers in the 20th Century have conceived of the enterprise of philosophy. There are those who see it as the guardian of the sciences, those who treat it as a kina of poetry, and those who view philosophy as a political exercise. In this paper, I try to show that Wittgenstein, despite certain popular conceptions of his project, belongs more in the third group than in the other two. The (...) paper focuses on Wittgenstein's notes On Certainty in order to reveal the structure of Wittgenstein's notion of epistemological privilege and how it depends on communal agreement and behaviour. The system of conventions and commitments on which our vanouis practices are grounded is not justifiable. It is a matter of forms of life. (shrink)

Thought experiments play a prominent role in philosophical inquiry. And yet we lack a good understanding of how they work and how they are supposed to supply evidence or knowledge in inquiry. This dissertation offers a novel account of the epistemology of philosophical thought experiments, namely, the reason-responsiveness view. The view is inspired by a virtue ethical tradition that flowers in John McDowell (1994) and Miranda Fricker (2007). Drawing on this virtue ethical tradition, I argue that knowing in (...) philosophical thought experiments is achieved through the exercise of the virtue of sensibility, which has three distinct features. First, it is social in origin, acquired through our training in a human language and as ordinary members of a community. Second, it is recognitional in the sense that although our sensibility gives us the ability to classify situations, whether real or hypothetical and to resonate with rational considerations for or against a given classificational judgement (i.e., the judgements we form in thought experiments), it does not equip us with a reflective ability to fully articulate those reasons in an infallible way. And third, it allows us to project across various contexts, both in real and in hypothetical situations. And this ability to project, I argue further, does not come from the ability of people to grasp concepts or to have certain mental episodes or phenomenology or to grasp universals or to have mastery of the application conditions of rules or from belonging to some exclusive club or from enjoying a certain superior access to concepts or access to philosophically interesting phenomena not available to ordinary people. On the contrary, that we do comes down to “our sharing routes of interest and feeling, mode of response, senses of humour and of significance, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation—all the while of organism Wittgenstein calls “forms of life” (Cavell, 1969, p.52). The account is then used to shore up the claim of epistemological continuity, which asserts that the epistemology of thought experiments is an extension of social cognition or social epistemology (Cappelen, 2012; Deutsch, 2015; Williamson 2007), and to offer a claim of epistemological-continuity-style defence of philosophical thought experiments against two major objections in the literature, namely, the negative experimentalist challenge (see Machery, 2017) and the ordinary language challenge ( Baz, 2016, 2017). (shrink)

Starting with Gottlob Frege's foundational theories of sense and reference, Miller provides a useful introduction to the formal logic used in all subsequent philosophy of language. He communicates a sense of active philosophical debate by confronting the views of the early theorists concerned with building systematic theories - such as Frege, Bertrand Russell, and the logical positivists - with the attacks mounted by sceptics - such as W.O. Quine, Saul Kripke, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This leads to important excursions into (...) related areas of metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science that present the more recent attempts to save the notions of sense and meaning by philosophers such as Paul Grice, John Searle, Jerry Fodor, Colin McGinn, and Crispin Wright. Miller then returns to the systematic program by examining the formal theories of Donald Davidson, concluding with a chapter surveying the relevance of philosophy of language to the broader metaphysical debates between realists and anti-realists. Miller's clear, engaged, and coherently structured approach makes Philosophy of Language an ideal text for undergraduate courses. The guides to further reading provided in each chapter help the reader pursue interesting topics further and facilitate using the book in conjunction with primary sources. (shrink)

Marjorie Perloff’s Wittgenstein’s Ladder investigates the relationship between Wittgenstein’s manner of writing—a “process of interrogation... tentative, self-canceling, and self-correcting” —and what she terms the “‘ordinary language’ poetics so central to our own time”. “Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry,” Wittgenstein proposed, in Perloff’s translation of a remark in Culture and Value. What form of poetry, Perloff asks, do we find in Wittgenstein’s work? We find a “poetry” which, “travel[ing] over a (...) wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction,” attempts to “command a clear view of the use of our words” through a sort of “understanding which consists in ‘seeing connexions’”. In particular, we find a poetry which brings out the beauty and complexity and strangeness in everyday communication by “arranging what we have always known” into texts in which we might think language through, from within. In the words of the conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth: “One of the lessons for art which we can derive from the Philosophical Investigations is that I believe the later Wittgenstein attempted with his parables and language-games to construct theoretical object-texts which could make recognizable aspects of language that, philosophically, he could not assert explicitly”. Just as Wittgenstein-as-philosopher constructs texts which make language visible rather than employing language to make assertions, so Wittgenstein-as-poet, Perloff suggests, dramatizes our life in language rather than using language for self-expression. (shrink)

Wittgenstein published next to nothing on the philosophy of religion and yet his conception of religious belief has been immensely influential. While the concluding, ‘mystical’ remarks in his early work, the Tractatus, are notorious, we find only a single allusion to theology in his magnum opus, the Philosophical Investigations, posthumously published in 1953. Wittgenstein’s mature views on the nature of religious belief must therefore be pieced together from scattered remarks made in his notebooks from the 1930s, the Lectures (...) and Conversations on Religious Belief, the Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough and from what has come to be known as Culture and Value. All of the above, as well as recorded conversations with friends, testify to Wittgenstein’s life-long involvement with religious issues, so it is not readily explicable why Wittgenstein remained silent about them in his most important work. But then Wittgenstein once said to his friend, Maurice Drury, ‘It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?’ This remark might equally well apply to religion. Wittgenstein’s reflections about religious belief are inspired by a number of thinkers, such as, for example, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and William James, as well as most notably, perhaps, the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. With the latter he shares the view that Christianity is not a theory about the behaviour of supernatural entities, but an existence-communication, whose demands are primarily ethical, not intellectual. The believer, on this conception, is supposed to transform himself, not his ontological commitments; he is called to exist in the truth as lived out by Christ, the paradigm or pattern, not to engage in speculation about the metaphysical compatibility of the ‘two natures’ of Christ, say. Wittgenstein once wrote: ‘If Christianity is the truth then all the philosophy that is written about it is false.’ If this is indeed apt, it would seem to confine pretty much everything that goes on in philosophy of religion and theology departments to the scrapheap. Small wonder, therefore, that Wittgenstein’s views about the nature of religious belief continue to engender the fiercest opposition, both in those who are sympathetic to religion and in those who are not. In this chapter I will concentrate solely on Wittgenstein’s later conception of religious belief and shall leave his Tractatus views to one side. (shrink)

The edition of the Nachlass from the early thirties by Michael Nedo and the completion of the "Bergen Electronic Edition" (BEE) have provided Wittgenstein scholars with all the material required to investigate the author's philosophical development starting with his auto-criticism of the "Tractatus" and leading to his later views. Wittgenstein's strategy of dictating from his notebooks and cutting up the typescripts to rearrange paragraphs into sequences of remarks is well documented in Nedo's edition and the BEE provides convenient (...) facsimile access to every page Wittgenstein wrote or edited throughout the process. Some researchers have begun to revise received opinions that were based upon the "books" previously published by the trustees. (Hrachovec 2002, 2004, Kientzler 1997, Nyiri 2002, Pichler 2004, Stern 2002) Yet, the scientific community has barely begun to discover the richness and density of the philosophical endeavor manifesting itself in this material. There has, understandably, been an interest to trace the origin of remarks, well-known from the "Philosophical Investigations", providing some background to Wittgenstein's most popular ideas. Various doctrines of what is becoming known as the "middle Wittgenstein" have been noticed, but they have themselves been perceived as more or less consolidated theories. Wittgenstein's editorial activity has been recognized as a hypertextual undertaking avant la lettre, yet there has been insufficient attention to the philosophical impact of these hypertextual strategies themselves. It is all too easy to be caught by someprovisional result captured on a printed page and to overlook the fact that some of its philosophical significance can only be recognized by considering its genesis. (shrink)

I propose to sketch my views on several aspects of the philosophy of mathematics that I take to be especially relevant to philosophy as a whole. The relevance of my discussion would, I think, become more evident, if the reader keeps in mind the function of (the philosophy of) mathematics in philosophy in providing us with more transparent aspects of general issues. I shall consider: (1) three familiar examples; (2) logic and our conceptual frame; (3) communal agreement and objective certainty; (...) (4) the transcommunal universality of mathematics; (5) the big jump to the potential infinite; (6) the reconciliation of local creation with the hypothesis of discovery; (7) Platonism as realism plus conceptualism; (8) foundational studies and mathematical practice; and (9) the decomposition of philosophical disagreements. The views of Gödel and Wittgenstein are emphasized in order to add specificity to the discussions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gregory Currie TEXT WITHOUT CONTEXT: SOME ERRORS OF STANLEY FISH "Intuition told him that the vast ineptitude of the venture would serve as proof that no fraud was afoot." —Jorge Luis Borges, "Tom Castro, the Implausible Imposter," in A Universal History ofInfamy There are those of us who seek unity, universality, patterns of invariance in any diverse multitude of particulars. With the interpretation of texts, the diversity is evident, (...) the unity, universality and invariance less so. Still, we have the text itself, a sequence of determinately meaningful signs, independent of, and a constraint on, the activities of interpreters. We universalists might want more than that, but it's a start. It's a start some people are not prepared to give us. Stanley Fish is one of them. According to him we are looking for something which does not exist, and which we do not need. I shall argue that Fish is wrong on both counts. According to Stanley Fish, there are no constraints on interpretation that transcend particular, local interpretive communities. Indeed, there is no truth or validity that is community transcendent, no standard of lightness, proof or confirmation that has any warrant other than community approval. Intellectual ascendency is always ultimately a matter of rhetorical power, and the locus of power shifts as the norms of the community change. Yet we need not worry that this implies any dangerous kind ofrelativism or subjectivism. Each ofus is deeply immersed Philosophy and Literature, © 1991, 15: 212-228 Gregory Currie213 in his or her own community. Our thoughts, intentions, and actions gain their very identity from the structure of public, communitarian relations we enter into, and the community imposes on us a tight structure of norms and intellectual options that "situate" us (a favored word in the Fish vocabulary) in such a way that it is always clear what interpretive move is appropriate.1 Fish is no epistemological anarchist in the style of Feyerabend: it is not the case, for him, that "anything goes." There is always a clear distinction between what goes and what does not; it is just that the rules, the structure, the hierarchy of options are not invariant across time or communities.2 Now we do it like this, tomorrow we may do it like that; we do it this way, they do it that way. Wherever you are, the rules are always clear, but the rules depend on where you are. I shall call this thesis "internalism." It bears some resemblance to views of the later Wittgenstein, and rather closely parallels Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific paradigms. It has a negative and a positive aspect. The negative aspect is that community-specific constraints on interpretation are all we have. The positive aspect is that they are all we need. Is internalism correct? I say it is not. I say that the positive claim is false, because internal constraints alone can never answer the relativist's challenge, when that challenge is properly understood; more about that in a moment. But this merely serves to highlight the importance of the negative thesis: if that is correct then relativism carries the day. So my primary concern here is with the negative thesis. Fish's main argument for the negative thesis is that what seems to most of us to be an obvious external constraint on interpretation—the literal meaning of the text in question—is no such thing. And he bases this claim on some arguments which purport to show that there L· no such thing as literal meaning. So my aim, it emerges at last, is to defend the idea of literal meaning. But first, I shall say something about the question of relativism. II Fish's answer to relativism, it will be remembered, is that interpretive communities constrain the interpretive choices of their members in such away that there can always be seen tobe nonarbitrary ways ofproceeding when it comes to formulating and choosing between interpretive hypotheses. This claim, the positive claim of Fish's internalism, raises two questions: Is Fish right, as a matter of fact, about the ways in which interpretive, and more generally intellectual communities constrain the 214Philosophy and Literature thoughts and actions... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Crystal Order That Is Most Concrete:The Wittgenstein HouseHui Zou (bio)IntroductionIn the instruction of architectural history, some historical references have to be mentioned in terms of the relationship between building and language. In Chapter I, Book II, of The Ten Books on Architecture, the ancient Roman theorist Vitruvius discussed the "origin of the dwelling house." According to him, the "primitive hut" originated from the gathering of men around (...) a fire through communicating in language.1 In the primitive hut, the origin of architecture was co-presented with the origin of language; the language helped establish a harmonic relationship, which developed builders' construction collectivity. Such a language-collectivity relationship was witnessed in the record of the Tower of Babel in the biblical scripture where the Lord decided to stop the human beings' construction of the tower by "confus[ing] their language there."2 During the Renaissance, the alphabetic language and the design of buildings were correlated through the application of geometry that was supposed to embody the "divine proportion." In the Franciscan professor Luca Pacioli's book On Divine Proportion, letters of the alphabet were geometricized to become objects of contemplation for tracing "God's light."3 In Chinese gardens, there has been a long tradition of naming a specific view with a poetical phrase that thematicized the scene into a meaningful unity of the view and the viewer—jing.4 In all these historical cases, language and building were integrated into a cosmological picture grounded in divine transcendence.After the modernism in architectural history of the 1960s and 1970s, a loss of meaning in architecture was widely observed,5 and the interrelationship between language and architectural design began to emerge as a prominent issue. Several trends in architectural theories during the 1960s and 1970s studied how meaning was created through architectural design. One was the post-modern development in architecture that sought to apply classic architectural elements to the facades of new buildings as gestures to [End Page 22] the past.6 Another trend was phenomenological, which attempted to discover a common language of building contexts that led to building humanized living environments.7 Yet another trend was to apply linguistic approaches to the rational methodology of architectural analysis.8 The analogy of building with language was provoked by an impelling sense of the crisis that the traditional embodied order was being lost in the prevalent instrumentalized practice of architecture.The predicament of the loss of meaning in contemporary architecture can be traced as far back in philosophy as the splitting of mind and body proposed by René Descartes in the seventeenth century. This split began to distance architecture from its traditional embodiment of transcendental meanings in the second half of the eighteenth century9 and finally led to the division of the metaphysical and physical parts in modern architecture, especially after the industrialization of the nineteenth century. Correspondingly, language became an instrumental means for architecture to impose posterior "ideas" to the material bodies of buildings rather than acting as an inherent component of architectural design for the creation of meaning in architecture. The desire for meanings in modern architecture, based on the split of the metaphysical and physical, theoretically catered to linguistic research, such as semiotics, and tended to define architecture as a symbol. The linguistic structure of signifier-signified was, however, coarsely transplanted into architectural theory and reduced architectural symbolism to a simple dualism of idea and form in which the former was usually arbitrarily applied to the latter by a designer. Such an arbitrary imposition of external "meanings" onto an architectural form through language intensified their separation, which in turn produced nihilism in architecture.The lessons learned from the transplantation of linguistic studies into architectural theories remind us that we need to pay close attention to the historical events that could open up the interaction between language and building and reveal the "fundamental linguistic character of our experience of the world" in Gadamer's sense.10 A house designed and built by Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) provides a unique case for us to contemplate this issue. My historical study of the Wittgenstein House is not to understand Wittgenstein's subjective intentions... (shrink)