Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates: Perspectives & Debates 3868381678, 9783868381672

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Introduction
I. Aesthetic Investigations
Tractarian Aesthetics
Aesthetics as Methodology in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Thought: The Operational Character of Family Resemblances
His (Freud) Explanation Does What Aesthetics Does: it Puts Two Factors Together
II. Aesthetic Grammar
Visual Space as Aesthetic Problem
Seeing as and Semantic Expansion
Conceptual Cartography and Aesthetics –a Preliminary Study
III. Musical Understanding
Typology and Functions of “Hearing-as”
Notes on Aesthetic ComprehensionSound beyond Image
Musical Analysis versus Grammatical AnalysisSaying, Whistling, Describing, Understanding
IV. Ethics and Aesthetics
Prolegomenon to a Morality of Music
From Art to EthicsExemplary Nature of Art Works and Aspectual Perception
V. Theory of Art
Art as Document
From Language Games to Analytic Iconographya Comparison between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Daniel Arasse
INDEX NOMINUM

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Alessandro Arbo | Michel Le Du | Sabine Plaud (Eds.) Wittgenstein and Aesthetics Perspectives and Debates

APORIA Apori/a HRSG. VON / EDITED BY Jesús Padilla Gálvez (University of Castilla-La Mancha) ADVISORY BOARD Pavo Barišić (University of Split) Michel Le Du (University of Strasbourg) Miguel García-Baró (University of Comillas) Margit Gaffal (University of Castilla-La Mancha) Guillermo Hurtado (National Autonomous University of Mexico) Antonio Marques (New University of Lisbon) Lorenzo Peña (Spanish National Research Council) Nicanor Ursua Lezaun (University of the Basque Country) Nuno Venturinha (New University of Lisbon) Pablo Quintanilla (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru) Aporia is a new series devoted to studies in the field of philosophy. Aporia (Aπορία) means philosophical puzzle and the aim of the series is to present contributions by authors who systematically investigate current problems. Aporia (Aπορία) puts special emphasis on the publication of concise arguments on the topics studied. The publication has to contribute to the explanation of current philosophical problem, using a systematic or a historic approach. Contributions should concern relevant philosophical topics and should reflect the ongoing progress of scientific development.

Volume 6

Alessandro Arbo | Michel Le Du Sabine Plaud (Eds.)

Wittgenstein and Aesthetics Perspectives and Debates

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CONTENTS Introduction

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I. Aesthetic Investigations JOÃO VERGILIO GALLERANI CUTER Tractarian Aesthetics

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CHIARA CAPPELLETTO Aesthetics as Methodology in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Thought: The Operational Character of Family Resemblances

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ANTONIA SOULEZ His (Freud) Explanation Does What Aesthetics Does: it Puts Two Factors Together

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II. Aesthetic Grammar JESÚS PADILLA GÁLVEZ Visual Space as Aesthetic Problem

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MICHEL LE DU Seeing as and Semantic Expansion

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JULIA TANNEY Conceptual Cartography and Aesthetics – a Preliminary Study

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III. Musical Understanding ALESSANDRO ARBO Typology and Functions of “Hearing-as”

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LEONARDO DISTASO Notes on Aesthetic Comprehension: Sound beyond Image

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MARIE-ANNE LESCOURRET Musical Analysis versus Grammatical Analysis: Saying, Whistling, Describing, Understanding

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IV. Ethics and Aesthetics JERROLD LEVINSON Prolegomenon to a Morality of Music

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SANDRINE DARSEL From Art to Ethics: Exemplary Nature of Art Works and Aspectual Perception

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V. Theory of Art MAURIZIO FERRARIS Art as Document

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SABINE PLAUD From Language Games to Analytic Iconography: a Comparison between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Daniel Arasse

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Index nominum

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Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD Strasbourg University The papers collected in this volume were all presented at a conference held at Strasbourg University in January 2011: “Les raisons de l’esthétique, à partir de Wittgenstein” (organized with the support of two research units: EA 3402 “Approches contemporaines de la création et de la réflexion artistiques,” and EA 2326 “Philosophie allemande”). The purpose was to reevaluate the epistemological status of aesthetics in the light of Wittgenstein’s conceptions. This conference sought, therefore, to continue in the same direction as other seminal contributions to the discipline: the conference on “Wittgenstein and Aesthetics” held in June 2010 in Southampton, and the book edited by Peter B. Lewis: Wittgenstein, Aesthetics and Philosophy (London, Ashgate Publishing, 2004). Wittgenstein’s writings have of course elicited a lot of debates and controversies, many of which are now commonplace topics in academic discussions. Yet, Wittgenstein’s considerations on aesthetics have raised fewer comments and debates than, for instance, his writings on language, mind, or mathematics. One aim of this volume is to reconsider this aspect: the contributors were invited to examine the notion of aesthetics in a broad sense, and to consider some of Wittgenstein’s concepts – such as aspectual perception, the criterion/symptom distinction, the opposition between grounds and causes – that may bring new theoretical material to contemporary aesthetic reflection. Another aim of this book is to tap these concepts in order to draw connections between aesthetic concerns and various areas of philosophical research: philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, theory of knowledge. Accordingly, the book tries both to deepen specific topics (such as musical understanding) and to encompass aesthetic issues in a broader perspective. By editing it, we thus sought to follow the advice given to us by this (anti-)philosopher when he invited his readers to throw away the ladder he had himself erected with his (pseudo-)propositions. In other words, the point of this book is not Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates, eds. Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 7-12.

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exclusively to clarify what Wittgenstein said about art and aesthetics (and how he said it), but also to examine how these conceptions may be exploited nowadays in the field of aesthetics, and how we might proceed our own way on some of the paths Wittgenstein has started to open up. The book is divided into five sections: aesthetic investigations, aesthetic grammar, musical understanding, ethics aesthetics and art theory. I. Aesthetic Investigations In his paper entitled “Tractarian Aesthetics,” João Vergílio Gallerani Cuter tries to answer the following questions: Is it possible to speak about “Tractarian aesthetics”? Does it make any sense to look for aesthetic values “endorsed” (or even “implied”) by the Tractatus? In what sense, and to what extent, can we look for such values? Is it possible, for instance, to use “Tractarian principles” (or something of the sort) in order to assess a work of art? How should we interpret the statement that “ethics and aesthetics are one”? Are they strictly identical? Or do they simply share a common ground? In “Aesthetics as Methodology in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Thought: The Operational Character of Family Resemblances,” Chiara Cappelletto underlines that, already in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein writes that “Belief in the causal nexus is superstition,” and she stresses how he maintains this conviction throughout his philosophical development. The point is then to find reasons allowing for a description of how what happens may happen. Such is the function of family resemblances: they connect different elements, each of which reveals its identity by means of a recognition of its relation with other elements of the same epistemological framework. Under the title “His [Freud’s] Explanation Does What Aesthetics Does: it Puts Two Factors Together” (taken from passages of Wittgenstein’s 1932-1935 Cambridge Lectures), Antonia Soulez claims that aesthetics, according to Wittgenstein, is descriptive, placing things side by side so as to exhibit characteristics conveyed by reasons, intended as “further descriptions,” or as justifying features in a work of art. It does not answer the question “why” by alleging causes: the description of a thing is opposed to causal connections. Aesthetics has nothing to do with psychology (or psychoanalysis), whose ambition is to become an empirical science based on experiments. Indeed, Freud confuses the two, treating psychological questions by means of representations mimicking those of science. His confusion unfortunately makes psychoanalysis appear as an

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empirical science dealing with causes, according to a method relying on a hypothesis (the Unconscious). II. Aesthetic Grammar In the fourth chapter of this book, entitled “Visual Space as Aesthetic Problem,” Jesús Padilla Gálvez tries to reconstruct the contributions that Wittgenstein made to the field of aesthetics. He deals especially with the reconstruction of a theory of sensory perception, which is characterized by the program of “minima visibilia.” This program is analyzed by employing the phenomenological method. In the context of visual space, three problems are addressed, namely blurredness, indistinctness, and sensory impressions. A distinction between the visual space and the Euclidean space can only be achieved by comparing their respective typical structures. The text focuses especially on the relation between the seeing subject and the visual space. To get a deeper insight into this problem, the visual space is compared to a two-dimensional picture. In order to establish “minima visibilia,” the role of color has to be clarified. Michel Le Du, in “Seeing as and Semantic Expansion,” tries both to assess the enduring relevance of Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect perception and family resemblances, and to connect these remarks to current issues in philosophy of language and epistemology. We build analogies as much as we discover them, and the outcomes of such building processes may have very different epistemic scopes. Numerous analogies are aspect-seeing; others have a deeper ontological significance. Some analogies are clearly fictional. They deserve to be called, following Max Black, “as-if” analogies. The scopes of many others (both in the human and in the natural sciences) remain controversial. Consequently, the purpose of his text is to sketch an overview of the various ways of making analogies and to analyze the role played by metaphors therein. Julia Tanney’s “Conceptual Cartography and Aesthetics” addresses the following questions: What happens to philosophical investigation if we relinquish the idea that the “elasticities of significance” of our expressions are discernible outside the contexts in which they are employed? What happens, thus, if we cannot presume to know in advance the function of an utterance, the dimensions along which it is to be evaluated – and so what is communicated and whether it is understood – in virtue of knowing its grammatical form and the words in which it consists? Whereas traditional conceptual analysis seeks to uncover a (partial) list of rules that articulate

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our grasp of a concept – understood as something that exists independently of our practices – “naturalized” philosophy proposes theories about what are taken to be the genuine referents – the properties, states, relations and events – at which our linguistic expressions merely gesture. But if concept nouns such as “beauty,” “art,” “intention,” or “expression,” for example, refer neither to abstract objects nor to meaning rules, nor serve to indicate real properties or relations, but serve instead a different-order task, then both the traditional and the naturalist programs are threatened. Julia Tanney advances the revival of the argument for the cartographical approach and suggests very briefly how it might be applied to an investigation of aesthetic concepts. III. Musical Understanding Alessandro Arbo, in “Typology and Functions of ‘Hearing-as’” tries to broaden the perspective opened up by Wittgenstein’s remarks through an analysis of the phrase “hearing as.” Uses of this expression are tested in some standard situations, and discussed in order to highlight its key functions. Four main functions are identified: conceptual (it highlights the opportunity to conceive the perception of music in terms of aspectual perception), aesthetico-pragmatic (it solicits and makes easier the perception of aspects, inducing in this way a musical understanding), epistemological (it allows us to examine the musical understanding of which a listener is capable), and experimental (it helps us to test musical ambiguities). Some variations of its purpose are eventually examined, according to the nature of the object listened to: when such an object is recognized as a musical work, the device favors a specific grasp, involving a knowledge of the context of the composition and a recognition of the author’s intentions. Leonardo Distaso, in his paper “Notes on Aesthetic Comprehension: Sound Beyond Image,” starts from Wittgenstein’s concept of a derivation of aesthetic understanding, and tries to show what part is played by the sound (and sonority) of words in an understanding of language that may overcome the connections between picture and representation, in order to grasp the problem of art, and in particular music, with respect to language in general. Marie-Anne Lescourret, in her text “Musical Analysis versus Grammatical Analysis: Saying, Whistling, Describing, Understanding,” recalls that musicians and musicologists know that, as Wittgenstein writes,

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analysis is the means by which one may “extract a symphony out of the score, this bunch of notes”: analysis is based upon rules and registered precepts, regardless of any affection or effect produced (or not) by the artistic proposition. Do philosophy and musical theory, she asks, allow for a rational approach, for a rational – i.e. universal – explanation of art, of a field usually concerned with sensitivity and subjectivity? More precisely, would Wittgenstein’s philosophy permit a rational understanding of music, of an art so remote from words? IV. Ethics and Aesthetics In “Prolegomenon to a Morality of Music,” Jerrold Levinson discusses the basis for bestowing on instrumental music something that could be equated to a moral force or moral quality, taking as a springboard a recent essay on that theme by Peter Kivy. Sandrine Darsel, in “From Art to Ethics: Exemplarity of Works of Art and Aspectual Perception,” then underlines that ethical education is not directed towards knowledge (how to distinguish between right and wrong), but rather towards dispositions to act (how to act, and what feelings one should feel ). She claims that works of art, because of their exemplarity, play a part in this learning, and she rejects the putative inertia of the exemplarity of works of arts: far from being mere illustrations of ethical inferences, works of art are able to cultivate the necessary perceptual, logical, emotional and imaginative dispositions in their recipient. Eventually, her investigation leads her to an examination of conceptual tools devised by Wittgenstein: the connection between aesthetics and ethics, criticisms towards a reading of examples as secondary and inert, and, last but not least, the notion of aspectual perception that overcomes the gap between sensation and thought. V. Art Theory Maurizio Ferraris, in “Art as Document,” recalls that a common family of arguments, inspired by Wittgenstein’s famous remarks about games, has it that, by their nature, the phenomena of art are too diverse to admit of the unification that a satisfactory definition strives for, or that “a definition of art, were there to be such a thing, would exert a stifling influence on artistic creativity.” The quotation is taken from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ad vocem “The Definition of Art.” The author addresses this thesis and tries to show that it is not at all difficult to find,

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rather than the definition of art, the definition of the kind of game played by art. This game is the game of documents, and artwork is a kind of document. Sabine Plaud, in her paper “From Language-Games to Analytic Iconography: a Comparison between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Daniel Arasse,” draws a comparison between Wittgenstein’s method of “language-games” and the methodological devices introduced by the art historian Daniel Arasse. Wittgenstein’s language-games are in fact schematic pictures of linguistic practices devised by the philosopher in order to gain a better comprehension of the latter. Her claim is that Wittgenstein’s analysis of such philosophical pictures offers an analogy with Arasse’s analytical iconography, intended as a method of elucidation of the compositeness of artistic pictures. Acknowledgements We would like to thank warmly Amanda Hascher for her close rereading of the manuscript. In the edition of this volume, her detailed remarks and comments have been of a great help, for which we express the most sincere gratitude.

I. Aesthetic Investigations

Tractarian Aesthetics João Vergílio GALLERANI CUTER Universidade de São Paulo Does a Tractarian aesthetics exist or not? Is it possible, for instance, to read the history of art in accordance with Tractarian principles? Is it even possible to assess a single work of art making use of what could be reasonably called “a Tractarian viewpoint”? Would the stern literary style of the Tractatus be a good example of this kind of use? Were the house he designed and the sculpture he commissioned both made according to these “principles”? I will argue that you can’t give a qualified affirmative answer to these questions unless you first give them a resolute negative one. Let us reflect for a moment about the only passage in the Tractatus where the word “aesthetics” is mentioned. There, Wittgenstein says that “ethics and aesthetics are one” (6.421), immediately after saying that “ethics is transcendental,” and (as such) cannot be said [sich … nicht aussprechen lässt]. It seems that our first task is to give a clear sense to this supposed identity between ethics and aesthetics. But I think it is necessary to make some methodological remarks before we proceed. So let me tell what I am not going to do. Let me say some words about how these passages should not be read. In what follows, I will try to observe a general exegetical maxim which I take to be of fundamental importance. It could be seen as a particular case of the so-called “principle of charity.” In my reading of some passages of the Tractatus, I will always be assuming the premise that Wittgenstein was not a plagiarist. He was not just copying ideas from Schopenhauer, or any other philosopher, and grafting them into the final part of his book. I do not say that just because I think Wittgenstein was an honest man. My point is a little bit stronger than that. I assume that even if he were an utter charlatan, he would not have been able to perform the grafting. I mean that I can even be convinced that Wittgenstein copied this or that from someone else’s work. As a reader, I simply cannot be satisfied with this kind of intentional or unintentional coincidence. The exegetical question is always directed to the sense of a proposition inside the whole book. We must establish, not the place where we can find a similar result,

Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates (Eds. Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD), Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 15-23.

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but the Tractarian path which leads to exactly that result, and not to any other one. With this methodological principle in mind, let us try to understand what Wittgenstein means by the “transcendental” character he attributes to ethics and aesthetics. This is a property that they share with logic. Logic is said to be transcendental, in the sense of not being a doctrine, a theory, but only a reflection, a “specular image” of the world (6.13). So logic is transcendental in at least two complementary senses. First of all, it cannot be described – it cannot be the subject of a meaningful talk. But logic cannot be described for a quite Tractarian reason. It does not point to any accidental state of the world – it does not describe any “fact.” It simply reflects those aspects which the world must share with language if representation is to be possible at all. The logic of names mirrors the combinatorial order of objects, while the truth-functions mirror the accidental condition of any fact. So logic is not only transcendental in the sense of not being describable – it is also a condition of possibility of any description. Now let us proceed to the crucial point. We have to decide in which sense ethics and aesthetics are to be considered “transcendental” in the Tractatus. Are they just ineffable, or are they also to be counted among the conditions of sense? In other words, are ethics and aesthetics “transcendental” in the same sense as logic, and for similar reasons? Or in another sense, and for different reasons? The first and immediate consequence of the second reading would naturally be the admission of ineffabilities which have nothing to do with the general conditions of sense. At this point, it will be helpful to briefly review a short list of these conditions. First of all, there must be logically simple objects associated with certain combinatorial possibilities. The existence of these objects, their logical simplicity and their combinatorial possibilities are the first things which cannot be said. They must be shown by the ultimate structure of language. Moreover, there must be a set of names, each one linked to exactly one object, and reproducing the combinatorial possibilities of that object. Again, these logical properties of names cannot be described – not at least as logical properties of certain symbols. As soon as we recognize the symbol behind the sign, we must see these internal properties, and see that they cannot be said. Finally, we have the internal relation holding between a determinate group of propositions and any proposition built out

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of that group by means of a truth-operation. The operation performed to build this proposition cannot be described. I can always negate a proposition, for instance, but it is impossible to describe the kind of change which is thereby effected. The general ground for the ineffability of logic is that any attempt to express the logical conditions of sense would already presuppose them. If I try to say, for instance, that α is a logically simple object, then in this sentence the Greek letter alpha must be a logically simple name which is “already” attached to the named object. If I could describe the workings of negation, I would have a proposition which, as any possible description, is equivalent to the double negation of itself. So the workings of negation are presupposed in any sentence – be it a negative one or not. This is what gives the word “transcendental” its double meaning when applied to logic. To repeat and stress a very important idea, logic is transcendental not only because it cannot be described, but also because it is a condition of possibility of any description. So must be ethics and aesthetics, if they are to be transcendental in the same sense as logic. But at this point, we seem to arrive at a dead end. If we choose to say that they are transcendental in exactly the same sense, it is hard to tell what the difference between them and logic could be. If we take the opposite direction, and look for differences, it is difficult to say where we should stop. Should we go as far as to say that, although ineffable, they have nothing to do with the logical underpinnings of language? In this case, it will be difficult to avoid the “plagiarist” reading we criticized some moments ago. Let us see why. When we take this course of reasoning we will inevitably favor a purely negative reading of Wittgenstein's comments about absolute and relative values. On aphorism 6.41, he says: The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value — and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world.

It seems that this passage involves a rather simple line of thought. We can value some actions and events by their consequences. We can say, for

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instance, that a painting is “aesthetically valuable” because it arouses such and such individual or collective feelings. But of course, we could ask a similar question about these consequences themselves. Why should those feelings be positively valued? Why should we want them to be aroused? We can mention another practical consequence – saying, for instance, that these feelings favor the unity of the city, the progress of humanity or what not. But any event in the world we mention will be subject to the same question which we made about the painting itself: “why should we value it?” Sooner or later, we will run out of factual answers, and we will have to face a very old and familiar dilemma. Either we assume that values are just cultural or psychological illusions – that they are just facts describable in terms of pleasure, utility, etc.; or we assume the existence of absolute values lying outside the changing flux of the world. What is the Tractarian way out of this dilemma? The first possibility is to assume a purely conditional reading. Wittgenstein would not be giving any logical reason to accept the existence of absolute values. Any commitment of this kind would exceed the limits of logic. The only thing that we could establish at a purely logical level is the possible existence of absolute values, and their consequent ineffability. There can be no doubt that the wording of aphorism 6.41 favors this kind of reading. It shall not say that “there is a value which is of value.” It says that if such a value exists, then it cannot be found inside the world. But this wording alone is not a sufficient reason for us to adopt a conditional reading. The truth of a conditional is not incompatible with the truth of its antecedent. Moreover, we must consider some disadvantages which come with the pack. According to the “conditional reading,” absolute values would have a place, but not a presence in the book. There would be no specifically Tractarian conception of these values – not at least a conception that could be organically linked to the rest of the book. So we could feel free to fill the gap with any piece of someone else’s philosophy. We could even suppose that Wittgenstein himself did so. By the summer of 1916, he realized he could assemble an excellent book on logic. Probably pressed by his experiences during the war, he thought – “Why shouldn’t I also write something about the meaning of life? That is a pretty important matter!” He then chose here and there (in Tolstoy, Schopenhauer, and the Bible) some seeds of wisdom, rendered them in the solemn style of the Tractatus, and placed the new aphorism at the end of the book, as a kind of gran finale. The only rationale behind them would be conditional and negative – he personally believed in the existence of absolute values, but could not

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establish their existence on logical grounds only. From a logical point of view, we could only say that if those grandiose things do exist, they are not facts. They lie outside the world. Although this is a highly impoverishing reading, I would like to insist that it is a possible one, and that it has some textual evidence on its side. As I am obviously favoring a different reading, I would like to bring some textual evidence that Wittgenstein was not speaking in conditional terms. Let us examine what he says about the subject of ethics. The English translation of aphorism 6.423 reads as follows: Of the will as the subject of the ethical we cannot speak. And the will as a phenomenon is only of interest for psychology.

The word used in the original is “Träger,” which is better translated by “bearer.” That was the word chosen by Ogden and Ramsey in 1922. Wittgenstein himself asked them to use the word “subject” instead of “bearer” in the 1933 corrected edition1. So we can be sure that the word is correct. But in this case, we have to recognize a close connection between ethics and solipsism. Unless we are ready to admit the existence of a whole family of transcendental subjects, the “metaphysical subject” which is mentioned in 5.641 must be the “bearer of the ethical” that we find at the end of the book. And the metaphysical subject is not something that is being “conditionally” introduced, and that could be properly conceived as a borrowing from Tolstoy or Schopenhauer. It is, as Wittgenstein says, a limit of the world, whose existence makes its entrance in philosophy as soon as we realize that the “world is my world.” We must now remember that “world” is a technical term in the Tractatus. The world is the totality of facts, and this totality is only given as a cut inside a much broader realm called “logical space.” This logical space is in turn not the totality of what can possibly exist (in a loose and permissive sense of “existence”). It is the totality of what can be described by language. So the “world” in the Tractatus is only given against the background of the Tractarian analysis of language. The world is my world just because the language is my language, and I am the only source of sense, without any possible contrast. I must give sense to the signs that come out of my mouth, as I must give sense to the signs arriving to my ears. Wittgenstein is saying that this sense-giving is not part of the world: it is a limit of it. It is not simply something which is beyond description. If it 1

A thorough account can be found in Lewy (1967).

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is a limit of the world, it is also inseparable from it. I cannot conceive the world without conceiving this subject as one of its limits. But why should language need a subject? We could perhaps just keep everything which is said in the Tractatus about language, without postulating a “subject” of any sort. Why should Wittgenstein be more similar to Berkeley than to Hume, as far as the existence of a subject is concerned? We could think of meaning in purely structural terms, in terms of isomorphism and truth-functional relations. So the question is – why don’t we get rid of this subject? What would be lost if we did? What is the logical function of the metaphysical subject in the Tractatus? No immediate and explicit answer to this question is to be found in the Tractatus, nor in any extant manuscript of that period. Even so, I think a very straightforward answer could be given; an answer that matches perfectly the Tractarian conception of language. One of the questions that accompanied Wittgenstein throughout his life is a very simple one: what gives life to signs? What is the nature of understanding and meaning? The answer given in the Tractatus is that we must project the signs into the world. Now, projection is obviously an action, and would by itself presuppose the presence of a subject. I think this answer is correct, but at the same time it is too simple. How should we think of this projective activity, and why should we postulate a metaphysical subject to perform it? Why couldn’t a body (with its voice and its physical reactions) perform exactly the same job? We can only give a satisfactory answer to this last question if we remember that the Tractatus involves a doctrine about the constitution of sense, that this constitution begins with names and elementary propositions, and (in most cases) proceeds with a series of formal selections and truth-operations leading to the construction of more and more complex propositions. I think all this would be generally admitted. Now I take the crucial (and polemical) step of my argument. Nothing is by its own nature the name of anything. Imagine that A and B are two names belonging to the same logical category. My whole point is that the meaning of these names is underdetermined by their categorial insertion. Even if we know that they both belong to the same category, it is not thereby determined what is meant by it. It is determined that they must name objects belonging to the same ontological category, but the objects are not specified. We cannot choose the combinatorial possibilities of language – these are given by the isomorphism between the world and our thought. But we must choose – arbitrarily – which object to associate with

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each name. This association between name and object cannot be described. It is part of the logical conditions of sense. It is transcendental. As it must be made (arbitrarily), it presupposes a subject. A transcendental subject. The logical engine of meaning would never get started without it. But it is not only a question of making the first move. A transcendental subject is needed at other points of the process as well. Negation is the name of a logical relation. But it is also the name of something that must be done with the sense of a proposition, in order to get another proposition out of it. Once more, this is something which must be done, but cannot be described. It wouldn’t occur without the help of a subject lodged in the limits of the world. But why should we say that this metaphysical subject should also be the bearer of absolute ethical and aesthetic values? In which sense could it be good or bad, beautiful or ugly? Certainly not in so far as it articulates true propositions instead of false ones. As Wittgenstein says, “propositions are of equal value.” The subject is not responsible for their truth or falsity. It is only responsible for their sense. Even if we try to imagine how we should analyze propositions about mental states, we should remember that a mental state would be a fact as any other, and that the subject describing one of them cannot be mistaken for the mental state which is being described. Metaphysical subjects do not feel headaches and the like. Even so, the articulation of sense presupposes a contact with the world and its substance. Names are projected into objects, and propositions are compared with facts. This contact is mediated by signs, and is interested. I “turn myself” to the substance of the world – to the atemporal realm of objects – in order to speak about what happens. My interest in this case is to describe the world correctly – to speak about how things are. But if we see the metaphysical subject as a pure intentional activity dwelling at the limits of the world, then we can easily conceive of that very same activity as being performed without the mediation of signs, and without the interest of making sense. The metaphysical subject, instead of intending ontological possibilities in order to choose which of them are going to occur, intends the same possibilities for their own sake. As the world itself is, from the point of view of the Tractatus, just a part of that realm of possibilities, it will appear to the subject as an arbitrary choice which wasn’t made by him. It will be a mere presence – a miracle – which cannot be explained by any fact. This is what the Tractatus would equivalently call “absolutely good” or “absolutely beautiful.” This is what the metaphysical subject of language “sees” when, without wondering

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linguistically about the “how,” he looks silently to a certain That. At this atemporal moment, he becomes the bearer of the Ethical, the bearer of the Aesthetical, the bearer of an absolute value. Now, is it possible to use this kind of analysis in order to judge human actions, and to evaluate works of art? Is there a Tractarian aesthetics in this sense? For all that I said my first answer would be a resolute “no.” Wittgenstein’s conception of absolute values was the absolute opposite of a choice of facts inside the world. It is based on an indifference to facts – be they paintings, sculptures, houses, books, melodies, movements of my body or feelings of my soul. Even so, I think we could say some “styles of life” are more harmonious with the kind of mysticism being presented in the Tractatus. Of course, such harmony could not be established from the perspective of the book itself. The mystical has nothing to do with what happens – so it has nothing to do with “styles of life,” or things like that. But I think that when we understand the perspective of the Tractatus, we expect someone who accepts that perspective to lead a life in which wealth, academic career, and power would have no place. Accordingly, we would not expect this person to show much concern about the future, nor to have a “strategic behavior” aimed at this or that outcome. From an ethical point of view, strategic behavior (such as lying, dissimulating, flattering, cheating, etc.) would be viewed as repulsive, not in virtue of any value directly attached to this actions, but because these actions would be symptoms of a bad will – a will directed to the contingence of facts, and not to the absolute presence of life itself, to the world sub specie aeterni. More precisely, both the bad and the good will are directed to facts of the world. The difference is that the bad will is a chattering distracted subject, which attaches more value to certain propositions than to others, and wishes for the world to make them true. The good will uses exactly the same language, and is in front of exactly the same facts. But it projects these transient facts against a background of eternity. It is in front of the same world, but its world in a certain sense is larger and happier, since it is always and in any circumstance exactly what it was expected to be. What this person calls “beautiful” will be equally the occasion of a contact with life itself, as opposed to that “mixture of memory and desire” in which a permanently anxious life is lost. London and Paris will not appeal to this kind of sensibility as much as a lonely hut right in the middle of a Norwegian fjord. A crowded and busy city will require movement,

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planning, practical decisions at every moment. If you just have a lake and an impressive mountain in front of you, and if you like to be there, this will again be a symptom of life concentrated in its own miraculous presence. It will be a symptom that your will is the bearer of an absolute value. If this person is an architect, and builds a house for his rich sister, he may perhaps have the idea of projecting monumental rooms with no profusion of colors or ornaments, no distraction for the senses. When an ornament is discretely used, it is linked to a very specific function – it will be a handle, a door, a window-catch. He may perhaps show an obsession with proportions, looking for a precision of millimeters which would never be realized by anyone but the architect himself – details which are not there to be seen, but just to exist. The idea behind the plan, quite independently of its cultural and historical roots, could be simply to produce a life container impressive enough to call attention, but far too subtle to invite a description. I say that it could be so because I really don’t think this kind of reading of the house, this kind of reading of the hut can be directly endorsed by anything which is said in the Tractatus. Huts and houses are just places where we spend our time, and absolute values cannot share the space and time in which architectural and geological facts take place. Absolute values must be a-temporal and have nothing to do with windowhandles or fjords. Even so, we could think that an absolute value, if it cannot be part of my life, can at least be ineffably inscribed in it. It is not in the fjord itself or in the window-handle, but in the ineffable meaning I attach to my aesthetical choices – so to speak, the ineffable background against which aesthetic choices are made. References Lewy, Casimir 1967, “A Note on the Text of the Tractatus”, Mind 76, 416423. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1988, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Aesthetics as Methodology in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Thought: The Operational Character of Family Resemblances1 Chiara CAPPELLETTO Università degli Studi di Milano 1. The magic of causal nexus In the Tractatus, Ludwig Wittgenstein writes: “Superstition is nothing but belief in the causal nexus.”2 Acquiescence to causality is then irrational. It is a position to which he remained faithful throughout his whole inquiry, insofar as it provides one of the leitmotivs that speaks in favour of the organicity of his philosophical output. We find it again seventeen years later, when he took up a stance against the Limits of Empiricism lecture Bertrand Russell delivered in April 1936, at a meeting of the “Aristotelian Society.” Russell considered the case of somebody that is hurt and cries, and argued: “When I am hurt and cry out, I can perceive not only the hurt and the cry, but the fact that the one ‘produces’ the other. When I perceive three events in a time-order, I can perceive that preceding is transitive.”3 Polemically stimulated by this somewhat Pavlovian thesis, between the end of September and the end of October 1937 Wittgenstein penned Ursache und Wirkung. Intuitives Erfassen published in 1976 in the Israeli journal Philosophia edited by Rush Rhees. Let’s read one of the key passages worth quoting at length: “Think of two different kinds of plant, A and B, both of which yield seeds; the seeds of both kinds look exactly the same and even after the most careful investigation we can find no difference between them. But the seeds of an A-plant always produce more A-plants, the seeds of a B-plant, more B-plants. In this situation we can predict what sort of plant will grow out of such a seed only if we know which plant it has come from. Are we to be satisfied with this; or should we say: ‘There 1

I would like to thank Antonia Soulez for having carefully read the first version of this paper and for her comments about it. 2 Wittgenstein (1921), 5.1361. 3 Russell (1936), p. 149. Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates, eds. Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 25-43.

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must be a difference in the seeds themselves, otherwise they couldn’t produce different plants; their previous histories on their own can’t cause their further development unless their histories have left traces in the seeds themselves?’ But now what if we don’t discover any difference between the seeds? And the fact is: it wasn’t from the peculiarities of either seed that we made the prediction but from its previous history. If I say: the history can’t be the cause of the development, then this does not mean that I can’t predict the development from the previous history, since that’s what I do. It means rather that we don’t call that a ‘causal connection,’ that this isn’t a case of predicting the effect from the cause. And to protest: ‘There must be a difference in the seeds, even if we don’t discover it,’ doesn’t alter the facts, it only shows what a powerful urge we have to see everything in terms of cause and effect. […] ‘Must’: that means we are going to apply this picture come what may. […] And now suppose that in the foregoing example someone had at last succeeded in discovering a difference between the seed of an A-plant and the seed of a B-plant: he would no doubt say: ‘There, you see, it just isn’t possible for one seed to grow into two different plants.’ What if I were to retort: ‘How do you know that the characteristic you have discovered is not completely irrelevant? How do you know that has anything to do with which of the two plants grows out of the seed?’.”4 Let’s try to visualize the reasoning: we have a pear tree and an apple tree that bear pear seeds and apple seeds, respectively. Nevertheless, the two seeds look identical no matter if they are or not. They are therefore their stories that will tell us that these two seeds are actually different. At this point Wittgenstein gives the argument a different, somewhat paradoxical direction in comparison with our common way of thinking. He wonders what might happen if this apparent identity was matched not by a relevant and unknown, veiled difference – common sense would say “things aren’t as they seem” –, but by an actual identity, although the seeds from the apple tree continue to produce apples and the seeds from the pear tree pears. Such an argument leads us to ask to what extent the past history of the two seeds can determine them or, in other words, if objects and facts can figure as issues of an isomorphic description that mirrors their behaviours so as to predict their doings. The answer is apparently negative and it urges us to pose a further question: would such a prediction be empirical or logical? At stake, indeed, are the correspondence between a fact placed in a set of facts and the understanding of it, and the criterion by which this correspondence 4

Wittgenstein (1937), p. 410-411.

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can be established. The inquiry focuses then on the consequences of our refusal – due both to philosophical and linguistic habits – to derive two different results from one same origin. Wittgenstein is not interested in imposing on his readers a reasoning that diverges from the one that they are driven to develop insofar as they are led by that causalistic ideology that he considers the major inheritance from the philosophical exercise. He aims rather to restructure the questioning, so as to be able to indicate the correct form for any kind of argumentation. Furthermore, he does not cast doubt on the shared practice for which, given a regular chronological sequence of facts, we all attest that they exist as we know them precisely by virtue of their reciprocal and peculiar relationship. He does not query the belief that logical as well as chronological sequentiality offers a relevant clue to order a set. The point on which Wittgenstein intervenes is that recognising a succession does not allow for the assertion of a causal explanation provided with a prescriptive power. Even if we succeeded in establishing an ontological bond in a series of facts, we wouldn’t be conceptually authorised to postulate ex post the a priori need of just one description that would enact an explicative function. This perspective has nothing in common with the Kantian distinction between phenomenon and noumenon neither is it the result of a methodological precautionary principle. Wittgenstein gives prominence to the possibility that two seeds that present themselves as identical to each other generate two different results or, in other words, that two different results compete for the same origin. He does not contest that a criterion of organisation would take on a cause-effect form from which an explicative order of data may derive. Yet he refuses to consider this principle genetically inherent to the data themselves, as if it expressed their essential connection. To admit that an outcome A or an outcome B can freely result from the same seed allows to safeguard the range of descriptions of the structure of states of things, that in turn call for their irreducible manifold. The “form” of these states – “in which objects fit into one another like the links of a chain”5 – “is the possibility of [their] structure”6; then we do have a form when a structure is composed, but there is no reason to make an appeal for “this form here” to be enacted. This is the reason why, as we have known ever since the Tractatus, “the law of causality is not a law but the form of a law,”7 and “all such propositions, including the principle of suf5

Wittgenstein (1921), 2.03. Wittgenstein (1921), 2.033. 7 Wittgenstein (1921), 6.32. 6

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ficient reason, the laws of continuity in nature and of the least effort in nature etc.– all these are a priori insights about the forms in which the propositions of science can be cast.”8 They are linguistic conditions for a descriptive form to be set. Concerning the form of the causal law, it leads us to believe that what happens must be in some way explained with reference to a conceptual condition that would be its cause: it is a case of mistaking concepts for facts. “Must come what may” would then imply a necessity for such a condition to be presumed, a kind of reificated ananke, while Wittgenstein reckons that free thinkers must be concerned with retracing possible reasons and not establishing essential laws, otherwise they assume psychological or physical correlations in place of linguistic nexuses. Wittgenstein is engaged in highlighting this type of misunderstanding since his approach is neither factual nor transcendental. An example of his imaginative – but not fantastical – attitude is given by his investigation into colours. Wittgenstein investigates the conditions under which and the means by which it is possible or not to describe to someone that which is not merely unknown to him – because he is unaware of it – but impossible to know by experience: “Can one describe to a blind person what it’s like for someone to see?”9 The question revolves not round the possibility to describe to a blind person what one can see, but the situation in which the seer finds him or herself. The point is not the communication of an activity – seeing – but the description of a condition. Posed in such a way, this question excludes that an uncommon case may arise in which, for sighted people, the blind person departs from the norm. Any exceptional case, even though eccentric, is nothing but a specific element of a chain. For Wittgenstein transforms the trivial clash between “being sighted” versus “being blind” into a concatenation of similarities inside which extreme instances are admitted, and indeed implied. These cases and their relations need to be displayed by descriptions, not by explanations, since they are not the result of an ontological comparison, but of a conceptual performance about actual occurrences and first-person intellectual experiences. As Jacques Bouveresse pointed out, “alors que les philosophes transcendantaux eux-mêmes ont tendance, par manque d’imagination, à réfléchir essentiellement sur les conditions de possibilité de ce qui est, la méthode préconisée par Wittgenstein est celle qui consiste à mettre en évidence l’existence d’autres possibilités sans se préoccuper directement de savoir si leur réalisation est pos8 9

Wittgenstein (1921), 6.34. Wittgenstein (1950-1951), part I § 81.

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sible, plausible ou souhaitable.”10 For this reason I consider Wittgenstein to be a valued thinker for contemporary intellectual challenges, as he works on the concreteness of theoretical thought. It is a perspective that is echoed with Robert Musil’s conviction: “No system of thought may stand in contradiction to experience or proper inferences drawn from it: in this sense, every serious philosophy is empirical.”11 2. A handbook of minimal methodology The manifold of knowledge data by which our life is shaped is what Wittgenstein alludes to when he refers to something as a “natural history.” This expression indicates a domain described by discovering resemblances and differences in a synchronic perspective, since the possibility of inherences among data is given by formal relations and not by genetic connections. He avails himself of such an expression in different pages of his writings. I quote the most significant. The first, on January 30, 1931, is drawn from the notes that belong to the section Philosophy of the Big Typescript: “The rules of chess could be taken as propositions that belong in the natural history of men. (As the games of animals play are described in books on natural history).”12 The second, in 1937, is paragraph 415 of the Philosophical Investigations: “What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of human beings; we are not contributing curiosities however, but observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes.”13 Finally, between 1950 and 1951, the Remarks on Colour give a further version of it: “Is there such a thing as a ‘natural history of colours’ and to what extent is it analogous to a natural history of plants?”14 Wittgenstein’s idea is that the latter is temporal, while the former non-temporal, but time doesn’t seem to be a determining condition in his concept of “history,” which is more a formal recurrence of similar states of affairs. Wittgenstein’s use of this notion allows us to understand what it entails for his speculative activity to investigate an object a posteriori: his purpose is not to set up a new theory but to clear up what we already know.15 It is a question of formally bringing to light facts and actions that 10

Bouveresse (2000), p. 147. Musil (1921), p. 139. 12 Wittgenstein (2005), § 87. 13 Wittgenstein (1953), § 415. 14 Wittgenstein (1950-1951), part III § 8. 15 See Andronico (1998), p. 82-83. 11

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we can actually come across in our experience and that are continuously met so much as to forget their presence. That forgetfulness has nothing to do with memory. It is an “epistemological forgetting.” It depends on the fact that man as a social agent, who is the actual epistemological subject, surreptitiously assigns to the philosophical investigation form a value of existence. This is what Wittgenstein means when he writes: “A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside of it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”16 The bearing of this statement is not limited to language, but comprises every medium of inquiry and description. It seems to me that Wittgenstein shares, without intending to do it, Alfred N. Whitehead’s view, according to which “The chief error in philosophy is overstatement. The aim at generalization is sound, but the estimate of success is exaggerated. [… One form of overstatement] is what I have termed the ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’. This fallacy consists in neglecting the degree of abstraction involved when an actual entity is considered merely so far as it exemplifies certain categories of thought. There are aspects of actualities which are simply ignored so long as we restrict thought to these categories.”17 Such a fallacy that in Wittgensteinian terms has to be called superstition is nothing but concepts reification, which counts as magic, as we understand reading the notes that Wittgenstein drafted as a commentary to The Golden Bough, James Frazer’s main work. In these twelve volumes, written between 1911 and 1915, Frazer dealt with magic and superstition as the leading principles in the constitution of associated human life forms. Wittgenstein came to terms with it at two different moments. In 1930 he got his friend Drury to read him some passages from the first volume of the complete edition, and the main corpus of the notes dates back to 1931. In 1936, after a break of a few years, Wittgenstein took up the single volume of the edition abridged by Frazer himself in 1922, to which he dedicated a second series of considerations. His references are unusually precise – he even cites the page number in Frazer’s text. Frazer considers that anthropology has a gnoseological dimension that corresponds to an interpretation of a mentalist kind, such that there exist thought structures that create relations. Adhering to the evolutionary perspective of Darwinian design, he attributes to magic a positive function in the performance of human progress. Following his reasoning, “savagery is the primitive condition of mankind, and if we would understand what 16 17

Wittgenstein (1953), § 115. Whitehead (1927-28), p. 9-10.

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primitive man was we must know what the savage now is.”18 Yet, the teleological perspective here implied is based on an aberrant analogy, whose schema is emblematically sketched by Musil in his page on the lemonyellow Chinese butterfly: since there are lemon-yellow butterflies and lemon-yellow Chinese, the butterfly is the winged, middle-European, dwarf Chinese. That butterflies have wings and Chinese do not is just a small detail. Moreover, “butterflies did not invent gunpowder because the Chinese had done so already.”19 Wittgenstein would have been sympathetic with this statement and mainly with its irony. Indeed he considers that Frazer’s work – like Darwin’s – represents an outcome of that metaphysical exercise that Paul Valéry effectively describes: “To ‘explain’ is never anything more than to describe a way of making: it is merely to remake in thought. The why and the how, which are only ways of expressing the implications of this idea, inject themselves into every statement, demanding satisfaction at all costs. Metaphysics and science are merely an unlimited development of this demand,”20 that “powerful urge” we read about in Ursache und Wirkung. The generalization process neutralizes any variations of a fact or an experience, it makes them appear similar to each other. When a conceptual making disguises itself as a genetic process, we obtain a specific case of reification, which is theoretically inconsistent. It is the same type of incongruity defined by David Hume’s notion of belief that describes our expectation according to which, given the effect of a cause, the same effect will occur from a cause that is similar to the one previously given: a pear tree and many pear seeds “must” be similar. Belief, per se, is an acceptable notion from Wittgenstein’s point of view if it is understood as what mirrors an epistemological behaviour and not what aims to found it, as if it was a justification endowed with causal force. Yet, it produces exactly the kind of justification that, for instance, will lead Darwin to state that monkeys, like men, make use of “implements”: a stone to crack a fruit with a tough shell, a stick as a lever to move heavy objects after they had been taught to raise the lid of a chest with a similar stick. As men do, monkeys “should be able to know” how to imitate the cry of a ferocious animal to warn their kin of imminent danger.21 Similar behaviours would thus be assimilated by virtue of an analogical principle that, however, is heterogeneous to their nature and that is simply applied to them. Indeed, Wittgen18

Frazer (1909), p. 163. Musil (1921), p. 139. 20 Valéry (1937), p. 12. 21 Darwin (1871), p. 85-96. 19

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stein thought that Darwin was wrong because his theory does not give any account of the variety of species. The assumption according to which evolution finally produced a species able to understand all the processes that generated it is methodologically illegitimate.22 The rhetorical argument of such an assumption has the form post hoc ergo propter hoc, which is essentially superstitious. For his part, Frazer confuses the presuppositions of his scientific work with the results that he got from it. That is, he confuses data and concepts, and ends up being a prisoner of his very own inquiry. Such captivity is the captivity into which we fall when we neglect the form of our search. For these reasons, I believe that the Remarks on Frazer’s “Golden Bough” are not critiques of content and not even critiques of method, but rather “critiques of forms,” since the conditions under which we discuss knowledge data are displayed so that a description can be correctly formulated. The work of Heinrich Hertz – a reference for Wittgenstein ever since the Tractatus23 – is illuminating in this respect. In his Introduction to The Principles of Mechanics (1899), Hertz writes that “we have accumulated around the terms ‘force’ and ‘electricity’ more relations than can be completely reconciled amongst themselves. We have an obscure feeling of this and want to have things cleared up. Our confused wish finds expression in the confused question as to the nature of force and electricity. But the answer we want is not really an answer to this question. It is not by finding out fresh new relations and connections that it can be answered; but by removing the contradictions existing between those already known, and thus perhaps by reducing their number. When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.”24 Hertz continues by stating that the concept of force is often introduced in the physical language with the function of a “sleeping partner,”25 i.e. a mechanism “whose function is solely that of transmitting movement from one point of the mechanical system to the other but that, per se, is neither the cause nor the effect of the partial or total movement of the system.”26 In Wittgenstein’s perspective, it is the metaphor for an empty concept, which is dangerous. In fact, in the theoretical domain a wheel that 22

See Drury (1973). See Wittgenstein (1921), 4.04 and 6.361. 24 Hertz (1899), p. 7-8. 25 Hertz (1899), p. 12. 26 Gottardi (1996), p. 245, note 1. 23

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turns uselessly does not turn with no effect, rather being the symptom of an intellectual retching: it is indifferent to the congruity between the form of a description and the state of affairs which is described but it does intervenes in the building of their relation. Wittgenstein notes: “Whenever we say that something must be the case we are using a norm of expression. Hertz said that wherever something did not obey his laws there must be invisible masses to account for it. This statement is not right or wrong, but may be practical or impractical. Hypotheses such as ‘invisible masses’, or ‘unconscious mental events’ are norms of expression. They enter into language to enable us to say there must be causes.” He continues, prefiguring his critique to Russell: “They are like the hypothesis that the cause is proportional to the effect. If an explosion occurs when a ball is dropped, we say that some phenomenon must have occurred to make the cause proportional to the effect. On hunting for the phenomenon and not finding it, we say that it has merely not yet been found. We believe we are dealing with a natural law a priori, whereas we are dealing with a norm of expression that we ourselves have fixed.”27 These sleeping partners can be assimilated to Frazer’s analogies, which are designed following a principle of resemblance but used as an argument a priori even though they are no more than a type of description. Criticizing them does not imply criticizing the fact that they hold an important role in the economy of discourse – both scientific and nonscientific –, but that they introduce surreptitiously the existence of something that would act as, for example, a “mental state.” Equally, the use of the hypothesis of development in historical discourse is a legitimate way of clarifying nexuses amongst data, provided that it is understood as a rule of the game of historical description and not as its fundament, to be revealed as unfounded. According to Wittgenstein, “an historical explanation, an explanation as a hypothesis of the development, is only one kind of summary of the data – of their synopsis. We can equally well see the data in their relations to one another and make a summary of them in a general picture without putting it in the form of an hypothesis regarding the temporal development.”28 It seems right to claim, in agreement with Rhees, that the reason why Wittgenstein took an interest in reading Frazer depends neither on a specific interest in religion nor on the desire to deal with history or anthropology, 27 28

Wittgenstein (1932-1935), p. 16. Wittgenstein (1931-1936), p. 34.

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but on his attention to the mythology present in our language.29 Two statements suffice to persuade us. We read in the Remarks: “We must plough over the whole of language,”30 and “a whole mythology is deposited in our language.”31 These are beliefs that recall the Sprachkritik exercised in the Tractatus where it anticipates the analysis of the proposition “I know” that Wittgenstein would deal with much later in On Certainty. The Remarks, however, do not provide a contribution to the philosophy of language; they rather provide an indication of the methodological strategies bequeathed by Wittgenstein’s philosophy, without being a treatise of method. Wittgenstein sketches in the Remarks what I call a “handbook of minimal methodology” in order to set the heuristic strategy implied in his kind of investigation. 1. Ritual thinking as well as rational behaviours occurs in the same human group: “The same savage who, apparently in order to kill his enemy, sticks his knife through a picture of him, really does build his hut of wood and cuts his arrow with skill and not in effigy.”32 2. The error has a heuristic value because it shows how things can be eventually considered: “We must begin with the mistake and find out the truth in it. That is, we must uncover the source of the error. […] To convince someone of what is true, it is not enough to state it; we must find the road from error to truth.”33 3. The explanation makes what it explains agree with the time in which the explanation itself is formulated. It is thus the explanation that reveals itself to be constitutively antagonistic to authentic notions of chronological sequence and processuality: “Frazer cannot imagine a priest who is not basically an English parson of our time with all his stupidity and feebleness.”34 4. Theoretical explanation and data presentation as such are conflicting: “One reason why the attempt to find an explanation is wrong is that we have only to put together in the right way what we know without adding anything, and the satisfaction we are trying to get from the explanation comes of itself.”35 5. Explanation as such is hypothetical as well as artefactual, because it 29

See Rhees (1971), p. 18. Wittgenstein (1931-1936), p. 34. 31 Wittgenstein (1931-1936), p. 35. 32 Wittgenstein (1931-1936), p. 31. 33 Wittgenstein (1931-1936), p. 28. 34 Wittgenstein (1931-1936), p. 31-32. 35 Wittgenstein (1931-1936), p. 30. 30

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gives a possible form to data: “Every explanation is an hypothesis.”36 6. Every overstated generalisation applied to human sciences is uselessness and damaging, because it exchanges the form of the law with its content: “There is a mistake only if magic is presented as science.”37 7. Satisfaction is the very aim of an action or of a rational as well as a magic thought, yet it does not claim to being valued as a justification: “Kissing the picture of a loved one. This is obviously not based on a belief that it will have a definite effect on the object, which the picture represents. […] We act in this way and then feel satisfied.”38

The major methodological distinction that Wittgenstein casts light upon is not that between real knowledge and false opinion, between episteme and doxa, but between causes and reasons. One way to account for it is that of considering the relationship between an artist’s life and his or her works. It is certain that life does not explain the work, but it nevertheless indicates a series of relations and motivations that, by way of principle, possibly collaborate. Lived life gives to the artwork a space of thinkability inside of which certain descriptions are applicable and others have to be excluded. To treat as a reason what even post-modern common sense still considers as a cause means to intend it as what thanks to which a series of facts gains in perspicuity, without obeying to it as if it was a law. A reason can refer to a cause but it does not imply it necessarily as such. It makes explicit on the epistemological level the circumstances thanks to which a fact or a process that could occur in fact occurred. We recognise here the same tension between “actual” and “apparent” discussed above with the seeds case. It is true that such a perspective privileges the pragmatic aspect of the knowledge to its theorisation. I argue that similar research guidelines lead thinkers to a “concrete philosophy” of which Wittgenstein’s aesthetics39 represents the emblem, because they exercise the performative quality of philosophical thought without falling into that greed denounced by Valéry. Aesthetics counts as a methodology able to stage processes of understanding and descriptions of lived experiences: it has a descriptive purpose; it is non-specific in its content and comparative in its strategy. Language games and mental experiments are its tools, since “nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than constructing fictitious ones.”40 Aesthet36

Wittgenstein (1931-1936), p. 30. Wittgenstein (1931-1936), p. 31. 38 Wittgenstein (1931-1936), p. 31. 39 See Wittgenstein (1967). 40 Wittgenstein (1948), p. 74e. 37

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ics for Wittgenstein shows the way in which we see things, thus showing the manner of our conceiving them.41 Elizabeth Anscombe recalled a discussion in which Wittgenstein asked her why it was thought to be natural to think that the sun revolved around the earth and not the contrary. She replied by supposing “because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.” Wittgenstein asked: “What would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?” Anscombe did a kind of cartwheel and obtained as reply: “Exactly!”42 3. The operational character of family resemblances Once the methodological strategy is established, it is necessary to identify a conceptual tactic that presides over such a descriptive art that unites and, in uniting, separates. Yet the separation is not meant in the Platonic sense of diairesis, because we are not in search of the best definition but of the right meaning in a given context. This is enacted by the family resemblances device, which is the product of a comparative process to which it does not pre-exist, since there is no such thing as family resemblances: “Imagine we had to arrange the books of a library. When we begin the books lie higgledy-piggledy on the floor. Now there would be many ways of sorting them and putting them in their places. […] In the course of arranging the library this whole row of books will have to change its place. But it would be wrong to say that therefore putting them together on a shelf was no step towards the final result. […] Some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves.”43 Family resemblances have an operational character44. Their nature is discussed in particular in paragraphs 65-77 of the Philosophical Investigations where Wittgenstein places himself before a certain number of different games and writes: “If you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and 41

See Bouveresse (1973), p. 157: “Wittgenstein’s aesthetics is incontestably philosophical; but it does not much resemble traditional philosophical aesthetics. It does not provide any precise contribution to the history, the criticism or the theory of the production of the artwork; but it is not even an attempt at a conceptual definition of things such as the Beautiful, the work of art or the aesthetic judgement.” 42 See Anscombe (1959), p. 151. 43 Wittgenstein (1958), p. 44-45. 44 The “law of the good neighbor” that Aby Warburg traced and followed to organize his library gives an example of how family resemblances work, even though the art historian did not know Wittgenstein’s methodological remarks.

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a whole series of them at that. […] You can see how similarities crop up and disappear.”45 And he continues: “I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.”46 The resemblances do not necessarily lead to include all the elements taken into account in just one rubric, neither they offer the means to define the essence of something like thinking, cooking, walking, instead of thought, food, space… They make recognizable several elements by virtue of the position each of them holds, as identity is not the property of an object but its intimate coherence once it has been compared with others. Family resemblances are neither a character nor an essence: they express the form of a relation thanks to which elements get clarified as they are tied to some others. Given a set of three images arranged in a certain way, in which a fourth one is introduced, it is possible that the order will be completely modified in response to the new elements that impose an overall reconfiguration, as when the birth of a second child makes the first born, who was thought to look like his mother, much more similar to his father. This is a perspective clearly opposed to that proposed by Russell and mentioned above. It has been said that Wittgenstein gleaned the notion of family resemblances from that of Ursymbol proposed by Oswald Spengler. This is the thesis argued by Georg Hendrik von Wright: the idea of family resemblances “appears to have its origin in Spengler’s notion of the Ursymbol (archetype). This characterizes each one of the great cultures and constitutes what Wittgenstein, writing about this, in fact calls a family resemblance between a culture’s various manifestations – its mathematics, architecture, religion, social and political organization, and so forth.”47 Von Wright refers in particular to a passage in which Wittgenstein comments on and criticises Spengler. Nevertheless it should be pointed out how the term Ursymbol never appears in Wittgenstein’s Nachlaß and how Wittgenstein rather makes use of the term Urbild, not borrowing Spengler’s vocabulary. It is true that Wittgenstein notes in his diary on May 6th, 1930, one year before drafting the Remarks: “I read the Decline etc. of Spengler and, in spite of many irresponsible particulars, I found many authentic, significant, thoughts. Many, perhaps most of them, coincide wholly with what 45

Wittgenstein (1953), § 66. Wittgenstein (1953), § 67. 47 von Wright (1982), p. 213. 46

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I myself have thought on several occasions.”48 To account for this affinity, it is sufficient to recall some statements from Spengler’s Introduction: “The means whereby to understand living forms is Analogy. By these means we are enabled to distinguish polarity and periodicity in the world. It is, and has always been, a matter of knowledge that the expression-forms of world-history are limited in number, and that eras, epochs, situations, persons are ever repeating themselves true to type.”49 Wittgenstein, however, charges Spengler as he charges Frazer with not distinguishing between facts and concepts: “Spengler could be better understood if he said: I am comparing different cultural epochs with the lives of families; within a family there is a family resemblance; though you will also find a resemblance between members of different families; family resemblance differs from the other sort of resemblance in such and such ways, etc. What I mean is: we have to be told the object of comparison, the object from which this way of viewing things is derived, otherwise the discussion will constantly be affected by distortions. Because willy-nilly we shall ascribe the properties of the prototype [Urbild] to the object we are viewing in its light; and we claim ‘it must always be’.”50 Spengler too would fall into Russell’s error. This is indeed an interesting analogy because it shows us how mistaking a cause for its effect, a description for its object, expresses a recurring problem when we are engaged in understanding. To solve it, it is necessary to accept that the way of realizing a description, a presentation, is giving a grid, a pattern to order the data. “This is because we want to give the prototype’s [Urbild] characteristics a purchase on our way of representing things. But since we confuse,” Wittgenstein continues, “prototype and object we find ourselves dogmatically conferring on the object properties which only the prototype necessarily possess. On the other hand we think our view will not have the generality we want it to have if it is really true only of the one case. But the prototype ought to be clearly presented for what it is, so that it characterizes the whole discussion and determines its form. This makes it the focal point, so that its general validity will depend on the fact that it determines the form of discussion rather than on the claim that everything which is true only of

48

Wittgenstein (1930-1932), p. 24. Spengler (1926-28), vol. I, p. 4. 50 Wittgenstein (1948), p. 14e. Otto Neurath based his critique to Spengler on similar arguments, stating that he confused the decision with which he wanted to predetermine the future of the West with the evidences he could collect (Neurath 1921). 49

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it holds too for all the things that are being discussed.”51 The Urbild is not a model elected for the inquiry into a particular object that should mirror it in turn. It is a schema that – as such – shows itself by difference, through the discrepancies among elements that distance themselves from it. As Wittgenstein writes: “We want to establish an order in our knowledge of the use of language […]; one out of many possible orders; not the order.”52 No schema corresponds precisely to what it describes. Thus it is necessary to look at the “what,” which exerts a poietic force on what it refers to. A possible order helps us to see the internal relations that constitute the object taken into consideration. It provides the paradigm for its understanding. Wittgenstein would use the term “paradigm” in a particular manner in the lectures delivered between 1938 and 1947, and dedicated to private experience and sense data; he makes use of it as a comparative principle subjected to comparison in turn. Finally, this is the conception that would lead him to contest both Spengler and Frazer: “Distortion in Spengler: the ideal doesn’t lose any of its dignity if it’s presented as the principle determining the form of one’s reflection.”53 This quotation is preceded by the following passage: “For we can avoid ineptness or emptiness in our assertions only by presenting the model as what it is, as an object of comparison – as, so to speak, a measuring-rod; not as a preconceived idea to which reality must correspond.”54 Wittgenstein’s epistemological attitude allows for a regeneration of the meaning and the use of different linguistic norms, assuming them as a paradigm. The use of the notion of paradigm within a discussion of an epistemological order recalls the notion put forward by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). According to Kuhn, the paradigm is a constellation that comprises “law, theory, application, and instrumentation together,” and that provides “models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research,”55 including such rubrics as Ptolemaic or Copernican astronomy, Aristotelian or Newtonian dynamics, corpuscular optics and so on. Scholars “whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are prerequisites for normal science, i.e., for the genesis and continuation of a 51

Wittgenstein (1948), p. 14e. Wittgenstein (1953), § 132. 53 Wittgenstein (1948), p. 27e. 54 Wittgenstein (1953), § 131. 55 Kuhn (1962), p. 10. 52

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particular research tradition.”56 Kuhn tends to introduce the notion of paradigm in order to describe the different modalities of understanding the world. In Wittgenstein, on the contrary, it is a question of recognising the presence of the paradigm in our way of looking at the world. The source from which Wittgenstein drew the notion of paradigm is Georg Christoph Lichtenberg57. The German scientist used it to study the formal aspects of theoretical physics through those of grammatical analysis, connecting events to fixed and self-explicative forms of models. Let’s take up, then, the operational meaning of paradigm – from paradeíknymi, i.e. showing, putting aside, comparing –: it is the model on the grounds of which nominal and verbal forms are declined and conjugated. The paradigm is the model when it counts as an example: the model of an inquiry expresses the paradigm of the investigated object. Such a performing quality that emerges from Wittgenstein’s inquiry owes much to Francis Galton. In the Lecture on Ethics Wittgenstein recalls Galton’s photographic experiments to which he refers as visual examples of what he wants to do with words and synonyms.58 Galton writes about them: “The effect of composite portraiture is to bring into evidence all the traits in which there is agreement, and to leave but a ghost of a trace of individual peculiarities. There are so many traits in common in all faces that the composite picture when made from many components is far from being a blur; it has altogether the look of an ideal composition.”59 This ideal results from a process of collecting, reducing, superimposing, focusing… It is artefactual and operational just as family resemblances are. The resemblances present an order by tracing tiny affinities as well as differences amongst elements, without establishing a common trait. They are “resemblances by difference” stringing together chains of elements that cannot be assimilated and hold together. As Galton writes, “The general expression of a face is the sum of a multitude of small details, which are viewed in such rapid succession that we seem to perceive them all at a single glance. If any one of them disagrees with the recollected traits of a known face, the eye is quick at observing it, and it dwells upon the difference. One small discordance overweighs a multitude of similarities and suggests a general unlikeness; just as a single syllable in a sentence pronounced with a foreign 56

Kuhn (1962), p. 11. See von Wright (1942) and Stern (1959). 58 Wittgenstein (1929), p. 139. Galton is also mentioned by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams, which Wittgenstein certainly read. 59 Galton (1883), p. 7. 57

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accent makes one cease to look upon the speaker as a countryman.”60 Family resemblances are the operational criterion for conducting an inquiry. I can finally sum up: they perform our understanding. I argue that this last consideration gives the final evidence that the notion of origin, introduced at the beginning of this paper, requires not to be understood as genesis, but rather in a Goethean way, as Ur, as an “empirical thought” capable of respecting the manifold intellectual and lived experiences.61 References Andronico, Marilena 1998, Antropologia e metodo morfologico. Studio su Wittgenstein, Napoli: La Citta del Sole. Anscombe, G.E.M 1959, An introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, London: Hutchinson University Library. Bouveresse, Jacques 1973, Wittgenstein: la rime et la raison. Science, éthique et esthétique, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Bouveresse, Jacques 2000, “Anthropologie et culture. Sur une dette possible de Wittgenstein envers Goethe et Spengler,” in: Essais I. Wittgenstein, la modernité, le progrès & le déclin, J.-J. Rosat (ed.), Marseille: Agone, 223-238. Darwin, Charles 1871, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, P.H. Barrett and R.B. Freeman (eds.), London: William Pickering, 1989. Drury, Maurice O’Connor 1973, The Danger of Words, London: Routledge. Frazer, James G. 1909, The Devil’s Advocate. A Plea for Superstition, London: MacMillan and Co., 1927. Galton, Francis 1883, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, London: J.M. Dent & Sons, IInd. ed., 1911. Gottardi, Giovanni 1996, Introduzione, in Hertz, Heinrich 1996, I principi della meccanica, Pavia: Università degli Studi di Pavia. Hertz, Heinrich 1899, The Principles of Mechanics, Presented in a New Form, New York: Dover 1956. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, IInd. ed, 1970. Musil, Robert 1921, “Mind and Experience. Notes for Readers who have Eluded the Decline of the West,” in: Precision and Soul, B. Pike and 60 61

Galton (1883), p. 3. See Schulte (1982).

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D.S. Luft (trans. and eds.), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990, 134-149. Neurath, Otto 1921, Anti-Spengler, in: Gesammelte philosophische und methodologische Schriften, R. Haller and H. Rutte (eds.), Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1982, 2 vols., 139-196. Partial English translation: Neurath, Otto 1973, Empiricism and Sociology, M. Neurath and R.S. Cohen (eds.), Dordrecht-Boston: Reidel, 158-213. Rhees, Rush 1971, “Introductory Note to Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’,” The Human World, 3, 18-28. Russell, Bertrand 1936, “The Limits of Empiricism,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, London: Harrison and Sons, vol. XXXVI, 131-150. Schulte, Joachim 1982, “Coro e legge. Il ‘metodo morfologico’ in Goethe e Wittgenstein,” Intersezioni, 1, 99-124. Spengler, Oswald 1926-28, The Decline of the West. Form and Actuality, English trans. by C.F. Atkinson, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2 vols. Stern, Joseph Peter 1959, Lichtenberg: a Doctrine of Scattered Occasions, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Valéry, Paul 1937, Man and the Sea Shell, English trans. by R. Manheim, in: Collected works, New York: Pantheon books, 1964, vol. XIII, 330. von Wright, Georg Henrik 1942, “Georg Christoph Lichtenberg als Philosoph,” Theoria. A Swedish Journal of Philosophy and Psychology, VIII, 201-217. von Wright, Georg Henrik 1982, Wittgenstein, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Whitehead, Alfred North 1927-1928, Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1921, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, English trans. by D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness, Introduction by B. Russell, London and New York: Routledge,1961. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1929, Lecture on Ethics. Introduction, Interpretation and Complete Text, E. Zamuner, E. Valentina Di Lascio and D. Levy (eds.), Macerata: Quodlibet, 2007. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1930-1932, Denkbewegungen. Tagebücher 19301932, 1936-1937, I. Somavilla (ed.), Frankfurt am Mein: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2000. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1931-1936, “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough,” English trans. by A.C. Miles and R. Rhees, The Human World, May 1971, 3, 28-41.

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Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1932-1935, Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge, from the Notes of A. Ambrose and M. Macdonald, A. Ambrose (ed.), Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1937, “Cause and Effect: intuitive Awareness,” English trans. by P. Winch, Philosophia. Philosophical Quarterly of Israel, September-December 1976, vol. 6, nn. 3-4, 409-425. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1948, Culture and Value, English trans. by P. Winch, G.H. von Wright (ed.), Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1950-1951, Remarks on Colour, English trans. by L.L. McAlister and M. Schättle, G.E.M. Anscombe (ed.), Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1953, Philosophical Investigations, English trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1958, The Blue Book, in: Preliminary studies for the “Philosophical Investigations,” Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1967, Lectures on Aesthetics, in: Lectures and Conversation on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, edited by C. Barrett, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1-40. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 2005, The Big Typescript. TS 213, German-English Scholars’ Edition, ed. and trans. by C.G. Luckhardt and M.A.E. Aue, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

His (Freud) Explanation Does What Aesthetics Does: it Puts Two Factors Together Antonia SOULEZ Université de Paris VIII These passages from Wittgenstein’s Cambridge Lectures 1932-35 (taken from Philosophy 1932-331, after Margaret MacDonald’s and the editor Alice Ambrose’s notes) I am quoting, deal with the aesthetic investigation, some five or six years before the more famous Lectures on Aesthetics (delivered at Cambridge, Summer 1938, before the Conversations on Freud, held between 1942-46). Aesthetics is descriptive, placing things side by side so as to exhibit features conveyed by reasons which are “further descriptions” justifying features in a work of art. It does not answer the question “why” by alleging causes. The description of a thing is opposed to causal connections. It has nothing to do with psychology (or psychoanalysis) which aspires to become an empirical science based on experiments. Now, Freud confuses the two, treating psychological questions by means of representations which look like science. His confusion makes psychoanalysis appear as an empirical science dealing with causes according to a method that relies on a hypothesis (the Unconscious) on the basis of explanations supposed to verify it. 1. Reasons contrasted with causes In a way, Wittgenstein argues as today’s psychoanalysts do when they object to psychologists who are inclined to medicalize or physicalize their therapeutic approach to mental diseases or sufferings. To find out reasons to a dream is not like finding the causes of a stomach-ache, Wittgenstein says in his 1932-33 Lectures (Cambridge). Yet, it would clearly be unfair to impute such a view to Freud. Freud’s experimentalism cannot be reduced to some kind of naturalization of psychology. The Vienna Circle, especially Otto Neurath, did expect such a naturalization, because they 1

Wittgenstein (1979), p. 39. Cf. Wittgenstein (1979), pp. 3-40.

Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates, eds. Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 45-59.

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aimed at unifying science, including psychology according to that program. The Manifesto of the Vienna Circle clearly exhibits this expectation. But Freud’s relationship to science was more subtle than what Wittgenstein, like the Vienna Circle, seems to presuppose when, against Freud’s confusion, he contrasts reasons and causes. The difficult point here is to appraise Freud’s own conception as demarcated from naturalized science of mind, while he was nonetheless aiming at a scientific approach. Science for Freud consisted less in a naturalization program than in finding a specific determinism applicable to the mind, just as there is a determinism for physical things in the world. This search for an “other science” has also found in Lacan its most prestigious and most challenging heir. In Freud’s case: what is scientific is less the “physicalization” of a method than the idea that “there must be a law that rules mental associations.” 2. The aesthetic way: “putting factors side by side…” More interesting is the family resemblance with aesthetic explanation Wittgenstein advocates in order to suggest, not exactly that Freud fails to be a good scientific as if it were relevant to pursue in these matters, but that he should not look at all in a scientific direction. That’s why, to Wittgenstein at least, the fact that psychoanalysis is not a science is not really a flaw. For the same reason, the comparison between psychoanalysis and aesthetics is harmless, if aesthetics does not pretend to be a science, either. The critique of the idea of a “science” of aesthetics, which is clear in the Conversations on Aesthetics, is assumed in the later Conversations on Freud (1942-46). What is wrong is to take psychoanalysis as a science whereas it is closer to an aesthetical investigation. Therefore, the right question to raise is: what is an aesthetical investigation like? But there again, aesthetics is never defined in itself. It is a web of family resemblances that consists in comparisons: psychoanalysis looks like aesthetics, philosophy also, and philosophy looks like aesthetics. Aesthetics is a partially shared predicate between two leading fields: psychoanalysis and philosophy. It is less a field in itself than an aspect of comparative activity. A second point as regards this family resemblance is thus the aesthetical aspect of psychoanalysis which, in a way, Freud also acknowledged. I will rather examine this point of agreement between Wittgenstein and Freud insofar as it involves a methodological insight into a comparison which I regard as important for both of them. My confrontation with aesthetics has the double advantage of dealing with a common source to both

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authors in their respective fields, and to rejoin Freud’s scientific expectation as regards the methodology of comparison. By putting the problem into aesthetical terms, I use a detour that enables me to reevaluate Wittgenstein’s conception of the legitimacy of psychoanalysis without directly confronting psychoanalysis to science. Why is this so? The reason for dealing obliquely with the problem is the following. Jacques Bouveresse’s commentary of Wittgenstein’s comparison between Freudian psychoanalysis and aesthetics is vitiated by a strong prejudice against psychoanalysis. This prejudice reveals itself in the way Bouveresse interprets the comparison with aesthetic explanation. Bouveresse’s reading of Wittgenstein’s statement is as follows: “Ce texte condense à lui seul toutes les objections essentielles que Wittgenstein a à formuler contre l’entreprise de Freud […]” (“This text distills all the essential objections Wittgenstein has to direct against Freud’s project […]”).2 Freud’s explanation of a joke, for instance, is similar to giving aesthetic reasons, rather than scientific causes. In short, the hypothesis of the Unconscious is not verified. Closer to aesthetics, psychoanalysis is not a serious science. It only pretends to be a science. 3. Reevaluating aesthetics a) Positive assumptions - Now, if you look at Wittgenstein’s texts and pay attention to what is said about aesthetics, there are positive assumptions and not only negative ones. Wittgenstein writes that the psychoanalytical way of discovering why a person laughs is comparable to an aesthetic investigation. In contrast with a cause which imposes itself objectively, a reason needs to be acknowledged and accepted by the patient, and this depends upon his will. Yet, what the patient agrees on is not the hypothesis of the Unconscious regarding the cause of his laughing, but the correctness of the reason alleged. For sure, what Freud writes about the Unconscious does not call for a real verification. Yet, what Freud provides is a means of representation. The example of the way the elements of a dream are being brought together exemplifies the aesthetic way to deal with dreams. There are “reasons for the dream,” he writes. b) To provide “means of representation” - Far from dismissing psychoanalysis on the pretext that it looks like an aesthetic investigation, Wittgenstein gives Freud his chance by leaving a door open. To provide 2

Bouveresse (1991), p 39.

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reasons is not a hopeless kind of pseudo-method. It seems as though there is something positive to expect from the use of “means of representation” when dealing with the entity of the so-called Unconscious. “Means of representations” are useful within comparisons, according to Wittgenstein’s own method: what he calls paradigms are such “means,” as opposed to “objects represented.” It is well-known that the comparison of language games is impossible without means of representation in the Philosophical Investigations. If the Unconscious is something, it is no more than a “façon de parler.” Well! A “façon de parler” is still something. Aesthetic reasons are a web of “façons de parler.” c) Philosophy itself is said to resemble aesthetics - Wittgenstein writes that it is a kind of Dichtung: “Philosophie dürfte man eigentlich nur dichten. Note ‘dürfte’” (1933). “Dürfte” adds a connotation of obligation. And “dichten” is also the word Freud uses to characterize literary creation, prose as well as poetry in Der Dichter und das Phantasieren (1908) when he speaks of condensation in dreams as a Verdichtung. It also refers to the process of “condensation” (of latent thoughts in the manifest text of the dream)3, as in Galton’s superposition of faces into a single one. And in 1936, Wittgenstein mentions the “queer resemblance between a philosophical investigation (perhaps especially in mathematics) and an aesthetic one […].” In the 1930’s and thereafter, the use of the musical paradigm for aesthetics is striking. Wittgenstein’s thought, as I have shown, is deeply penetrated with music4. So far, aesthetics is not a devaluating comparison for psychoanalysis. d) Freud’s own way: his use of analogies Let’s turn to Freud’s account of the significance of dreaming. The reader is struck by Freud’s precautions, but also by the importance of aesthetic analogies. The comparison of dreams with pictograms (it is a puzzle in which the set of elements and their relations are more relevant than each one of these elements) cannot be pressed too far. The “interpretation” starts where the totality of the elements need to be understood figuratively, rather than as a written text. The dream remains a Rätsel, an enigma. There is a limit to it that prevents the interpreter from forcing an analogy into an essential identification of the comparing with the compared items. If the dream looks like a language, it is not a fully articulated symbolism. 3

Which together with figuration, displacement, symbolization make up the work of the dream, according to Freud. 4 See Soulez (2012).

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Just like Wittgenstein, Freud believes that an analogy allows no direct and uncontroversial transfer of features from the Urbild (the prototype) in the comparison, to the nature of the compared object. In this respect, Spengler’s methodology of comparison is not a good example to follow, either for Freud or for Wittgenstein. It also depends upon the context and the singularity of the fact. The example of the hat Freud mentions in order to display the method of comparison he uses in dream explanations dwells on the details of a motive which turns out to be floating, while its details present themselves as disconnected. These factors make the dream intangible5. The same holds for literature in virtue of the kinship between dreams and literature, hence the many references to literature in his Interpretation of Dreams. In this respect, for Freud, literature and art shed light on the Unconscious. 4. The substitutional method a) Freud’s weakness - It is true, though, that Wittgenstein sometimes reproaches Freud for tending to assimilate what he compares. His great error, he says, is to conclude from analogies, that “Es muss immer so sein.” This objection occurs in the Conversations on Freud. But it rather aims at pointing out Freud’s obsession for the unity of explanation in the light of determinism. The irony of the story is that Freud also regards this unity as a guarantee for understanding art. The explanation rests upon such a unification of the multiplicity of details. This is true, in his opinion, of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci as much as of a dream. On the face of the unity of explanation, understanding art and understanding a psychic phenomenon are quite similar. So far, Freud does not choose a causal kind of psychoanalytic explanation against aesthetics. It is better to say that, for him, causes and reasons coexist under the banner of a unitary model of explanation. When Wittgenstein happens to point out that this unity is an illusion, he does much more than just criticizing psychoanalysis. The critique is much broader here, and takes a whole philosophical conception as its target. The Philosophical Investigations, for instance, show to what extent this conception which is shared by many philosophers is misleading, if not pathological. b) Wittgenstein’s indebtedness to Freud? – It is well known that Wittgenstein had not read Freud before 1919 (see what he said to Rush Rhees), and that in 1940, he claimed to be his disciple. Wittgenstein had 5

Cf. Milner (1980), ch. III, p. 43.

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read his Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), his Interpretation of Dreams (1899) and his book on “Witz” and its relations with the Unconscious (1905). He had probably also read some of The Studies on Hysteria (1895) by Freud and Breuer whom he admired very much (both found on shelves of his father’s library)6. Freud and Breuer had first been fascinated by hypnosis as a possible treatment of hysteric symptoms. Hypnosis is an important simile for Wittgenstein and his faithful associate Friedrich Waismann, when it comes to the comparison between obeying an order and executing an order that has been given whilst still under influence in a state of passivity. This comparison is as a weapon against the comparison between applying a rule and following a railway. One could mention other migrating ideas from psychoanalysis to Wittgenstein’s philosophy. The Freud Wittgenstein had read is clearly the one of the first “topics” (in 1900: a system of coordinates representing psychic phenomena as if they were located in a space – unconscious, pre-conscious, conscious, in the first one). The leading paradigm is then the paradigm of obsessive neurosis7 or Zwangsneurose, characterized with compulsive obsessive troubles. The fact that Wittgenstein uses so many comparisons in his paradigmatic method also witnesses his indebtedness to the comparative technique used by Freud in his Interpretation of Dreams, in order to build a “new method of interpretation” (an “art,” McGuinness writes), but it also corroborates the thesis of another common precursor, namely Goethe whose method of “assembling reminders”8 is well-known.

6

Note Bouveresse’s own remark that in Wittgenstein’s Big Typescript (p. 180), a linguistic knot can be solved (unknotted) by repetition in an analogous way to the possibility for an hysterical symptom to be solved by the repetition of an expression loaded with the affects originally responsible for the symptom. The expression (“ausgesprochen” is Wittgenstein’s word) is thereby an act endowed for Wittgenstein with a powerful force of efficiency inducing a phenomenon of discharge as an effect of its repetition. See in Freud’s and Breuer’s Studies on Hysteria, 1895, in French, PUF 1956), their joint preliminary introduction (1892) inserted in the first Chapter, p 1. 7 See here Pierre-Henri Castel’s work on this paradigm in Wittgenstein’s era. Around the 60’s in France, this paradigm slowly lost its preeminence, and is substituted with a more cognitivist social-behavioristic model of treatment of the anxious diseases. P.-H. Castel sees no contradiction between Freud’s associationism and this new model. 8 See Allan Janik’s book of the same title, ch. 9, Santerus, Press, Sueden, 2006, p 205. Goethe was known to have assembled the remains of a sheep’s skull from which he could build a theory of the vertebrate.

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Wittgenstein had strong reasons, as we see, to be interested in Freud’s method, as is noticed by Brian McGuinness himself in a paper on Wittgenstein and Freud (1981)9. It is noteworthy, as he says, that, as early as in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein already puts his method in Hertz’s terms: “we picture facts to ourselves” (2.1). This expression, McGuinness writes, is not only Hertz’s one, but also refers to Freud’s “geistreich” method of interpretation. “Geistreich” might sound ironical here, but it is in no way a pejorative expression. The idea of an art of interpretation coincides with A. Janik’s argument according to which Wittgenstein allows the legitimacy of a non-propositional kind of knowledge together with the primacy of practical knowledge based on experience and sound judgments, “unlike rules of calculation.” To this extent, maybe Freud himself went too far when, expecting to verify a hypothesis upon a mental process or a symptom, he argued in favor of deduction. Consequently, one should not be surprised to read Wittgenstein’s own statement that “Our method is, in certain respects, similar to psychoanalysis” (1930, see Philosophical Investigations, § 144). 5. The substitutional model: “We renounce nothing. We only replace something with something else” (Freud) What is new with Wittgenstein, and which also already seems to emerge in Freud, is the importance of replacement as a method of interpretation: a change of notation becomes crucial when an element (a mental item) of the chain is to be replaced with a less obscure one, in a series. “Add the missing link in the chain” is Freud’s expression in his interpretation of dreams. This feature is striking in Freud’s early texts around 1900. Wittgenstein also appeals to this symbolic change of notation. The dream itself is said by Freud to be a “substitute” of the sentimental and intellectual contents of associations of ideas grasped by analysis that make up what Freud calls the “material.” Would Wittgenstein agree with Freud on treating the dream according to a substitutional principle? That’s a problem. Yet Freud does so by combining reasons and causes, while in Wittgenstein’s view, notational procedure is opposed to the search for hidden causes nested in details. “A small detail of the aspect of a dream enables one to uncover the powerful auxiliary that has come from the Unconscious.” This is what Freud calls “indices.” Indices are the salient aspects in a causal chain. They indicates the extreme point of a dynamic like the dynamic of a seismic action irrupting from the bottom to the surface (see, 9

Reprinted in Approaches to Wittgenstein, coll. papers, Routledge, 2002.

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in his Interpretation of Dreams, the allegoric image of the Titans crushed under enormous blocks of mountains the gods have rolled upon them) as an illustration of the repressed. Note that Freud’s psychoanalytic quest is precisely, as he clearly states in his book, an investigation into what philosophers have never been able to achieve: an understanding of the logic of repression. To Wittgenstein, there is no such move from the bottom to the surface, or at least no move that we could identify through interpretation. In his method of comparison that aims at clarity, he is not interested in the source of nonsense, but rather in obvious aspects showing off a manifest nonsense put in plain view, at the surface of our language games. Comparison is one-level. It evolves at the surface of language. This is what interpreters sometimes call the “triviality claim” (Philosophical Investigations, § 126, 127, 128). 6. The limits of the substitutional method The difference lies in the relation of the depth to the surface. This distinction is essential to the contents of the dream. The replacement of oniric elements, according to Freud, works from the hidden to the manifest. One replaces an obscure element with a manifest one. The latter hides the latent one, standing in its place. Interpretation works in the opposite direction. Stemming from the manifest aspects at the level of the surface, it goes down to the bottom along the obstructed track of dream-transformation (condensation, displacement, analogical transposition), but in the opposite direction. So far, it resembles the elaboration of the work of art. Then it becomes necessary to elicit the motives of transformation in the dream work. Transformation means you cannot succeed in finding what was at the bottom, once you deal with manifest aspects. The replaced item makes unrecognizable the hidden element that has been replaced. The reason for this is that the relation is that of a transformation, and not of putting parts in a whole of parts. Yet, this relation between the latent thought and the manifest one is as cryptic as it is necessary. It’s a causal connection. The explanation of this causality is made difficult by at least two factors: in the dream process of transformation, there is a disguising process of the sense of the dream in virtue of a transfer of the psychic intensity of ideas and representations; the motives themselves are not separable from them. They stick together. The obscure detail is thus more relevant than the clarified aspect of the dream. The obscure lies in the obscure. The less understandable, the less con-

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sistent, or even the less interesting might well be more crucial to the understanding of a dream than what has been uncovered and looks clear. Where is the logic of that psychic complex? Rather, the interpreter will stumble against a lot of heterogeneous elements, assembled into a complex scaffolding of mere disconnected/fragments10. 7. In the light of PI, § 531 It seems as though the interpreter rather spends his time eliminating obstacles and screens one after another, than finding a buried original material. That’s why Freud, the so-called experimenter he dearly aspired to become, came gradually to doubt the validity of his hypothetical search, looking for an enigma instead of a definite sense of a dream. The dream is not understandable, just like the work of art. Like poetry or music, it resists understanding in the sense elicited in the second part of § 531 of the Philosophical Investigations. According to these lines, there is (1) an understanding in the sense of a possible translation of phrases; (2) an understanding in the sense of the impossibility of such a translation. The paradigm of music shows the importance of the second sense. Understanding a linguistic phrase looks like understanding a musical phrase, Wittgenstein writes. At this point, we are far from an analytical approach to understanding. The obstacle of untranslatability between two grammars – between the language of dream-thoughts (unconscious desires) and the content (translation of dream-thoughts under the aspect of a hieroglyphic rebus or a Bildschrift) – leads Freud to renounce the hope of finding a term-to-term correspondence between each dream-image and what it represents. That’s a major obstacle to a substitutional treatment of dreams. What then about Wittgenstein as regards this problem? If, as I have said, Wittgenstein’s “triviality claim” means a rejection of the demarcation between levels of grammar, surface and depth, on the other hand, his approach to understanding in reference to art contradicts this rejection. To this extent, the importance he assigns to understanding in the second above-mentioned sense prompts us to reevaluate the question about the distinction between two grammars.

10

See my article in Sebestik and Soulez (1994): “Le sujet chez Wittgenstein ou : ‘qui’ la grammaire soigne-t-elle?” and also: Soulez (1999) “L’intentionnalité dans le langage chez Wittgenstein,” p. 87.

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8. Unity of explanation: a methodological mirage As regards the dream, Freud nonetheless remains convinced that if an explanation is possible, the explanation must then have (and that’s the finality of comparison after all), the form of a unitary insight into the common elements of dreams. Nothing is more alien to Wittgenstein’s views than this methodological conception. To Wittgenstein indeed, the very idea of comparing details stemming from latent ideas in order to find out the presence of one common element in all these components, as Galton does with his family photographs, represents a typical Urbild of misleading representation. So yes, Freud and Wittgenstein do share the same source (Galton), but Wittgenstein is critical towards Galton’s way of recomposing physiognomies into one typical generality11. As to Freud, if the method fails, then there must be another way to obtain this common element, despite the multifarious trickeries of the dreaming phenomenon. It is up to the “analysis” to discover the common character that escapes through so many motives of combinations, what he calls an “X value,” shared by such miscellaneous images. In order to capture this value, Freud imagines a quest similar to a criminal investigation. The “X value” is the goal to attain. Assembling images leads to a set of analogies which makes a method of indices necessary. The quest for indices is what Wittgenstein refuses, and after him, Adolf Grünbaum who considers that the confusion between causes and reasons leads to another unacceptable confusion between causal relations and semantic relations. The attribution of necessity to the effect that follows a thought in obsessive neurosis is a modern case of superstition or of animism, as is shown by Freud’s own example of Polycrates’ ring. In a less physicalist spirit, Vincent Descombes12 addresses the same kind of critique to Lacan’s magic conception of the action of the signifying. Lacan, he writes, “metamorphoses meanings into causal powers.” However, the powerfulness of almighty thoughts, which analysis discovers at the root of das Unheimliche, does not only reveal the mythological aspect to which the method is attached: it also points out what the neurotic patient is suffering from. So far, there is at some point a collusion between the cause of a symptom (compulsive repetition as in the story of Po11

“Our craving for generality” is the effect of this illusion Wittgenstein criticizes. Yet, Galton’s method might well be the real target here, rather than Plato’s search for essences. 12 Cf. Descombes (1995).

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lycrates’ ring) and the source of the investigation. In Totem and Taboo (1913), Freud stresses this double-aspect, or twofold causal root of anguish as an effect of repression, in which under the same name, the origin of suffering and the cause in the method find themselves to be gathered. The Freudian text in which the tension between the two grammars (causal grammar and semantic grammar) is the most obvious, at least at a methodological level, is “Tatbestandsdiagnostik und Psychoanalysis” (1906). The language in which it is expressed is an association of experiences, reactions, stimulus-words, contents of representations, complexes, pathogenic nucleus, and secrets. The thesis at stake is the determined character of the psychic life, as exhibited in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Freud presents himself as an experimenter testing the arousing of complexes when a stimulus-word is pronounced. The use of converging indices helps to identify the perturbing effects in the patient, just like in a criminal investigation. The juridical analogy between the hysteric and the criminal (in reference to the time of his collaboration with Breuer) is mentioned in order to reinforce the technique of dream-interpretation, i.e. the translation of the content of the rememorized dream into its hidden sense, on the basis of its repetition. In the account Freud gives of his method, the difficulty is clearly stated: once you make the experience of a passage from the explicit symbolism of the patient down to the unknown complex (“secret” and unknown to the patient himself), the words chosen as a departure-material by the psychoanalyst, here compared with the investigator magistrate, seem to be uttered by chance; but once the complex has appeared to be at the origin of the reactions (with the collaboration of the patient who struggles against his own resistances), the situation looks different. At this point, one finds himself to be so-to-speak half-way between the discovery of the secret, and the process of verification: then, at the second stage, the experimenter is led upstream by the words of the reacting person, which are then revealed as rather determined. At this stage of the so-called verification, what is at stake is to make sure that the complex that was uncovered during the first phase of the experiment is indeed the very complex that affects the person. In these two phases of the experiment, the “X” that is the unknown in an equation, moves from one place to another: initially located in the complex, it moves to the reacting person in the second phase. In these investigations back and forth, the grammar of words and the rules for putting one element in a series in order to replace a missing one, change. You have sign-words at the level of an explicit symbolism for

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which a notational system holds, and some of them are also surfaceexpressions of the original complex at the deeper level. These two dimensions involve an interference of two different grammars: the grammar of symbols [Zeichen], and the grammar of symptoms [Anzeichen]. For Wittgenstein, as we know, dealing with Zeichen is one thing, and dealing with Anzeichen is another. So far, crossing these two grammars is illegitimate. The latter only brings information on the causal link, just like the link between the graduation of mercury indicated on the barometer and the fact that it is going to rain. The fall of the barometer is a “sign” that it is going to rain, i.e. a “symptom.” But in ordinary language, if I say the light you see in the house is a sign that I am at home, it could mean two things: 1) that it is a “symptom,” but also 2) that to switch on the light in the house means or expresses the fact that I am at home. “Signs” are therefore conventional, and come from a stipulation in language. To Wittgenstein, the principle of substitution applies to the conventional sense of signs-stipulation in grammar. You can then translate a symbolism into another symbolism at the surface level. You cannot translate a symbolism into signs in the sense of symptoms. Hence Wittgenstein’s important critique of the causal conception of language13. Understanding refers to the first (grammatical) sense of “signs,” observation to the second (inductive) sense. Interestingly enough, but inconceivably for Wittgenstein, Freud refers to “substitutes” for what has been repressed, also to “symptoms and inhibitions“, which are the effects of forgotten unpleasant material. By giving rise to emerging scattered thoughts, thanks to the technique of “freier Einfall” and with the collaboration of the patient, Freud takes it that it is possible, along the cure, to assemble the rests and fragments of these forgotten materials as an archeologist working on the remains of a broken totality. So far, the analogy serves to reconstitute a lost totality of elements in virtue of a deep hidden law of composition (Cf. his correspondence with Stefan Zweig, but also his famous “Constructions in psychoanalysis,” 1937). In Wittgenstein’s view, this is indeed misleading. A noteworthy illustration of what Wittgenstein considers as confusion is Freud’s “Relation between a symbol and a symptom” (1916), to which Wittgenstein’s later dictation to Waismann on “Sign and indication” seems to bring a contradictory reply. The example is that of the hat, and of what it means to take off one’s hat when you meet somebody in the street, 13

See for instance “Signs and indications,” Waismann’s Notebook 1, ca 1931, in (Wittgenstein 2003), p. 89.

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as a sign of greeting. Two senses of “sign” are involved, the conventional sense of greeting, but also the symptomatic (obsessive) sign of being debased by the same gesture, a feeling revealing a complex of castration. If both Wittgenstein and Freud agree on the therapeutic liberating efficiency of new forms of comparison against the cramps due to inlaid older analogies, Wittgenstein would never allow, and that’s the limit of their agreement, that such new analogies are more than an “aspect-seeing,” while Freud expects them to be “model-generating”14 at the level of the formation of hypothesis. That’s why, according to Wittgenstein, there is no possibility of reading the processes of thought through the processes of our brain. Remark 608 of Zettel is about Goethe’s image, and claims that there is no legitimate way to infer the forms of a plant out of the seed it comes from. No index is then able to help us to get upward towards the center of an organized system, as if this system were consistently knowable. In other words, there are no projection rules according to which the experimenter could infer such projected forms as being determined by some original fact. The so-called original system is rather a kind of chaos, an amorphous state of things out of which an organism proceeds in a way that cannot be explained. To put it in a nutshell, what Wittgenstein refuses is the existence of a written psychè as a kind of modern revival of the older Greek comparison, where the soul is compared by Plato to a “biblion.” Wittgenstein rejects the very philosophical paradigm used by Freud when he appeals to comparisons in order to characterize psychic reality. As he claims in 1931: “it is a great temptation [Versuchung] to make the spirit [Geist] explicit.” As I used to say in other contexts, such a doubt makes of Wittgenstein an anti-Greek kind of thinker. A question remains: what then about depth-grammar as seen by Wittgenstein, if it’s different from a causal level of explanation? Gordon Baker has tackled the point in his article “Wittgenstein’s ‘depth grammar’”15. First, it contains counter-arguments aiming at putting into question the kind of logical grammar that Frege and Russell had been developing. Wittgenstein’s search then relies on his conception of meaning as use. “Depth grammar,” G. Baker writes, “is meant to reveal further dimensions to the activity of describing the grammar of our language.” These dimensions are explored in some inquiries into Waismannian aspects of Wittgen14

The distinction is drawn by Peter Hacker in “Languages, Minds and Brains,” in (Blackmore and Greenfield 1987), p. 486 (quoted by J. Bouveresse, op. cit. p. 44). 15 In (Baker 2004), ch. 3 p 73.

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stein’s thought which exhibit striking analogies with Freud’s views16. This aspect of the “Third Baker’s” conception (K. Morris) leads to a justification of Wittgenstein’s views in terms of “a psychoanalytic model of philosophy” which stems from Waismann’s own Freudianism, and which is marked with his influence. It takes seriously the idea that there are some family resemblances between philosophy and psychoanalysis. In spite of Wittgenstein’s indebtedness to some Waismannian features, depth grammar makes no concession to a causalist approach to the hidden aspects underlying the use of our symbolism. Conclusion My conclusion is therefore that Wittgenstein does not reject psychoanalysis but only, from a grammatical point of view, its causal methodology. Aesthetically speaking, psychoanalysis is legitimate as far as the method of comparison looks for new comparisons that do not go beyond a modification of aspect-seeing. Within such limits, it is as legitimate as philosophical investigation itself. Wittgenstein’s aesthetic conception of psychoanalysis is the positive counterpart of his critique towards the causal conception of language which culminated in Freud. References Baker, Gordon 2004, Wittgenstein’s method, ed. K. Morris, London: Blackwell. Blackmore, C. and Greenfield, S. (eds.) 1987, Mindwaves Oxford: Blackwell. Bouveresse, Jacques 1991, Philosophie, mythologie et pseudo-science, Wittgenstein lecteur de Freud, Paris: L’Éclat. Descombes, Vincent 1995, La denrée mentale, Paris: Minuit. Hacker, Peter 1987, “Language, Minds and Brains” in Colin Blakemore and Susan Greenfield (eds.) Mindwaves Oxford: Blackwell 485-516. Milner, Max 1980, Freud et l’interprétation de la littérature, SEDES, CDU réunis, 1980 Sebestik, Jan and Soulez, Antonia (eds.) 1994, Grammaire, sujet, signification, Cahiers de philosophie du langage, Paris: L’Harmattan. Soulez, Antonia 1999, “L’intentionnalité dans le langage chez Wittgenstein” in G.-F Duportail (ed.) Intentionnalité et langage, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. 16

Cf. “Thinking about ‘thinking’”, ibid. See Part II, Wittgenstein and Waismann, ch. 8, p. 144.

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Soulez, Antonia 2012, Au fil du motif : autour de Wittgenstein et la musique, Paris: Sampzon – Delatour – France. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1979, Cambridge Lectures 1932-35, Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 2003, The Voices of Wittgenstein, ed. G. Baker, London: Routledge.

II. Aesthetic Grammar

Visual Space as Aesthetic Problem Jesús PADILLA GÁLVEZ Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo Introduction Wittgenstein’s book The Big Typescript contains the following quotation that deals with the topic of perception in both the visual space and the Euclidean space. It contains also a brief summary of the long history of human perception. His investigation traces back to the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus in which the philosopher points to the contradiction that arises if we use the same terminology to describe both spaces. He explains this in the following quotation: If we confuse the meaning “of the same length” and other expressions in visual space with the meanings of the same words in Euclidean space, we encounter // we get into // contradictions, and then we ask: “How is this kind of an experience possible?! How is it possible that 24 and 25 segments of equal length add up to the same length? Have I really had this kind of an experience?”1

In the late 1920s Wittgenstein had given several talks on the topic of the visual space in the Vienna Circle.2 In the course of these talks he discussed the topic with members of the Schlick circle and changed his point of view of the problem several times. Later he noted down his results in the The Big Typescript. In this article I want to highlight the difference in the way we perceive depending on whether perception is related to the visual space or the Euclidean space. Both the visual and the Euclidean space represent different frames within which perception takes place. We shall compare these two frames and analyse the contradictions that may arise if we confound the two perspectives. We shall also deal with the consequences that 1

“Wenn wir die Bedeutungen der Ausdrücke “gleichlang” und anderer im Gesichtsraum mit den Bedeutungen derselben Wörter im euklidischen Raum verwechseln, dann geraten // kommen // wir in // auf // Widersprüc[j|h]e und fragen dann: “Wie ist so eine Erfahrung möglich?! Wie ist es möglich, dass 24 gleichlange Strecken zusammen die gleiche Länge ergeben, wie 25 eben-solange? Habe ich wirklich so eine Erfahrungg gehabt?” Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 94, p. 329; Wittgenstein, Ts-213,454r. 2 Wittgenstein, WWK (1967), WA, Vol. 3, 59 ff. Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates, eds. Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 63-80.

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follow from this contradiction for the human experience. In particular, we will refer to the ramifications ensuing for the field of aesthetics. There is a long tradition in viewing aesthetics as the doctrine of apparent beauty, homogeneity and harmony especially in nature and the arts. Scholars have long had an interest in the process of perception in order to understand the origins of our human sense of beauty. Therefore aesthetic theories have focused on a characterisation, description and observation of aesthetic objects. Experts in art deal with the peculiar phenomena that make objects appear aesthetic according to the viewer. But how is this phenomenon described within aesthetic theories? How does the impression of an aesthetic object come into being? Is it true if we say that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder? At first sight, such questions appear circular; however, we shall try to analyse them in more detail within the following sections. Descriptive geometry is the scientific base of arts and especially of design. Thus the geometric terminology constitutes the linguistic basis for the description and definition of aesthetic objects. However, the question arises whether the geometric terminology is appropriate and correlates salva significatione with the terminology used to describe the visual space. L. Wittgenstein treated this question and his arguments shall be reconstructed here. I shall take up the considerations that Wittgenstein had made about the topic of aesthetics in The Big Typescript. Although they were not explicitly entitled as aesthetic annotations they are still related to this field. In fact, Wittgenstein makes some essential general remarks on sense perception.3 We shall try to capture some arguments that he presented in this context. If we define aesthetics as a theory of sense perception we are particularly attracted by L. Wittgenstein’s relevant contributions on the topic of spatial perceptions. Therefore the aim of this paper is to reconstruct an aesthetic theory of spatial perception and to denote an appropriate terminology for its description. 1. Wittgenstein’s change of viewpoint As mentioned above, Wittgenstein changed his viewpoint on aesthetic perception several times. In his conversations with Schlick in the Vienna Circle in December 1929 he emphasized that the visual space must be put in relation with Euclidean space. Visual and Euclidean spaces are not identical but rather correspond to one another. The Euclidean space may be 3

Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 94.

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considered a correlate of the visual space. If we apply this view to the perception of colours within the visual space one could say that a subject perceives different colours by way of observing the borders around these different colours. However, in the course of his research Wittgenstein changed his mind and became one of the most radical critics of such correlation between visual and Euclidean space.4 As such, he noted down in his Nachtrag that the visual space had a non-Euclidean structure.5 As such he concluded that when we say that something is “parallel” it has a different meaning depending on whether we use it in the visual or the Euclidean space. Generalising this approach he assumed that the syntax used for the description of the visual space was quite different from that applied to the Euclidean space. Wittgenstein suggested applying a method of projection in order to respond to this distinction because it allows us to depict linguistic propositions by means of Euclidean geometry. He started from the assumption that human beings need two different languages to refer to the visual space and to the Euclidean space respectively. Among these two languages he gave preference to the language of the Euclidean space. In fact, an analysis of the terminology shows that expressions such as “it seems” or “it appears that” point to a distinction. When mathematicians apply Euclidean geometry they usually tend to use expressions such as “it seems as if a geometric figure has this form or that.” As the two languages are analogous but not identical, the “multiplicity” of the geometry of the visual space is different from that of the Euclidean space. In fact, the hypothesis of two different languages and their corresponding frames is not new. L. Wittgenstein had already made similar conjectures in his earlier studies.6 For a better understanding of the problem we shall propose the following thought experiment [Gedankenexperiment].7 Let us divide a rectangle in two different parts of equal size and colour one in black and the other one in white. There are two different modes in which the division can be made: the parts may either be arranged 4

Wittgenstein, WWK (1967), WA, Vol. 3, 59 ff. Wittgenstein, WWK (1967). 6 Wittgenstein says: “Ich muß meine Darlegung berichtigen: Das Wesentliche dabei ist, daß wir zwei Sprachen gebrauchen, eine Sprache des Gesichtsraumes und eine Sprache des euklidischen Raumes, wobei wir der Sprache des euklidischen Raumes den Vorzug geben.” Wittgenstein, WWK (1967), WA, Vol. 3, 59. 7 There is a similar experiment in Brentano’s writings. See: Brentano (2009). 5

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in a horizontal or vertical way whereby two quadrangles emerge. But we may equally produce two triangles by cutting the quadruple at an angle. The question arises whether it is possible to represent such distinction. We presuppose that a person trying this experiment is able to imagine several ways in which such division may be produced. We do not associate any difficulties with such activity of mental representation. Actually, we are used to such kind of imagination since our time at school. However, it is exactly this skill that Wittgenstein is vigorously opposed to. He expressed this in the following quotation: But in this case it actually isn’t a question of the difficulty of calling up a particular image before my mind’s eye, nor is it a question of something that I can try but fail at; it’s a question of acknowledging a rule for a mode of expression.8

If we want to understand the structural and dynamic conditions of perception we have to accept the fact that the imagination is a rule for a mode of expression. Thus the philosopher draws our attention to a cognitive skill that we seem to apply as a matter of routine. We take this skill as a mode of expression for granted. This is a crucial point in Wittgenstein’s philosophy because he reveals our implicit assumptions. However, as the rules for the mode of expression are normally not analyzed within classic theory we rather tend to follow the imagery of pictures. In this context it is surprising that Wittgenstein does not make any reference to the field of psychology or physics as possible sources for a solution to this problem. Within classical theory questions related to sense perception are explained in terms of picture theory in which a lexicon of picture theory helps to explain the effect or appeal of pictures on the viewer. However, the terms used in this context often lack a precise definition or are applied incorrectly. Thus Wittgenstein had repeatedly criticised psychological terms and expressions and considered them as insufficiently qualified and fundamentally deficient. Questions of sense perception belong to the field of empirical perception theory. The analysis of Wittgenstein’s argumentation shows that his aim had not been the description of facts [Tatsachen]. Facts reveal all those elements that play a role in the process of perception. The aim was rather to show the pre-requisites that allow perception to take place. For instance, Wittgenstein wrote in the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus that there 8

See: Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 327.

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is neither a subject that is able to imagine, nor can we deduce from the visual space that there exists an eye:9 The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing. (5.631)10 And he explained this dictum by pointing to the visual field: “And from nothing in the visual field can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye.” (TLP, 5.633(c)).11 And immediately after that he added the following statement: “For the visual field has not a form like this:12

Conversely, the expressions “perception,” “visual space,” “visual field” or “visual picture” etc. belong to the field of phenomenology. The logical relation between these and other related expressions is still not clear. It would, for instance, be interesting to know more about the relation between the terms of the visual space on the one hand and expressions such as “vagueness,” “blurredness,” “indetermination” and “sensory impressions” on the other hand. The structural relations between the different conceptual fields of aesthetics or psychology remain undefined. These fundamental questions of definition have to be treated before dealing with psychological questions. Definitions cannot be made by using empiric or psychological methods. A combined use of aesthetic terminology and physiological and psychological expressions is always problematic. 2. The phenomenological question We are confronted with a problem that cannot be solved by mere observation, such as by watching an art object or a process closely. Observation and description are useful methods to conceive physiological and psychological phenomena. Conversely, Wittgenstein seeks a different approach in order to gain an insight into the grammar that is used in the de9

Compare MS 107, 1: “Der Gesichtsraum so wie er ist hat seine selbständige Realität. Er selbst enthält kein Subjekt. Er ist autonom.” (Wittgenstein, WA 2,3, MS 107, 1). 10 “Das denkende, vorstellende, Subjekt gibt es nicht.” (TLP, 5.631) 11 “Und nichts am Gesichtsfeld läßt darauf schließen, daß es von einem Auge gesehen wird.” (TLP, 5.633(c)). 12 “Das Gesichtsfeld hat nämlich nicht etwa eine solche Form: ” (TLP, 5.6331).

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scription of phenomena. During the process of observation our attention is automatically focused on the description of the observed object. However, the language that we apply to describe our perception underlies an incorrect logic analysis. In order to clarify our description we must first examine its grammar. And it is phenomenology that can help us in this process and thereby understand the old phenomenon of seeing.13 By using phenomenological methods we shall detect the incorrect logical analysis. Accordingly, Wittgenstein summarizes his viewpoint in the following quotation: The investigation of the rules of the use of our language, the recognition of these rules, and their clearly surveyable representation [übersichtliche Darstellung] amounts to, i.e. accomplishes the same thing as what one often wants to achieve in constructing a phenomenological language.14

Wittgenstein applied a new approach to the perception of art objects. He did not ask for any psychological predispositions that shape our way of perceiving aesthetic objects. Rather than that, he focused on our language use for the description of art phenomena. As such, his criticism was much more profound because he pointed to the ambiguity within the terminology. Ambiguous terms may provoke theoretic mistakes and lead to wrong conclusions. Wittgenstein’s language analysis was therefore an examination of the mode of representation that we apply in the context of aesthetics. He put it like this: Each time we recognize that such and such a mode of representation [Darstellungsweise] can be replaced by another one, we take a step toward that goal.15

He seemed to believe that an erroneous mode of expression in the description of sense data distorts our aesthetic perception. Language and terminology constitute a kind of linguistic supra-structure that originates from our natural or ordinary language. However, if we apply the expressions of this ordinary language to a specific context they undergo a shift in meaning and become part of scientific language. If we neglect the distinction be-

13

See: Wittgenstein, BT (2005), Chapter: Phenomenology, §§ 94-100. See: Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 94, p. 320. 15 See: Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 94, p. 320. 14

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tween the meaning of a term in natural language and its altered meaning in the scientific field we run the risk of making mistakes. The confusion that occurs occasionally when we describe aesthetic objects arises from an inadequate use of language. An aesthetic theory that is based on ambiguous or vague terms is doomed to fail. But how can we construct an appropriate language of aesthetics? We have to reconsider the terminology and reveal paradoxes and linguistic incongruence. However, this should not distract us from the relevance of other questions. One such question is, for instance, whether vague terms can be replaced by others. Wittgenstein focused particularly on indistinct terms or undefined concepts, such as “imagination,” “emotion” or “perception” and advises against substituting such terms. He rather views a problem in an incorrect interpretation of such terms and a possible ambiguity resulting from it. Such ambiguity can be avoided by a logically and grammatically correct explanation and definition of the terms. More specifically, he sees a problem if a wrong grammar is applied within the language of aesthetics.16 Let us assume that somebody sees a picture with two red circles of equal size on a blue background. The viewer could describe what he sees in the following way:17 (1) I see two red circles of equal size on a blue background. According to traditional perception theory the focus of attention lies on the process of vision. If the viewer described the red circles as “green” everyone would point to this mistake. Undoubtedly, the viewer of a visual impression has a crucial role once he describes what he has seen. In fact, traditional aesthetic theories put the viewer in the centre of attention ascribing him a front position from which he is situated opposed to the picture. According to this view, sentence (1) is either true or false depending on whether the description corresponds to the picture or not. In this approach the relation between beholder and picture appears more important than the language used by the beholder to describe his impressions. In contrast to that, for instance, a physicist would use a theory of colours in order to analyse and determine the blue background with the red circles on it. This matter can be expressed in ordinary language by the following sentence:18 (1*) Two red balls are lying on the table. Interestingly enough, Wittgenstein reveals that according to a scientific view we tend to create an analogy between a red circle and a red ball 16

See: Wittgenstein, BT (2005), p. 320. Id. 18 Ibid. 17

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on a table. But if we simply posed the question of what exists in duplicate and what is singular (1), the physicist would probably give the following reply:19 (2) I see the colour red at two circular locations. This response implies that one can see the colour red on two different positions with “two” relating primarily to the position and not to the colour. A simple question reveals that the physical approach has led to a shift of perspective between viewer and picture. Accordingly we refer to the red colour as a singular phenomenon and at the same time point to two distinct positions. We describe a picture by sentences such as (1) whereas the scientific expression produces sentences such as (2). However, the scientific approach has created a shift of quantification. Which implication does this shift have? We can provide the following explanation: (3) Red and circular are properties of two spots at two circular locations. Sentence (3) gives us a physical explanation of our perception. It seems that (2) and (3) are typical interpretations of (1). Therefore we assume that the expressions (2) and (3) have the same meaning as (1). We may conclude that the grammar applied to words such as “spot,” “position” or “colour” are determined by the grammar of the words “red,” “blue,” “background” or “circle,” as in (1). But these assumptions are likely to provoke confusions for the following reason: if we bring the grammar of (2) and (3) in line with (1) we can only determine the equivalence of meaning by deciding about the presence or absence of the spot. In sentence (1) the viewer confirms whether he has really seen a red spot and not just a reflection. The assumption that there is an analogy of grammar in (1) and (1*) has led to an incorrect ontology. The error is not in the process of perception but rather in the underlying grammar that we use for the description of perceptions. A substitution of (1) to (2) and (3) causes terminological misconceptions and produces a shift of meaning. But how can we delimit the borders that form the frame of a certain meaning? Wittgenstein answers that this can only be figured out by a detailed analysis of the use of words. As such, nonsense is the result of an incorrect use of the rules that govern a term. Certainly we have got used to applying the physical mode of expression to sense data. The term “object” in (1*) is used to denote “objects” such as described in (1). It is the same process by which we transfer the red ball on the table on to two red circles on a blue background. But is this transfer justified? Can we simply replace particular syntactic structures by 19

Ibid.

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others? Is my perception of two red circles on a blue background identical or just analogous to perceiving two red globes on a blue table? Do I use the same grammatical structures to describe these two perceptions? In this context Wittgenstein poses the following question: I, the Subject, am standing across from the table, as an object; but in what sense am I standing across from my optical after-image of the table? 20

Wittgenstein examined this matter profoundly. Although in 1929 his considerations were still dominated by anti-intentionalism, his views on atomic sentences had undergone a fundamental change of viewpoint. Rather than considering single sentences as basic units of his epistemological account, he pointed to a systemic view of linguistic structures: Ich lege nicht den Satz als Maßstab an die Wirklichkeit an sondern das System von Sätzen. 21

When Wittgenstein discovered the logic of colour terms he underlined that one has to take the possibilities given by the spectrum into account. Atomic sentences are never completely independent of others since “This plate is blue” logically implies – among other propositions – that it is not red. Yet, this is not a tautology. Given the visual field and the customary colour space one has a priori knowledge of the structural dependencies of possible colours. To look for any actual colour one must necessarily have a knowledge of a presupposed colour scheme. Wie es einen Sinn hat zu sagen die Farbe R ist am Ort P wenn ich überhaupt den Gesichtsraum mit dem Farbraum “vor mir” habe.22

Wittgenstein’s quotes indicate that he is still officially unwilling to admit the existence of a subject. But what if I am not able to capture every single detail of my picture? Does this mean the same as saying that I do not see all the details of the table? Are we then confronted with an empirical fact or a statement on logical impossibility? We tend to apply the same terms and expressions as in (2) to descriptions made from the perspective of the 20

See: Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 94, p. 321. Wittgenstein, MS 107, 35; WA 2, 149. 22 Wittgenstein, MS 107, 158; WA 2, 92. 21

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visual field in (1). However, we have to take a shift of meaning into account as well as the consequence that the statements lose their meaning. It is our task to identify transgressions whereby the limit of a meaning is exceeded. We have to examine those terms of ordinary language that are used in a particular science and thereby undergo a change of meaning. The scientist may not always be aware of this change or simply overlook the fact that both meanings overlap. 3. From the visual to the Euclidean space Following Ernst Mach’s assumptions, there are two distinct perspectives referring to our spatial perception, the physiological or visual space on the one hand and the geometric or Euclidean space on the other hand.23 Characteristic to the visual space is that it is finite and delimited,24 that its parts have different structural properties; and that its amount of expansion is different at certain areas. Another typical feature is the capacity of the eye to zoom in and out or to move towards an object. As such our visual perception is limited by the physical conditions of “top” and “down,” “front” and “back” as well as “right” and “left.”25 In contrast to this, the Euclidean space is characterised by its infinity and the fact that it has uniform properties and unlimited space.26 In the following quotation Ernst Mach summarized the characteristic elements of both the visual and the Euclidean space: Der geometrische Raum ist überall und nach allen Richtungen gleich beschaffen, unbegrenzt und unendlich (im Riemannschen Sinne). Der Seheraum ist begrenzt und endlich, ja sogar, ..., in verschiedener Richtung von ungleicher Ausdehnung.27

Robert Musil had been dealing with this topic in his thesis and he considered Mach’s comparison of the two spaces incorrect. He maintained that the use of one and the same proposition in different contexts produced different meanings. Moreover, Musil criticised the aphoristic manner of

23

Mach (1991a), p. 148. Mach (1991b), p. 337. 25 Wittgenstein put it like this: “Visual Space is a directional space in which there is up and down, right and left.” Wittgenstein, 2005, BT, 96, 330. 26 Mach (1991b), p. 338. 27 Mach (1991a), p. 148. 24

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Mach’s considerations arguing that the informal style of his descriptions impeded a logically stringent analysis.28 Musil criticised Ernst Mach for using expressions from ordinary language which he had given a new meaning when used in a scientific context. He argued that the aphoristic parenthesis may produce grammatical inconsistencies and considered it as terminological misuse. Mach considered facts as the only relevant source of knowledge, a position that was fundamentally criticised by Musil.29 Wittgenstein used a completely different approach to the analysis of language. He was neither interested in the aphoristic elements of physical language nor in its underlying facts. Therefore his point of departure was the non assumption that there existed any hidden or obscure facts that had to be discovered. As he said: The geometry of our visual space is given to us, i.e. finding it doesn’t require an investigation into hitherto hidden facts.30

At this point Wittgenstein changed his view of the problem. There is something more fundamental than geometry and that is the definition of the word “geometry.” It can only be defined by examining the grammatical rules of the word.31 He explains the problem in the following way: This geometry is grammar, and our investigation is a grammatical investigation.32

Which kind of grammar does Wittgenstein refer to? The linguistic representation of the geometry of the visual space must be clearly acquired. The visual space is described as having a certain kind of order a priori. What is reasoned in the visual space goes along with a certain logic and geometry both of which have grammatical properties.33 Wittgenstein sees the main problem in the use of the same terminology for both the visual and the Euclidean space.34 Let us take, for instance, the meaning of the expression “of equal length.” Wittgenstein shows that 28

Musil (1980), p. 22. Musil (1980), p. 23. 30 See: Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 94, p. 323. 31 Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 39, p. 121. 32 Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 94, p. 323. 33 Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 94, p. 324. 34 Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 94, p. 329. 29

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its meaning in the visual space differs from that in the Euclidean space.35 In ordinary language we often use the expression “it seems that…” and in the case of our example applied to the Euclidean space it means that two lines have the same amount of measurable units. If we, however, speak of “equal length” in the visual space we cannot say that both sticks are of the “same length.” Two lines may have equal or different length depending on whether we describe them in the visual space or measure them in the Euclidean space. Wittgenstein says in this context that we have to take into account the rule for the way we speak.36 4. The observer and the visual space L. Wittgenstein brings up the question whether we can make meaningful sentences such as the following: (4) I see this object in visual space.37 We could, for instance, imagine that an object is seen by somebody, smelt by another person and heard by another different person. Still it cannot be deduced from (4) that this object is the direct cause for my seeing it within my visual space. Representatives of behaviourism hold that (4) is mainly understood as physical statement. But Wittgenstein abandoned this interpretation and related the word “visual space” to the grammar of the language.38 Exactly this perspective led him to the assumption that “visual space” does not have a particular beholder. We could therefore incorrectly deduce the following sentence from (1): (2) I see a landscape in my visual space. According to this perspective each beholder could view and describe one and the same object in different ways. Let us imagine that I can see a particular landscape within my visual space. Another person perceives a boring scene; another observer views an economically deprived region, and so on. Referring to these analogies we shall point to two fallacies: first, each of us can see a landscape but nobody can see the visual space of the other; second, there is something deceptive in the attributions by which we 35

„Die Argumentation gilt auch für die Bedeutung von ‚gleichfärbig‘. Die Bedeutung hängt von dem Kriterium ab, das wir für die Gleichfärbigkeit annehmen. Wenn es sich um Flecke im Gesichtsraum handelt, die wir zu gleicher Zeit sehen, so hat das Wort ‚gleichlang‘ verschiedene Bedeutung, je nachdem die Strecken unmittelbar angrenzend oder voneinander entfernt sind.“ Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 118, p. 412 ff. 36 Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 118, p. 414. 37 “Ich sehe diesen Gegenstand im Gesichtsraum.” Wittgenstein BT (2005), 97, p. 334. 38 Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 97, p. 334.

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describe a landscape as boring or deprived. This identification is incorrect as we cannot disregard the difference between geographic indicators on the one hand and psychological attributes on the other hand. Elsewhere Wittgenstein resumed the problems that we face when we deal with the problem of the visual space. He put it like this: Die Schwierigkeit die uns das Sprechen über den Gesichtsraum ohne Subjekt macht & über meine & seine Zahnschmerzen ist die die Sprache einzurenken daß sie richtig in den Tatsachen sitzt.39

He clearly indicates in this quotation that in the visual space there is no such phenomenon as a metaphysical subject. 5. Visual space compared to a two-dimensional picture Wittgenstein regards it as impossible for a person to draw a picture of his own visual space.40 He explains this in the following statement. Someone who was asked to paint a Visual image and seriously tried to do this would soon see that it is impossible.41

But why should this be completely impossible? Wittgenstein did not give any answer to this question. One may assume that the painter is unwilling to follow this instruction. Leave aside the painter’s internal reasons there is rather a danger that the painter might use his particular “language of painting” and depict the visual space in a way that is substantially different from reality. Wittgenstein describes this aspect in more detail in his chapter on “phenomenological investigation of sense impressions.”42 It appears that the difficulties have to do with concepts such as “blurredness,” “unclear” or “out of focus.” E. Mach tried to sketch his own visual space as he perceived it by drawing himself in lying position looking through the window of his study.43 He did that by closing his right eye and made a drawing of his surrounding as he viewed it with his left eye only. If we intend to reconstruct this experiment we become aware of the fact that he had incorrectly depicted his visual space. As can be seen in the image, 39

Wittgenstein, MS-153b,19v. Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 98, p. 336. 41 Id. 42 Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 98, p. 337. 43 Mach (1991a), p. 15. 40

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Mach depicted his own body, his moustache, nose, shoes, as well as the book shelves of his study at the borders of the space by drawing sharp contours. In fact, all the objects at the outer frame of his visual space can be seen in detail, even the folding of his clothes. But trying out this experiment one notices that despite the sharp contours of the objects, it is impossible to grasp all the details that are located at the margins of the visual space. For instance, if we zoom in an object we can only see the details of the close surrounding but we are cannot gain a detailed view of the outer margins. The human eye cannot simultaneously zoom in distant objects and zooms out close objects. In fact, blurredness is an internal property of the visual space itself.44 E. Mach’s picture would be correct if we focused our view on each of the individual objects of the surrounding and then arranged each of these objects together in a picture. Therefore Mach’s picture does not correspond to his factual visual field. The language that is used in the picture does not correlate to the language used for the description of our perception. Wittgenstein’s explanation for this phenomenon is that we tend to confuse physical and phenomenological language. Mach’s drawing of his own visual field is different from what we perceive. This is because the degree of visual zoom depends mainly on our perspective. For Wittgenstein E. Mach’s sketch is a typical example of confusion of physical and phenomenological languages.45 He says this of Mach’s depiction: One of the clearest examples of confusion between physical and phenomenological language is the picture Mach sketched of his field of vision, in which the so-called blurredness of the shapes toward the edge of his visual field was reproduced by a blurredness (in a quite different sense) in the drawing. No, you can’t make a visible picture of your visual image.46

E. Mach’s picture takes all the skills into account that belong to the process of perception when we focus on all the visible objects. But this does not correlate with the language of experience. Conclusion Some parts of Wittgenstein’s writings mislead us into assuming that his considerations are based on a classic concept of aesthetics. This be44

Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 98, p. 337. Id. 46 Wittgenstein, BT (2005), 337(e). 45

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comes obvious when he asks for the purpose of grammatical rules and gives the following answer: Um den Gebrauch der Sprache im Ganzen gleichförmig zu machen? (etwa aus ästhetischen Gründen?)47

It seems as if the homogeneity of language is in correlation with classical aesthetics. The triangle of language – homogeneity – aesthetics seems interconnected. Although there are spots of sharp perception within our visual space the majority of impressions is undetermined and blurred. If we speak of the Euclidean space we could say that it consists of a number of visual spaces but without any vagueness. Euclidean space lacks any vagueness or blurredness. Consequently the terminology used in the Euclidean space includes expressions that describe these phenomena. An aesthetic theory which does not contain an appropriate terminology to describe vagueness or blurredness cannot deal with the errors that occur within the process of perception. The question is whether aesthetic theory has an adequate language available in order to describe phenomena such as vagueness or indeterminacy, both of which are characteristic elements of visual space. References Wittgenstein’s Bibliography - Das Blaue Buch und Eine Philosophische Betrachtung BB (das sogenannte Braune Buch, ed. R. Rhees, in: WA, vol. 5, (1970). - Bemerkungen über die Farben (1977), ed. G.E.M. AnBF scombe, in: WA, vol. 8, pp. 7-112. - Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik BGM (1974), WA, vol. 6. BT, 2000 - The Big Typescript (TS 213), Wittgenstein. Wiener Ausgabe, ed. M. Nedo, vol. 11, Springer, Wien, 2000. BT, 2005 - ‘The Big Typescript: TS 213’, Wittgenstein’. ed. and trans. C. Grant Luckhardt, M. A. E. Aue, Blackwell, Oxford, 2005. - Manuscript …, catalog from G.H. v. Wright. MS ... 47

Wittgenstein, Ts-213,193r.

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- Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. The Bergen Electronic Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000. - Philosophische Bemerkungen (1964), ed. Rush Rhees, PB WA, Vol. 2. - Philosophische Grammatik (1969), ed. Rush Rhees, PG WA, Vol. 4. - Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), ed. J. C. PO Klagge, A. Nordmann, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, Cambridge, 1994. - Philosophische Untersuchungen (1953), eds. G.E.M. PU Anscombe, G.H. von Wright, R. Rhees, in: WA, Vol. 1, pp. 225-618. TS... - Typescript …, catalog from G.H. v. Wright. - Werkausgabe (8 volumes), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., WA 1984. - Wittgenstein’s Lectures. Cambridge, 1930-1932, ed. D. WL30/32 Lee, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1980. WV32/35(1)/(2) - Wittgenstein. Vorlesungen Cambridge 1932-1935 (1979), ed. A. Ambrose, trans. J. Schulte, in: Wittgenstein. Vorlesungen 1930-1935, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1989. - Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis (1967), Ed. B.F. WWK McGuinness, WA, Bd. 3. Nachlass

Baker, Gordon Park 2004b, “Some Remarks on ‘Language’ and ‘Grammar’,” in: Wittgenstein’s Method. Neglected Aspects, ed. K. J. Morris, Oxford: Blackwell, 52-72. Baker, Gordon Park 2004c, “Wittgenstein’s ‘Depth Grammar’,” in: Wittgenstein’s Method. Neglected Aspects, ed. K. J. Morris, Oxford: Blackwell, 73-91. Baker, Gordon Park – Hacker, Peter Michael Stephan 1980, Wittgenstein. Understanding and Meaning. Volume 1 of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell. Baker, Gordon Park – Hacker, Peter Michael Stephan 20092, Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity: Essays and Exegesis of 185-242, ed. P. M. S. Hacker, Oxford: Blackwell. Brentano, Franz 2009, Schriften zur Sinnespsychologie, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

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Forster, Michael N. 2004, Wittgenstein on the Arbitrariness of Grammar, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Garver, N. 1996, “Philosophy as grammar,” in: H. Sluga, D. Stern, (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, New York, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 139-170. Gier, Nicholas F. 1981, Wittgenstein and Phenomenology. A Comparative Study of the Later Wittgenstein, Husserl, Heidegger and MerleauPonty, Albany: State University of New York Press. Gier, Nicholas F. 1990, “Wittgenstein’s Phenomenology Revisited,” Philosophy Today, 34: 3, 73-288. Hacker, Peter Michael Stephan 1972, Insight and Illusion. Wittgenstein on Philosophy and the Metaphysics of Experience, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hacker, Peter Michael Stephan 1992, Developmental Hypotheses and Perspicuous Representations: Wittgenstein on Frazer’s Golden Bough, Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, 41, 277-299 (see also Hacker, 2001, 74-97). Hacker, Peter Michael Stephan 1996, ‘The arbitrariness of grammar and the bounds of sense’, in: Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, vol. 4 de An Analytic Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell. Hacker, Peter Michael Stephan 2001, Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Husserl, Edmund 1968, Logische Untersuchungen II, 1 (1901), Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Hutchinson, Phil - Read, Rupert 2008, “Toward a Perspicuous Presentation of ‘Perspicuous Presentation’,” Philosophical Investigations, 31, 141-160. Mach, Ernst 1991a, Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhältnis des Physischen zum Psychischen (1922), Darmstadt: WB. Mach, Ernst 1991b, Erkenntnis und Irrtum (1926), Darmstadt: WB. Musil, Robert 1980, Beitrag zur Beurteilung der Lehre Machs. InauguralDissertation (1908). Hamburg: Rowohlt. Padilla Gálvez, Jesus 2005, Minima Visibilia. Episteme, vol. 25, Nr. 1, 5381. Padilla Gálvez, Jesus 2008, “Phenomenology as Grammar. An Introduction,” in: Phenomenology as Grammar, ed. J. Padilla Gálvez, Frankfurt a. M.: Ontos Verlag, 7-14.

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Padilla Gálvez, Jesus 2010, “Philosophical Anthropology. An Introduction,” in: Philosophical Anthropology. Wittgenstein’s Perspective, ed. J. Padilla Gálvez, Frankfurt a. M.: Ontos Verlag, 7-14. Wenning, Wolfgang 1985, “Sehtheorie und Wittgensteins Sprachphilosophie,” in: Sprachspiel und Methode: zum Stand der WittgensteinDiskussion, eds. D. Birnbacher, A. Burkhardt, Berlin - New York: de Gruyter, 170-190.

Seeing as and Semantic Expansion Michel LE DU Université de Strasbourg 1. Introduction This paper deals with the concepts of metaphor and similarity and questions the assertion that all semantic innovation is – directly or indirectly – attributable to metaphorical mechanisms. It also tries to connect this issue to series of themes, recurrent in Wittgenstein’s remarks on language and mind. One will perhaps conclude, from reading the following pages, that the difference between pragmatic and semantic perspective on this topic has been overlooked. But my being disregardful in that respect is justified by the fact that this distinction has no clear role in Wittgenstein’s own perspective on language.1 Some authors deny the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical any relevance. But from the fact that the border between the two is often blurred (and the difference between various figurative uses of language frequently difficult to locate with desirable accuracy), one cannot infer that the very distinction doesn’t exist: the only conclusion one can draw is that one single criterion cannot be expected.2 The fact that the distinction involves various criteria is obviously different from it being deprived of all justification. It’s clear, at least, that the meaning of a vivid metaphor “is not inferable from the standard lexicon” even if dead metaphors frequently become part of it. 3

1

It is clear that Wittgenstein’s notion of a grammar disregards the traditional distinctions between semantics, syntax and pragmatics. 2 Max Black (1978), p. 35, notices that the absurdity or patent falsity of a sentence taken literally cannot be considered as a criterion for its being metaphorical, at least for two reasons: (1) if acceptable, such a criterion would apply equally to oxymoron and hyperbole (2) a negative sentence such as “man is not a wolf” is as metaphorical as the corresponding positive one and, however, makes perfectly good sense taken literally. 3 Op. cit., p. 23. Black suggests (rightly, I think) that there is something fishy in the thesis that a metaphor is a deviation from proper usage. Such a thesis, he says, considers literal sentences as unproblematic standards and metaphoric ones as mysterious. Consequently, the layman could say “If the metaphor producers don’t say what they are willing to say, why is it that they don’t say something else” (op. cit., p. 21). It’s impossible to do without the idea that a vivid metaphor is unusual as an application of a word but to describe this application as a deviation is inappropriate: the very notion Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates, eds. Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 81-95.

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Wittgenstein was strikingly talented in finding illuminating analogies and has often underlined how important they were to the task of unraveling conceptual confusions and dissolving pseudo-problems. He has also suggested that their cognitive value consisted in their capacity to suggest unexpected descriptions of familiar things and features of life. However, he didn’t undertake a systematic display of concepts (such as family resemblance), and themes (such as aspect change) to which he drew the philosophical attention, although these topics have numerous connections with those of similarity and metaphor: multiple similarities exist between the branches of a family resemblance network and, obviously, the use of a vivid metaphor can lead to the emergence of a new aspect. Accordingly, what we need is an insight into the exact relation between the concepts of metaphor and similarity, together with an overview of the different kinds of similarities. It’s not enough to notice the relations that do exist between the various applications of the same word because such an outlook doesn’t inform us on the very mechanisms which resulted in this diversity: all the established uses of a word are, from a synchronic point of view, more or less on an equal footing4 and don’t keep trace of the events thanks to which a new use has been generated from previous ones. An additional difficulty, in that respect, is attributable to the fact that different mechanisms may result in the same cognitive effect: both a metaphor and a catachresis (= the extension of the literal meaning of a word in order to fill a gap in language) may well arouse an aspect change. One could object that many recent theories of language and symbolism deal with these topics. However, they often operate with much too broad a concept of metaphor, and this is a defect one can also see in the work of Aristotle (1997, 1457b), the consequence of this excessive extension being that almost every figurative use of language becomes metaphor-

of a deviation suggests the idea of a straightforward way which is not taken for some reason. 4 This equal footing is true from a grammatical point of view: among the spectrum of meanings of the word game (football, board games, the Olympics etc.), none of the things denoted can be said to be more a game than the others. From a psychological perspective, a different point has to be made: concepts very often hinge upon a prototype and speakers are more responsive when they are asked, for instance, if a creature close to the prototype (a sparrow) is a bird than when they are asked if a marginal member (an ostrich) of the category is a bird. In this perspective, a member of a category can be “more” a member than another.

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ical.5 Other authors use a more circumscribed concept and, afterwards, tend to reduce all semantic innovation to underlying metaphors.6 I will try to show that such an endeavor is ill-advised. Subsequently, the real challenge is, on the one hand, to account for the different routes of semantic change that do exist and, on the other hand, to show how these different routes also produce various cognitive effects. 2. Interaction To achieve such a goal, we need first to survey some of the most notable contributions to the field in contemporary philosophy, in order to determine in which way they renewed the discussion. One of the major events, in that respect, was the abandoning of the so-called substitution view of metaphor.7 This abandoning was already clear in I. A. Richards’ text entitled “Metaphor.”8 Richards’ merit is to have proposed “a set of useful terms for talking about metaphors.”9 He coined the words topic and vehicle to denote the terms involved in a metaphorical sentence and described as a tension the relation between them. Such a set of words prefigures the distinction later established by Max Black between the primary subject and the secondary subject (lion in Richard is a lion), metaphor being conceived as an interaction between the two.10 Obviously, the interaction theory discards the substitution view, for at least two reasons. First, the interaction is supposed to create something new, for which no literal term is available. In other words, the paradigmatic case of metaphor be5

This tendency is visible, for instance, in Nelson Goodman’s work. Goodman (1976) more or less considers that all displacements of what he terms labels are metaphorical. 6 This is, I think, a failing one can detect in Lakoff and Johnson’s influential book (1980). 7 The substitution view of metaphor is the idea that every metaphor is a surrogate for some literal expression. For instance, “Richard is a lion,” in such a perspective, is a substitute for “Richard is brave.” If this view was correct, metaphors would all be expandable or purely ornamental. As Max Black noted in his seminal paper “Metaphor” the comparison view of metaphor, which states that metaphors can be appropriately replaced by literal comparisons (“Richard is like a lion in being brave” for “Richard is a lion”) is a variant of the substitution view; Black (1962a), p. 36. 8 Richards (1936). 9 See Andrew Ortony’s introduction to the book he edited (1978), p. 3. 10 See again his paper “Metaphor,” p. 38-39. Primary subject is another name for the logical subject of the metaphorical sentence and secondary subject another name for the term included in the predicate. Black sometimes labels focal word the subsidiary subject.

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comes the one where no satisfactory paraphrase can be found.11 Secondly, while the substitution theory focuses on words (one being substituted for another in the course of the metaphor making), the interaction view takes the whole sentence as the relevant unity and so is quite in keeping with the main trends of philosophical semantics from Frege onwards.12 Black uses the word frame in order to denote the context in which the focal word gains a new meaning. Here, the expression new meaning simply records the fact that the focal term is applied in an unusual way. But this must not dissimulate what appears as Black’s most interesting insight, the idea that, in a metaphor, a concept is always seen through another concept. Here is what I would like to call the point of metaphors. Such a point is the justification for the idea that they have their own distinctive achievements. Moreover, the fact that a concept is seen through another is the very source of the asymmetry which distinguishes metaphors from similarities (similarities being symmetrical relations). Indeed, if such an asymmetric relation between concepts is at the very heart of metaphor making, it’s difficult to maintain that one essential feature of a vivid metaphor is its capacity to suggest new kinds. This suggestion (although widespread) appears as misleading because, in the present context, the search for a new kind can only consist in an attempt to grasp a feature common to the primary and the secondary subject, and this involves a symmetrical perspective on these concepts, such a symmetry (once again) being foreign to the point of metaphors: in other words, to address what two concepts have in common is quite different from seeing one through the other. Black himself (1978), p. 31, explains this distinction with the help of an image: seeing a scene through blue glasses is different from looking for a feature common both to the glasses and the scene. However, apart from its point, a metaphor also has characteristic effects, and might have some of them in common with different sorts of figurative speech.13 Among those effects is, as Aristotle 11

It must however be noticed that some literal sentences might also be extremely difficult to paraphrase. In this respect, see Nelson Goodman’s remarks in “Metaphor as Moonlighting.” Goodman (1984), p. 72-73, insists that the inability to paraphrase a metaphorical term is compatible with knowing what it applies to. 12 Frege (1980), § 62 ; Wittgenstein (2000), § 49. 13 Some authors obviously ignore the distinction between the point of metaphors and their effects. Donald Davidson (1984), p. 262, suggests that a metaphor makes its reader see things in a different way and claims that a bump on the head can do the same. This remark overlooks the fact that metaphor effects such a change thanks to a semantic / cognitive mechanism (a concept seen through another) and that the bump

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already emphasized, the perception of similarity. As soon as a metaphor is set forth, a register of similarities is opened. And “scanning” this register, in turn, opens the way to the detection of new kinds. Accordingly, one of the major sources of erring here is the confusion between the point and the effects. Effects-based classifications often induce readers to mistake other innovative uses of language for metaphors. In order to illustrate what seeing a concept through another one consists in, Black examines first a familiar example of metaphor: man is a wolf. He explains that in such a case, the concept wolf is used as a filter (or a prism) through which men are seen.14 Such a filter highlights certain features to the detriment of others.15 What he calls a system of commonplaces comes into play here. In other words, when I describe a person as a wolf, I don’t activate the zoologist’s notion of a wolf (a notion I may not master completely) but rather a folkloric wolf: the metaphor animalizes its subject and humanizes the wolf. This is an obvious illustration of the interaction theory: the relation between the subject and the predicate is reciprocal but not symmetric. 3. Creativity One major defect of the system of commonplaces theory seems to be that it describes well what occurs when a familiar metaphor is being used but seems unable to account for creative metaphors. Black was clearly aware of this difficulty, as one can see from the new insights he introduces at the end of his text “Metaphor.” He accordingly suggests that innovating metaphors should be understood as establishing a new range of implications. Here, it’s clear that this very notion of implication overrides the idea on the head, on the assumption that it produces the same change, causes it with the help of a rolling pin or a truncheon. 14 Things are only apparently different if I say George is a wolf, because what the listener is supposed to understand is that George [a man] is a wolf. That the principal subject can be a singular term doesn’t abolish the fact that the constitutive relation is between concepts. 15 This point also plays an important part in Lakoff and Johnson’s account. If I say that arguing is a battle, I may “lose sight of the cooperative aspects of arguing” (op. cit., p. 10). Another major point of their analysis (which also fits the interactive conception) is that metaphor is selective on both sides: the metaphorical term (the focus in Black’s terminology) drives the listener to select aspects of the logical subject, and is also used selectively: if I say that a theory is a building, I tap, among other things, the fact that buildings have a framework, but not their having gargoyles or plumbing problems (op.cit., p. 53).

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of a system of commonplaces: the most interesting implications cannot be those implicit in such a system.16 This is precisely the moment he chooses to introduce one of the most controversial theses on this topic, the idea that really innovative metaphors creates similarity and cannot be explained as the formulation of a previously existing resemblance. As many different issues seem to be involved in this thesis, let us tackle it in a somewhat indirect way. It is certainly true that an observer cannot see alternately a duck and a rabbit in Jastrow’s famous drawing without mastering the concept of a duck and the concept of a rabbit. So it would be inappropriate to sum up the situation by saying that the observer confines himself to the reading of a preexisting resemblance. However, there would be no point either in saying that, in such a case, similarity is created by the use of those concepts, even if their mastery is required in order to grasp it. In other words, it would be ludicrous to say that such similarities are creations, although the drawing is one. On the other hand, the relationship between the fall of a rock from a cliff and the phenomenon of the tide is completely unapparent: one can grasp the similarity between the two events (in spite of the innumerable differences between them) as a result of an understanding the physical theory of movements: here similarity itself becomes theoretical. Are we then to say that the similarity is created by the theory? It would be foolish to suggest that the attraction force which operates in both cases is a theoretical creation. But the concept of such a force certainly is, and this concept governs the grasp of the similarity. This last point makes the whole question appear as an extension of the theory-observation problem. It’s widely admitted today that pure data don’t exist. This doesn’t mean that our theories create the things they address or that the “given” is completely informed by hypothesis. It means that the difference between concept and datum must be interpreted as a logical one and not in realistic terms: the idea of a psychological stratum of “pure given” is mythical and, accordingly, the data are not isolated. Subsequently, the distinction between the given and the concepts being deprived 16

The concept of a system of commonplaces seems very close to the notion of stereotype as later used by Putnam (1975). Putnam coins this term in order to refer to shared representations which might lack scientific validity: according to the stereotype, a gold ring should be yellow, although, as one can learn from an expert, a gold sample might well be white. However, the main problem doesn’t come in the first place from the information contained in the stereotype being scientifically questionable, but from the fact that the implications one can draw from a stereotype are, so to speak, known in advance.

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of psychological content, the data appear to be dependent on the concepts.17 However, such a determination of perception by concepts doesn’t entail a further determination of perception by theories: having concepts doesn’t determine in advance how we will describe things with their help. It remains that, if the data are dependent on concepts, so, a fortiori, are some resemblances. And, eventually, if the theoretical concepts create the perspective from which heterogeneous events appear as kindred, it doesn’t seem absurd to say that the similarity between those events is itself a theoretical outcome. And if it’s not absurd to say that theoretical concepts can create similarity, it doesn’t seem absurd either to say that a metaphor also can create similarity, especially if such a metaphor is a cog in a conceptual apparatus. Similarity, here, is not a part of the world as such, but a part of the world described in a certain way.18 If so, it still makes good sense to call it objective (at least it would sound odd to describe it as purely subjective), but its reification is banished. 4. Two accounts for meaning expansion The distance between concepts and data is obviously much bigger in the gravitation example than in Jastrow’s example. That’s why it is doubtful that the discovery of the kinship between the fall and the tide will modify the way each event is perceived. But this is clearly a matter of degree. If a conceptual change, or the sudden grasp of a similarity, is echoed in the observer’s psychological life, such change and similarity might be called experiential.19 That’s typically what happens when an aspect dawns or when an aspect change occurs: aspect dawning and aspect change are un17

Scheffler (1967), chap. 1-2; Lewis (1952), p. 189-192. Black (1978), p. 39-40. 19 I borrow this attribute from Lakoff and Johnson (1980), chap. 29. They use it when discussing what they label objectivism. Their idea is that objects constrain our conceptual systems, but only through our experiencing them; hence the term experiential. I agree with their criticism of the myth of a thought without location and, to some extent, with their idea that “objectivity is always relative to a conceptual system” (ibid.). However, I don’t accept the relativistic consequences they draw from their experiential interpretation of similarity. A conceptual system doesn’t predetermine the content of the assertions which are built up from it. That’s why one should not adhere to too strong an interpretation of relative in the previous quotation. That’s also why the idea that our understanding of the world is based on culturally differentiated conceptual systems is an insufficient ground to repudiate the idea that truth is absolute. In addition, I think that there is no point in calling experiential some similarities because one doesn’t experience anything specific when grasping them, as we have seen from the gravitation example. 18

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derpinned by the exercise of conceptual capacities. If a similarity is grasped between A and B, B can come to be seen under the aspect of its being similar to A. And the similarity might be loose and rest on superficial features or be more structural and based on “deep” properties. If the similarity is based on such properties, we will, most probably, claim that it is more than a matter of aspect. Nevertheless, what I would like to call an aspectual moment is required in order to bring two things together. Going beyond this aspectual moment and giving similarity an ontological scope requires experimenting. Things remain rather simple when one deals with typical occurrences of metaphorical sentences such as argument is war.20 Arguments are seen through the concept of war and such a filter, as we have already said, highlights a set of features to the detriment of others: the filtering mechanism is also an aspect revealing mechanism. There is no place here for the idea that the concept of war could be extended, to the point of including arguments. In other words, inside such a frame, war means something unusual, but one cannot account for this innovation by saying that the word war has gained a new meaning: to mean and to have a meaning are two different things. If I speak of the table’s foot or of the virus in my laptop, it’s another story: here the two words have clearly obtained an additional meaning. It’s difficult to give a single explanation for the genesis of such additions. Has the first move been the addition of a new portion to the extension of these words, or is it that foot (in the anatomic sense) and virus (in the medical sense) have been, at the outset, used as filters in order to grasp objects foreign to their extensions? This distinction might appear as a minor one. Nevertheless, it’s important to see that even if the implications effected can, more or less, be identical in both cases, the bases for these implications are different. If the first hypothesis is the correct one, the additional meaning furnishes the hearer with such a basis: the new meaning is established in the first place, and then, drawing inferences may be required to substantiate it. If, on the contrary, the second hypothesis is the correct one, the filtering mechanism plays the role of the inference basis directly. The first hypothesis illustrates the catachresis model for word use expansion. The second illustrates the metaphor model. Every reader of Wittgenstein knows that most word extensions are not homogeneous, but built out of many threads, bound to each other by multiple transitions. This is what he chose to call family resemblances. Accordingly, having this point in mind, one might wish to know which model 20

I pick up this example from Lakoff and Johnson (1980), p. 4-6.

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is appropriate to describe the transitions that generated those multiple networks of family resemblances. Lakoff and Johnson obviously tend to think that the metaphorical mechanism is the most important. In that respect, one of the most surprising passages in their book is their analysis of the meaning of the word in (op. cit., p. 59-60). Their account hinges upon the idea that we conceptualize the non-physical in physical terms. This doesn’t mean that a particular field of experience has priority over the others but that our conceptualization of various domains of our experience is grounded in our everyday physical concepts. They illustrate this grounding by the following sentences: (1) Harry is in the kitchen. (2) Harry is in the Elks. (3) Harry is in love. They suggest that the meaning of in in (2) and (3) is the result of a metaphorical projection from the spatial use of in cases like (1). In other words, different languages games can be played with the help of the word in, and the transitions between these games are based on a metaphorical mechanism. If they are right, in as used in its initial spatial and physical sense is the metaphorical prism through which the relation of an agent with an institution or with his own affective state comes to be seen. Subsequently, in order to cover cases such as (2) an (3), Lakoff and Johnson concocted the notion of metaphorical concept.21 Their idea of grounding as such is plausible as a psychological assumption, but doesn’t seem to have any strong connection with the semantic hypothesis that the expansion of in, as a concept, is metaphorically underpinned: it is perfectly compatible with the idea that in, as used in (2) and (3) is obtained by addition of new portions to the initial extension, just as one goes naturally and effortlessly from vivid applied to colors to vivid applied to expressions.22 The same continuity can be observed when one speaks first of the cherries coming from the cherry tree and then of cherry lips. There is no reason to attribute the semantic expansion, in those two examples, to a metaphorical work; 21

A striking aspect of their analysis is that it doesn’t quite fit the interaction theory. In Black’s conception, as well as in most examples by Lakoff and Johnson, the interaction is, roughly speaking, between the subject and the predicate. Here the interaction seems located inside the predicate (between in and the Elks, between in and love). 22 I have borrowed this example from Colin Lyas (1999), p. 31. One could object that, in this passage, the author describes the situation of a hearer learning an application of a word he previously ignored and not the stance of a speaker creating a new application. But Lyas also underlines that the difference between a child progressively learning language and a poet is only a matter of degree: both are creators.

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Black (1962a), p. 34, indeed, mentions the second one as a typical example of catachresis. Eventually, my guess is that the relations between (1) and (2), on the one hand, (1) and (3), on the other hand, look much more like the connection between the two applications of vivid, than like the interactions between the two subjects in typical metaphor examples. 5. Models and Metaphors From an epistemological point of view, the major issue remains the nature of the relation between the new application devised for a word and the older ones. Peter Hacker (1980) distinguishes analogies he labels model-generating (whose main characteristic is their ability to suggest experiments) and analogies he calls aspect-seeing (describing features of reality we already know in an unexpected way).23 His example of a modelgenerating analogy is the recourse to the word current to describe the circulation of electricity in a wire. Such an analogy has an ontological scope: electricity is identified with a stream of particles, and such identification can be checked with the help of experimental procedures. Hacker insists that aspect-seeing analogies are recurrent in non-theoretical intellectual disciplines such as art history. An art historian will, for instance, speak of the grammar of architecture.24 Although such an analogy doesn’t suggest any further hypothesis, it’s still fruitful and valuable, especially from a heuristic point of view and can function, among other things, as a basis for comparisons between different trends in architecture. One must also notice that examples of aspect-seeing analogies are not difficult to find in everyday language, as when one notices that the house’s façade looks in a certain direction. However, it would be foolish to conclude that the grammar of Renaissance architecture is a sort of grammar, together with the grammar of English, the grammar of French etc.25All we can say is that the norms of an 23

In fact, his distinction is between two uses of analogies. When a new analogy is devised, one cannot say, at the outset, if its scope is model-generating or simply aspectual. 24 Hacker mentions John Summerson’s book entitled The Classical Language of Architecture (1980). However, aspect-seeing analogies also exist in natural sciences. The idea that such an analogy as the genetic program, for instance, is model-generating is very questionable. 25 Hacker (1991), p. 127, expresses a kindred remark when he says that, contrary to a suggestion made by many cognitive scientists, machine-vision is not a species of vision, together with vision by biological creatures. Commenting upon David Marr’s

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architectural tradition are seen as grammatical rules, and this is the justification for labeling such an analogy as aspect-seeing. On the contrary, the relation between the electrical current and the water current is not a loose one and proves to be more than simply aspectual: it has an ontological commitment and suggests that the electricity, just like water, is made of a flow of material particles. And the validity of such a commitment leads to the conclusion that the electricity current is a sort of current, together with gaseous and liquid currents. In other words, at the time of this discovery, one became aware that the primitive extension (relative to the physical world) of the word current was broader than previously imagined. The story is quite different when current is used to denote political or literary trends because the term gains a new and autonomous extension which is only loosely and indirectly connected to the primitive one: a political current is not a sort of current (together with the gaseous and liquid ones) but of a radically different kind. In his paper entitled “Models and Archetypes”, Max Black (1962b), p. 229, distinguishes two different species of seeing as and underlines that as being should not be mistaken for as if. This distinction doesn’t play any direct part in Hacker’s analysis. When one sees X as if it was an Y, one uses Y as what Black choose to call a fictional model. Black illustrates this notion with the help of Maxwell’s model of an electric field as an uncompressible imaginary fluid.26 Maxwell described his model as a “purely geometrical idea”, a heuristic model. He opposed it to models he called existential. It’s easy to find such heuristic models in other fields of knowledge. When Konrad Lorenz sees the nervous system as a tank, he uses a helpful devise in order to explain why the system’s outputs weaken after having several times been activated and why it can also be activated after a while without any stimulus (the tank overflows). In other words, the point of the model is to connect together heterogeneous facts, and the more it covers various facts, the more it is to be taken seriously. But if a neurologist, with

famous theory, he says that “it is a unquestioned presupposition of Marr’s work and of other authors in artificial intelligence that machine-vision is a species of vision.” 26 Maxwell (2011). As Black notices, Maxwell eventually went further in the ontological commitment and his seeing the electric field as if it were a fluid became more and more his seeing it as being a fluid. In other words, his theoretical model became model-generating in Hacker’s sense. Similar questions could be raised about the notion of a social field: the idea that such field could be an autonomous entity is very disputable. See also Turner (1955).

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such a model in mind, decided to locate the tank somewhere in the organism, we would probably find such an undertaking ludicrous.27 It’s interesting to notice that Black’s distinction cannot be superposed to Hacker’s. It’s clear that a model-generating analogy in Hacker’s sense has necessarily some ontological scope, but from this one cannot deduce that aspect-seeing analogies are all fictional devises. Although the analogy between a physical current and a political one is loose and aspectual, one cannot conclude than such a current is a mere fiction, like the tank in Lorenz’s example: a political current is an entity or is, at least, made of entities (voters, leaders, militants), the truth being that these entities are agents and belong to another realm than the one of natural processes and events. Accordingly, the conclusion seems to be that although not being model-generating in Hacker’s sense, the current analogy applied to agents’ collective actions and social trends is still existential in Max Black’s sense: the political movements are seen as being currents. However, I think possible to combine both distinctions. Although the fact that Black calls models intellectual constructions foreign to what Hacker calls model-generating is a source of confusion here, the issue is not simply one of terminology. When a fictional model is used, a whole range of behaviors and phenomena are seen as if they were products of what the model simulates. In that respect, a fictional model is also aspect-seeing. Lorenz’s model is quite good as an example here, but it will be useful to examine another one. Many expressions used by laymen revolve around the idea that the mind is a machine, but such a conception also underpins a wide range of academic work.28 It would be mistaken to take the mind / machine analogy as being model-generating (although major trends in cognitive sciences obviously tend to do so). But as soon as the machine model of the mind is adopted as a heuristic fiction, a whole set of behaviors (wordings, reactions, answers etc.) come to be seen as if they were products of a mental machinery. There is nothing existential here. A realistic interpretation would be inappropriate. Taking the mechanical analogy for the mind as equivalent to the hydrological analogy in electricity is grounded on a confusion between the mental capacities and their vehicle: the mind is not a sort of mechanism, along with physical and chemical mechanisms, and only the vehicle of psychological capacities can legiti-

27 28

See MacIntyre (1958), chap. 2 for a comment. Lakoff and Johnson (1980), p. 27-28.

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mately, and realistically, be described as a machine.29 On the other hand, accepting the idea that the mind could be a machine in a completely different sense (just like a political current is a current in quite a different sense) would open the door to the Trojan horse of the ethereal mechanisms mythology Wittgenstein recurrently fought against, especially in the Philosophical Investigations (see for instance § 308). Such a mythology is the accomplice of the superstition of “pure” thought-processes whose connection with language use is allegedly only empirical and contingent.30 6. Conclusions As one can see from the previous examples, mistakes about the way different uses of a word are related to each other are recurrent sources of conceptual confusion. In some respects, seeing one thing under the aspect of its resemblance to another belongs to what one could call the aesthetic ability of the human mind. However, such an ability to see aspects doesn’t inform us, as we have seen, about the nature of the resemblances grasped. In other words, its insights might have different cognitive status and various ontological scopes. In the human sciences, the situation is more difficult because the questions raised by the use of certain analogies interfere with the epistemological issues created by the natural sciences being used as a model. When one speaks of social field, the problems are partly identical with those raised by the model of an electric field, and partly different. In the realm of natural sciences, the issue is to determine whether such a field is an autonomous physical entity or simply a geometrical idea. In sociology, thinking of the political field, of the academic field etc. as autonomous entities would perpetuate Durkheim’s reification of a collective consciousness bending the agents’ decisions and feelings. But this doesn’t force us to accept the idea that such a field is a mere fiction in the eye of the sociologist. One can imagine, for instance, that the mention of a determinate field is part of an intentional explanation, in other words that this field makes sense, at least vaguely, for the concerned social agents. If we adopt such a perspective, we avoid reifying the field: it only exists if thinking agents situate themselves and other competing agents in it, and make decisions on the basis of these represented locations. It’s worth noticing that such a distinction between the fictional and the intentional interpretation of the field parallels Wittgenstein’s distinction between various senses 29

The distinction between the mental capacities and their vehicles is central to Anthony Kenny’s account of the mind: Kenny (1992), p. 71-72. 30 Wittgenstein (1980), § 7.

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of the term rule, especially between the rule, understood as a hypothesis in the mind of the observer, and the rule conceived as a justification that can be given afterwards by the agent for his decisions and actions.31 References Aristotle 1997, Poetics, New York: Dover. Black, Max 1962a, “Metaphor” in: Model and Metaphor, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 25-47. Black, Max 1962b, “Models and Archetypes” in: Model and Metaphor, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 219-243. Black, Max 1978, “More about Metaphor” in: Ortony, Andrew (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19-43. Davidson, Donald 1984, “What Metaphors Mean” in: Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 245-264. Frege, Gottlob 1980, Foundations of Arithmetics, Oxford: Blackwell. Goodman, Nelson 1976, Languages of Art, Indianapolis: Hackett. Goodman, Nelson 1984, “Metaphor as Moonlighting” in: Of Mind and other Matters, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 71-77. Hacker, Peter 1987, “Languages, Minds and Brains” in: Blakemore, Colin and Greenfield, Susan (eds.) Mindwaves, Oxford: Blackwell, 485505. Hacker, Peter 1991, “Seeing, Representing and Describing” in: Hyman, John (ed.), Investigating Psychology, London, Routledge, 119-154. Kenny, Anthony 1992, The Metaphysics of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark 1980, Metaphors we live by, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lewis, Clarence Irving 1952, Mind and the World Order, New York: Dover. Lyas, Colin 1999, Peter Winch, Teddington: Acumen. MacIntyre, Alasdair 1958, The Inconscious, London: Routledge. Maxwell, James Clerk 2011, “On Faraday’s Lines of Forces” in: The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ortony, Andrew 1978, “Metaphor: a Multidimensional Problem” in: Ortony, Andrew (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1-16. 31

Wittgenstein (2000), § 82.

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Putnam, Hilary 1975, “The Meaning of Meaning” in: Mind, Language and Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 215-271. Richards, Ivor Armstrong 1936, “Metaphor” in: The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 89-114. Scheffler, Israel 1967, Science and Subjectivity, Indianapolis: Hackett. Summerson, John 1980, The Classical Language of Architecture, London: Thames and Hudson. Turner, Joseph 1955, “Maxwell on the Method of Physical Analogy”, The British Journal of Philosophy of Science, vol. 26, n° 23, p. 228-258. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1980, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology vol. 2, German / English edition, Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 2000, Philosophical Investigations, German / English edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

Conceptual Cartography and Aesthetics – a Preliminary Study Julia TANNEY University of Kent What happens to philosophical investigation if we relinquish the idea that the “elasticities of significance” of our expressions are discernible outside the contexts in which they are employed? What happens, thus, if we cannot presume to know in advance the function of an utterance, and therefore the dimensions along which it is to be evaluated – and so what is communicated and whether it is understood – in virtue of knowing its grammatical form and the words in which it consists? What happens if we cannot assume, for example, that grammatically descriptive sentences function to describe, report, or state matters of fact, or that several things to which a general term is applicable must all have something in common? If we were to abandon these (and other) assumptions, not only is traditional conceptual analysis threatened; so, too, is a “naturalized” philosophy that attempts to sever what it counts as “real” from our normative practices. Whereas traditional conceptual analysis seeks to uncover a (partial) list of rules that articulate our grasp of a concept – understood as something that exists independently of our practices – “naturalized” philosophy proposes theories about what are taken to be the genuine referents – the properties, states, relations and events – at which our linguistic expressions merely gesture. But if concept nouns such as “beauty,” “art,” “intention,” or “expression,” for example, refer neither to abstract objects nor meaning-rules, nor serve to indicate real properties or relations, but serve instead a different-order task then both the traditional and the naturalist programs are threatened. This paper will take steps in resurrecting an argument for the cartographical approach and suggest very briefly how it might be applied to an investigation of aesthetic concepts. 1. Grammar and Ontology In his first 1939 lecture on the Foundation of Mathematics in Cambridge, Wittgenstein explains that he as a philosopher can talk about mathematics because he will only deal with puzzles which arise from the Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates, eds. Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 97-113.

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words of our ordinary everyday language, such as “proof,” “number,” “series,” and “order,” etc. He acknowledges that though puzzles may arise out of technical mathematical terms or words not ordinary and every day, these kinds of puzzles are “not so tenacious, or difficult to get rid of.” Ryle echoes some of these thoughts when he suggests that the tangles and knots that a philosopher has to unpick are set not by some branch of specialist theory, but “in the thought and the discourse of everyone, specialists and non-specialists alike.”1 The concepts of cause, evidence, knowledge, mistake, ought, can, etc. are not the perquisites of any particular group of people. We employ them before we begin to develop or follow specialist theories; and we could not follow or develop such theories unless we could already employ these concepts. They belong to the rudiments of all thinking, including specialist thinking.2

It does not follow from this, as Ryle also notes,3 that all philosophical questions are questions about such rudimentary concepts. But it is worth signaling that Ryle and Wittgenstein put their finger on something important in noting that what is special about certain concepts – including mathematical ones – is precisely that they belong to the fundamentals of all discourse and thought. Conceptual investigation – the investigation of the logic or grammar of our expressions – seems to have dropped out of favor. Indeed, some philosophers today think that neither ordinary nor technical language has anything to do with their particular interest in, say, logic, mathematics, science, mind, morals, aesthetics or indeed metaphysics. For example, in an article entitled “The trouble with W*ttg*nst*n,” Pascal Engel writes “unless one believes that ‘everything is in language’, it is an empirical matter whether the brain, or some of its parts, performs understanding or seeing.” This question, he says, has nothing to do with how we speak.4 This claim is belied by the fact that the expressions, “To perform understanding” and “to perform seeing” are not familiar verb constructions. Without explaining how these odd expressions are being 1

Ryle (2009b), p. 304. Ryle (2009b), p. 317-318. 3 Ryle (2009b), p. 304. 4 Engel (2007), p. 24. 2

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used, we do not know what is being said. We know how to use the verbs “to see” and “to understand” to talk about, for example, the student who understands an answer to a question, or a cat that sees its prey. Perhaps Engel invents a new expression because he is uncomfortable stretching the use of the ordinary expressions “to see” and “to understand.” Nonetheless, if we are to accept a new expression, then its application and its relation to the regular verbs “to see” and “to understand” – that is to their regular uses – must be spelled out. Otherwise it is not clear what purchasing power this alleged information delivered from empirical studies gives us. What inferences can we draw, what predictions can we make, what conflicting or supporting evidence can we adduce from the claim that an individual or its parts “performs seeing”? Extensions, or new ways of using expressions are introduced all the time, but the decision to extend these uses will depend in part on the practical consequences, the benefits and risks, of doing so. As Wittgenstein says: The point is indeed to give a new meaning to the word [...]. But it is not merely that; for one is responsible to certain things. The new meaning must be such that we who have had a certain training will find it useful in certain ways.5

Expressions of natural languages are made to accommodate new phenomena (this is part and parcel of discovery) but features of the new phenomena may not be features of the old. The kind of philosophical misunderstanding that Wittgenstein and Ryle are interested in arises from a tendency to assimilate to each other expressions that have very different functions in the language. We use words such as “cause,” “reason,” “the same as,” “intention,” “belief,” “knowledge,” and “explanation,” for example, in all sorts of different cases, guided by a certain analogy. We try, Wittgenstein notes, to talk of very different things by means of the same schema. We are much more inclined to say “all these things, though looking different, are really the same” rather than stressing the differences. Hence, his strategy is to stress the differences. Doing so will presumably help us see that things we call by the same name do not have one underlying thing in common. A perennial risk in any kind of theoretical activity is to oversimplify; in philosophy this might take the form of supposing, wrongly, that when we use the same expression there is some underlying thing which ties these uses together, the nature of 5

Wittgenstein (1939/1976) p. 66.

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which it is the philosopher’s job to investigate. It is this assumption that generates philosophical puzzles. There is also an attendant risk with Wittgenstein’s strategy. In “saving the differences” one might be inclined to underestimate the way our expressions share the same roots, to use an analogy of Ryle’s. In central applications of a concept the differences between uses tends to blur. They work together, or are held “in solution” and it is only when a philosopher “crystallises them out” that we can see those differences.6 These become salient when we examine the way the expressions are used on a case-by-case basis. As the above citation from Engel indicates, it is largely accepted today that if a question is not about language (and according to some, even if it is) then it is to be settled empirically, and, correspondingly, that there is a sharp distinction between the conceptual and the ontological domain. In texts on contemporary metaphysics, we learn that the conceptual domain comprises language, concepts, propositions, theories, and the metaphysical/ontological domain comprises properties, relations, facts, and events. This neat but dangerous division was buttressed by the logical empiricists’ use of the analytic/synthetic distinction to explain a priori knowledge. This in turn depended on the idea (to use a metaphor of Wisdom’s) that the relation between analysandum and analysans in a philosophical analysis is a piece of string stretched between ice-coloured objects that never melt. This picture is of a piece with the idea that language hooks up with the world either by referring to it or by representing it. Words and sentences, when not naming things in the world, express concepts and propositions; these represent the world of facts, states of affairs, properties, events, and other allegedly “real” (i.e., practice-independent) phenomena. Language is one thing; reality another. It is only on this view that one can reasonably be accused of committing a mistake by conflating what a thing is called, how the use of the expression is defended, and what “really” exists. But it is just this view about “how language makes contact with the world” that was called into question by the later Wittgenstein, by Ryle, and others. The idea that there is a sharp distinction between how we use expressions (in descriptions, for example) and allegedly “real” facts about the phenomena so described, is significantly more difficult to make out when assumptions that language makes contact with the world primarily by indicating it or describing it is called into question. 6

Cf. Cioffi (1963).

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It is with proper names and “concreter” concepts (as Ryle calls them) that we can most easily make out a distinction between an object and what we call it. Concepts such as dog, greyhound or roundabout have instances – ones we can point to – that are available on our “daily walks.” The more abstract concepts, such as knowledge, intention, causation, explanation, and “aesthetic experience” are not like these and an investigation of their “nature” lends itself less or not at all to empirical methods. It is with these abstract concepts that the distinction between “language” and “reality” begins to blur. Hacker, for example, reminds us that the philosophical questions “Why is ignorance a state, whereas knowledge is not?,” “Are reasons causes?,” “Do we have an immortal soul?,” “Is the will free?,” and “Is life of intrinsic value?” are patently questions about knowledge and ignorance, states and mental states, and reasons and causes. Equally patently they are also about the concepts of knowledge, ignorance, states, reason, etc. Since there is no investigating concepts other than by investigating the uses of words that express them, these questions are about words and their uses.7

This echoes § 370 Wittgenstein suggests:

in

Philosophical

Investigations

where

One ought to ask, not what images are or what happens when one imagines anything, but how the word “imagination” is used. But that does not mean that I want to talk only about words. For the question as to the nature of the imagination is as much about the word “imagination” as my question [how the word “imagination” is used] is.

Although a conceptual investigation into the relation between a work of art and the artist’s intention, for example, tells us about the nature of both, it is not one we carry out by further observation and experiment. For, to use an example of Wisdom, to harbor a misunderstanding about the conceptual is not like the child who thinks there are biscuits in the tin when there are not, but rather, we might suggest in the spirit of Wisdom’s remark, like one who thinks that praise or disapprobation only attaches to intentional performances. We can demonstrate this is false by issuing 7

Hacker (2009b) p. 343.

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reminders of situations, for example, of culpable negligence and moral luck. Although there are questions that may be settled by reflection alone and others by experiment and further observation, the division is not as sharp as philosophers tend to imagine. In his lectures on the foundations of mathematics Wittgenstein argues that there is no sharp line between the cases in which, say, a discovery is announced, and one would react with “Oh, really?” and those in which one should react by saying “I don’t know at all what you’re talking about.” This, again, is not to deny that there will be questions that can be answered without getting up from the armchair and others that require, as Wisdom says, lifting lids and doing experiments. The difference is one of degree, and we may need to start honing our conceptual tools to determine, as I understand the point, whether words used to express the discovery are used in a reasonably standard way and it is the discovery that surprises or interests us, or whether the words are being stretched, perhaps in ways we would be happy to accept, but in such a way that it is apposite to say “I don’t yet know what you’re talking about.” Consider, by way of a clear example of this phenomenon, the recent “discovery” that elephants have a sixth “toe.”8 One might well wonder how this could be a recent discovery, since elephants have been studied by researchers for hundreds of year. Indeed we learn that the first was dissected in 1706. So, how could scientists just now discover a sixth toe? The answer is that recent tests have confirmed that what was always considered to be a strange protrusion in the foot, and thought to be cartilage, is in fact bone, “although bone with a highly irregular and unusual arrangement.” A bone structure found in the front paws of pandas, which does not look like an extra digit but which functions as one in the sense that it helps pandas grip bamboo, is known as the panda’s “thumb” or “finger.” By parity of reasoning, since the apparent job of the unusual bone in the elephant’s foot is to help the animal stay upright, the elephant has been deemed by this particular team of scientists to have a sixth “toe,” and the decision to extend the concept in this way has, at the time of writing, not met with opposition. Here it is clear that the word “toe” is being extended to accommodate a feature of elephants as “thumb” or “sixth finger” was extended to accommodate an analogous feature of pandas and certain other mammals. Note that what counts as “relevantly analogous” is also decided 8

Internet: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16250725.

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concomitantly, whether this is explicit or implicit. This stretch in usage is signaled in the reports by the inverted commas around “toe,” but as this use gains currency we can imagine they will no longer be used. Rather a precedent has been set so that toes, like hearts, may be identified by virtue of the function it performs in what are decided to be analogous circumstances. (Readers will remember a recent debate about whether to demote Pluto as a planet. Here again, a new criterion (size) was being proposed about what is to count as a planet for classification purposes. In this case however not all scientists agreed, the public was consulted and a large discussion ensued.) Are these just facts about language? Not at all: we are considering recent events in the scientific community in which language is either stretched or contained in the light of empirical research and new discoveries. These stories are as much about the real nature of toes, thumbs and planets as they are about what decisions have been made about what is to ground our claims to describe or classify objects thus. That the notions of discovery and invention or construction tend to blur is important because it calls into question the most widely accepted view about how language functions, at least according to western philosophers. On this predominant view – a view which influences analytic philosophy in all of its diverse sub-specialisms – the world is one thing, language another. The central job of sentences on this view is to state, report, describe, or make claims (compare: the central role of the intellect is to judge) and these sentences are to be evaluated by virtue of how well they represent facts or states of affairs. Speech acts, or pragmatic features of language use are, on this picture, additional considerations that are relevant after “core” meaning (in Dummett’s terminology) is secured. If it is true that the distinction between our making a discovery or making a decision about how to apply a term or extend a concept tends to blur, this would put pressure on the idea that language and the world are as distinct as the orthodoxy holds them to be. Looking at these cases in which discovery and invention/construction merge may help to put the languageworld relation in a new light. For even in cases which seems like a pure discovery (e.g., in mathematical theorems) we may come to discern a “decision” element when we trace the inflections of meanings or the (mere) family resemblances to be found in the relevant expressions (in the case of mathematics these would include “number” or “equals”).

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2. Philosophy of Language as a subset of Philosophy of Action “The truth is not in the words; it is in the circumstances.”

Stanislavski It is a staple of Stanislavski acting technique that the actor should, for every one of his lines (whether it be utterance, gesture, or pause), make a reasoned choice about the “action” or “objective” his character intends to achieve by it. For dramatic purposes this action or objective should be specific, concrete, and expressed by an active verb. Consider, by way of example, the the following two lines and proposed actions from Pinter’s The Homecoming. Ruth: I need a breath of air; I think I’ll take a stroll. (Action: to manifest her independence) [After Teddy tries to convince her that she is tired and should go to bed, Ruth continues], Ruth: May I have the key? (Action: to refuse to give in to her husband’s wish that she stay) You might say that one learns in acting classes that philosophy of language is a subtopic in the philosophy of action. The meaning of the lines are to be unpicked by the actor who chooses which of many actions – consistent with the “given circumstances” set down in the script – her character intended to perform in uttering the specified line, in making a certain gesture or movement, or even (as in the case of Pinter) pausing or keeping silent. That there are indefinitely many choices the actor can make on behalf of her character, each of which is consistent with the given circumstances, is one of the things that make theatrical performance an art form. (According to Ryle, that there are indefinitely many things one might say by using a particular expression is what makes original thought possible.) It seems to me that Stanislavski theory embodies a lesson we should be taking seriously from the writings of Ryle, the later Wittgenstein, as well as Austin, and others in Britain, and has obvious affinities with the American pragmatists. The idea suggested by making philosophy of language a subtopic in the philosophy of action is that we can no longer presume in advance the function of an utterance: what is to be communicated, and therefore the

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dimensions along which it is to be evaluated, just by knowing its grammatical form and the words in which it consists. We cannot assume, for example, that sentences appearing to describe, such as Ruth’s lines above, are to be assessed by virtue of their accurately representing some state of affairs or that if they are true, there must be a “natural” (read: language- and thus practice-independent) “truth-maker” that renders them so. More generally, we cannot assume that grammatically indicative sentences serve to indicate, report, or describe or that they should be construed as attributing a property (or relation) to (a) named object(s). Though their grammatical form alone – the fact that they are indicative sentences, for example – makes them apt for assessment in terms of truth or falsity, this form masks the fact that a different kind of assessment may be more appropriate, as we saw in the case of Pinter’s Ruth. According to my suggestion, we can assess what she says in these two lines by virtue (among other things) not of her stating or failing to state a truth, but by succeeding or not in asserting her independence from her husband. This idea reverses a traditional thought in philosophy: that expressions can be assessed first by sentence-meanings, which can be unpicked before we look at speech acts or the so-called “pragmatic” aspects of language. Thus, it questions the very idea that there is such a thing as “core meaning” in which the semantic properties of sentences can be discerned before augmenting them with a theory of sense and a theory of force. It puts into question, that is, the widely accepted view that sentences have their semantic properties in virtue of the meanings of their constituent words, their composition, and the way the world is. And, in opening up an indefinite variety of norms of assessment it also demotes truth as the sine-qua-non of semantic norms. The traditional view – the predominant view today – that language makes contact with the world through reference is a descendent of what Wittgenstein called the “Augustinian,” or what Ryle ridiculed as, the “Fido”-Fido notion of meaning. This view, resurrected by Mill, holds that the primary vehicle of meaning is a word, and a sentence is the compound of these components. On the basic version, words are construed as names and the meaning of the word is the object that they stand for. This idea, though largely accepted, was also put under different kinds of pressure by Mill himself, with his introduction of “connotation,” by Frege’s introduction of “sense,” and by Russell’s treatment of syncategorematic or logical words, but, according to Ryle, this pressure

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finally found momentum in Russell’s distinction between sentences which express truths and falsehoods and those which express sense and nonsense. But whereas Russell used this distinction “as a crowbar to dislodge only certain logical obstructions [...] [i]n Wittgenstein’s hand, it became the fulcrum for inverting the whole notion of meaning” (2009a; 193). Or rather it should have become that fulcrum. It seems that what Ryle (rather overoptimistically) called the “Cambridge Transformation of the Conception of Concepts” failed to take place. We are today working very much within a traditional view of meaning – with reference at its core – which these philosophers thought utterly bankrupt. It is ironic, therefore, that the principal arguments that have ushered in so-called “naturalism” in philosophy seem to embrace the most pernicious elements of this view: namely, that concept-words (e.g. abstract nouns) name a property, the nature of which it is the scientist’s job to discover. “Direct-reference” approaches to language, in other words, are modern incarnations of the Augustinian picture of language, as indeed, are any that give reference a primary place. Before examining one of the most powerful treatments against this tendency, it will be worthwhile looking very carefully at what Wittgenstein’s and Ryle’s transformation is supposed to involve and how exactly it forces us to reconstrue the nature of propositions and concepts. The upshot of the transformed view, according to Ryle, is that considering the meaning of a sentence is: considering what can be said with it, i.e. said truly or said falsely, as well as asked, commanded, advised or any other sort of saying. In this, which is the normal sense of “meaning,” the meaning of a subexpression like a word or phrase, is a functional factor of a range of possible assertions, questions, commands and the rest. It is a tributary to sayings. It is a distinguishable common locus of a range of possible tellings, askings, advising, etc.9

In including tellings, askings, advisings (as well, we might add, as explainings, predictings, inferrings, provings, and so on) Ryle is turning our attention to sayings that are not merely reportings, describings, or statings. Truth and falsity become only one manner of assessing the utterance-activity (“the move in the language game”) and the gist of the transformation that Ryle speaks of, as I see it, is that meaning is something 9

Ryle (2009b) p. 372, my italics.

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discernable or abstractible from all these performances. Another way to put the point is to insist (now with Ryle but in contrast to Austin) that on the central use of the term “sentence,” sentences are live, they are utteranceactivities and how they are to be assessed depends upon that activity. Although grammarians or copy-editors may be interested in sentences as “dead” inscriptions, and thus there is a use of “sentence” in which the form alone is relevant (for the copy-editor’s job can (usually) be undertaken by abstracting from the employment of the sentence that she is scrutinizing), this use is arguably derivative. On the view I am recommending, live sentences do not, in the general case, aim to indicate or reflect some aspect of the (languageindependent) “world” with “truth” as the prize for success, and “false” the gong for failure. Sentences cum utterances are interwoven with the world in virtue of their employments, actions, or objectives (in Stanislavski’s sense of “objective” – not Meinong’s) of which there are indefinitely many. Since each employment is apt for assessment – as a performance of some kind it merits good, medium and bad marks – we have in view a normative dimension for (live) sentences that encompasses far more than truth-aptitude, truthfulness in expression, or, if the goal of inferences is to transmit truth from premise to conclusion, their role in inference as well. Indeed, it would seem that construing truth-aptitude as central forces us positively to distort the normative dimension along which utterances are to be assessed; this is so, incidentally, even for “truth-apt” categorical and conditional “statements.” In wondering how a Universal can impose its authority we become puzzled about the normative nature of rules. In committing ourselves to a methodology that refuses to accept languagedependent practices we make matters worse in reconstruing the authority as issuing from “normative properties” or “meaning facts.” Both moves – the traditional metaphysical one and the modern “naturalist” one – lead to unsolvable philosophical mysteries. Instead of comparing and contrasting the various jobs of verbs, adverbs, and adjectives that are collected under abstract concept-nouns, and recognizing that these jobs change, even when the same expression is used, we are misled by a bad theory of language into assuming that our abstract concept-nouns name abstract objects or properties. Not only does this issue in metaphysical and epistemological puzzles, it also ignores internal “logical” connections between the items that are collected by these abstract nouns (“thick” concepts) as well as those with which these concepts crisscross, abut, and overlap.

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To sum up, I have suggested that unless we know the dimensions along which utterances are to be evaluated, we do not yet have a grasp on what is said or communicated. This is the idea enshrined in acting theory. The best argument for this view is to be found in the very first sections of Philosophical Investigations. 3. Primitive Language Games In the Investigations, Wittgenstein asks in § 37 on behalf of his interlocutor, “What is the relation between name and thing named?” “Well what is it?,” he responds. In other words, look and see. In examining the primitive scenarios and their permutations we begin to realize that in almost every case, the “what is named” drops out. Consider the shopkeeper game of § 1: Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked “five red apples.” He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked “apples,” then he looks up the word “red” in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers – I assume that he knows them by heart – up to the word “five” and for each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer.--It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words – “But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word ‘red’ and what he is to do with the word ‘five’?” – Well, I assume that he “acts” as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere. – But what is the meaning of the word “five” – No such thing was in question here, only how the word “five” is used.

“Five red apples” here functions as a command or request and the command is correctly understood if the shopkeeper opens the drawer marked “apples,” checks the colour chart, and counts out five objects in the drawer that correspond to the colour indicated by the word “red.” In specifying how the words function in this scenario, we might suggest that “five” introduces a counting procedure; “red” a chart-consulting procedure and “apple” a procedure for opening a labeled drawer. In the game as described by Wittgenstein, “five red apples” is a command that requires on the part of one to whom it is directed, a performance such as counting out five red apples, which in turn requires constituent performances. Each has its own criteria of success and failure: each merit good, medium or bad marks. We judge whether the shopkeeper has understood the instructions based on his performance. The utterance –

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the command – is itself a performance, designed to facilitate a purchase, and is also subject to assessment. But to surmise that the word “apple” signifies a type of fruit, “five”, a number and “red”, a color is of no use in explicating this language game since what constitutes understanding in this primitive scenario has nothing whatever to do with the philosophical assumption that words have their meaning by naming or representing objects, universals, or properties. Instead, what constitutes understanding in this scenario, is a public performance of a particular kind. The shopkeeper would already have to be competent with, or know how to engage in, the performances required in order learn something from knowing the category-words, just as learning that a chess-piece is called a King will enable one to play chess only if one already knows the kinds of moves one is allowed to make with that type of piece. Telling someone the post at which a word is stationed allows him to trade with it only if he know how to engage in the permissible transactions. A more general version of Wittgenstein’s question is: “What is the relation between language and the world?” The answer, in the spirit of Wittgenstein would be: “Look at the multifarious activities in which sentences are employed and we will see the relations.” Different circumstances, of course, will require different employments. If the colour on the chart corresponding to “red” is different on different occasions, then so too will the correctness conditions of the shopkeeper’s choice of apples. In the “Builder” game of § 2, the utterance “Slab” is successful if the assistant brings a slab; correspondingly, if the assistant performs this task (perhaps after several judicial tests) we will agree that the assistant understands the command. When the builder was training the assistant, however, the utterance “slab” may well have been used to identify types of blocks. Here, merely pointing to the slab and not one of the other stones may count as understanding in these circumstances. Whether an utterance and its uptake are successful will depend upon the objective in the particular circumstances. 4. The Cambridge Transformation of Concepts According to this view there is room to talk about “concepts” and “propositions” as long as the former are not taken to be “the meanings,” conceived as, in Ryle’s words, coins in a museum, withdrawn from their daily transactions, that are expressed by the words or other sub-factors of sentences and the latter are not to be understood as object-like entities that sentences-in-formaldehyde express. Propositions are collections, as it were,

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of live sentences or utterances in their various employments that we group together to form a particular affinity that we wish to mark on the occasion and concepts are collections of affinities we wish to mark between the subfactors of these propositions. But on this view, to reiterate, the utteranceactivities are the bedrock from which the propositions and then the concepts are abstracted. And though it is natural to use abstract nouns such as “art,” “beauty,” and “intention,” these concept-nouns do not name some sort of object about which it makes sense to enquire after its “nature,” they “collect” affinities we wish to mark from employments that include a whole host of activities, which may include stipulating, describing, praising, expressing an attitude, insulting, explaining, predicting, teasing, and so on indefinitely. On this view it is a logical mistake or type error to ask about the state of affairs, matters of fact or fiction, or the actual or possible worlds signified by propositions since nothing is signified by them. So too is it a mistake to ask after the properties, states, or events that are signified by concepts since nothing is signified by them either: they are (again) abstractions from propositions which are themselves abstractions from the utterance activities in which the relevant live verbs, adjectives and adverbs are embodied. These ideas together can help us set an agenda for an understanding of the nature of concepts. If concepts mark affinities between sub-factors of propositions which are themselves collections of affinities between utterance-activities, then, in investigating the concepts one needs to investigate the manner in which sentences or utterances, now understood as different and various activities or actions, are to be assessed. One way of understanding the force of what makes an investigation a conceptual one is to see it as an investigation of the type of grounds or backings that are relevant in assessing, criticizing and defending the various performances from which the concepts are abstracted. These grounds, warrants, and backings for warrants comprise, I believe, what Ryle calls the “logical implication threads” that a concept contributes to the live sentences in which it occurs and are, or are related to Wittgenstein’s notion of “criteria”: the grounds we would give for the application of a concept in particular circumstances.

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5. Aesthetic concepts In this paper I have not meant to be critical of the methods of analytic philosophy in general: there is much work which is cartographical in nature, and this is especially true of some excellent discussions in aesthetics. Rather, I have motivated and described in some detail a view about language that should call into question some of the metaphilosophical claims that are made on behalf of analytic philosophy today, especially in the “naturalized-philosophy” quarters which serve as a bridge to link questions in aesthetics with answers grounded in science. In the remaining section I would like briefly to indicate the relevance this kind of investigation would have on approaches in aesthetics. First, discussions about the concept of art, in particular about what to include and what to exclude, would not be a matter tracing what is imagined to be fixed either in a Platonic heaven or in a “natural” (practiceindependent) environment. Rather than imagining that there is some property in common running through the instances of genuine art, the philosopher would instead trace the similarities and differences between the things we call “art” and the grounds and practical consequences we have for doing so, and to what extent or not a proposed extension would be useful. Rather than presenting her conclusion as following ineluctably from statements purporting to attribute properties or qualities to a named object and a universal premise (for example) about objects and properties of that kind, she would present her arguments as considerations in favor of containing or extending the concept in particular cases. Second, discussions about the place of aesthetic, evaluative concepts “in a physical world” – for example, whether aesthetic properties supervene on physical ones – would lose its point. The project of showing a dependence relation grounding aesthetic concepts in “purely descriptive” ones makes sense against a background of concern about whether the supervenient properties float free of the “hard” facts of physics and mathematics. If, however, the facts of the physical sciences as well as those of mathematics are as susceptible to questions about what we count as, for example, “red” or “the same as,” or to what we call “number” then science and mathematics is, to a certain respect, in the same boat as those of the traditional “value” subjects; in virtue, that is, of pragmatic constraints as to how the propriety concepts are to be circumscribed. Indeed, a rejection of the representationalist bias in analytic philosophy puts pressure on the traditional distinction between description and evaluation. If we cannot tell from the grammatical form of an utterance

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what its role is, then a remark such as “This is beautiful” may be a description or it may have the form of a stipulation of the sort of thing we should count as beautiful. It may be an insult, given the occasion, or it may be an expression of aesthetic appreciation, but this latter category will arguably have at its core actions besides sentence-utterances, for example, the interest one takes in dressing well, or the care one takes in choosing a dining room chair or in hanging a picture. The concordance with these types of actions will be relevant in turn in judging the role of the expression, in the particular circumstances of, “This is beautiful,” including whether it should be assessed in terms of its genuineness as opposed to its truth. These sorts of considerations in the cartography of aesthetic concepts will be mirrored, of course, in the cartography of other ones; in particular in those of agency, action, and the mind. Disputes about the relevance of the artist’s intention, to use just one example, will be alive to a cartographical investigation of the concept of intention. It will no longer be assumed (as Wimsatt and Beardsley do, for example) that the abstract noun “intention” names something, for example, a mental or physical state, or something that straddles both, the nature of which it is the philosopher cum psychologist, neurologist, or cognitivist’s job to investigate. A cartographical approach into the nature of intention will proceed, as Anscombe’s does, by looking at use of the relevant verbs, adverbs, and adjectives, as well as the actions in which these uses are embedded; as well, of course, at how this concept abuts, crisscrosses and overlaps with the neighboring concepts of reasons and causes. A cartographical approach into the relevance of the artist’s intention will look, as for example Frank Cioffi’s does, at the different grounds we have for ascribing an intention to an artist; not only on the basis of the kinds of things he says, including his own declarations of intentions, but on the basis of what he does; for example in salient patterns within his work that, on occasion, will tend to override what he says as the appropriate grounds for ascribing intentions in those circumstances.10 This, however, is just a commercial, as it were, for many possible investigations to come.

10

Cf. Tanney (2008).

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References Cioffi, Frank 1976, “Intention and Interpretation in Criticism,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 64 (1963), 85-106; reprinted in On Literary Intention, ed. D. Newton-De Molina, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 55-73. Engel, Pascal 2007, “The trouble with W*ttg*nst*n,” Rivista di Estetica, n.s., 34, XLVII, 11-26. Hacker, Peter M.S. 2009, “A Philosopher of Philosophy” (Critical Review of Timothy Williamson’s The Philosophy of Philosophy), The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 59, issue 235, 337-348. Holland, Roy F. 1980, “The Link between Cause and Effect,” in Against Empiricism: On Education, Epistemology, and Value, New York: Barnes and Noble. Ryle, Gilbert 2009, The Concept of Mind, London: Routledge. Ryle, Gilbert 2009a, Collected Papers, Vol. 1, London: Routledge. Ryle, Gilbert 2009b, Collected Papers, Vol. 2, London: Routledge. Tanney, Julia 2008, “The Colour Flows Back: Intention and Interpretation in Literature and in Everyday Action,” Journal of European Studies, vol. 38, no. 3 (September), 229-252. Wisdom, John 1991, Proof and Explanation: The Virginia Lectures, ed. Stephen F. Barker, New York: University Press of America. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1953, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1966, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Bennett, Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1975, Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, (Cambridge 1939), ed. Cora Diamond, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

III. Musical Understanding

Typology and Functions of “Hearing-as” Alessandro ARBO Université de Strasbourg 0. I will try in this paper to give an account of different uses of “hearing-as.” As is known, Wittgenstein explored some grammatical and theoretical implications of this formulation. He highlighted, among other things, its ability to illuminate certain aesthetic issues. By following his suggestions, but by going beyond the scope and purpose of his perspective, I will try to show in what sense this expression functions as a conceptual tool in order to explain our ways of hearing music. I will test its ways of working in relation to some musical objects and situations, and discuss its key functions. 1. Let me begin by observing that the claim to “hear (x) as (something)” occurs in a wide range of situations in which we aspire to a common kind of reference. We say: you must hear the “beep” as a sign that a message was recorded on your answering machine, or you must hear the wheeze as an indicator of pneumonia. It is not in these cases of (simple) acoustic symptomatology or of symbolic reference that Wittgenstein was interested. In his writings, he focused his attention almost exclusively on musical perception or musical performance: for example, hearing x (or possibly, in parallel, playing x) “as an introduction,” or “in this key.”1 Why such an interest? The reasons are not only personal (his passion for this art is well known). Many examples, starting from those contained in the Tractatus, show that he intended to focus on “internal” references. They point to the need to identify specific morphologies and syntactic categories, highlighting similarities between the functioning of music and language2. In connection with the project to explore the meaning and use of verbs and words of perception, exploring music seems to be an excellent way to test the validity of an observation, stated in the early 30’s, according to which “phenomenology is grammar.” 1 2

Wittgenstein (1967), § 208. See: Hanfling (2004), p. 151-162.

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Understanding a Gregorian mode – we read in an annotation of the Big Typescript3 (already present in the manuscript that Wittgenstein had given Moore probably in the last months of 1930, and quoted here) – is not like getting used to a series of sounds, as we could get used to a bad smell (to the point that one no longer perceives it as bad); it is rather “hearing something new,”4 something I have not heard before, just as when we notice a new pattern in a series of sounds that we had previously seen otherwise5. As he remarks elsewhere, to hear something as a musical phrase means not only distinguishing perceptions or interpreting them as signals: it is to embrace a morphology, to recognize its possible compliance with certain rules, to phrase correctly what one is hearing, to perceive a rhythm, to understand an expression and to respond to it adequately. Several topics are suggested here, but one of them, throughout Wittgenstein’s works, seems to emerge quite clearly: the request of “hearing as” implies that music perception is a kind of aspectual perception; and this in turn proves to be a model able to account for our strategies of understanding (both in music as in language). This observation can be developed in many ways (for example, in order to clarify the relationship between music and language, or the idea of meaning, or the nature of perception). Like others before us, we will use it to clarify the musical understanding itself. 2. So, what are the main functions of “hearing-as” when we talk about music? Here are some suggestions: 1) it highlights the opportunity to conceive the perception / understanding of music in terms of aspectual perception (conceptual function); 2) it solicits and makes easier the perception of aspects, inducing in this way a musical understanding (aesthetico-pragmatic function); 3) it allows us to check the musical understanding of which a listener (another person) is capable (epistemological function); 4) it helps us to test musical ambiguities (experimental function). 3

Wittgenstein (2000), p. 298. Wittgenstein (1975), p. 43. 5 In the Philosophical Investigation, changes of tempo are stressed as an important factor in order to produce the “right” aspect. Wittgenstein (1997), p. 206: “I have a theme played to me several times and each time in a slower tempo. In the end I say ‘Now it’s right,’ or ‘Now at last it’s a march,’ ‘Now at last it’s a dance.’” 4

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Item 1) is the most general assumption of discourse and as such was taken (and developed) by many contemporary perspectives. 2) and 3) are explicitly suggested by Wittgenstein’s remarks, which direct us to a “public” or intersubjective situation (by removing introspective strategies). 4) may seem less obvious, but it is actually the function that best corresponds to those of (the better known) “seeing-as.” Indeed, “hearing-as” has the merit of drawing our attention to an experience where perception and thinking are as two sides of the same coin, as pointed out by Wittgenstein about the case – similar in some respects – of “seeing-as.” If the two situations are not perfectly parallel, it is because – as is also already clear in Wittgenstein’s remarks – “hearing-as” is used when one intends to capture one specific aspect among many possible ones, or when it’s to induce, to put it in another way, the “good” or “correct” understanding. It assumes in that sense, as pointed out by Sandrine Darsel,6 a normative worth (which we do not necessarily observe in the “seeing-as,” focused on highlighting the ambiguity of the image in question): when you say to someone to hear something “as an introduction,” or “as a conclusion,” as “the answer to what came before,”7 this denotes certain modes of hearing correctly. It therefore expresses a good understanding of the piece. Although absent or little explored in the text of Wittgenstein, item 4) has not been ignored by research in recent decades. It has especially interested the musicology of performance, as is made clear by the work of Janet M. Levy on the double entendre, particularly the beginning-ending ambiguity.8 A conductor who performs the Scherzo of the “Jupiter Symphony,” or the end of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, or a string quartet that performs the finale of Haydn’s op. 33 n. 2, could rightly ask himself how to handle (or how to make audible) the ambiguities that the composer subtly inscribed in the score: doing so, he somehow explores a typical function of “hearing-as.”9 About 1), it is possible to formulate a general remark: if, as Wittgenstein himself has suggested, “hearing-as” is useful when we take into account our ways of understanding music, it is because aspectual perception 6

Darsel (2010), p. 209. Wittgenstein (1960), p. 166. 8 Levy (1995), p. 150-169. 9 See also Arbo (2002) and (2005). In this article, I rather focus on the implications of 1, 2, 3. 7

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is nevertheless an actual perception. In other words, such a formulation suggests that we must pay attention to certain specific categories operating not only in an interpretation but in an effective experience of music. Musical understanding proves to be not a theoretical, but an aesthetic one, based on a direct recognition of expressions.10 One might reply that there are cases where the object on which this request is focused cannot be heard, or where the conception is in the foreground. For example, you have to hear (x) as a theme based on the “gematria” of the name BACH. However, such a request in my opinion could not really be satisfactory, unless one attributes to “hearing” the broader meaning of “interpreting”: because the fact that the theme or sequence listened to for example has a length of 14 or 41 notes, is not a feature that is directly perceptible. We can certainly count the notes, but such activity, although it allows one to reveal the symbolic meanings of what we hear, cannot coincide with an actual musical experience. Or to put it better: 14 notes can be structured so differently that they will ultimately correspond to morphologies that are completely opposite in a musical perception. Paraphrasing what Wittgenstein said about seeing, one could ask someone who claims to hear Bach’s music in this way: “don’t think, but listen!” It is otherwise difficult to imagine a musical understanding free of any conceptions. The request for a “hearing-as” would be futile or simply pleonastic: it would be like, for example, asking someone to hear a sound as nearby when he has no problem locating it. Besides, it is important to note the “specialization” of the different conceptions referring to morphologies that must be recognized: if one can assume that many understand the request to hear something “as an introduction,” there are fewer people who can manage, for example, to hear something “like a Neapolitan sixth,” “as an harmonie-timbre,” “as a Phrygian imperfect cadence,” etc. It is important to observe that in order to obtain these results, it is not enough to know what a Neapolitan sixth is (or an harmonie-timbre, a Phrygian imperfect cadence, etc.): you must recognize when you hear it (and this requires training). It is also useful to consider the proportions of what is heard, for if musical perception always has aspectual perceptual components, what is heard is “acting” in a different way when we consider a short or a long length of time: some aspects are actually “perceived” only in the present of a “quasi-hearing,” not in the past registered by a long-term memory.11 For 10 11

Roger Scruton often stressed this difference; see Scruton (2010), p. 37-38. See Levinson (1997), p. 14-21.

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example, something that in a short length of time has all the appearances of a false chromatic relationship and sounds like a tritone, loses this aspect in a longer time scale. Consider these situations: 1) I ask someone to hear x as a theme reversed; 2) I ask someone to hear the piece in which this theme is contained as a “pre-classical, bithematic and bipartite form of the sonata.” What is the difference here? In the first case, hearing, even if it refers to a concept, is related to an actual perceptual experience in the present time; and in this dimension, the reversal may become perceptible because of the morphology of the theme (indeed, it is sometimes easy to grasp it, sometimes not at all). In the second case, I rather seek to point the listener to a conception: it is to find the map of a journey that we have in mind and that we could call more or less schematically “the shape of the pre-classical sonata.” It could be argued that in one case as in the other, we are dealing with an actual hearing: it’s just that in the first case the emergence of aspect depends more on the presentation direct material, while in the second, we must compare what we are hearing with a pattern that we have memorized. Actually, the difference does not seem radical to me. We could say that it is a difference of degree rather than of kind: where the proportions are larger, a concept is more prominent than a perception while in a microstructure, the opposite is true. 3. In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein puts us in the situation of understanding someone who says, “I heard a plaintive melody.”12 The question is: “Does he hear the plaint?” If you say he does not actually hear it, but “he merely has a sense of it,” remarks Wittgenstein, we haven’t gained much from this, because we “cannot mention a sense-organ for this ‘sense’.” The point is that what allows us to hear the mournful aspect of a melody is not a sensory organ, but the recognition of some expression in music (or more precisely in a kind of music that is familiar to us). This remark gives us the opportunity to turn to another important point of the hearing-as, such as: the type of aspect we must grasp (or rather, that we lead a third person to grasp). You don’t do the same thing when you invite someone to hear x “as a dominant,” “as a modulation (to x)” or to “hear it as complaining,” or “ironic” or “as in a dream,” “as a promise,” “as far away,” etc. In short, the aspect may be presented in the form of a metaphorical rather than of a literal exemplification. 12

Wittgenstein (1997), p. 209.

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The role played by the metaphor here is far from being unanimous: some assume that the use of such a notion is redundant or even misleading if we leave a linguistic analysis, in order to describe the operation of perception. One can easily note on the other hand that the boundary between the metaphorical and the literal is not always easy to identify: saying that a sound is “higher” or “lower” than another does not mean — as shown by Roger Scruton (1997), p. 14-15 — to describe it through a spatial metaphor. One must still specify that such a metaphor does not (normally) function like other metaphors: it seems easier to imagine a discussion based on the fact that a phrase is more ironic than another, rather than on the fact that its register is higher or lower. That is because in the latter case, the transfer is not recognized as such, and “high” or “low” refer to characteristics that are considered as stable. We can say therefore that this is an “indispensable metaphor,” as does Scruton (1997), p. 91-92, or consider it as a literal expression; but I think that in one case as in the other, something different is implied by the “ironic” aspect of this sentence, and this should be taken into account. We must now look at the features of the object to be heard (and understood). What is covered in the situations presented by Wittgenstein, are generally short morphologies (as an introduction, a phrase, a tone). One must draw distinctions between them, one must “phrase” them properly: Wittgenstein does not go beyond this. Nevertheless analytic debate rightly felt the need to clarify the nature of the object covered by such a hearing. If we engage in such an exercise, it is because we don’t intend to understand music in general, or a simple musical phrase, but “things” such as Schubert’s Fantasia in F minor, Cage’s Bacchanale (in a particular performance), Ummagumma by Pink Floyd, etc.: in short, musical works. It should then be asked what this development means for the claim of “hearing-as”: what is happening when we invite someone to “hear (x) as a work”? What is the exact meaning of such a request (if any)? 4. The nature, status, identity and function of musical works are much debated issues in contemporary philosophical aesthetics. Since it is impossible to enter briefly into these discussions, I will only mention three of their results. Of course, there is no general agreement about them; nevertheless, I think we can say they are emerging nowadays to some extent beyond the theoretical differences (or in a wide variety of perspectives):

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a) the indispensable (and specific) contextualization of what is heard or grasped by means of such a category (= as a work); b) the idea that such an object is linked to an intentional origin (intentional hypothesis); c) the awareness of the multiplicity of entities that we face when we use such a notion. On a), one may recall the argument of indiscernibles advanced, with respect to the music, by Kendall Walton and Jerrold Levinson: if we take two compositions as having exactly the same structural and perceptive features, but with some different contextual factors (such as the date of composition, the title, or author’s name), we can say we actually have two different works.13 Changes in aesthetic properties of the work – properties that prove so highly relational – depend therefore on a specific culturalhistorical background. Now for b). Although the type of intentionality that can be attributed to a musical work is not unanimous, and in particular with regard to the relationship supposed to exist between the interpretation of semantic properties and the composer’s intentions, it is commonly assumed that if an artefact is presented in this form, it must be connected to the activity of a human agent (usually an individual) that created it in a given context. Some philosophers have recently emphasized point c), starting from the distinction between autographic works and works with multiple instances introduced by Nelson Goodman. Stephen Davies’ “pluralist” approach has proved particularly effective. His classification is based on the distinction between music conceived for performance and music not conceived for performance. This second category is divided into two subcategories, depending on whether the production is live or studio. Davies then introduced some new distinctions: the works are “rich in properties” (ontologically thick) or “poor in properties” (ontologically thin). In general, the category applies to a wide range of objects: it includes both “Happy Birthday” and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. “Works can be long or short, simple or complex, vocal or purely instrumental, highly detailed in their determinative characteristics or merely skeletal.”14 However, even if we extend the notion of work, we must recognize that in the experience and practice of music, everything we produce – any musical artefact – or everything you hear is not normally conceived, per13 14

See the topics of Walton (1973), p. 725-726, and Levinson (1980), p. 52-53. Davies (2001), p. 19.

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formed or perceived as a work. What is beyond this category? The “music making,” the improvisation. But Davies shows precisely that the border is not always clear, and suggests that, in order to capture the passage from improvisation to work, you have to examine the context. I agree with this solution, even though it somewhat undermines the purpose of identifying a class of objects whose (relational) properties justify the status of “musical work.” Basically, the distance between a jazz standard, the melody of “L’homme armé” and “Happy Birthday” is not so great: they are all clearly recognizable and are (or were) used precisely as a basis for improvisation. Why should we grant the third the status of work, and not the other two? I think we are then obliged to force the current language or, at least, to go against a most common way to categorize. What do we hear when we hear “Happy birthday”? Is it really a “work”? We would rather say that it is a simple song for a particular circumstance. But where is the difference? A first temptation is to say that a musical work confronts us with something extraordinary: a work is a masterpiece – a word which immediately seems exorbitant in the case of a nursery rhyme or a popular song. However, although I think that the idea of an intrinsic value is inherent in the way we think of works, there are undoubtedly works which are more or less successful. Wellington’s Victory (op. 91) is certainly not worth the Ninth Symphony, although there are many affinities between the two of them, and we so easily ascribe to one as to the other the status of “work.” It is more appropriate to say that this concept includes these kinds of artefacts (which are of course the majority, in the history of music as in history of arts), and it is useful to account for their use. We agree with the need to “normalize” such a notion, according to the idea developed by “popular” ontologies like those by Maurizio Ferraris (2007) in Italy, or by Roger Pouivet (2010) in France. This is not, however, to deny the special character – that is to say, tied to a specific historical and cultural context – of the concept of “musical work.” Lydia Goehr (1992), who has emphasized this point, claims that such a notion was beginning to play a regulatory role (in guiding and consolidating a practice) around 1800. This does not preclude the fact that such a function was assumed in part, prior to that date, by other concepts. But her analysis shows above all, in my opinion, that the possibility of considering the previous generation of composers in terms of work depends not so much (finally) on the identification of these proto-concepts, than on the ability of such a concept to explain what we do with this music

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(how we listen to it, or how we judge it today). Whether we like it or not – or rather, rightly or not –, a Bach composition played in a concert hall often functions as a musical work (it is understood as a musical work). But how should we determine if or when the music that we listen to lets us “hear-it-as-a-musical-work”? (or, in other words, when is it legitimate to apply the concept of musical work to what we listen to?) 5. To do this, it seems to me that we should first examine the most common and ordinary ways to hear and conceive a musical genre. Rather than on the “music making,” we should focus on the ordinary “music listening” concerning a certain genre or piece. If “Happy birthday” does not seem to present itself as a musical work, it is because, in contexts where it is sung, played or heard, it does not work (or not entirely) as a musical work: as we listen, we usually do not pay attention to its origin, composer or to the historical context that would allow us to evaluate it. Or rather, that knowledge does not seem indispensable to understanding, since we tend to hear it as a (simple) song for an occasion, without paying much attention to the way it is played or sung (except perhaps when it is sung so badly as to be unrecognizable). We could say that one must not sing it especially well, but sing it at the right moment. This corresponds to a common social practice (the one that characterizes typical birthday parties in most countries of the world). But of course, it is always possible to consider this song with an aesthetic outlook: we can, for instance, appreciate its structure, the fact that it offers three times the same sentence, but that the third time the melody expands itself through a more assertive and lyrical range, and suggests so perfectly the idea of a wish or greeting. In addition, we can appreciate a specific way of playing or singing it (think of the famous rendition by Marilyn Monroe for JFK’s birthday). Especially in the latter case, we might think we are experiencing a work: and we actually are, in a sense. But this is not a performance of the “work” Happy birthday, but rather a “work of performance” that Monroe produced on an occasional song). One might hold, mutatis mutandis, a similar speech about the song of “L’homme armé” at the time of Franco-Flemish polyphonic splendor: a recognizable pattern, on which the composer could build a contrapuntal edifice, which was in turn the specific object where he could write his own idiom or “signature.” I think we could even apply this kind of analysis to many musical entities: a waltz, a tune, a jingle, a riff, a standard, a hymn, lending them-

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selves to be categorized according to the contexts in which they are listened. The latter case may seem surprising: doesn’t a hymn have an original individuality and a well-defined character? Can’t we find a signature behind it, which corresponds in turn to what the Enlightenment called the “genius of a nation”? Indeed, “Fratelli d’Italia” is the work of Michele Novaro, composer and Italian patriot, and Goffredo Mameli, Italian poet and patriot. However: is it not significant that we talk more generally of the hymn of Mameli (lyricist) than of Novaro? (ask an Italian if he knows the work and see what he answers). In most situations, “Fratelli d’Italia” is not heard (nor understood) as a musical work: it is for us, above all, a “hymn,” and as such, it is comparable to other artefacts with a similar function. I believe we must first recognize that we have several ways to categorize and contextualize what we hear: putting them all in the same bag with the concept of “musical work” may lead us astray. Even in other functional cases, it is quite possible to target aesthetic qualities. Thus, at the beginning of a football match between Italy and France, we may be tempted to compare the brilliant-sounding of the “Marseillaise” with the more pompous fanfare of “Fratelli d’Italia.” It will be unusual, however, to refer explicitly to the historical and musical background that might explain these qualities – such as the Republican song of the eighteenth century or the nineteenth century opera. (By the way: as a musical work, the Marseillaise should be more properly called Battle Hymn for the Army of the Rhine, because it is with this title that it was composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, 1760-1836, in Strasbourg on the night of 25 to April 26, 1792, following the declaration of war from France to Austria, and then dedicated to a Franco-Bavarian officer, Marshal Nicolas Luckner, who would be guillotined two years later; or we should also turn to one who, according to the latest research, seems to be the “real” composer of the song, the “politically incorrect” Louis Brouet). Let us return to our question: what happens when we suggest “hearing (x) as a musical work (of)”? We consider the ability to hear this object in the light of a certain background knowledge. Which one precisely? The one that is most suitable to bring out its individuality and intentionality in a historical and stylistic context. We must be able to discern the presence of an idiom, of a “signature”; we must know how to locate what we hear in its “right” environment (that of the stylistic conventions which help us to grasp its characters in a specific historical and social context). To achieve this, it may be useful but not really necessary to know the true intentions of

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the composer; but we must at least believe that this musical object may be associated with a specific intentionality and individuality (yet hypothetical). References Arbo, Alessandro 2002, “Entendre comme. Réflexions sur un thème de Wittgenstein,” International Review of Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 33/2, 149-169. Arbo, Alessandro 2005, “‘Dis-toi que c’est une valse…’ Réflexions sur un thème de Wittgenstein,” Musurgia 12/4, 45-62. Darsel, Sandrine 2010, De la musique aux émotions. Une exploration philosophique, Rennes: PUR. Davies, Stephan 2001, Musical Works and Performances: a Philosophical Exploration, Oxford: OUP. Ferraris, Maurizio 2007, La fidanzata automatica, Milano: RCS. Fontaine, Olivier 2001, “Le ‘voir comme’, entre voir et penser? Remarques sur ‘l’espace grammatical’ de la saisie d’aspects,” in: Christiane Chauviré, Sandra Laugier, Jean-Jacques Rosat (ed.), Wittgenstein : les mots de l’esprit, Paris: Vrin, 159-182. Goehr, Lydia 1992, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, Oxford: OUP. Hanfling, Oswald 2004, “Wittgenstein on Music and Language,” in Peter B. Lewis (ed.), Wittgenstein, Aesthetics and Philosophy, Adelshot: Ashgate, 151-162. Levinson, Jerrold 1980, “What a Musical Work Is,” Journal of Philosophy, 77, 5-28; in: Music, Art and Metaphysics. Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics, Ithaca (New York), Cornell University Press, 1990, 6388. Levinson, Jerrold 1997, Music in the Moment, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Levy, Janet M. 1995, “Beginning-ending ambiguity: consequences of performance choices,” in John Rink (ed.), The Practice of Performance. Studies in Musical Interpretation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 150-169. Pouivet, Roger 2010, Philosophie du rock, Paris: PUF. Scruton, Roger 1997, The Aesthetics of Music, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Scruton, Roger 2010 Understanding Music. Philosophy and Interpretation, London - New York: Continuum.

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Walton, Kendal 1973, “Not A Leg To Stand On The Roof On,” in The Journal of Philosophy 70/19, 725-726. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1960, Preliminary Studies for the “Philosophical Investigations.” Generally known as The Blue and Brown Books, ed. R. Rhees, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1967, Zettel, ed. by G.E.M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1975, Philosophical Remarks, ed. R. Rhees, trans. by Raymond Hargreaves and Roger White, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1997, Philosophical Investigations, trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 2000, The Big Typescript (1932), in Wiener Ausgabe, 11, ed. by M. Nedo, Wien-NewYork: Springer.

Notes on Aesthetic Comprehension: Sound beyond Image Leonardo V. DISTASO Università di Napoli “Federico II” 1. If the development of Wittgenstein’s thought can be considered a philosophical reflection, then from the conclusion of his Tractatus we can draw, with him, this consideration: he who comprehends my propositions as propositions of my philosophy (and not as propositions of natural science) should recognize them as nonsensical and must throw them away after having surpassed them; philosophy must disappear, and along with it, its problem.1 Thus the task of philosophy doesn’t consist in formulating philosophical propositions, but rather in the clarification of propositions.2 If the Tractatus is a book that expounds a philosophical reflection, its propositions are not, properly speaking, propositions of a philosophical theory, but elucidations [Erläuterungen]. They are senseless and clarifying propositions that put an end to Philosophy itself: they don’t say anything. Clarifying means: to bring philosophy itself to an end, and more precisely to bring to an end the idea of philosophy as a doctrine, as a theorein. However, in order to reach the end the philosophy we must philosophize: “it must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outward through what can be thought. It will signify what cannot be said, by presenting clearly what can be said”.3 Clarifying what can be said, philosophy ends in clarity. This is worthy of consideration: if we can foresee the end of something, it means that we can survive its end. If we cannot foresee its end, we experience the inescapable finitude of our condition. Wittgenstein conceives the philosophizing of the Tractatus as a paradoxical endless task in which, through the experience of the finitude and limitations of thought, the strife towards clarification is never fully satisfied. The Philosophical Investigations are also a philosophical reflection, and they should lead us to the discovery of a plain nonsense (schlichten 1

Wittgenstein (1974), 6.54. Wittgenstein (1974), 4.112. 3 Wittgenstein (1974), 4.114; 4.115. 2

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Unsinn: “The results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense”).4 This discovery reveals itself within the philosophical reflection that intersects the realm of language as it is,5 penetrating the aspects of things that are hidden in their simplicity and daily existence,6 and, above all, seeing clearly the use of our words [übersehen]: “A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words. – Our grammar is lacking in this sort of perspicuity. A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in ‘seeing connexions’.’”7 Seeing clearly means “seeing connections” [Zusammenhänge sehen] in the use of our language. It means having a perspicuous representation: this is the property of the grammar that we can understand. Thus comprehension implies leaving everything as it is while describing the use of language; if philosophy speaks of the use of the word “philosophy” (and this is not a second-order philosophy),8 philosophizing means comprehending, and philosophical comprehension emerges from asking questions concerning words that speak about words: “In giving explanations I already have to use full-blown language (not some sort of preparatory, provisional one); this by itself shows that I can adduce only exterior facts about language […].Well, your very questions were framed in this language […]. Your questions refer to words; so I have to talk about words”.9 If the language of philosophy is at the same level as ordinary language and if its problems are related to words – i.e. to language – the plain nonsense that philosophy results in the end of its investigation coincides with its own problem. This is the problem of philosophy, that is, the problem philosophy poses to itself, insofar as philosophizing is a reflection that intersects language to achieve nonsense. This interrogation experiences finitude and the limitations of thought, and it imposes on itself, paradoxi4

Wittgenstein (1989), § 119. “On the one hand it is clear that every sentence in our language ‘is in order as it is’…Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is.” Wittgenstein (1989), § 98, § 124. 6 “The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.” Wittgenstein (1989), § 129. 7 Wittgenstein (1989), § 122. 8 Wittgenstein (1989), § 121. 9 Wittgenstein (1989), § 120. 5

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cally, the interminable task that rests within the senseless pauses of the world. The nonsense of the contingency. Wittgenstein’s reflection can be summed up as an interrogation on philosophy and on its possibilities through philosophy itself. This reflection intersects language for what it is. In the Tractatus the goal was to go through the totality of meaningful propositions: “We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand”.10 The sense of the philosophical reflection of the Investigations is to penetrate phenomena (Erscheinungen durchschauen or to look through phenomena) to go back to their possibilities, keeping in mind the kind of statement that we make about phenomena.11 The result of the interrogation – the penetration of what lies in front of our eyes - is the schlichten Unsinn, the transition from patent nonsense to something which is disguised nonsense [Übergang von einem offenkundigen zu einem nichtoffenkundigen Unsinn].12 It is a transition from the evident nonsense of language that leaves everything as it is to the non-evident nonsense of the language of philosophy that talks about the fact that we discover, we experience, we understand or we don’t understand etc. The language of the Philosophical Investigations is interminable in the opacity of its nonsense: “Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. – Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us”.13 It seems that in the transition from logic to language philosophy continues to inhabit the space of nonsense: “The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to. – The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself (the philosophy) in question”.14 Those who comprehend the propositions of the Tractatus will find them senseless and will throw them away; those who follow the path of the Investigations, the passage of looking through the phenomena in order to understand their possibility, will eventually put philosophy at rest, will suspend the interrogation of philosophy itself, and will remain silent on its question. Philosophy vanishes in extreme clarity. 10

Wittgenstein (1989), § 89. Wittgenstein (1989), § 90. 12 Wittgenstein (1989), § 524. 13 Wittgenstein (1989), § 126. 14 Wittgenstein (1989), § 133. 11

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Both the Tractatus and the Investigations end the enigma of clarity. What is the enigma of the clear representation of what can be said and of the complete clarity in which the philosophical interrogation dissolves itself? It seems that Wittgenstein, along the road that leads him from the Tractatus to the Investigations, preserves and continues to think about the evident nonsense of clarity. The enigma of clarity is its nonsense, and the enigma of nonsense leads us to the question of possibility. 2. In one of the paragraphs in which Wittgenstein considers the limits of the Tractatus, we find a short-circuit that reveals a further dimension: “Let us examine the proposition: ‘This is how things are’. – How can I say that this is the general form of propositions? – It is first and foremost itself a proposition, an English sentence…To say that this proposition agrees (or does not agree) with reality would be obvious nonsense. Thus it illustrates the fact that one feature of our concept of a proposition is, sounding like a proposition”.15 The Satzklang (the sound of proposition, in its literal and correct translation and in its deepest meaning) shows itself as it speaks out a patent nonsense: that the proposition is either in accord or not with reality. The Satzklang, in saying an evident nonsense shows its non-evident nonsense. However, illustration is the typical proposition of Wittgenstein’s philosophy.16 Thus the nonsense of Wittgenstein’s propositions shows –i.e. illustrates– the possibility of language and opens up to its reference and to its expression. The theory of correspondence and figuration in the Tractatus shows their nonsense, but this nonsense tells us something about the proposition. It tells us that what we intend by the word “proposition,” it tells us what a proposition is within our language: “And to say that a proposition is whatever can be true or false amounts to saying: we call something a proposition when in our language we apply the calculus of truth function to it”.17 The nonsense allows the philosopher to say what is, once more, ineffable. It is also a patent nonsense to say that this proposition agrees or does not agree with reality. But we can add further element: if we look through what we say we can see in the patent nonsense the transition to15

Wittgenstein (1989), § 134. “Meine Sätze erläutern…,” Wittgenstein (1974), 6.54; “Alle Erklärung muss fort, und nur Beschreibung an ihre Stelle treten.” Wittgenstein (1989), § 109. 17 Wittgenstein (1989), § 136. 16

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wards disguised, hidden nonsense (occult and enigmatic), in the dimension that anticipates the dimension of language: the Satzklang, the sound of the proposition. The conditions of language as a non-evident nonsense. It is within the sound of the proposition that the hidden nonsense manifests itself and the transition towards it. It is within the Satzklang that the enigma of clarity is illustrated. It is a clarity that surpasses vision and that anticipates the Spiel of language. There is a preliminary dimension that must be thought of, and whose nonsense emerges from listening to language to understand its possibility, beyond convenience, beyond reference and correspondence. It is the dimension in which we are capable of suddenly grasping a word: “But we understand the meaning of a word when we hear or say it; we grasp it in a flash, and what we grasp in this way is surely something different from the ‘use’ which is extended in time!”18 We grasp a word when we hear it and when we pronounce it, when its sound resonates within us, when the whole of the word is before us, but not as an image.19 When we understand a word or a proposition, this event takes place immediately while listening or pronouncing it, vocalizing and articulating it. It takes place in a realm in which our dwelling and belonging to a linguistic dimension resonates. We feel within an allencompassing whole that constitutes the horizon of the possibility that accompanies every step of the linguistic game. It is not the dimension of producing the image of something, but a sort a involuntary memory of a familiar sonority in which we perceive the echo of a possibility that we always carried with us and that appears in a productive and articulated manner in our comprehension. To remember the possibilities of phenomena upon which our grammatical research rests, is to penetrate phenomena,20 whose beginning coincides with a sound, whose resonance continues the process of understanding. The echo of the original dimension of a sonority as an occult nonsense is the opening and unfolding of language. It resembles the pure language mentioned by the young Benjamin. The journey of the belonging and comprehension of language – in its attrition and friction on rough ground [rauhen Boden]21 – begins with this resonance. Philosophical problems acquire a sense and a direction within this original resonance: “These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are 18

Wittgenstein (1989), § 138. Wittgenstein (1989), § 139. 20 Wittgenstein (1989), § 90. 21 Wittgenstein (1989), § 107. 19

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solved, rather, by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings: in despite of an urge to misunderstand them […]. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language”.22 Resonance is present in the atmospheric space in which the word lives and materializes itself in every possible use23 and preserves and hides itself in everyday language. By using our everyday language we show language as such as it speaks, while we comprehend clearly the connections and familiarities that, through similarities and dissimilarities, illuminate the state of our language.24 Only a philosophical interrogation on possibility can illustrate this state, provided that it leaves everything as it is. We can reveal the blunt nonsense of our language only by clashing against its limits and by listening,25 resting on the limit created when philosophizing itself is put to rest. We grasp and we comprehend all this in the moment in which we go back to the possibility of interrogation and to the non-evident nonsense of our logical conatus. Pure will-to-say, pure giving and comprehending. 3. Wittgenstein writes: “What really comes before our mind when we understand a word? – Isn’t it something like a picture? Can’t it be a picture?”26 If there is a relation between comprehending a word and knowing how to use it, this relation is not provided by the image that the word evokes in our mind, but rather by the capacity to grasp immediately something that guides us towards one use instead of another, towards one application instead of another. Wittgenstein proposes the example of “reading,” as “the activity of rendering out loud what is written or printed; and also of writing from dictation, writing out something printed, playing from a score, and so on”.27 Wittgenstein underlines that, although the use of this word is well known in everyday life, it is extremely difficult to represent the role that this word has in our life, that is, the linguistic game through which we use

22

Wittgenstein (1989), § 109. Wittgenstein (1989), § 117. 24 Wittgenstein (1989), § 130. 25 Wittgenstein (1989), § 119. 26 Wittgenstein (1989), § 139. 27 Wittgenstein (1989), § 156. 23

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it. The act of reading the sounds off from the letters,28 passing from the printed to the spoken words,29 seems an act that has much to do with playing a musical score: we have to let the words slide inside us while we pronounce them, hearing the sound inwardly.30 Recalling a sound does not have its root in the image that the word might evoke, but in something that the word carries with itself well before its representative capacity. The familiarity of the word, its being played out in the texture of connections, in the vital intricacy that is always before our eyes, leads Wittgenstein to recognize that the aspect of a word that is familiar to us is its sound: “Remember that the look of a word is familiar to us in the same kind of way as its sound”.31 We speak a language that we can already speak, but to go back to this possibility through language itself means to go back to that possibility that holds together many possibilities and that reveals itself in the dimension of the enigma, in the non-evident nonsense that only the unfolding of sonority can represent in the space of the language game. Maurice Merleau-Ponty also thought about this dimension of language. In his Phénoménologie de la perception, in the chapter on Le corps comme expression et la parole, he writes: “je commence à comprendre une philosophie en me glissant dans la manière d’exister de cette pensée, en reproduisant le ton, l’accent du philosophe […] une pensée dans la parole que l’intellectualisme ne soupçonne pas”.32 We have to retrace the stratifications of that pensée dans la parole que l’intellectualisme ne soupçonne pas, and that emerges explicitly, although enigmatically, in the case of poetry or music, where it is evident that thought is not representation. The meaning of a sonata cannot be separated from its sounds, and the sense of the word, and its institution in a language is constituted in the simultaneity of gesture that, breaking the silence, poses the expression and embodies the word itself beyond any image: “De la même manière, je n’ai pas besoin de me représenter le mot pour le savoir et pour le prononcer. Il suffit que j’en possède l’essence articulaire et sonore comme l’une des modulations, l’un des usages possibles de mon corps”.33

28

Wittgenstein (1989), § 159. Wittgenstein (1989), § 162. 30 Wittgenstein (1989), § 165. 31 Wittgenstein (1989), § 167. 32 Merleau-Ponty (1945), p. 209. 33 Merleau-Ponty (1945), p. 210. 29

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Merleau-Ponty describes this situation in a more explicit and deeper manner. This is what he writes: “S’il nous semble toujours que le langage est plus transparent que la musique, c’est que la plupart du temps nous demeurons dans le langage constitué, nous nous donnons des significations disponibles et, dans nos définitions, nous nous bornons, comme le dictionnaire, à indiquer des équivalences entre elles […]. Au contraire dans la musique, aucun vocabulaire n’est présupposé, le sens apparaît lié à la présence empirique des sons, et c’est pourquoi la musique nous semble muette. Mais, en réalité, comme nous l’avons dit, la clarté du langage s’établit sur le fond obscur, et si nous poussons la recherche assez loin, nous trouverons finalement que le langage, lui aussi, ne dit rien que luimême, ou que son sens n’est pas séparable de lui”.34 Wittgenstein’s familiarity of the sound of the word takes us back to the couche originaire du sentir qui est antérieure à la division des sens by Merleau-Ponty.35 Music doesn’t occupy any visible space, and the impossibility of representing the possibility of language appears, ineffable and invisible, within the visible in order to make us see through the words,36 the non-evident nonsense that interrogates the word through itself, and against which clarifying analysis fails. If philosophy is an interrogation of the possible, it moves within the same space of music. 4. Let us go back to Wittgenstein: “I want to remember a tune and it escapes me; suddenly I say “Now I know it” and I sing it. What was it like to suddenly know it? Surely it can’t have occurred to me in its entirety in that moment! – Perhaps you will say: “It’s a particular feeling, as if it were there” – but is it there?”37 Wittgenstein can repeat, after saying it in Philosophical Investigations § 138: “It is as if we could grasp the whole use of the word in a flash…The point is, that it is as if we could ‘grasp in a flash’ in yet another and much more direct sense than that. – But have you a model for this? No”.38 It seems that what I suddenly comprehend of the proposition is what the proposition is telling me. If we compare the proposition to an image, it tells me about a state of things that is characterized by being so and so. The 34

Merleau-Ponty (1945), p. 219. Merleau-Ponty (1945), p. 262. 36 Merleau-Ponty (1964), p. 313. 37 Wittgenstein (1989), § 184. 38 Wittgenstein (1989), § 191. 35

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proposition tells me something, but if I ask “what does an image tell me?” what would I answer? This musical theme tells me itself.39 It does this suddenly, immediately, and then in its unfolding, in its being time and making time, until vanishing in a point in which it is no more: the moment in which the musical theme is and resonates in the sound of the word and in the sound of the proposition. This can be both the peculiar phenomenon of the interior resonating of sound,40 and the pronounced sound that makes a word familiar, familiar like its sound.41 This is something that – once again – stands in proximity of the experience of reading a playing a musical score.42 Thus what I comprehend in a flash is not what the proposition is telling me, but what I say about the proposition, and what the proposition doesn’t say, but shows in the evidence of its sound. The proposition shows itself, and don’t take it as a matter of course!43 This is the transition from an evident nonsense to an occult nonsense: from a “such and such” of the proposition to its possibility that shows itself only through itself and the immediacy of its sound. The oscillation and the transition that I have expounded are both a comprehension and a non-comprehension.44 I comprehend something in a painting or in a proposition, but there is something that I don’t understand of a painting or of a proposition: what I feel I do not comprehend is what constitutes the enigma of the painting and of the proposition: something that is in the painting and that I can’t see, and that in the proposition I grasp in a flash: it is not its meaning. It is its will-to-say, it is the Voice that wants its language to be and to be open to the abyss of the determined. It is the Voice that burdens itself with the contingent: it resonates with the inaccessible place of the original unfolding of language: the non-evident nonsense of philosophy. Giorgio Agamben expresses this idea eloquently: “La parola che vuole cogliere la Voce come Assoluto, che vuole, cioè essere nel proprio luogo originario, deve, pertanto, essere già uscita, assumere e riconoscere il nulla che è nella voce e, traversando il tempo e la scissione che le si rivela nel luogo del linguaggio, far ritorno a se stessa e essere, alla fine là dove, 39

Wittgenstein (1989), § 523. Wittgenstein (1989), § 165. 41 Wittgenstein (1989), § 167. 42 Wittgenstein (1989), § 162. 43 Wittgenstein (1989), § 524. 44 Wittgenstein (1989), § 526. 40

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senza saperlo, era già stata in principio, cioè presso la Voce. La filosofia è questo viaggio da sé a se stessa della parola umana che, abbandonando la propria dimora abituale nella voce, si apre al terrore del nulla e, insieme, alla meraviglia dell’essere e, divenuta discorso significante, ritorna alla fine, come sapere assoluto, nella Voce”.45 5. In § 527 of the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein describes what he means when he writes about philosophical comprehension or comprehension of what we cannot comprehend as meaning: “Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme in music than one may think. What I mean is that understanding a sentence lies nearer than one thinks to what is ordinarily called understanding a musical theme. Why is just this the pattern of variation in loudness and tempo? One would like to say ‘Because I know what it’s all about’. But what is it all about? I should not be able to say”. Comprehending something is neither a meaning nor an image: it is one and the same thing as understanding a sentence in the sense in which it cannot be replaced by any other, something that only these words, in this sequence and position can express. It is like understanding a poem, or one musical theme that cannot be replaced by another.46 To ask what it means to comprehend in this sense is like asking: “What is the meaning of music? what is the meaning of these sounds?”47 What is at stake here is what I mean by the expression “to comprehend,” and in the concept of “comprehension” there is also its philosophical use, that is, how Wittgenstein defines philosophical comprehension. The problem is to understand what Wittgenstein wants to say when he writes that philosophical comprehension is connected to the comprehension of the non-evident nonsense that hides the possibility of language, and that we can grasp in a flash in the sound of a word and in the proposition in which our already-knowing-something resonates as belonging to that horizon of possibility. How does one lead anyone to comprehension of a poem or of a theme?, Wittgenstein asks in Philosophical Investigations § 533. The answer should clarify what it means to explain meaning. Explaining meaning is not a true explanation, but is related to an interminable pointing in the 45

Agamben (1982), p. 116-117. Wittgenstein (1989), § 531. 47 Wittgenstein (1989), § 529. 46

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direction of an enigma. It means to show what can be expressed only through these words in these positions, these sounds in this arrangement, leaving everything as it is, starting from the enigmatic experience of hearing a sound of a word or of a proposition or of a musical theme or of a verse of poetry.48 To explain a meaning is tantamount to going to the inaccessible original place of the word, to reach the non-evident nonsense that we clarify in a flash, and in which thought ceases to philosophize to rest near its Muse. The place where language takes place, the voice of Sigé. The border of Wittgenstein’s philosophical interrogation – what puts an end to philosophy and allows her to cease asking questions – coincides with the question: What is music? References Agamben, Giorgio 1982, Il linguaggio e la morte, Torino: Einaudi. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1945, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Gallimard. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1964, Le visible et l’invisible, Paris: Gallimard. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1974, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. by D.F. Pears and B. McGuinness, London & New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1989, Philosophical Investigations, trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

48

Wittgenstein (1989), § 534.

Musical Analysis versus Grammatical Analysis: Saying, Whistling, Describing, Understanding Marie-Anne LESCOURRET Paris The simple: a double – musical and philosophical – perplexity We are dealing here with a Wittgensteinian problem, a musician’s problem also, and that of each “hermeneutician,” of all those who claim to understand a text, whatever it is, and who pretend to manage “objectively,” which means avoiding psyche, feelings, soul, interiority, passion, and simultaneously to do justice to something that seems hidden, ineffable maybe, namely to the sense of the piece (in our case, the sense of the musical piece). In that respect, we ought to remember that from Plato and Aristotle onward, until Augustine and even Leonardo da Vinci, music has been suspected of an immediate access to the heart, ignoring the filter of sight, of contemplation, of theorein. Nevertheless, this paper contends that there is an objective, public, scientific way of accounting for an artistic text: grammatical analysis, according to Wittgenstein’s specific understanding of “grammar”. This scientific way of explaining a “sensible” text is of course not devoid of the difficulties already stated in a remark by D’Alembert in the 18th century: as he tries to provide some account of Rameau’s principles of harmony, D’Alembert distinguishes between “elements of genius” (a matter of sensibility and inventiveness), and “elements of music” – what rational analysis actually seeks. But what is an “element” of music? The question is raised at the very beginning of Wittgenstein’s work, in his Notebooks, 1914-1916: “And yet it is clear that I have before me the concept of a thing, of a simple correlation, when I think about this matter. / But how am I imagining the simple? All I can say here is always that ‘x’ has reference. – Here is a great riddle!”1 It occurs again as the opening sentence of the Philosophical Grammar: “How can one talk of ‘understanding’ and ‘not understanding’ a proposition? Surely it is not a proposition

1

Wittgenstein (1969), p. 45e.

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until it’s understood”.2 This point is also ironically formulated by Goethe in one of his Xenien about the Analysts: “Isn’t truth something like an onion, which you only need to peel off? What you did not put in, you won’t take out”. Elements of music or elements of genius, it does not matter. The question remains of the veracity and validity of an undertaking that is supposed to be good for all, and that relies only on the one who achieves it, on those who achieve it – (does the plural form yield universality, eternity?). As if we, musicians and philosophers, were bound to know nothing more about things than what we put into them, and to question only what we can answer. We shall come back later to the question of understanding, which, according to Wittgenstein, relies first of all on a totalization, on a position, or on the taking of a position. For the time being, let us stick to common views, if not to ascertained knowledge. As a matter of fact, since our first training in philosophy and the reading of Descartes’ Discourse of Method, we are convinced that analysis is the second major principle in intellectual attainments: “Divide each difficulty I shall examine in as many bits as possible and as required for its solution”.3 Something we actually knew since our first school years, when the exercises of grammar, syntax or “logical analysis” (in French) – the articulation of the sentence in subject, verb, complement – taught us rational discourse. Musicians and musicologists also know that, as Wittgenstein writes, analysis is the means by which one may “extract a symphony out of the score, this bunch of notes:”4 analysis rests upon rules and registered precepts. It seems to be the first step in the constitution and understanding of the sense, regardless of any affection or effect produced (or not) by the artistic proposition. The question of analysis leads right to the heart of the question raised in this volume about “the reasons of aesthetics”: as if philosophy and musical theory allowed for a rational approach, for a rational – i.e. universal – explanation of art, of that field usually devoted to feeling and subjectivity. More precisely, would Wittgenstein’s philosophy permit a rational under2

Wittgenstein (1974). Descartes (1958). 4 Wittgenstein (1971b) § 4.0141: “Dass es eine allgemeine Regel gibt, durch die der Musiker aus der Partitur die Symphonie entnehmen kann […]. Und jene Regel ist das Gesetz der Projektion, welches die Symphonie in die Notensprache projiziert.” Wittgenstein (1971b) § 4.015: “Die Möglichkeit aller Gleichnisse, der ganzen Bildhaftigkeit unserer Ausdrucksweise ruht in der Logik der Abbildung.” 3

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standing of music, of an art so remote from words? (A poem may be commented in more words, a painting may be described in words, just like any visible reality, but what about a sound or a note? Try to describe a ‘C’ without effusiveness? Isn’t Adorno right – though in contradiction with his own doing – when he states that understanding music means playing music, that is performing it? What are we thinkers up to?) I sustain that some part of Wittgenstein’s philosophy – e. g. grammar – can help us to report about music, to provide and exhibit an understanding of it independently of sympathy, of intro- or em-pathy, of any soul-to-soul correspondence (as Delacroix puts it), of any encounter between interior necessities (as Kandinsky would say), notwithstanding, though the prominence of their authors, the inacceptable resonance of those expressions for our rationalist ears. You may have noticed that I am referring here to Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, insofar as it considers problems of understanding, rather than to his so-called “aesthetics”. I disregard therefore the many passages in his work which mention or allude to music. We know that music moved him to teeth grinding, that he played a clarinet which he carried in a sock, that he had a great talent for whistling, – which secured him and David Pinsent reckless evenings in Norway, when they performed Schubert’s Lieder (Pinsent playing the piano) –, that he liked Viennese Classicism and nothing more, found Richard Strauss “odd,” as well as any passionate musical expression (be it that of his brother Paul), and that he was irritated by the Wiener Moderne – though the last sentence of Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron “Wort, Wort, das mir fehlt” seems to echo this confession from the Notebooks: “My problem is just an – enormous – problem of expression”. Among Wittgenstein’s musical considerations, I shall then retain those by which he tries to explain the nature of linguistic understanding: when he states that language does not only amount to verbal language, but also includes gesture, signs and sounds languages, or when he compares the understanding of a verbal sentence to that of a musical piece. Wittgenstein’s investigations on linguistic comprehension thereby prove to be relevant for musical understanding: Language is not defined for us as an arrangement fulfilling a definite purpose. Rather, “language” is for us a name for a collection, and I understand it as including German, English and so on, and further

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Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates various systems of signs which have more or less affinity with these languages.5 Nun, ihm [Menschen] Verständnis beibringen wird ihm in anderem Sinne lehren was Verständnis ist, als eine Erklärung die dies nicht tut. Ja, auch Ihm Verständnis für Gedichte oder Malerei beibringen, kann zur Erklärung dessen gehören, was Verständnis für Musik sei.6

Wittgenstein himself takes us on to the bridge, to the passage between philosophy and music, between grammatical and musical analysis in his Philosophical Remarks when he writes: “Ist nicht die Harmonielehre wenigstens teilweise Phänomenologie, also Grammatik? / Die Harmonielehre ist nicht Geschmackssache”.7 Wittgenstein’s grammar has musical relevance insofar as it sets us on the path towards the meaning of meaning. It helps us discover in what sense the work of art, the musical work makes sense. Indeed, we rarely saw a conductor carrying a book by Wittgenstein at a rehearsal. And suppose the same conductor would mug up on the philosopher’s thought at home, his own research and performance would nevertheless proceed mainly from his analysis of the score. Therefore, if philosophy brings something to music, it depends on the liability of music to this contribution: not only by virtue of the extended (Wittgensteinian) definition of language, but because music as such, with all its practices and specialists, raises questions that are relevant to philosophy, such as the question of the element, hence of the analysis, hence of the sense. The point of our discussion is philosophical, aesthetical rather than musical. Therefore, if analysis, be it musical or grammatical, helps us solve rationally, universally, objectively, the question of the sense and understanding of music – a philosophical and aesthetical question –, I keep on wondering how, on the one hand, to reach the elementary or the simple, and how, on the other hand, to reach a comprehension that is distinct from what is preliminary to decomposition. What guarantees the objectivity of the element? How can analysis, grammar (that comes second, and says the how not the why), protect me from the pathos of subjective approach? How does it rescue the sense from sensitivity or feeling?

5

Wittgenstein (1967), § 322. Wittgenstein (1977), p. 134. 7 Wittgenstein (1964), p. 53. 6

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Musical analysis Diether de la Motte starts his method of musical analysis (in two parts: Textteil and Notenteil) with a discussion of the development of the notion of form, ending up with Schoenberg’s Formgefühl – i.e. “feeling for form” – : that is, with an intuitively and personally conceived “form,” quite remote from the “formalist” conception of form. De la Motte continues with what he calls Wegweiser, namely with 22 precepts to be applied to analysis, some of which I shall now unfold. 1. The first one reads: “Verzichte so weit als möglich auf blosse Notentextbeschreibung: Der Leser oder Hörer deiner Analyse hat ja die Noten vor sich! Beschreibe nur, um sodann Schlüsse daraus ziehen zu können”.8 We are now involved in deduction, interpretation, or musical logic, as defined for instance by Carl Dahlhaus in his Beiträge zur musikalischen Hermeneutik (Contributions to Musical Hermeneutics), when he asserts that the concatenation of variables, of melodic, rhythmic or harmonic transformations of a motive must be felt as a consequence, as musical logic. 2. “Eine Analyse kann allen Einzelheiten gerecht werden und doch völlig ergebnislos, ja sinnlos sein. Es genügt nicht zu erkennen, was im einzelnen vorgeht. Wichtiger und allein verdienstvoll ist es festzustellen, wodurch sich ein Vorgang von anderen Vorgängen unterscheidet, inwiefern er anderen Vorgängen ähnelt, ob er unvermittelt eintritt oder ob er aus Vorherigen hervorwächst”. A process is more than an element, a sound, a bar. Hence, analysis implies synthesis, choice and decision. Last year, during Alfred Brendel’s master classes at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, it was interesting to hear two members of the audience, a composer9 and a pianist,10 translate by “phrasé” (an interpretative notion in French), what Alfred Brendel called “articulation” (a logical notion), both terms providing an account of this – hermeneutical and performative – synthesis. 3. “Auf die Gliederung einer Komposition in Abschnitte kann in den seltensten Fällen verzichtet werden. […] Soll eine Komposition als lebendiger Organismus behandelt werden, muss zwar jedes einzelne Organ dargestellt, vor allem aber das Geheimnis des Zusammenwirkens mit den übrigen Organen ergründet werden”. Goethe had already warned against dissection, against an allegedly scientific account of creatures, which actually 8

De La Motte (1968-1990). Nicolas Bacri. 10 Eliane Reyes. 9

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only delivers knowledge of the dead, not of the living: musical analysis should not endanger the living unity of the piece. 4. “Unbestreitbare Feststellungen lassen die Person des Analytikers vergessen, – hier ist die Ich-Form nicht am Platze – doch muss sich die Analyse nicht auf das unbezweifelbare beschränken”. The target of musical analysis is objectivity, so that one may wonder who the subject of synthesis is: the musician or the musical language by itself? Especially since the following precepts refer to personal evaluation: pleasure, strength, emotion… The theoretician also warns us against any claim regarding the unquestionable… Could indeed music escape personal hearing, personal experience at all? Could it be a matter of nobody’s ear?11 5. The last precept recommends: “Hüte dich vor Überinterpretation. […] Hüte dich, der ordnenden Kraft des Komponisten zuzuschreiben, was schlicht in der Einheit des Tonmaterials begründet ist”. Hence, music “speaks for itself”: granted this does not refer to Adorno’s dialectic of the material, it does at least mean that not everything in music is a matter of creative intentionality. De La Motte goes on reminding us that the analyst’s work does not end with the treatment of the musical piece. The analyst still has to look for comparisons, within the general production of the composer, and with other pieces by other composers. Comparison requires no special rules; the choice of the pieces to be compared and of the method of their comparison changes the result of the analysis… (One has the feeling that musical analysis, in De la Motte’s views, strongly resembles cooking rules: changing the rules of the recipe does not result in a bad cake but in another cake, whereas changing the rules of a game excludes us from playing it). Interesting is the course of the process he advocates for analysis, from the grand form [Grossform] to the detailed structure [Detailsstruktur]: one starts with a global view [im grossen Überblick], previous to the precise exposure of what is not immediately striking. This means there is an “understanding,” a “comprehension,” a “synopsis” prior to explanation. Whose view is that? The connoisseur’s of course, more than the “enthusiast’s”. Things are easier for the French Encyclopedia of Music (Fasquelle 1958-1961) since, as in many other treatises of analysis, the components, the elements (of music) are identified from the beginning onward, as they were for instance in Rameau’s Treatise of Harmony (1992) – which is obvious in D’Alembert’s remark. Musical analysis hence amounts to the log11

As I asked in a previous article, Lescourret (2007).

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ical enumeration of the constitutive elements of a musical work, preluding to the performance. It provides a map of the specific places and moments of the work, and entails a topography as well as a dynamics. The elements are known because analysis as such (which is different from harmony, and raises the question of the simple, not of the genius), has existed since the end of the 19th century: it begins with Kretzschmar’s Listener’s Guide (1887), followed by Riemann’s analyses. (We remember of course that in his Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann gave to his stammering lecturer in musicology the name of Kretzschmar…) The article “analysis” in the Grove (Sadie ed., 2001) is much more developed, and hence proper to encourage my perplexities. Ian Bent asserts that analysis consists in “the resolution of musical structure in relatively simple components and in the study of the functions of these elements inside this structure”. He defines the structure as “a part of the work,” but neither says which one, nor who determines it. He distinguishes formal from stylistic analysis, however stating that analysis starts with music – probably what Carl Dahlhaus calls the “acoustic substratum” –, before summoning exterior elements. But is it really possible to stick to “pure” music when Ian Bent writes that “at the bottom of all aspects of the analytical activities, there is the fundamental point of contact between mind and musical sound, hence musical perception?” Music appears therefore as relevant to psychology, as Robert Francès and Michel Imberty have shown. The first one pointed to the “difficulties in analyzing musical structures”: “When we try to account for all the abundant notions involved in a semantic judgment, we face the specific difficulties of a complex reality in which the variables are never isolated, but coexist in mutual interactions. Even if we limited our considerations to monody, we would establish that, transposed from bass to sharp (low to high pitch), from piano to forte, from one timbre to another, the chosen samples change their character”.12 Hence, among other reasons, the metamorphic character of musical styles, majestic, comic or tragic, harbored in the most “classical” writings, those of Bach and Mozart for instance. Ian Bent then exposes the diverse kinds of analysis familiar to musicologists, up to the “Schenkerian” analysis (and let us just mention the existential and transcendental analysis of our friend Eero Tarasti). It seems that contemporary musicology and musical theory do not solve the question of musical elements raised by D’Alembert three centuries ago. As it were, they make it even more complicated, increasing the 12

Francès (1984), p. 307.

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kinds of references – sound, natural sound, functional chord… So that if we look for a musical sense, the analytical selection operates essentially as a source of disorientation. Grammatical analysis Our concern is to do justice to something that is apparently neither acoustic nor sounding, but still musical, and to manage thanks to extramusical means (philosophy, linguistics), aiming at a public, if not universal or eternal validation. Music is not just pleasant or soft and relaxing, as it is to Thomas Mann’s hero Hans Castorp, who likes music because it has on him the same effect as English ale upon an empty stomach… Music “speaks” to us, as we tend to say, and so does Wittgenstein: “The way music speaks. Do not forget that a poem, even though it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information”.13 But the study of music cannot be limited to the appeasing or exciting feelings it stirs up in us. Music is not only a matter of passion, it is also a matter of intellection, just like painting. This is why I leave aside the so-called “Wittgensteinian aesthetics,” since it only considers the effects produced on one’s feelings by the work of art, so that Jacques Bouveresse is entitled to identify it as a “eudemonist aesthetics:” the finality of art being, according to Wittgenstein, to make one happy.14 On the other hand, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, and more precisely his conception of grammar, seems appropriate to account for what, in the work of art (be it musical or else), exceeds contemplation and summons to speech. To begin with, the interesting point in grammar is that it records Wittgenstein’s evolution: the moment when he gives up the pretention to solve all philosophical problems by means of an ideal language excluding the inexpressible, and begins to study the ordinary language, seeking logic in vagueness.15 We remember that the Tractatus had left us with all the instruments of the ideal, truth-saying language, but also with the unutterable, 13

Wittgenstein (1967), § 160. Cf. Wittgenstein (1969), p. 86e: “And the beautiful is what makes happy.” 15 I won’t mention the unutterable and the ineffable: I did so in another article, to be published. I won’t mention either the inside and the outside, nor the apocryphal texts on the philosophy of psychology. I shall stick to grammar, as exposed in the Philosophical Grammar, produced out of the Big Typescript, on its way to the Philosophical Investigations, remembering that the notion of grammar appears very early in Wittgenstein’s writings, before being deeply explored in the Thirties. I take “ineffable” as what seems to exceed the limits of language, and not as the ineffable that results of the difficulty of translating a language into another. 14

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that could only be shown; and in one letter, Wittgenstein added that what you cannot say, you cannot whistle either. This might mean that, contrary to what Vladimir Jankélévitch (1983) states in a fascinating and unchallenged book, music does not, for Wittgenstein, begin when speech stops, and that music does not compensate for the failures of verbal language. Let us recall and discuss his arguments. If music meant something, how would it manage to express this something without a soloist or a conductor, without an acoustic substratum? Words cannot replace sounds, though for some advanced musicians, reading a score is like reading a novel. How does a deaf person know that he/she can’t hear? How do I know there are things that I cannot say? Nevertheless, Wittgenstein cannot help mentioning the question of the inexpressible, as it challenges the limits of language. And maybe the way out of the “verbal glass” is to consider that the discourse about music as the expression of the ineffable is, like any discourse (even scientific discourse, even that of the physicists) an asymptotic one, steadily searching, approximating, and always subject to revision… We can therefore admit, together with P.M.S. Hacker in his famous article directed against Wittgenstein’s so-called realism (“Was he trying to whistle it?”16), that Wittgenstein was indeed trying to “whistle it,” that he was trying to do justice, in his own way, to the unutterable, to the ineffable.17 The Wittgensteinian way of studying the “whistled,” the “figurative” if not concealed meaning, is neither mentalist nor behaviorist. In order to account for what exceeds verbal language, or seems to do so – such as artistic creations–, we still can rely on grammatical analysis: neither on psychologizing hypothesis nor on behaviorist explanation, but on a description of what happens in language, whatever it may be, verbal or musical. In so doing, we reverse Wittgenstein’s conception of the connection between music and verbal language. Wittgenstein has recourse to music in order to explain linguistic understanding – especially its intuitive and spontaneous aspects –, whereas we claim to apply the instrument of linguistic understanding to musical understanding. But Wittgenstein encourages us to do so when he asserts that: “Musical themes are in a certain sense propositions”.18 His aesthetics, as an account of the emotions stirred up by works 16

In Crary and Read, ed. (2000). For a description of the unutterable, of the ineffable, of the inexpressible, see Hacker’s article. 18 Wittgenstein (1969), p. 40e. 17

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of art, and especially by music, is included in his philosophy of language, and stretches between two fundamental propositions. On the one hand, there is the comprehension of the work of art, on the other hand, the report, the telling to other people about this comprehension. In the Philosophical Grammar, Wittgenstein writes: “What happens is not that this symbol cannot be further interpreted, but: I do no interpreting. I do not interpret because I feel natural in the present picture. When I interpret, I step from one level of my thought to another”.19 And he adds, in the Cambridge Lectures 1932-1935 (same period): “Aesthetics is descriptive. What it does is to draw one’s attention to certain features, to place things side by side so as to exhibit these features,”20 whereas the rightness of the analysis is manifested by the assent of the addressee to the explanation, which shows up in the fact that he/she gives up interpreting. Description, supposed to contribute to understanding, takes place between these two instances. The descriptive method, though not explicitly displayed by Wittgenstein, has its roots in his conception of grammar, of philosophical grammar. Let me remind you of the four theses on grammar, before we start considering their musical relevance. Grammar takes care of the relationship between language and reality; grammar says nothing about truth or falsehood, but examines what makes sense and what does not; grammar registers the linguistic transactions, to the exclusion of the entailed psychological impressions. Those descriptions of philosophical grammar are to be found in the eponymous book, but also in other works such as the Philosophical Remarks, the Zettel and – to a slighter extent – the Philosophical Investigations. Would they apply to musical understanding? The relationship between language and reality, which grammar takes care of, is a relationship of projection rather than of reception – (along with its transcendental bearing, in the Kantian sense, as the reference of knowledge to the subject of knowledge). This relationship has something mysterious and fundamental, made particularly perceptible in the famous anecdote of On Certainty: a man in a park points to a tree repeating: “this is a tree, this is a tree...,” while his companion explains to amazed onlookers: “we are philosophizing”. Grammar keeps the accounting-books of language. It records the exchanges between words, signs, forms and sounds. This is bound to evoke the music composed “note by note,” as Willy Reich describes the Schoenbergian Klangfarbenmelodie, each note getting its color from the previous 19 20

Wittgenstein (1974), p. 147. Wittgenstein (1992), p. 56.

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and the next ones, just like visual colors gain their hues (and existence) from their system. “When a musician pays close attention to every note he plays and judges it, this is done so as to direct his action accordingly”.21 Speaking, writing, composing amount to calculating with language, to evaluating the exchanges between linguistic components. In his book on Culture and Value (Vermischte Bemerkungen), Wittgenstein mentions two composers, Brahms and Bruckner. The first one is said to compose with his feather:22 a conception that actually matches Schoenberg, objective calculator by all means, who inscribed his composition in a square. The second one, Bruckner, “hat nur mit dem inneren Ohr und einer Vorstellung vom spielenden Orchester komponiert”.23 By this notion of “interior ear,” Wittgenstein does not mean a feeling or a passion, but this capacity which we possess or not, to keep “in mind” some melodies which we could or could not start singing. (Schoenberg, again, once reported about one of his compositions which he conceived entirely during a walk, and that he just had to write down when he was back home. Let us also remember the young Mozart, who was able to transcribe Allegri’s Miserere after one hearing only. Also think about the mystery of vocal emission, when the singer has to produce a sound without any instrumental support.) Those musical exchanges can also be measured topographically and geometrically: not only thanks to the reciprocal influence of words, sounds and colors within a systematic frame, but also thanks to the relations that the observer traces between some places of a text, of a score or of a painting: of whatever composition. Wittgenstein does indeed compare the thinker to a “Zeichner, der alle Zusammenhänge nachzeichnen will,”24 being thus very close to Alberti who invites us to retrace the composition of the painting by studying the mutual relations of its parts. What is striking is the autonomy of grammar towards reality. Grammar does not deduce its rules from its connection to the world. Parallelism between language and world is not at stake, no more than a prejudiced – though inexpressible – common logical structure. Of course, the bond between language and reality always persists, since, as it is said in the Big Typescript, language only speaks of the world, and speaks only insofar as it speaks of the world. Merleau-Ponty puts this point even better when he claims that language begins with the excess of existence over essence, with 21

Wittgenstein (1967), § 591. Wittgenstein (1977), p. 30. 23 Id. 24 Wittgenstein (1977), p. 30. 22

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the necessity of catching a world that easily exceeds any poor human being. Moreover, the thesis of the autonomy of grammar widely contributes to stress the fact that language takes care of itself, that everything happens in language, and that language, not as a meta-language, but as an aggregate of uses and applications, will help us understand language. And the same goes with music. “Music only says itself: it is no instrument to stir up feelings”.25 Music takes care of itself; we understand music from the musical field, by virtue of the known and recorded applications of musical signs, thanks to musical language-games, even if these lead us back to a whole culture, as Wittgenstein puts it in his Lectures and Conversations: “Giving a complete description of aesthetical rules would be tantamount to describing the culture of a whole period”.26 In his endeavor to understand the work of art, e. g. the musical piece, Wittgenstein never appeals to psychology. As far as undeniable “mental states” occur, they have to be elucidated according to obvious manifestations, to the exclusion of any subjective, private or secret events. Explanation sets forth, leaving room for descriptions that record visible, perceptible, certified transactions. Perceiving and appreciating notes and phrases, the musician’s ear will be credited with the same qualities as the painter’s eyes when perceiving and appreciating forms and colors. Just as the painter can say that the blue of Oxford’s flag is lighter than the blue of Cambridge’s flag, the musician can (objectively) assert that the interval of a seventh is discordant (so says Rameau), whereas the third, fourth, fifth and sixth are consonant. Both colors evaluate one another, as lighter or darker, just as the sounds produce a chord, a third – emerging – sound that modifies what each of them would be without the other one. Therefore, just as Wittgenstein contends, it is possible to achieve the understanding of music, of a non verbal text, by means of description only, avoiding effusion, or any conjecture about what happens in the composer’s or in one’s head. (One will then be most perplexed by what Wittgenstein considers as a model of discursive commentary of music, namely Mörike’s novel Mozart’s Journey to Prague, since the author describes it as a portrait of the composer drawn after invented anecdotes…) Another striking feature of this musical grammar is that it still pertains to the analytic model, insofar as it only deals with small entities: with interacting sounds or sentences. As if we still were on the level of Tractatus 3.141: “Der Satz ist kein Wortgemisch. – (Wie das musikalische The25 26

Wittgenstein (1965), p. 296. Wittgenstein (1971), p. 28.

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ma kein Gemisch von Tönen.) / Der Satz ist artikuliert”.27 Grammatical analysis exhibits the articulation of a composition, i.e. what happens within a composition. But grammar as such aims precisely at overcoming the strictly analytical perspective, towards a “transcendental” perspective, that considers the conditions of possibility, not of knowledge, but of composition, hence of comprehension. Understanding: the sense of sense For it is one thing to produce the geometrical account of a composition– or of a form, a structure, a sentence –, i.e. to map the relations between words, things, forms, colors and sounds within it, and it is another thing to understand those transactions. Diether de la Motte said it right at the beginning: a very detailed analysis may remain senseless. We cannot achieve anything out of it: wir können damit nichts anfangen. We are once again facing our initial – Wittgensteinian – perplexity: “Isn’t it a proposition only when we have understood it?” As it were, in order to understand – be it by analysis or more precisely by grammatical description–, we need to have already understood. Alberti, the above mentioned Renaissance architect, painter and theoretician of arts, expresses a similar embarrassment. In his treatise about painting (De Pictura), he teaches us how to start treating (creating, reading) the work as a whole, before dealing with the parts, the articulation of which will yield the story [storia]: “Composition is the way of painting by which the parts are composed within a picture. The major work of the painter is the story [storia]. The parts of the story are the bodies, the part of the body is the limb, the part of the limb is the surface”.28 Artists and historians of Renaissance art know that composition is eventually (or primarily) a matter of circumscriptio – the frame, the size of the image –, and of inventio – the argument of the picture, the way the painter chooses to treat a subject, to tell his story. This invention can be easily compared with the rule that permits the extraction of a symphony out of the many notes on the score, and very much resembles the musical idea that guides the process of composition, or the intention that is previous to the achievement of the painting: “No one should doubt that one shall never become a good painter if he does not perfectly comprehend what he undertakes when painting. Since your bow is bent in vain if you have no target for your arrow”.29 We know that art consists neither in imitation, nor 27

Wittgenstein (1971). Alberti (1992), p. 153. 29 Alberti (1992), p. 127. 28

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in inspiration, nor in reproduction, but in thought, when the rule acts as an ars inveniendi – which was Wittgenstein’s conviction. Our problem is to get hold of this idea, to get hold of this law that waves to the choir, to the whole – according to Goethe’s formula Chor und Gesetz, to follow it in a work that we can’t absorb in one bite, but must cut into pieces in order to understand it, remembering that the whole determines the parts. Wittgenstein repeats time and time again: understanding is “übersehen, Übersicht haben,” i.e. to have an overview, a global perspective.30 In his Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, he clearly describes the synoptic presentation [übersichtliche Darstellung] as the key to comprehension: “the concept of synoptic presentation is for us of fundamental importance. It designates our mode of representation, the way we see things. This synoptic presentation helps us understand, that is precisely, see correlations. Hence the importance of discovering intermediate terms”.31 Thereupon, it becomes possible to proceed to a topographic analysis (geometric, surface analysis), or geologic (deep) analysis, and to assert that understanding does not amount to knowing the rules, but to seeing the correlations… And this is Wittgenstein’s other sociological moment. After the “rule-moment,” identified by Bourdieu, comes the moment of comprehension. Understanding a musical text, figuring it globally before “decomposing” (analyzing) it, far from being the expression of personal subjectivity, is the result of an acquired competence, of a training, of a cultural habitus. This competence improves in the course of specialized learning, that then enables one to identify a melodic line or a chord, still through this synoptic view that Wittgenstein also defines as a “relational totality,” when he mentions the musical psychologist Stumpf in Culture and Value. Understanding is then a public, open, social and logical matter, exhibited in a rational activity. It is manifested by the identification of the rule that constitutes the work, of the rule that governs the interactions of the sounds, so that we know how to perform, or, as Wittgenstein would put it, how to go on. Music plays on this differing, this postponing of the resolutions that classical harmony (or the human mind) teaches us to expect. Understanding has nothing to do with the personal – ineffable – emotion that goes with the perception of the work, the sense of which can precisely be reached for this reason.

30 31

Wittgenstein (1974), p. 40; Wittgenstein (1971), § 122. Wittgenstein (1982), p. 21.

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“The meaning of the word is what explains the explanation of the meaning”.32 The meaning of the work is what explains the explanation of the meaning: that’s why it equals the factual description of the use, i.e. the reading or the performing, the grammar or the musical analysis. This is what Alban Berg (1957) does in his impressive analysis “contra Pfitzner,” of Schumann’s Rêverie, while he shows how an elegiac piece happens to be the fruit of a complicated calculus, when feelings do not exclude reason and when reason does not exclude feelings, when feelings (“heart,” as we would say in French) “result” from the study of the work, from the capacity of identifying and contrasting certain features within the totality of the work. Of course, the synoptic, totalizing perspective never allows for anything more than a “hearing as,” according to a certain listening point. This means that although being topographic or geologic, faithful to the melody or to the counterpoint, our reading and our listening are never definitive, unquestionable. There comes the difference between the Wittgensteinian approach to sense and that of Hermeneutics, in search of an original, true, absolute sense. And if the Wittgensteinian critique leaves us in an uncomfortable philosophical state of steady watch – far away from the quiet shores of conventionalism and constructivism –, on the pier of certainty, on the other hand, it is, aesthetically speaking, especially fruitful, explicit and enlightening. Comprehension indeed neither manifests itself as an assertion nor as a message, – such as “the weather is nice,” “life is hard,” “pure or profane love” –, which would reduce music and painting respectively to a discursive assertion or to an allegory (this catastrophe of the spirit into reality). Comprehension appears in the description of the very process of understanding, in the conception and decomposition of the work, as a scenario, as a “story” [storia]. Except that this story is no narrative; if not the narration of the quest for sense, a narrative as a topology, as a source of orientation enabling us, as Horatius already required, to progress from before to after, from beginning to end. Granted that this orientation be won from a distanced point of view, a totalizing and logical one, seeking concatenations, passages: an intelligent point of view, the point of view of no pathetic but incarnated sensitive and real intellection. What is at stake is binding, connecting – intelligere –, not saying synthetically what is said. The sense of the work of art is rational and logical. It resorts to logos, or to language as reason, and not as a message, or worse, as a pathos. It has nothing to do with truth, since it depends on the stance of the beholder, of 32

Wittgenstein (1971), § 109.

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the listener as well as on the topography of the work. Art does not gain its eternity from its belonging to an ineffable, absolute and transcendent world, but from the multiplicity of the gazes, receptions and commentaries it gives rise to, from one period, from one culture to another. Such exchanges between art and beholders weave, diachronically, the width of a signification due not only to what one projects in the works, but mainly to the solicitations (fascination) the works addresses by virtue of its anthropological relevance. References Alberti, Leon Battista 1992, De la peinture, Paris: Macula. Berg, Alban 1957, Écrits, Monaco: Éditions du Rocher. Crary, Alice, and Read, Rupert (eds.) 2000, The New Wittgenstein, London and New York: Routledge. De la Motte, Diether 1968-1990, Musikalische Analyse, Textteil, Kassel: Bärenreiter. Descartes, René 1958, Œuvres Complètes, Paris: Pléiade. Francès, Robert 1984, La Perception de la Musique, Paris: Vrin. Jankélévitch, Vladimir 1983, La musique et l’ineffable, Paris: Seuil. Lescourret, Marie-Anne 2007, “L’oreille de personne,” in A. Arbo (ed.), Perspectives de l’esthétique musicale, Paris: L’Harmattan, 277-289. Michel, François (ed.) 1958-1961, Encyclopédie de la musique, Paris: Fasquelle. Rameau, Jean-Philippe 1992, Traité de l’harmonie, Paris: Klincksieck. Reich, Willy 1974, Arnold Schönberg, der konservative Revolutionär, München: DTV. Sadie, Stanley (ed.) 2001, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, New York, London: Macmillan. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1964, Philosophische Bemerkungen, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1965, Le cahier bleu et le cahier brun, Paris: Gallimard. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1967, Zettel, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1969, Notebooks 1914-1916, New York: Harper. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1971a, Leçons et conversations, Paris: Gallimard. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1971b, Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1971c, Philosophische Untersuchungen, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

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Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1974, Philosophical Grammar, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1977, Vermischte Bemerkungen, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1982, Remarques sur le Rameau d’or de Frazer, Paris: L’Âge d’Homme. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1992, Les Cours de Cambridge 1932-1935, Mauvezin: T.E.R.

IV. Ethics and Aesthetics

Prolegomenon to a Morality of Music Jerrold LEVINSON University of Maryland I. In a recent paper devoted to my topic, music and morality, my fellow philosopher of music Peter Kivy makes a helpful tripartite distinction among ways in which music could be said to have moral force.1 The first is by embodying and conveying moral insight; Kivy labels that epistemic moral force. The second is by having a positive moral effect on behavior; Kivy labels that behavioral moral force. And the third is by impacting positively on character so as to make someone a better human being; Kivy labels that character-building moral force. Kivy is decidedly skeptical about the prospects of pure instrumental music, or what he calls “music alone,” to possess the first or second sort of moral force, and only slightly less so for its prospects to possess the third sort. But he rightly points out that that third sort of moral force — what might alternatively be described as music’s power to shape for the better, albeit in subtle ways, what kind of person one is — is largely, if not wholly, independent of the first two sorts, the epistemic and the behavioral, and might be manifest where they are absent. Before returning to Kivy’s three sorts of moral force, however, I want to underline a fourth way in which music can be moral. This fourth way is through music’s having moral quality, whether or not it possesses, in consequence, moral force. What I mean by moral quality is a matter of the mind or spirit reflected in the music, and most particularly, in the nature of its expression, both what it expresses and how it expresses that. Moral quality in music is not a function simply of what emotions, attitudes, or states of mind are expressed, but of how they are expressed – with what fineness, subtlety, depth, honesty, originality and so on. Music can surely display moral quality whether it is optimistic – as for instance, the first movement of Dvorak’s “American” Quartet — or pessimistic — as for instance, the first movement of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony. What matters is the nature of the mind or spirit that shows itself through such expression, and more generally, through its management of all aspects of the musical medium, expressive, formal, and aesthetic. 1

Kivy (2008), p. 397-412.

Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates, eds. Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 161-166.

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The fundamental criterion of musical moral quality, perhaps too crudely framed, is whether the mind or spirit displayed in the music is such as to elicit admiration and to induce emulation, or instead such as to elicit distaste and to induce avoidance. If the former, the music has positive moral quality; if the latter, the music has negative moral quality; if neither, then the music is simply morally neutral. But why, one may ask, does such a property of music deserve the label of moral quality, and not simply aesthetic quality? Before answering let me re-label the property in question as ethical, rather than moral, quality, appealing to a broad sense of “ethical” that is familiar to us from Aristotle and the Stoics, comprising all aspects of character relevant to living a good life, and not only those corresponding to the moral virtues narrowly understood. With that relabeling in place, I see no way to avoid replying, to the question of why the display of an admirable mind or spirit makes for ethical quality in music, that it is simply because some minds or spirits are ethically superior to others, in the sense that they are such as to conduce to living a good life or to living as one should. Music can thus have ethical value in the sense of presenting exemplars of admirable states of mind that are conducive to, perhaps even partly constitutive of, living well, even if no demonstrable effect on character is forthcoming. And ethical value of this sort, one may add, in general makes music that possesses it artistically more valuable as well, artistic value being a broader notion than aesthetic value, plausibly covering rewards afforded by a work that are not directly manifested in experience of it. So music might, in principle, have ethical quality without that resulting in moral force of either the behavioral or the charactering-building sort. But in fact it is difficult to believe that repeated exposure to music that is ethically superior, in the sense I have indicated, should have as a rule no effect on character at all. And that is because of the plausibility of a contagion-cum-modeling picture of what is likely to result from such exposure. Just as spending time with certain sorts of friends invariably impacts on character, if perhaps in a transitory manner – this is what parents have in mind in classifying their children’s pals as on the whole either “good influences” or “bad influences” – so does keeping company with certain music rather than other music.2 It seems manifestly better, for one’s psychological and spiritual well-being, to spend time with music of sincerity, subtlety, 2

I here echo the claim made by Wayne Booth (1988) on behalf of great literature in his well-known book The Company We Keep.

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honesty, depth, and the like, than with music of pretension, shallowness or vulgarity.3 As noted earlier, Kivy does not entirely discount the notion that purely instrumental music might have moral force, at least of the characterbuilding sort, but the possibility that he is willing to grant is slender indeed. Here is what he says: One might argue that, at least in some sense or other, great music uplifts us; makes us, for the period of the listening experience, feel a kind of exaltation […]. And even though this experience has no lasting beneficial effect on our characters […] it would not be wrong to say that during the experience, at least, we are better people […]. Thus absolute music shares with many other human activities the propensity to produce in human beings a kind of ecstasy that might seem appropriate to describe as character-enhancing, consciousnessraising, and, therefore, in some vague, attenuated sense, morally improving, while it lasts.4

I have a few comments on this. First, as regards the feeling of uplift or exaltation that Kivy acknowledges it can be the result of listening absorbedly to certain music, music in which one seems to be in the presence of a great mind or spirit–surely this effect normally endures for some time after the listening experience, and does not cease as soon as listening ends. Second, it is necessary to insist, pace Kivy, that any ethical benefit of music, if it is to be deserving of that name, must involve an effect on character that endures to some extent--that is, which outlives the occasion itself. Music that is only “morally improving” while one is listening to it is not, to my mind, really morally improving, but rather only music that provides a temporary if pleasant illusion of moral improvement. But third, the mechanism of music’s possible character-building force strikes me as both less obscure and more robust than it does Kivy. I have already touched on this, in mentioning the likelihood of contagion and modeling effects, but I now elaborate further. Though they are not sentient, musical works are somewhat like persons. They possess a character, exhibit something like behavior, unfold or develop over time, and display emotional and attitudinal qualities which we can access through being induced to imagine, as we listen to them, per3

For further reflections in this vein, see “Evaluating Music,” in Levinson (2006), p. 184-207. 4 Id., p. 411-2.

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sonae that embody those qualities.5 In short, musical works are person-like in psychological ways. If so, then it hardly seems implausible that music regularly frequented will have moral effects on one, just as will being in the company of, and spending time with, real persons. This may transpire through the mere contagion or rubbing off of mental dispositions; or through a conscious desire to model oneself, in thought and action, on impressive individuals in one’s environment; or through a less conscious identification with and internalization of attractive personalities with which one has contact. Why should something similar not generally occur through exposure to a given range of minds and spirits in music? Let me be more concrete. Judging from the mind or spirit that comes across from their respective musics, Haydn would, I think, be a good choice of companion on a desert island, Tchaikovsky rather less so. It would perhaps here be fair to specify a particular Tchaikovsky, say that of the Piano Trio or the Fourth Symphony; these do not correspond to individuals I would care to be marooned with. On the other hand, I would willingly share my desert island with the Tchaikovsky of the “Souvenir de Florence” or the Third Symphony. And what goes for Haydn and Tchaikovsky as imagined desert island companions holds as well for the proportion of time one would be well advised, on ethical grounds, to allow Tchaikovsky’s music, or at least certain stretches of it, to occupy one’s ears as opposed to Haydn’s music. Mention of Haydn naturally raises the issue of the ethical value of humorous music, especially skillfully and wittily humorous music of the sort Haydn produced in abundance, and of the intimate connection between humor and good humor. It is surely significant that most humorous music is also good-humored music: that it is, on the one hand, funny or amusing, and on the other hand, mood-improving and spirits-lifting. This observation provides a basis, perhaps, for affirming the inherently positive ethical worth of humorous music, but its development will have to wait for another occasion. Leaving music aside for the moment, let us remind ourselves briefly of ways in which the other arts, most notably those of literature, theatre, and cinema, can contribute to moral education. Novels, plays, and films can offer imaginative acquaintance with concrete moral situations, represented in specific ways and from particular perspectives, and embodying concrete moral perceptions of them, engagement with which can aid us to 5

See “Sound, Gesture, Space, and the Expression of Emotion in Music” and “Musical Expressiveness as Hearability-as-Expression,” in Levinson (2006).

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better understand ourselves and others, and so to better conduct our lives. Such artworks, it should be stressed, need not prescribe moral stances in order to facilitate our efforts to define ourselves and to appreciate the selves of others; they need only present morally relevant situations sensitively and believably, allowing us a valuable exercise of our moral faculties. Such artworks generally serve to enlarge our moral imaginations, making us more capable of adopting the points of view of others and of empathizing with them. Even if an increased awareness of the subjectivity of others does not itself constitute moral improvement, it is clearly a prerequisite to it, in that without such awareness we are less able to take the interests of others into account and so to treat them as ends rather than means. The foregoing should all be roughly familiar as a defense of the moral relevance of arts such as literature, theatre, and film. But as the ancient Greeks were keen to emphasize, music arguably also has a place in moral education, the production and reception of some music serving to make us more fully human, despite representing no concrete individuals, scenarios, or situations. And that is largely because of the person-like character of music, remarked on before, whereby music can embody personal qualities, and thus affect one in somewhat the same way that persons do. Music, through its form and expression, audibly manifests attitudes, emotions, and other states of mind, and these states of mind, to which we are exposed when attending to music, can clearly be of greater or lesser moral worth. Thus on the one hand there is music that exudes maturity, strength, courage, resignation, vitality, and determination; on the other hand there is music that exudes immaturity, cowardice, fecklessness, megalomania, hypocrisy, and superficiality. Some music reflects a process of thought that compels admiration and uplifts us; other music reflects a process of thought that inspires dismay and depresses us. Can it make no difference in what sort of musical atmosphere, ethically speaking, one chooses regularly to bask? So much for the ethical dimension of instrumental music. In the longer essay to which these remarks serve as prolegomenon6, my main subject is the ethical import of song, and the role in such import of both the articulate component (the words) and the purely musical component (the notes). As regards song, or texted music generally, claims of moral insight, which correspond to the first sort of moral force recognized by Kivy, and 6

“Popular Song as Moral Microcosm: Life Lessons from Jazz Standards,” in preparation.

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claims of character-building potential, which correspond to the third sort of moral force recognized by Kivy, are generally held to be less extravagant, and to have a more solid basis, than comparable claims for textless music. And the same goes for claims of what I characterized above as ethical quality, as distinct from moral force in any of Kivy’s senses. Still, the contribution of the musical element per se to whatever moral force or ethical quality a song ends up possessing surely remains crucial, and presents an enduring puzzle. Put bluntly, how is it that music can reinforce, amplify, or almost create single-handedly, the moral force or ethical quality of a text that would otherwise not seem particularly notable in that respect? One of my purposes in examining a number of songs from the jazz standard repertoire, overlapping to a large extent with what is called the “Great American Songbook”, is to underline that the ethical dimension of art is not something that is only of issue in regard to unconventional performance art, transgressive theatre, propaganda films in the mode of Leni Riefenstahl, homoerotic photographs in the mode of Robert Mapplethorpe, or intentionally provocative novels in the mode of Michel Houellebecq. That is to say of art that, whether self-consciously or not, it is in forthright opposition to prevailing mores. The ethical is, I suggest, a dimension in one way or another present in virtually all art, even the declaredly amoral literary art of an Oscar Wilde or Vladimir Nabokov, the purely abstract visual art of a Piet Mondrian or Mark Rothko, and the abstruse musical art of a Pierre Boulez or Milton Babbitt. References Booth, Wayne 1988, The Company We Keep, Berkeley: University of California Press. Kivy, Peter 2008, “Musical Morality,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Vol. 62, No. 246, 397-412. Levinson, Jerrold 2006, Contemplating Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

From Art to Ethics: Exemplary Nature of Art Works and Aspectual Perception Sandrine DARSEL Archives Poincaré - Université de Lorraine 1. Introduction 1.1 Art and ethics: a possible relationship? At first sight, the arts seem to offer a privileged perspective to understand how we build our lives. The key elements which confer direction in our lives and determine our understanding of the world, are not framed in a clear and stiff way by a pre-existing ideological, religious or social structure. Our moral rationality is, at least partially, to be built. And here is the role played by works of art: works of art teach us about ourselves, the others and the world. They would reveal to us how moral dilemmas appear, how stories of life are constructed, how conflicts of values are resolved, suspended or analyzed. So, works of art could be a real existential guide. In fact, a simple anthropological view shows that people attach to art a particular and dominant role in their practical and moral life. This is not without consequence for aesthetics. A philosophical investigation into art should question the practical and ethical implications of art and its supposed function: to enlighten the human nature. However, can we give to works of art this moral role? Is it not to overvalue the possible relation between the arts and ethics? Moreover, is it not inadequate to think of art in moral terms (art would be evaluated only from the aesthetic point of view)? If it is the case, how can we explain the abundance of ethical interpretations, practical evaluations or moral experiments of the works of art? On the contrary, if we consider that there is a link between art and morality, esthetics and ethics, we must clarify it. On one hand, is it an essential or only possible, even fortuitous link? On the other hand, what is the moral contribution of the works of art? On what is it based? What do we learn with art from the practical point of view: propositional content or Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates, eds. Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 167-180.

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rather emotional enlightenment? Can we moreover distinguish these two orders and keep them separate? Before analyzing all these problems about the relationship between art and ethics, an introductory methodological point needs to be made. 1.2 Methodological choice The philosophical exploration of the arts often remains subject to aesthetic questions (for example, the problems of aesthetic judgment, aesthetic value, aesthetic criteria, and so on). My aim is to bring to light the necessity, the utility and the fertility of an “impure” philosophical investigation of the arts. An impure philosophy of art disputes the idea that aesthetics constitutes an autonomous domain of reflection, independent from the other fields of philosophy. On the contrary, I suggest here opening the philosophy of art to the field of ethics. And far from weakening the specificity of the fine arts, this impure method is necessary for a complete investigation into works of art. In other words, it is not a question of escaping the fundamental investigations on the magic and the mysteries which surround art generally, but rather to refocus the philosophy of the arts on what it can do: the philosophy of art cannot replace its objects (the art work, the artistic creation and experience) nor threaten their existence or their prestige, but more modestly analyze what is philosophically problematic. Besides, I use a double impure method. It is not only a transversal philosophical reflection; artistic practices and common sense talk about art and works of art constitute the framework of this paper. Indeed, I sustain a descriptive philosophy of art which is itself distinguished from two attitudes: either the appeal of common sense in a dogmatic way, or the view which identifies philosophy as super-knowledge (a lucid knowledge of another order than a common knowledge which could upset our intuitions and common practices). The structure of our practices, speeches and thoughts about art involves preliminary certainties. As it is indicated by Wittgenstein in his book On Certainty, certainties are not epistemic. They play an essential regulating role: they are contextual norms accepted in normal circumstances. The normativity of these pre-theoretical intuitions supposes the establishment of a reflected balance between them and the philosophical orientations. In other words, philosophy doesn’t consist in making an inventory of the possible varied hypotheses supported by complex argumentations, but

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in the examination of the reasons for which we might have to assume such and such ontological commitment. Nevertheless, there are different types of reasons: – logical (the principle of non-contradiction for example), – formal (the principle according to which we should not multiply the entities more than one needs), – scientific (the agreement with scientific discoveries), – aesthetic (the elegance of a simple theory or the beauty of an original conception), – practical reasons (our preliminary certainties and their relative weight).

Due to this diversity, the problem is the following: which is the most important? Logical reasons are apparently the most important. Yet the question remains: how can we classify or choose between those reasons? The constraint of common sense is necessary for a philosophical investigation into art: works of art are relational (and real) entities; they suppose a complex set of certainties, sentences and practices. Of course, it is not a question of sticking rigidly to this system, nor to underestimate the problematic cases, or the variety of the practices (attached to art and to such and such artistic practice). However, works of art are implanted in this knot of certainties and practices. This establishes the point of departure and the main methodological constraint for any philosophic survey about art. Therefore, several intuitions, practices and certainties are related to the problem that I want to analyze in this paper: the relationship between works of art and ethics. - The art is morally estimated. - This evaluation gives rise to discords. - Sometimes we expect from art that it participates to the moral education as is the case for youth literature. - We also accuse art of being at the source of questionable or vicious behavior: we say that some movies trivialize violence, some pictures try to justify war, and some plays stress the benefits of lying, and so on). - Some works of art are used as illustrations for moral thought: for example, Sophie’s Choice by William Styron, or the myth of Medea. - Some categories of art are more used than others, as it is the case for the narrative arts (literature, cinema, theater). - Finally, we value works of art, supposing that they have a moral value - But at the same time we depreciate works of art considered as moralizing human life.

For the descriptive philosopher, the task will therefore be difficult because it is important to make sense of all these certainties and common practices.

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My purpose is to show that the relation between art and ethics takes place less in the contents of the work than in the perception of the exemplary nature of the works of art, the strong identification and the emotional implication which we experiment when we interact with a work of art. Thus, the work of art is neither conceived as a source of examples or illustrations in moral reasoning nor as a means to bring a defined solution to practical conflicts, to propagate ethical certainties or to transmit a definite moral content, as can be seen particularly in the work of Stanley Cavell1 and Martha Nussbaum.2 The successful experience of a work of art is a moment of ethical performance, practical commitment and moral improvisation. To sustain this thesis, I must establish the possibility of a link between works of art and ethics. Secondly, my attention will be focused on the problem of the moral value of works of art. I shall examine two contrasting theories - the theoretical conception and the emotivist conception. Finally, I shall defend the idea that it is the experience of the exemplary and singular nature of the work (which seeks at the same time emotional and cognitive capacities, the work of the imagination, the refined perception, the acuteness in details and the conceptual refinement) which participates in our moral education. 2. What is the relationship between art and ethics? Is it possible to consider works of art from a moral point of view? Several options are opposed: Philosophical views Analysis of the link between art and ethics

Strong skepticism

Weak skepticism

Autonomy of works of art

Immorality of works of art

Strong optimism

Morality of works of art

Moderate optimism

Moral value (positive or negative) of works of art

2.1 Strong skepticism This option disputes the relevance of speaking about works of art in moral terms. This contestation rests on the postulate of the autonomy of art. In other words, the philosophy of art is defined as an independent do1 Cavell (2003). 2 Nussbaum (1992).

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main. In this way, philosophy of art is aesthetics: it takes essentially as its object the producing and receiving aesthetic subject. It is from this theoretical point of view that most of the following notions are articulated: aesthetic taste, artistic genius, aesthetic criticism, beauty, the fine arts… So, the philosophy of art will be established around strong distinctions to stress the specificity of art: pleasure versus knowledge, sensitive versus intellectual, artistic genius versus technical production, art versus science, aesthetic contemplation versus the intellectual explanation, and so on. A true work of art requires a pure experience and calls exclusively for an aesthetic interpretation. Any moral reflection is inappropriate. It is inappropriate to speak morally about The Straight Story – a movie by David Lynch, about Hamlet – a Shakespearian play – or about the youth book À la Recherche du Bonheur written by Juliette Saumande and illustrated by Eric Puybaret, the songs of NTM, the TV series 24, or the whole of Céline’s work. To evaluate these works of art from a moral (positive or negative) point of view is a mistake about their nature. Works of art are reduced to a set of movements and actions, to a text, or to a formal pattern. Thus, the truly aesthetic experience cannot and must not be subjected to any moral reflection. This conception has the advantage of reporting the intuition according to which works of art are not an instrument of morality and are not envisaged from their moral consequences (or effects on the human behavior): the moral effects are not the function nor the target of the arts. However, this option invalidates a lot of common practices with works of art and does not take into account the moral role (although not instrumental) often granted to them. Besides, it simplifies the works of art and the interpretative practice. 2.2 Weak skepticism This option, inherited from Plato (Rep. X), insists on the immorality of works of art. It is not because art is independent from morality, as it is supposed, because of strong skepticism. It is because art is in conflict with ethics. This option places art in the sphere of the immoral, the practical vice, and the moral fault. We can only think morally of works of art in negative terms. Two reasons are given to explain this depraved character of works of art: – Works of art have immoral contents (the justification of violence such as the movie Fight Club, the acceptance of infidelity in David Lodge’s books, the contest of traditional values – for example, Nirvana’s song

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Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates Rape me which expresses an unbridled sexuality, pornographic movies and pictures, racist or vulgar plays, and so on). – Works of art appeal to the immoral feelings of the spectator (sympathy for perverted human beings and/or inhuman behavior such as in the movie Der Untergang, pity for criminals, distance with regard to ethical virtues, the destabilization of the personality by the imaginary identification with a character, the indifference to the violence…).

In other words, this refers to the assumption of the weak skeptical conception: we must not take works of art for a moral guides. Indeed, even if works of art are apparently harmless, none escapes the sphere of immorality. Indeed, in a general way, art, the sphere of the emotions, diverts from the good, the sphere of reason. Nevertheless, even if we agree on the possibility of immoral works of art (from the point of view of the contents or from the point of view of the answers implied by the work), we can’t identify works of art in general with the sphere of the vice. On the contrary, we can rather think that if some works of art have a negative moral value, maybe some other works of art might possess a moral positive value. Furthermore, we can question the implicit conceptions of art and the morality which underlies this weak skepticism. Can we reduce art to the emotional excitement and/or to the destruction of values? Furthermore, to understand morality as the reign of reason, is not to miss the importance of the feelings for ethical attitudes. Finally, is it possible to sustain the opposition between feelings and reason? 2.3 Strong optimism: the morality of works of art Strong optimism is opposed to the previous option. It considers that works of art have a moral positive value. This utopian conception postulates the emancipatory character of art. In this way, Schiller3 regards art as a liberator: works of art are allowed to reach a free and harmonious life. More generally, it is a question of articulating the morality of the work of art with the creation by the work of another world: the world of art. The work of art mobilizes the imagination. It makes us reach the domain of the conceivable, the possibilia, what it could be. Now, the possibility is in the foundation of the practical choice and it is in that sense that art is profoundly and essentially moral whatever its kind, its shape, its content, its material may be.

3

Schiller (1983).

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Nevertheless, this analysis of art is problematic. On the one hand, it confuses the concept of work of art and the concept of a good work of art: it attaches an evaluative dimension to the concept of art. Besides, how can we reconcile the fundamental moral contribution supposed by all works of art and the artistic contents of some works of art or the artistic experiences against the virtues, connected to some others? Finally, even if we often regards the imagination as a guide for the acquisition of a modal knowledge (what is conceivable would be possible and inconceivable, impossible4), it is necessary to explain and analyze this association. 2.4 Moderate optimism Works of art, as cultural specific artifacts, have a positive or negative moral value (although more or less important according to the particularity of the considered work of art). Their moral contributions are a function of the exemplary nature of the work of art: – Some artistic cases are paradigmatic (such as literary books, films or theatrical works considered as kinds of attention to the human life with moral characters confronted to choices or important dilemmas and questioning the human being, his relationship to others and his life choices). – Other cases are problematic (such as Claude Simon’s work whose clarification of values remains uncertain, or moralizing works which in fact undermine their moral role). – Other cases are peripheral (in the sense of being inscribed in the moral point of view only in a supplementary way or in an indirect way, like instrumental music).

However, aesthetics cannot do without ethics: moral reflection appeals to and logically implies thought by way of artistic cases. Hence the following questions: what can art teach us from a moral point of view? What does the moral positive value of the paradigmatic works of art consist in? Moreover, why do we consider that the narrative arts play a central ethical role? Finally, what can we say about works of art which apparently avoid any moral reflection, such as instrumental music? 3. The moral contribution of works of art: what do we learn from them In the case of the moral contribution of works of art, two different conceptions are outlined:

4

For the defense of this option, see Hume (1967).

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– The theoretical conception according to which the moral contents of the arts are an abstract and argumentative content. – The emotivist conception according to which the moral contents of the arts are only emotional. 3.1 The theoretical view In the first case, ethics is considered as a question of practical judgment, moral inferences, and adequacy with moral reality. So, the ethical value of a work of art is that it delivers a definite moral propositional content. However, this cognitivist analysis is confronted with the following problem: mostly, the propositional contents of works of art are poor and already known. If we summarized for example, the moral content of David Lynch’s movie The Straight Story, it would boil down to nothing: let us take care of people we love. However, this moral principle is far from being a discovery. From then on, at best, Lynch’s movie allows us to confirm the truth of this principle; at worst it proposes only resumption (as an old sentence). In this way, the work of art has only an instrumental moral value, completely replaceable, even useless. In fact, a philosophical reflection or an ethical essay would suffice to reveal these contents. Moreover, the attention paid to the moral propositional content of the work of art can sometimes lead to a negative evaluation of the work considered: it would be moralizing and would participate in the fixedness of a moral proposition. 3.2 The emotivist view The second conception, the emotivist one, disputes the identification of ethics with a question of judgments and deliberations around propositions. Ethics in that case has as its object our affective reactions, our moral feelings and emotions in ethical life. So, the moral value of a work of art is not its moral content but the fact that it arouses ethical reactions, more exactly moral feelings such as indignation, shame, respect, empathy, etc. The work of art plays a moral role if it incites some types of emotions which have a moral value. In that case, the moral judgments of the works of art are judgments devoid of propositional content of the truth. Their meaning is the approval or the disapproval of the emotions implied by works of art; or they act like an order to feel such and such emotion (for example, the reader has to be scared in the reading of 1984 of George Orwell). When a subject S says that “Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is a satire of English provincial

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life that explores the moral contradictions of wedding,” he doesn’t describe the literary work. This type of statement cannot be true in the same way as factual statements such as “This novel in the French translation has 61 chapters.” A moral aesthetic statement is like an interjection (“hurrah!”): it has no propositional content and tells us nothing about a moral content of the literary work; it is the expression of a moral subjective attitude. Moral aesthetic statements don’t have any truth conditions: they describe no aspect of the work of art. The moral evaluations of a work of art have an emotional influence, a form of magnetism: there are stimuli that have the causal disposition to provoke or arouse emotions. Thus, none of these evaluations could be false: these kinds of judgements qua non-cognitive attitudes don’t contradict each other. As a consequence, a resolution of a moral aesthetic disagreement does not consist in exchanging arguments but in successful attitude modification. Nevertheless, this option is confronted by the “Frege-Geach problem”: it cannot explain why moral statements about works of art may take a non-assertive form (interrogative, conditional, negative). Besides, if feelings are at the heart of moral practices, it does not mean that they exhaust the ethical field. So, the reduction of morality to a question of feelings renders it meaningless. Finally, it is important to question the two conceptions presented above - the cognitivist and the emotivist -, the supposed abyss between the abstract and the sensitive, the cognitive and the emotional person, and to analyze their inseparable character. So, to conceive the connections between art and ethics, is rather a question of exceeding this alternative by defending a “mixed” conception: moral education through works of art is an education which connects the abstract and the sensitive in an indissoluble way. 4. To think by artistic case and to perceive the exemplarity of works of art The ethical role of works of art is far from being simple. It educates in two ways. At once, it refines our moral concepts by the experience of works of art and it provides a sentimental education by the attentive experience of works of art.

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4.1 Why art (and narrative arts)? The specificity of the narrative arts, such as literature and cinema which occupy an essential place in our lives, is that they lead, by the experience of reading or viewing, to a complex and dense adventure of the human personality: they make us sensitive and attentive to the density of common life. The feelings, choices, actions, reflections, thoughts, certainties and the doubts of the characters become our own adventure to give meaning to the work of art. This ethical experience in its complexity consists not of a moral revelation or an ethical conversion but in the exercise of an attention paid to the individual identity of the work of art, that is in its specific aspects and its density. The successful experience of a work of art mobilizes a refined aspectual perception, some adjusted emotions, an explorative imagination, and some cognitive distinctions. By mobilizing all these capacities, this successful experience becomes a moral performance: the paradigmatic work of art calls for and requires manners and moral attitudes. The idea of moral performance is central in order to understand the specific contribution of the work of art to ethical reflection as well as moral practice. Indeed, we cannot give a complete and determined notation of the right practices and the right attitudes (how to be a good mother, how to love someone, how to be a friend, how to be a good citizen, how to accompany a child who is going to die…). Of course, a sketch can be made and give the essential moral and practical points. This sketch is made adroitly by moral philosophy and moral theories. However, moral action is comparable to a choreographic, theatrical or musical performance: we may have a notation or a score as a guide, but the notation sub-determines the performance. In other words, whatever the density of the moral theories from the point of view of details as for the moral questionings (by inserting by example experiments of thought or by limiting themselves to a problematic moral point – such as the question of euthanasia or the parental ethics–), these theoretical scores don’t determine in a complete and unambiguous way the choices of the agent. On the contrary, we can reach the density of the ethical performance by the experience of the narrative density of movies, literary books or plays, and more generally by the exemplary nature of a work of art. Obviously, a problem arises when we experience the work of art: how can we know what are the important points in the work of art for the problem which interests us. However, this artistic experience of density turns out to be irreplaceable.

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For example, the moral question of what it is like to be a good mother obviously requires a theoretical reflection (on mothering, education, the status of the child, and so on). Nevertheless, this reflection always turns out to be insufficient. Thinking of artistic cases or samples can help and is often necessary. The reading of Sophie’s Choice by Styron, the attentive experience of Mères et filles, a movie by Julie Lopes-Curval, or the experience of Vipère au poing (the novel, the cinematographic or theatrical adaptations) are all means to give access to this density which is required by ethics. The moral attention to the artistic object is obviously demanding for the person who experiences the work. Hence, it is always possible to miss the exemplary nature of the work of art. In any case, with works of art, we can think morally. 4.2 Thinking with artistic cases This analysis of the specific moral role of the work of art invites us to rethink, with Wittgenstein, the status of thought by case. The originality of thought by case consists in thinking by taking peculiarities as the target of the attention (a particular event, experience, fact, situation...). It is a deictic thought which points towards what makes the particularity of this case. In other words, a case is not an example, illustration, exemplification or application of some general theory or concept. It is a singular example which, paradoxically, has its value because of its singularity: it is irreplaceable, not substitutable and not repeatable. This is paradoxical, because we mostly expect from understanding and knowledge that it concerns the general and not the particular. It explains why thought by case is usually disqualified: at best it is considered as a mere illustration of the general theory; at worst, deictic thought would be a methodological perversion. The argument is the following: i. Moral thought by artistic case is a deictic thought, a contextual dependent one. ii. The method of investigation of moral reality aims at a general and not a contextual knowledge. iii. It is impossible to generalize from the thought of a particular case. iv. Thus, moral thought by artistic case cannot contribute to the development of moral knowledge. However, artistic references play a beautiful part in moral theories and works of art take a specific place in our every-day lives. The recent methodological rehabilitation of the thought by case is articulated around

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two arguments: we insist on the generic features of the artistic case and the formalization (or semi-formalization) of the logic of reasoning by case; or we specify that the case study possesses an instrumental value and not an intrinsic value. The first strategy seems to be the best. We can distinguish two different strategies of the line of defense: 1) either the fruitful method is the top-down method: to go from the theory to some artistic examples. However, it is simply an illustration with artistic examples, their illustrative function being for general rhetorical or pedagogical purposes. In other words, the example is substitutable, widely repeatable (because it is subdetermined with a vague identity); 2) or it is possible to generalize, to make inferences from the case study.5 So, it’s possible to exceed the case peculiarity by the bottom-up method: the case’s comparison results in a general knowledge.6 On the contrary, I will question these two propositions. The artistic case can have a cognitive value without needing to exceed it, to go beyond. Indeed, the inferential approach (common to the top-down and bottom-up methods) leads to an impasse. The inferential deficit of the case doesn’t compromise its cognitive value: its epistemological content comes from the various capacities it mobilizes. Its value is not an inferential but a performative one. Because of its individuality, we learn from the case: the case makes us think in a sensitive way. It is an authentic thought which overtakes and rides the distinction between thought and sensibility. It is not a question of thinking that, to conceiving that but of thinking of it by mobilizing perceptive, imaginative and emotional capacities. However, when we speak in these terms of thinking by artistic cases, do we not in fact include this thinking among the practical knowledge, thus distinguishing it from theoretical knowledge? No, if we understand “practical knowledge” as the updating of theoretical knowledge. Yes, if we consider that the value of the artistic case study lies in the cognitive performance (irreducible to the intellectual capacities) logically called by the experience of the work of art. So, the moral experience of a work of art doesn’t lead to general knowledge or to the establishment of universal principles. Its value comes from the specificity of the work. So, works of art constitute cases for moral thought. Paradigmatic cases, problematic cases, peripheral cases. The capacity to understand the 5

Evers and Wu (2006), p. 511-526. They analyze the abduction process, i.e. the inference to the best explanation to establish conclusions from the case study. 6 Goffi (2001), p. 87-107.

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artistic case, to have a successful experience consists of an elaborated behavior, a virtuous exercise of the logical, imaginative and emotional capacities in the moral performance. The moral investigation doesn’t lose its rationality but simply reveals its complexity: it commits a person and not simply a logical spirit or a body. 5. Conclusion To conclude, works of art maintain privileged links with morality. It is not an error of category to think of works of art in moral terms; ethics appears as necessary for the understanding of works of art.7 Works of art can have an ethical strength when they require a moral performance which supposes the exercise of perceptual, logical, emotional and imaginative skills. In a fundamental way, this analysis of the moral role of art allows us to refocus ethics and the moral reflection on the human capacities to react and to answer morally (in the Aristotelian lineage of moral perfectionism). However, the moral effect of works of art cannot be understood by a simple direct causal explanation: the significant properties of the work are not dispositional even if they are relational. Finally, this analysis reveals the fertility of the conceptual distinctions inherited from Wittgenstein: the normative status of the preliminary certainties, the link between aesthetics and ethics as well as the valuation of the cognitive content of the example. References Cavell, Stanley 2003, Le cinéma nous rend-il meilleurs ?, tr. fr. É. Domenach, Paris: Bayard. Evers Colin W. & Wu Echo H. 2006, “On generalizing from single case studies: epistemological reflections,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol.40, n°4, 511-526. Gaut, Berys 2007, Art, Emotion and Ethics, Oxford: OUP. Goffi, Jean-Yves 2001, “La nouvelle casuistique et la naturalisation des normes,” Philosophiques, n°28/1, 87-107. Hume, David 1967, A Treatise of Human Nature [1739], Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, Martha 1992, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 7

Gaut (2007).

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Plato 1992, Republic, trans. by G.M.A. Grube rev. by C.D.C Reeve, Indianapolis: Hackett Pub Co. Schiller, Friedrich 1983, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters, ed. by E. M. Wilkinson, L. A. Willoughby, Oxford: OUP. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1975, On Certainty, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, trans. by D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1998, Culture and Value: A Selection from the Posthumous Remains, ed. by G.H. von Wright, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

V. Theory of Art

Art as Document Maurizio FERRARIS Università di Torino “A common family of arguments, inspired by Wittgenstein’s famous remarks about games, has it that the phenomena of art are, by their nature, too diverse to admit of the unification that a satisfactory definition strives for, or that a definition of art, were there to be such a thing, would exert a stifling influence on artistic creativity.” Thus spoke the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ad vocem “The Definition of Art.” In what follows, I will try to show that it is not difficult at all to find, not the definition of art, but the definition of the kind of game played by art. This game is the game of documents1, and artwork is a kind of document. But let’s begin at the beginning. It seems very easy to understand an art work as a thing, given that merely saying so seems a banality. But after all it is not quite so easy, if we recall that there is a strong pull to say that there is an ontological leap from a mere thing to an art work2. Even the esthetic theories that have emphasized the way that an art work is a thing have often concentrated on avantgarde productions3, as if the thingness of art works were a recent discovery. And we should not forget that these thing-esthetics have generally focused primarily on the visual arts, which is a limitation of the claims they make. What I want to show is that thingness holds true of all art works and that the passage from the thing to the art work depends on an increase in inscription in line with the second part of my theory regarding the relationship between art works and documents. How to avoid frustration in art Frustration is one of the most common experiences when confronted with contemporary art. Gallery owners are perfectly aware of this and, by way of consolation, they put on their exhibitions in very elegant galleries 1

I present a whole theory of document as a basis of social reality in my Documentalità. Perché è necessario lasciar tracce, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2009, English trans. forthcoming, Fordham University Press, New York; for a short presentation see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentality 2 Heidegger (2002). 3 Danto (1981). Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates, eds. Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 183-193.

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and accompany the shows with white wine and nibbles. One of the most common explanations of this is that, being part of a market system in which the mass media play a decisive role, contemporary art goes in search of provocation and paradox. This seems to be a necessary explanation; but it is not sufficient because it runs the risk of making us lose contact with the essence of contemporary art, and indeed of art in general. So it is this false impression that I wish to correct with two consolations and one constructive suggestion. The first consolation is that we should not assume that we understand or really like classical or beautiful art. When we see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre through a thicket of Japanese tourists, we are often disappointed. It may be that we are tired, that our feet hurt or that we want to sit down; but the fundamental point is that the pleasure we expected does not happen or, at best, it is exactly what we get from a postcard of the painting. The truth is that the fact that the Mona Lisa represents a lady’s face does not make it any more understandable than a work by Duchamp or Francis Bacon. It is just that we are ashamed to admit it. The second consolation is that, even though “contemporary art” is often used to mean avant-garde visual art, this is by no means the most typical sort. For sure, it is the sort that is most difficult to understand but, happily, there is a mass of other art that is pleasing and comprehensible as well as being, I add, equally esthetically worthy. I have in mind Pop Art and things like novels, entertainment movies and rock concerts. In short, it is just not true that visual art is the only paradigm of modernity. Pop in all its manifestations is another paradigm and is not in the least incomprehensible, and sometimes it is all too comprehensible. The constructive suggestion is the question: are we really sure that contemporary art is incomprehensible? After all, they are objects like any other and, as such, have a lot to learn from design, which has itself displaced the line between instruments for use and art works. We would do well to abandon the superstitious distinction between everyday things and these slightly sacred and slightly vain objects that are art works. We would do well to look at the works not just of contemporary art but also at those of more traditional art as if they were coffee makers or iPads. We would probably understand them much better than if we went in some frustrating search for a secret meaning.

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Ready mades In this connection, it is perhaps not an accident that the consecration of Pop Art was Andy Warhol’s 1964 exhibition in a New York gallery of a set of supermarket products: Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Del Monte peaches in syrup, Campbell’s tomato soup, Heinz ketchup. But the laurels went to the box of Brillo pads, which was decked out in the elegant design of the abstract expressionist James Harvey who was making honest money out of commercial art. Harvey is not much remembered today, which is a pity, but there is no doubt that it was Andy Warhol who had the fundamental intuition in deciding to select and literally to magnify (increasing the physical dimensions) those groceries. Given that the boxes in question were in any case handsome, Warhol made one concession to the canons of traditional art, but he picked up another insight taken from Marcel Duchamp who in 1917 had put an inverted urinal on display in an art gallery. Much has been made of the provocation, of the fact that the urinal suggested that anything whatever could become a work of art, so that the ontologically constructive point has been overlooked, namely that the gesture itself showed that a work of art is essentially a thing. The art world is a world of objects. And this seems to hold especially of contemporary art. In 2007 at the Venice Biennale, Sophie Calle put on her Prenez Soin de Vous. And it was only fair to ask: where is the work? Was it in the pavilion or in the accompanying book? For it would be wrong to call the book a “catalogue,” because it was not a reproduction, but the original. And, more radically, where were the works: in the national pavilions or in that international pavilion where they sell the catalogues, rubbers, penholders, fridge magnets, but alas no longer glass snow scenes, because they are regarded as kitsch? This is what the ready made has taught us, and it is most startlingly confirmed not in avant-garde galleries, but in more traditional venues. After all, seventeenth century aristocratic galleries – the ancestors of the modern museum – would display pistols and armour alongside pictures in a way no different from Duchamp. And, from the point of view of the ready made, archeological museums are hyper-transgressive because they gather tombstones, sarcophagi, amphoras, buckles and what not. And then there is that variant on the ready made that is body art, given that the exhibition of bodies are art works is the norm in Egyptian museums that display mummies, not to mention Pompeii, where the show includes casts of human beings in the act of dying.

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If this thought is surprising, perhaps it is because we do not reflect sufficiently on what is a “thing,” “instrument” or “art work,” on what is a “museum,” “catalog,” “library” or on the slightly opaque laws that govern the distinctions among such entities. For instance, museums only rarely contain books, the exceptions being when they are visual poetry or – and here we are back with Duchamp’s ontological intuition – destroyed books, bits of pages and a cover as in the Mariée mise a nu, which managed to get a book back into a museum. But the overwhelming majority of books in museums do not execute the ergon of the work, but rather have the role of parergon, of something that surrounds the work, as a frame surrounds a picture. We find them in the museum bookstore along with postcards, jute bags, diaries, rubbers and pencils: they are parerga that nevertheless have a role to play in the experience of art works, of the ergon, just like the white wine and nibbles at the vernissage. Sizes To show that recourse to ready-mades does not mean that anything whatsoever can be a work of art we may note that, contrary to the conventionalist claim, there are objects fairly close to hand that cannot become art works for various reasons, including mere considerations of size. For instance, a statue that is more than twenty kilometers tall cannot become a “work,” and perhaps one that is a mere two kilometers tall is already too big. It is true that nano-art exists, with very interesting artifacts that can only be seen with a microscope, but the fact remains that the work in such a case is the ensemble of the nano-object and the microscope that makes it visible, just as Christo’s wrapping of the Great Wall of China really finds its expression in the catalogs that document the “performance.” The size criterion shows that art works share some features with things in common use, including the fact of fitting, by way of dimension and duration, into a human environment. As Aby Warburg might have said, the good God is in the sizes: in the end, we are used to supposing that the question of dimension is extrinsic to art, but when a work cannot be seen all at once with the naked eye or calls for – for instance – a trip to an orbiting space station, then we are outside the realm of works proper, while to say that a city is “on the human scale” is to praise it. This holds true not only for space, but also for time. At a certain time, people want to go to sleep, and I suppose that Aristotle had this in mind when he proposed that a tragedy should observe unities of time, place and action. Let us imagine a novel that is a million pages long. Who would

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have the courage to launch themselves, at the age of fifty, on such an enterprise? And would even a youngster begin reading it, given that he has to plan on doing something else with his life? The duration of a work has to fit in with human life-span: we cannot imagine a symphony that lasts a thousand years; and if it calls for a certain stamina to listen to the more than eighteen hours of piano music that make up Erik Satie’s Vexations, superhuman endurance is required by John Cages’ As Slow As Possible, which would last seven hundred and thirty-three years. Time makes quite a difference. Andy Warhol’s Empire, which is twenty-four hours of the Empire State Building taken from a single angle tried the patience of cinemalovers and even Wagner’s Ring runs into serious production problems. Things that pretend to be persons The continuity between things and works allows us to formulate an ontology of art works under six headings. First, art is the class of the works. The common denominator of the practices that make use of different media and different materials at various times with the most various purposes is the fact that they end up with works that have the feature of “poiesis.” This is a very broad but not infinite class. As we have seen, the fact of ready-mades does not mean that anything can be an art work. Rather, a work of art is in the first instance a thing with definite physical features as regards size, duration and perceptibility by the senses. Second, despite the aspirations of conceptual art and those of the postmodernists who talk of art and reality as complementary fictions, works are above all physical objects. It is not a mere opinion that art has to do with aisthesis, but rather a fact that can be established by anyone who tries to replace a concert with a written account of a concert, an exhibition with a review of it, a novel with a summary or a poem with paraphrase. Third, works are social objects. It is senseless to talk of works without referring to human beings who share our or a similar culture. We can easily imagine societies that do not create things like art works, and indeed there are cultures in which the realm of art is not distinguished from that of religion or of folklore; but we cannot imagine that there would be art works for the last survivor in the world. Like promises, bets, honorific titles, art works exist only in a society, even one made up of only two persons. Fourth, art works produce knowledge only accidentally. While there are forms of art, such as narrative and portrait painting, that do transmit

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knowledge, there are some civilizations of which remain only artistic productions, which have thus become the only knowledge we have of them. But this does not at all mean that knowledge is the primary function of art. It is possible to learn something about Ireland by reading James Joyce, but it is much easier and more efficient to buy a guidebook or a history. Fifth, art works necessarily stimulate some sentiment. What we expect from works are sentiments and emotions, which are the same things that documents produce in us, except that they are generalizable and disinterested, where as documents, such as a fine or a lottery win, are individual and interested. Sixth, art works are things that pretend to be persons. The judgments we pass on art works are very similar to those that we formulate about persons. To say that a person leaves us indifferent is the same sort of negative comment that could be used of an art work, while to say that a screwdriver or a telephone, considered from the instrumental point of view, leaves us indifferent is not a criticism, but just an odd thing to say. Art work as document Question: what turns a thing into an art work? Answer: inscription, which confirms the continuity between art works. On these grounds, I believe that the best way of explaining that peculiar kind of object that is an art work is Work = Inscribed Act, and this formula should be understood as a necessary but not sufficient condition: for there to be a work, an inscribed act is needed but it is obvious that there are many inscribed act that are not works. Let us see how this works. The work is the result of an act that involves at least one author and one addressee: even a person who writes “for himself” at least postulates a reader. On this understanding, works present themselves as a peculiar type of document, that is, as inscriptions that register social acts. In some cases, more often than with normal social objects, the object coincides physically with the inscription, as in the case of a painting or a novel, but not in that of a symphony. The specific reason why I think that the rule Work = Inscribed Act is preferable to the formula “X counts as Y in C” is that it applies to all forms of art, whereas Searle’s version is applicable only to ready-mades4. Francis 4

For instance, when Piero Manzoni signed seventy-one living sculptures, including Umberto Eco, he performed a transformation of Eco which was not so very different from the one carried out by the examination board of the University of Turin in 1954, when they conferred on Eco the title of Doctor of Philosophy.

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Ford Coppola did not just take a load of celluloid and baptize it Apocalypse Now: if he had done so, perhaps a better title would have been Laocoön; but he didn’t: what he did was compose the script, meet bankers to whom he explained his project, asked for permissions, signed contracts with the actors and distribution houses, and so on; and what he filmed, registering on celluloid, depended directly on those acts and the inscriptions that followed from them. The same goes for old art works: Botticelli did not take a wooden board with colors painted on it and baptize it The Birth of Venus; rather he planned a painting as such, did some preparatory sketches and then applied paint within the context of commissions and cultural codes. So, on the one hand, artwork is an object that sits atop the hierarchy that runs from things to works passing through instruments. It is in this respect that I have insisted on the way that ready-mades have a certain paradigmatic character: works share with things the medium size and the presence within the human world, and there is nothing surprising about the way that things and instruments can become works under certain conditions. But what determines this passage is what we might call the “increase in inscription.” Trivially, it is enough for a weapon or a buckle to be placed in a showcase in a museum accompanied by an explanatory caption, which is a central factor whose significance is easily overlooked. This fact shows the central role played by inscription in the transfiguration of the ready-made. On the other hand, it is not surprising that there are works, such as literary and musical ones, that are inscriptions from the very start. In this sense, the law Work = Inscribed Act is a more general theory of which “X counts as Y in C” is just a particular instance. Stories and texts for nothing Thus far we have been concentrating on the analogies between art works and documents. Let us now look at the differences. Works are located in an institutional setting which means that we cannot imagine a work without institutions, just as we found for documents, but they do not have the powers of documents; rather their power or prestige consists in their uselessness. The Kantian notion of “purposefulness without purpose” can be applied to this fact. Works seem to have an end or purpose, but then we discover that they do not or that, just as with persons on the Kantian understanding, they do have one, but it is in themselves or it is an internal purposefulness. Typically, when the development of firearms made armor useless, there began the esthetic contemplation of it in terms of it design and ornamentation.

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Here we find a second difference between works and documents. While signatures and documents take the place of their authors, it would seem that works are much more similar to personas, and it is in light of this that they have privileged status in our culture. As we have seen, works are social objects, which exist as such and not as merely physical objects because humans think that they do so, precisely as happens with those social objects that we call “documents.” Following this scheme, the work is an idiomatic inscription that pretends to be a person. The work seems to address us and it seems to be the work itself and not its author that does this as if it had representations, thoughts and sentiments5. Unlike documents, works, which are undoubtedly objects, present themselves as quasisubjects, as instances in which the inscription seems to promote an intention on its own account. I would like to make a further reflection on the relation between art and documents. Some philosophers maintain that the question about the ontology of art is ill-framed if it is of the form “what is art?”: rather, we should be asking “when is art?”6. There is no dispute about that. There are historical conditions and circumstances of exhibition that make a document become an art work or that make an art work regress (or progress, according to one’s point of view) to the status of mere document. An analysis of these conditions and circumstances does not mean, however, that there can be no ontology of art, but rather that the ontology of art does not have access to the highest level, so to speak, which determines the passage of the inscription to the status of document or art work. This highest level calls for a very strong institutional input. For documents, there are parliaments and attorneys; for art works, there are publishers, museums and critics. Thus, an art work is a social object that is founded on institutional objects. But, it might be asked, what sort of institutional object is a museum? Or a critic? What constitutes their normative value? And the answer is fairly straightforward: they depend on other inscriptions. The social world 5

“Why do you not speak?” is a question apocryphally attributed to Michelangelo in front of his statue of Moses (if he had really said it, he would have been sick in the head); and doubtless, when Heidegger said of a painting by Van Gogh that “it was that painting that spoke,” he was speaking metaphorically (no-one could sensibly say, for instance, “it was the CD that spoke”). J. Derrida (1987) examined the limits of the metaphor of the painting that speaks, suggesting that it has more to do with writing, in agreement with the documental theory I am proposing. Nevertheless, art works do have what Arthur C. Danto (1981) calls “aboutness,” which is not so very different from “telling us about.” 6 Goodman (1978).

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is circular, and this is no surprise7. From this it does not follow that a critic’s fiat suffices to turn a tropical hurricane into an art work; it may be necessary, as we have seen in considering the thingness of works, that certain sufficient conditions of size and inscribedness be observed. But once these conditions are fulfilled, a critic may say that a given thing is a masterpiece; but that does not mean he will be believed. Let us now look at the features of artistic inscription. Cuts In line with the law Object = Inscribed Act, an art work is the result of an expression that involves at least two persons, such as a writer and a reader or a painter and a patron, and that is inscribed, which is to say fixed on some support such as paper, wood, stone or a computer chip or even just in the heads of the persons involved, as in the case of a performance. Just as the ready-made seemed to illustrate particularly clearly the fact that a work is a thing, I think that Lucio Fontana’s slashed canvases are a perfect illustration or even the essence of the work as inscription. Reducing painting to pure inscription Fontana achieves many things: he finds the element common to all forms of art; he offers works that are in effect somewhere between sculpture, painting and literature (because after all the model of the page is omnipresent); and he reduces to a single trace both figure and signature because Fontana’s slashes are immediately recognizable and idiomatic, and they cannot be confused with anything figurative like a signature, which is often an illegible scribble and not merely the reproduction of the signer’s name. In light of these considerations, we are in a position to offer a phenomenology of inscriptions. Traces. The trace is the basic element of the work as it is for any inscription. A trace is out there in the world, the modification of a surface. A work without trace is strictly inconceivable, as follows from what we have said about the work as a physical object. Obviously a trace is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of there being an art work: not every trace is a work, indeed almost all traces are not; yet there can be no work without a trace: paintings, books, symphonies, songs, performances, films and soap operas all need, in order to be realized some possibility of inscribing something even if it is only in the people’s minds. Think of a jazz jam session with no score and no recording: its only trace is in the minds of the spectators and the players. I do not think much need be added here, if not a sim7

Hume (1874-5). On the non-conventional (because a convention is not enough) but accidental nature of the work, see Fish (1980).

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ple thought experiment: try to imagine a work without traces; from the fact that you will not, you will understand that there is no work without traces. Impression. There are two dimensions to a trace. One is the fact that something physical, a sound a color, some ink, is present in the world; the other is that this event is registered in a mind (and in this case too we have an inscription that can be picked up by a brain scan). There are no traces except for the minds that observe them and register them as other traces. This follows naturally from the fact that the work is a social object, which is to say something that exists only because there are minds (not necessarily human minds) that are able to register it. Nevertheless, when a trace is in a mind, it is an impression, which is not itself at all social, and hence is not at all artistic. I can have a childhood memory or a dream, but this is not by any means an art work. The same applies if I look at a work and do not recognize it as such: it will be simply a physical object with certain characteristics for me and this is completely different from what happens when I know, or merely suspect, that the thing is art. In that case, I contemplate it with the supposition that there exist other humans who are ready to share my sentiments; and these are the humans who make the work what it is. Here is a possible case of collective intentionality, but also a demonstration of how little that sort of intentionality can explain about the way society works and especially about how indispensable documents, in this case art works, are to bring it into being. Expression. The decisive passage towards the status of the art work lies with expression, which involves at least two people. The minimum condition for the existence of art is thus the same as is required for the existence of a society: two persons, an addresser and an addressee, and artist and a client, a promissor and a promissee, a creditor and a debtor. At this point we have made the move from the level of impression to that of expression. I can give an order, make a bet, compose a poem in rhyming couplets, challenge someone to a duel. In all these cases, we see an essential difference between the purely psychological level of the impression and the social level of expression. If it is true that there is all the difference in the world between saying and doing, we should add that there is an even greater conceptual difference between thinking and saying, writing or showing. For the difference between thinking about giving an order and giving an order, between thinking about composing a poem in rhyming couplets and composing a poem in rhyming couplets is to all intents and purposes the difference between nothing and something. The mere thought has no social importance until it is expressed, even if it comes out as a slip

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of the tongue or an omission. Work. If, as we have seen, an expression shares the formal features of a work, what makes an expression into a “work”? Nothing ontological, but lots of history, psychology and social reality: taste, circumstances, the coordinates of an era, just as we find with documents. Just as a document can easily not be recognized as valid, or even not be recognized as a document, in a state different from the one that issued it, so it can happen to a masterpiece that, with the passing of just a few decades, it becomes nothing more than evidence about the period in which it was made, and then be rediscovered as a result of the unpredictable fluctuations of taste. This has happened to Italian poet Giosuè Carducci, to Liberty style, to Academic art and to many other styles, movements and works. But – and this may give pause for thought – it has never happened to ideal objects, such as numbers and theorems; nor to natural events, such as tsunamis or spring showers; nor yet to yesterday’s dreams or artists’ unexpressed thoughts. The reason for this is simply that in these cases we are not dealing with inscribed acts, which are thus confirmed as the necessary but not sufficient condition for the existence of an art work, as it is for the existence of any social object whatever. References Danto, Arthur 1981, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. Derrida, Jacques 1987, The Truth in Painting (1978), trans. G. Bennington and I. MacLeod, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fish, Stanley 1980, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. Goodman, Nelson 1978, Ways of Worldmaking, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Heidegger, Martin 2002, “On the Origin of the Work of Art” (1935) in Off the Beaten Track (1960) trans. J. Young and K. Haynes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-55. Hume, David 1874-75, “Of the Standard of Taste” (1741) in Philosophical Works, ed. T.H. Green and T.H. Grose (4 vols.), vol. 3, London: Longman.

From Language Games to Analytic Iconography: a Comparison between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Daniel Arasse Sabine PLAUD Université de Strasbourg Introduction Daniel Arasse (1944-2003) was a French scholar specializing in art history, interested mostly in Italian painting in the Renaissance. Many of his works (L’Annonciation italienne1, L’homme en perspective2, L’homme en jeu3) now count as a reference in this field. He also produced more general contributions to art history, such as his book on details (Le détail: pour une histoire rapprochée de la peinture4), or his work on the subject of painting (Le sujet dans le tableau5). Of course, it might seem unexpected to compare Ludwig Wittgenstein and Daniel Arasse, since the former was a philosopher and the latter an art historian. But beyond the difference of disciplines, I think that there are great similarities between Wittgenstein’s method of language games and the original method introduced by Arasse in art history. Arasse’s ambition was in fact to give a new perspective to iconography,6 thus encouraging two switches of attitude, both of which are characteristic of his so-called “analytic iconography.” On the one hand, art history should look closely at works of art, in contrast with excessive scholarship. To put this in Wittgensteinian terms, I would say that Arasse teaches how to see just what is “before one’s eyes.”7 On the other hand, analytic iconography won’t seek to identify unambiguous or one-sided figures within pictures, but will rather strive to examine the network of varia1

Arasse (1999). Note that few books of Arasse have been translated into English. The translations of his texts in this papers are mine. 2 Arasse (2008a). 3 Arasse (2008b). 4 Arasse (1992). 5 Arasse (1997). 6 Arasse’s ambition is to provide a critical reexploration of Panofksy’s method of iconology. On this criticism, cf. Gress (2011). 7 Wittgenstein (1953), § 129. Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates, eds. Alessandro ARBO, Michel LE DU, Sabine PLAUD, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 195-212.

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tions embedded in one and the same picture. For Arasse is convinced that painted pictures are the synthesis of complex sets of motives, and that the art historian has to consider these motives together. That’s why he often refers to a process of “condensation” at work in pictures, by analogy with Freud’s description of dream-pictures: as Freud stresses in his Interpretation of Dreams, the so-called “dream-work” involves a set of figurative devices, one of which lies in the condensation of many figures into a single one. The same goes for artistic pictures as seen by Arasse: analytic iconography is therefore committed to gaining a clear view, a “synopsis” of such pictorial networks. In his own words, analytic iconography shall “disentangle the tenets at the basis of the associations of ideas at work in some pictures – and that serve as a motivation for artistic production.”8 Now, I think that these features of Arasse’s analytic iconography are quite comparable to the specific method of philosophical analysis introduced by Ludwig Wittgenstein at the turn of the Thirties, namely the method of language games. This method rests upon the invention of fictitious linguistic interactions, deliberately simplified, on the basis of which the philosopher reconstructs the whole variety of genuine linguistic interactions. Of course, Wittgenstein’s method of language games is not properly speaking an analysis of pictures, since its immediate object is rather the meaning of words. Nevertheless, I take it that Wittgenstein’s language games do amount to a kind of schematic pictures of linguistic interactions, and that Wittgenstein’s attitude towards such linguistic pictures is, in many respects, comparable to Arasses’s analytic iconography. First of all, Wittgenstein assumes that the basic words of our language also count as “motives” or as “patterns” that may indefinitely vary according to the context and circumstances: the very purpose of the method of language games is to propose a clear view of such variations, by offering a set of “objects of comparison.” Next, Wittgenstein insists that the meaning of words is often a “composite” one, i.e. that it condenses many aspects and levels of sense. The philosopher, there again, is given the task of disentangling these aspects by means of language games. Hence a marked analogy between Wittgenstein’s analysis of linguistic pictures and Arasse’s analysis of paintings: in both cases, the aim is to provide a synoptic view of the condensed or composite nature of pictures; and in both cases, the right way to do so is to focus on the variations experienced by a given pattern, and to try to organize them using objects of comparison. 8

Arasse (1997), p. 20.

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Such a correspondence between Arasse’s method and Wittgenstein’s language games is obviously not deliberate, since I do not know of any explicit reference to Wittgenstein in Arasse’s work. Nevertheless, I regard this comparison as interesting, for it shows how an analysis of pictures tried-and-tested by Wittgenstein in the realm of the philosophy of language is even more efficient in its privileged field, namely art history. Moreover, I will claim that analytic iconography as developed by Daniel Arasse is even more fruitful than Wittgenstein’s method of language games. For Wittgenstein’s language games suffer somehow from what I should call “historical blindness”, which means that they usually take no notice of the historical background of linguistic practices. Arasse, on the contrary, precisely because he is an art historian, introduces a reflection on the historicity of pictures, on the dialogues and inheritances that made up their stylistic evolutions. On this account, he does more than just applying to aesthetic analysis a set of devices already exploited by Wittgenstein in his philosophy of language: he increases the interest of such processes, by supplementing them with the historic dimension they were lacking in Wittgenstein’s work. In order to make these points, I will start with a brief exposition of Wittgenstein’s method of language games, and I will show in what sense this method amounts to an analysis of composite pictures by means of a method of variations. I will then present Arasse’s analytic iconography, and stress its analogies with Wittgenstein’s method. Lastly, I will insist on the limits of such a comparison, by emphasizing how Arasse’s notion of historicity brings perfection to a method which, in its Wittgensteinian application, remains somehow unaccomplished. I. Wittgenstein’s language games: attention, variation, compositeness The method of language games Wittgenstein’s so-called method of “language games” emerged mostly at the turn of the Thirties, when he returned to philosophy after many years of silence. In his Blue Book, he makes the following claim: I shall in the future again and again draw your attention to what I shall call language games. These are ways of using signs simpler

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Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates than those in which we use the signs of our highly complicated everyday language.9

Such language games, in at least one meaning of this expression, refer to fictitious and oversimplified constructions, meant to provide a model of what genuine linguistic interactions may be10. Their function is therefore to help the philosopher in his reconstruction of more complex forms of language, of linguistic interactions in their indefinite variety: On the other hand, we recognize in these simple processes forms of language not separated by a break from our more complicated ones. We see that we can build up the complicated forms from the primitive ones by gradually adding new forms.11

Now, the point I would like to make is that Wittgenstein’s method of language games, thus understood, is actually an analysis of pictures. As a matter of fact, language games turn out to be primitive pictures or paradigms of linguistic reality. On that account, they do amount to what Wittgenstein, in his Dictations to Schlick, calls “grammatical pictures” or “synoptic schemas” of language: This is the standpoint from which we wish to investigate language. We want to avoid dogmatizing, but rather leave language as it is and juxtapose with it a grammatical picture, the features of which are fully under control. We construct as it were an ideal case, but without claiming that it agrees with anything. We construct it solely in order to obtain a surveyable pattern with which to compare language.12

And since language games are indeed prototypes, models or paradigms of linguistic interactions, they may serve as “objects of comparison” in our study of discourse: 9

Wittgenstein (1958), p. 17. Cf. id.: “The study of language games is the study of primitive forms of language or primitive languages. If we want to study the problems of truth and falsehood, of the agreement and disagreement of propositions with reality, of the nature of assertion, assumption, and question, we shall with great advantage look at primitive forms of language in which these forms of thinking appear without the confusing background of highly complicated processes of thought.” 11 Ibid. 12 Wittgenstein (2003), p. 279. 10

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The language-games are rather set up as objects of comparison which are meant to throw light on the facts of our language by way not only of similarities, but also of dissimilarities.13

My next step will be to show how Wittgenstein’s method of language games is an analysis of pictures that shares three features with Arasse’s analytic iconography: namely the attention to particular, the use of a method of variations, and the insistence on the composite nature of pictures. Three features of language games Let us start with Wittgenstein’s attention to the particular. As anyone knows, the passage of the Blue Book introducing language games is closely related to Wittgenstein’s criticisms towards the so-called “craving for generality”, intended as a tendency of the mind that corrupts our understanding of things by encouraging inappropriate essentialism.14 Against such bias, Wittgenstein exhorts the philosopher to look closely at the particular, to see what lies “open to the view.” And this is precisely the interest of language games, the outcomes of which are famously described in PI § 144: “I have changed his way of looking at things (Indian mathematician: ‘Look at this’).”15 The second feature I would like to stress lies in the connection between language games and method of variations.16 For the most appropriate way to proceed to Wittgenstein’s reconstruction of complex forms on the basis of schematic language games is to set up a range of variations of such paradigmatic pictures, in order to explore their possible instantiations. This method is of particular interest in the realm of psychology, since Wittgenstein commonly insists that psychological concepts do not have a clear-cut extension, and are rather comparable to patterns or schemes:17

13

Wittgenstein (1953), § 130. Cf. Wittgenstein (1958), p. 17: “what makes it difficult for us to take this line of investigations is our craving for generality.” 15 See also Wittgenstein’s celebrated claim in Wittgenstein (1953), § 66: “don’t think, but look!” 16 On Wittgenstein’s method of variations, see Plaud (2011). 17 Wittgenstein sometimes convokes a striking example of those variations, namely the “figure in the carpet” introduced by Henry James in a famous short story. On this example, see Rosat (2002), as well as my paper mentioned above, Plaud (2011). 14

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Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates “Grief” describes a pattern which recurs, with different variations, in the tapestry of life. If a man’s bodily expression of sorrow and joy alternated, say with the ticking of a clock, here we would not have the characteristic course of the pattern of sorrow or of the pattern of joy.18

In those conditions, the business of the philosopher will be to deal cleverly with such variations in order to gain a better understanding of meanings. And once again, the method of language games is crucial to the investigation of such variations, since they allow for an exploration of the different possible contexts for a given word. Lastly, these two features are connected with a third one, namely Wittgenstein’s insistence on the composite nature of linguistic pictures. For Wittgenstein, so to say, reads the business of philosophy as an investigation of type/token relations; no wonder, then, that he should sometimes compare his concern for types to a device introduced by the British naturalist Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), namely composite photography.19 Galton’s ambition was in fact to design a genuine typology of human physiognomies, and his strategy was then to elaborate condensed pictures synthesizing many portraits into a single one. See for instance the following portrait:20

This picture is actually the blended product of several ones. The specific determinations of individual components (moustache, earrings…) are blurred and hardly visible, whereas the features shared by all or many components (shape of the face, eyebrows…) appear rather sharply. Alt18

Wittgenstein (1953), II, i. On Wittgenstein and composite photography, see Plaud (2009). 20 Galton’s papers and composite pictures are available on http://www.galton.org/. 19

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hough I shall not explain the details of Galton’s technique here, I would like to stress that this device happens to be precisely the example convoked by Sigmund Freud in his Interpretation of Dreams, when he describes the process of condensation at work in dream-pictures. Freud’s creed is indeed that dreams rest upon processes of figuration, one of which consists of combining many figures into a single one. Dreams thus involve “the formation of new unities (collective persons, composite images)”,21 and such composite images are in turn characterized in reference to Galton’s portraits: I have adopted the method employed by Galton in producing family portraits, by which he projects both pictures upon one another, whereupon the common features stand out in stronger relief, while those which do not coincide neutralize one another and become obscure in the picture.22

The interesting point is now that Wittgenstein, who knew Galton and was familiar with Freud’s work, also showed a great interest to Galton’s composite photography. This is witnessed by the fact that a composite portrait of his own family has been found in his personal belongings. The picture was taken on the basis of these portraits:23

The blending of these portraits into a single one produced the following result:

21

Freud (1913), ch. VI (“The Dream-Work”). Id. 23 The pictures reproduced here are taken from Nedo (2007), p. 172 ff. 22

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Furthermore, Wittgenstein’s interest for composite photography is actually directly echoed in his philosophical work, since he also refers to Galton when accounting for his own philosophical method. He does so in particular in his 1929 Lecture on Ethics, when he strives to elucidate the meaning of the concept of good. His claim is once again that this concept does not have a clear-cut extension, but rather applies to a whole network of things, and may be involved in quite a diversity of language games.24 The criss-cross descriptions of these multiple meanings then amount to a “Galtonian portrait” of the concept of good: By enumerating [these meanings] I want to produce the same sort of effect which Galton produced when he took a number of photos of different faces on the same photographic plate in order to get the picture of the typical features they all had in common. And as by showing to you such a collective photo I could make you see what is the typical – say – Chinese face; so if you look through the row of synonyms which I will put before you, you will, I hope, be able to see the characteristic features they all have in common and these are the characteristic features of Ethics.25

To summarize, then, Wittgenstein’s method of language is an analysis of pictures, that draws our attention to the particular, that rests upon a method 24

I am taking the liberty of using this expression, although Wittgenstein hadn’t yet introduced it at this time. 25 Wittgenstein (1929), p. 38. This reference to Galton is not isolated in Wittgenstein’s works, where composite photography makes several explicit or implicit appearances. See for instance some passages in the Brown Book where Wittgenstein (1958) p. 168, alludes to a “compound experience,” or again a passage from the 1947 Cambridge Lectures where Wittgenstein reflects upon the grammar of “composite concepts.”

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of variations, and that shows interest for composite pictures. I will now compare these features with Daniel Arasse’s analytic iconography. II. Analytic iconography: Daniel Arasse Iconography in general seeks to elucidate the meaning of pictures by identifying their themes and motives. Yet, Arasse’s own version of iconography proceeds to a deep reevaluation of its goals and methods. In particular, this new approach involves three characteristic features that match Wittgenstein’s method of language games: an attention to the particular, a method of variations, and an interest for condensed pictures. Paying attention to the particular Let me start with the first of these three points. A major discrepancy between Arasse and traditional iconography lies in the fact that Arasse gives priority to a close examination of pictures in their specificity, and disregards excessive scholarship where “‘knowing’ prevails over ‘seeing’.”26 Hence the considerations proposed his book appropriately entitled On n’y voit rien [I can’t see a thing]: “Let me try and look at the picture. Forget iconography. See how it works…”27 Arasse is thus quite critical towards the hypocrisy of traditional iconography, which seeks to avoid the confrontation with pictures, or the weariness attached to the discovery of new elements: Iconographers are definitely the firemen of art history: their role is to calm things down, to put out the fire that might be lighted by such and such anomaly, because it would force you to look closer and to take notice of the fact that things are not as simple, as plain as you wish them to be.28

When Arasse rejects this attitude in an effort to pay attention to slight shades and dissimilarities within pictures, he is thus rather faithful to a typically Wittgensteinian precept. Let us recall, for instance, the motto Wittgenstein had once considered for his Philosophical Investigations, namely the celebrated line of Shakespeare’s King Lear: “I’ll teach you differences !”29 Such methodological postulates are also at the basis of Arasse’s 26

Arasse (1992), p. 10. Arasse (2001), p. 119. 28 Id., p. 27. 29 Cf. Drury (1984), p. 157. 27

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method, especially when he shows interest for pictorial details, while details are intended as a stimulus for iconographical enquiries, as a source of astonishment and of discovery. His creed is that art historians let their attention be caught by details, thus regaining awareness of the singularity of pictures.30 On that account, art history may be said to experience its most glorious moments when confronted to an equivalent of Thomas Kuhn’s socalled scientific revolutions31, i.e. when facing anomalies that force the scholar to change his way of seeing. The “aspect-lighting” provoked by unexpected details is for instance described by Arasse in an Annunciation by Francesco del Cossa, where a snail suddenly appears on the edge of the picture: On the edge of the perspective construction, on its threshold, the anomaly of the snail waves to you; it calls for a conversion of the glance and lets you understand that you do not see anything in what you see, that you do not see what you’re looking at, your goal, what you expect when you look: the invisible that has come into vision.32

Francesco del Cossa, Annonciation

30

Cf. Arasse (2001), p. 15: “In each case, discrepancies should not be trivialized or flattened; on the contrary, their highly significant purport should be made salient.” 31 Note that Daniel Arasse sometimes refers to Kuhn’s epistemology when accounting for artistic revolutions as analogous to scientific revolutions. See Arasse (2006), p. 48 and Arasse (1999), p. 123. 32 Arasse (2001), p. 46.

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Condensed pictures This leads me to my second point of comparison between Wittgenstein and Arasse, namely their common insistence on the composite nature of pictures. Arasse assumes in fact that one of the benefits of paying attention to the singularity of pictures is that this attitude favors a better grasp of the network of meanings involved in paintings. For a major postulate of analytic iconography is that artistic pictures, far from expressing simple iconographic contents, are usually condensed pictures, combining and interweaving many themes and materials. In his introduction to Le sujet dans le tableau, Arasse thus notices that “[m]ost of the time, far from having a single source, pictures, frescoes, drawings and sculptures superimpose, interweave and condense different (and sometimes heterogeneous) texts”33. This condensation occurs, for instance, in such figures as Judith-Salome, where a woman is represented holding both Judith’s sword and Salome’s dish:34

Bernardo Strozzi (?) : Judith and Holophernes

This condensation also holds true for the figure of Mary Magdalene, whose iconographic representations often combine three motives, namely the girl from Magdala, the prostitute in Nain, and Mary, sister of Martha.35 Such a figure is then doubtlessly a “composite” one: He who is fond of clarity will claim that Magdalene is the result of a confusion. Confusion my foot! […] What the artist does has nothing 33

Arasse (1997), p. 18. Id., p. 19. 35 Cf. Arasse (2001), p. 91. 34

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Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates to do with confusion: it’s a matter of condensation, which is quite different. Confusions are mistakes, they are never made on purpose, and afterwards one feels sorry about them, one tries to rectify them. Condensation, one the other hand, may not always be made on purpose, but is never made without a reason. […] Do you know what this long-hair character is called? It’s called a composite figure […], composed with features belonging to different figures. It is the result of a condensation.36

Now, in my previous examination of condensation in pictures, I had recalled that Wittgenstein would connect the notion of composite pictures to Galton’s technique of composite photography, and that this technique had in turn been used as a model by Sigmund Freud in his considerations upon dream-work and dream-pictures. It is then highly significant that Arasse himself, although he does not explicitly refer to Galton, does refer to Freud’s condensation on many occasions. When dealing with the compositeness of painted pictures, he often claims that the analyses performed by art historians are quite comparable to dream-interpretations. Just like dreams, paintings convoke procedures of figuration, aiming at a pictorial expression of stories or thought-contents.37 The business of analytic iconography is then to learn how to decipher the “rebus” made up by paintings: Painting transforms a text into enigmatic figures. The dream-work, the operations described by Freud when accounting for the works set up by dreams turn thoughts into images, just like a painted picture. All of these operations of condensation, this consideration of figurativeness, displacement and secondary elaboration are quite efficient when it comes to the analysis of painting, to the specific thoughtwork set up by painting.38

That’s why Arasse assumes that “the concepts and the method that govern Freud’s interpretation of dreams are a remarkable tool for art history.”39 Such tools may, for instance, be applied to the interpretation of a famous composite picture, namely Titian’s Allegory of Prudence: when he deals

36

Id., p. 92. Cf. Arasse (1997), p. 24: “classical narrative painting works at the transformation of a narrative into a picture.” 38 Arasse (2006), p. 311-12. See also id., p. 24. 39 Arasse (1997), p. 24. 37

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with this picture, Arasse stipulates that “the following remarks will most likely resemble the deciphering of a dream-condensation.”40

Let me now proceed to my last point, and show how Arasse’s insistence on attention and condensation is linked to his concern for variations. Motives and their variations Despite his reevaluation of the aims of iconography, Arasse does maintain that the iconographer has to ‘identify ‘motives’ representing ‘themes’ or ‘concepts.’”41 But our previous remarks imply that this identification of motives will rest upon a consideration of associations and condensations at work in pictures. And the right way to do so is to set up a variation of themes and motives, in order to confront their respective versions. This method is most interestingly convoked in Arasse’s book on Italian Annunciations, for instance in the chapter devoted to “Suites and variations.” In this chapter, Arasse focuses on the many variations experienced not only by the traditional theme of the Annunciation, but also by the formal procedure of perspective which, in his opinion, is closely connected to this theme.42 By using such a method, the historian can understand how some pictures might have served as models generating a series of variations, of combinations of themes and motives:

40

Id., p. 222. Ibid., p. 21. 42 See for instance Arasse (1999), p. 159-160. 41

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Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates Far from exercising a sterilizing “tyranny” on Florentine artistic imagination, the Annunciation of the Santissima Annunziata is used as a new model […] on which the painter, in the copies he makes of it, produces variations, and sometimes even transforms its basic constructions. At the beginning of the 15th century, Florentine Annunciations thus appear as a synthesis of familiar types and motives, whose combinations may vary.43

And not only does this method help to grasp the multiplicity of motives involved in pictures, but it also provides guidelines or landmarks within this multiplicity, by grouping these variations on the basis of these very “objects of comparison” I have already mentioned in my account of Wittgenstein. According to Arasse, the difference between analytic iconography and traditional iconography lies precisely in this capacity to articulate the variations, resemblances and differences at work in pictures: Although iconography of associations of ideas, no less than traditional iconography, starts by determining clear differentiations and by disentangling the themes that are interwoven in the picture, yet it goes on by identifying the common features which, from a theme to another, have allowed for the construction of associations in pictures, which have granted the picture its meaning and function.44

There is more: the concrete manner in which Arasse understands the possibility of this categorization happens to echo another set of Wittgensteinian creeds. For it is a well-known fact that, according to Wittgenstein, the right way to understand the meaning of words is to pay attention to how they are being used;45 that’s why, in particular, the method of language games focuses on concrete (however fictitious) uses of words. Now, it turns out that Arasse himself regards the consideration of use as the key to an understanding of the coherence and organization of pictorial variations. In his 43

Id., p. 115-116. Note that Arasse’s concern for types amounts once again to a reevaluation of Panofsky’s principles: Panoksy’s essentialist approach was meant to subsume different representations under one single type, thus minimizing their part of originality. Arasse’s use of types, on the contrary, aims at shedding light on the constrasts and difference among different versions of the same type. On this issue, cf. once again Gress (2011). 44 Arasse (1997), p. 20. 45 See for instance Wittgenstein (1953): “For a large class of cases – though not for all – in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.”

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Annonciation italienne, in particular, he proposes a chapter called “La perspective: modes d’emploi” (“Perspective: directions of use”). In this chapter, he stresses how, in order to gain a clear view of the connections between variations, the correct attitude is to focus on the ways such motives or procedures are used: The attempt to summarize the history of Annunciation in Italian painting in the Quattrocento involves a consideration of the connection between various categories of Annunciations, not according to their respective formal types […], but according to the various directions of use assigned to perspective within this theme.46

For all of these reasons, I maintain that Wittgenstein’s language games and Arasse’s analytic iconography rest upon the same guidelines. In both cases, the analysis applies to composite pictures, and strives to disentangle the network of their meanings. In both cases, attention is paid to the variations experienced by a given theme, motive or mode of representation. And in both cases, the very possibility of an orientation among these variations is offered by a consideration of use. Nevertheless, I will now examine some limits to this comparison, by confronting Wittgenstein’s and Arasse’s respective attitudes towards historicity. III. A limit to this comparison: historicity Since Wittgenstein and Arasse share a common concern for the appreciation of dissimilarities, it would be unfair to overlook the dissimilarities between their respective methods. In particular, I will focus on the dimension of historicity which is essential to Arasse’s iconography, whereas it is almost completely missing in Wittgenstein’s method of language games. In his account of linguistic practices, Wittgenstein does not lean on genealogical or etymological investigations on the origins of meanings. On the contrary, Arasse assumes that iconography won’t elucidate the interlacing of motives and meanings unless it engages itself in historical and contextual enquiries on artistic dialogues and inheritances. For the composite pictures studied by iconography are not merely fictitious constructions, as are Wittgenstein’s language games: they are real pictures, historically and culturally elaborated. That’s why historical investigation will be necessary to reconstruct the associations of ideas at the basis of pictorial and artistic condensations: 46

Arasse (1999), p. 177.

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Historical iconography of associations of ideas should always avoid anachronisms, and assume as its basis the social and cultural practices of the times. Besides, one should ascertain to identify the motive of the association, which makes up the condensation. Therefore, one should try to find what I will call the least common denominator between associated themes, which is the very kernel of the cause of condensation. And this has to be found in the culture of the times.47

This attitude, according to Arasse, is precisely what marks the difference between art history and philosophy. Whereas art historians are bound to show historical accuracy, philosophers enjoy greater freedom in their treatment of time, being less threatened by anachronisms: One of the principles followed by historians is to try (and I insist: to try) to avoid anachronisms. This is characteristic of any history whatsoever, and no historian will take the responsibility of anachronisms or claim that he makes some, and that he is proud of it. An artist or a philosopher is entitled to do so, and he may even have the duty to struggle out of the object of the past, out of his time, to keep it alive on the basis of today’s questions.48

But does that mean that iconography has to remain strictly historical, or that analysis of pictures is nothing more than a clarification of the historical context of their emergence? Absolutely not: on the contrary, Arasse stresses the shortfalls of pure historical methods. If you take for example the figure of Mary Magdalene already mentioned, you will understand that a mere historical investigation does not give you the key to the complexity of its meanings: Well I say no! I disagree! You may have understood how Magdalene was invented, but you haven’t yet understood why she was invented! Nor why her hair plays such a part in this invention.49

Against such historicist excesses, Arasse stresses the fecundity of cautiously applied and controlled anachronisms, even in the field of art history. For artists themselves circulate within the different periods of time when ex47

Arasse (2006), p. 308. Arasse (2006), p. 220. 49 Arasse (2001), p. 91. 48

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ploring the variations of a given motive. That’s why the art historian won’t have a clear understanding of these dialogues unless he sometimes scruplelessly jumps from a period to another:50 The artist is naturally anachronistic; he appropriates the works of the past, and has the duty to do so. If he was content to copy and cite them respectfully, he would be academic. The specificity of the creator is to appropriate the past in order to transform and digest it, and to produce another result. This reflection from the point of view of the artists is a clever way, for art historians, to face the limits of their discipline. Artists teach us how to see.51

So Arasse’s analytic iconography, because it does not overlook the historical aspect of its object and yet grants itself some free scope in its treatment of historical date, finds a convenient balance between short-sighted historicism on the one hand, and complete anhistoricity on the other hand. Thus understood, Arasse’s work is proof that one may reject excessively historicist methods, but without rejecting historicity as such. To conclude, I think that it must be possible to devise a method of variations inspired by Wittgenstein’s language games, but upgraded by the introduction of a historical dimension that was missing in Wittgenstein’s perspective. And I maintain that Daniel Arasse’s analytic iconography is a good example of what such a method of variations might be, once supplemented with the historical dimension that was lacking in Wittgenstein’s work. Then and only then will the thinker be able to understand pictures, by combining an analytic account of their compositeness on the one hand, and a fitting of their variations in a cultural context on the other hand. While both Wittgenstein and Arasse strive to draw our attention to what lies open to the view, Arasse enhances Wittgenstein’s method by the addition of a new interest for historicity. References Arasse, Daniel 1992, Le détail : pour une histoire rapprochée de la peinture, Paris: Flammarion. 50

See for instance Arasse’s defense of Michel Foucault in his “Éloge paradoxal de Michel Foucault” in Arasse (2006). Whereas Foucault has commonly been reproached for the anachronisms in his treatment of Velasquez’ Meninas, Arasse shows how fruitful these very anachronisms may turn out to be. 51 Arasse (2006), p. 235.

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Arasse, Daniel 1997, Le sujet dans le tableau : essais d’iconographie analytique, Paris: Flammarion (new edition 2010). Arasse, Daniel 1999, L’Annonciation italienne : une histoire de perspective, Paris: Hazan. Arasse Daniel 2001, On n’y voit rien : descriptions, Paris: Denoël. Arasse Daniel 2006, Histoires de peintures, Paris : Gallimard. Arasse, Daniel 2008a, L’homme en perspective : les primitifs d’Italie, Paris: Hazan, 3rd ed. Arasse, Daniel 2008b, L’homme en jeu : les génies de la Renaissance, Paris: Hazan, 3rd ed. Drury, Maurice O’Connor 1984, Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. R. Rhees. Oxford: OUP. Freud, Sigmund 1913, The Interpretation of Dreams, tr. A. A. Brill, New York: Mac Millan. Gress, Thibaut 2011, “Panofsky’s presuppositions : can one see without looking?”, Iconology Conference, Universität Wien, 15.09.201117.09.2011. Nedo, Michael 2007, “Familienähnlichkeit: Philosophie und Praxis”, in G. Abel, M. Kross and M. Nedo (ed.): Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ingenieur – Philosoph – Künstler, Berlin: Parerga. Plaud, Sabine 2009, “Ressemblances de famille, portraits-types et photographie composite: Wittgenstein et Galton”, in Corridor, vol. 2. Plaud, Sabine 2011, “Morphologie grammaticale et méthode des variations – Wittgenstein, Husserl et la quête des essences”, in Wittgenstein et les questions du sens, special issue of L’art du comprendre, ed. Ch. Chauviré. Rosat, Jean-Jacques 2002, “Les motifs dans le tapis”, in Wittgenstein, dernières pensées, ed. J. Bouveresse, S. Laugier and J.-J. Rosat, Marseille: Agone. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1929, Lecture on Ethics, in Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951, ed. J. C. Klagge and A. Nordmann, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1993. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1953, Philosophical Investigations, tr. G.E.M. Anscombe, London: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1958, The Blue and Brown Books, Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 2003, The Voices of Wittgenstein. The Vienna Circle, ed. G. Baker, London: Routledge.

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INDEX NOMINUM Adorno, Theodor, 143, 146 Agamben, Giorgio, 137-139 Alberti, Leon Battista, 151, 153, 156 Allegri, Gregorio, 151 Andronico, Marinela, 29, 41 Anscombe, Elisabeth, 36, 41 Arasse, Daniel, 12, 195-197, 199, 203-212 Arbo, Alessandro, 10, 119, 127, 156 Aristotle, 39, 82, 84, 94, 141, 162, 179, 186 Augustine, 105-106, 141 Austen, Jane, 174 Austin, John Langshaw, 104, 107 Babbitt, Milton, 166 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 120, 125, 147 Bacon, Francis, 184 Bacri, Nicolas, 145 Baker, Gordon, 57-59, 78, 212 Beardsley, Monroe, 112 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 119, 123 Bent, Ian, 147 Berg, Alban, 155-156 Berkeley, George, 20 Black, Max, 9, 81, 83-85, 87, 9094 Booth, Wayne, 162, 166 Botticelli, Sandro, 189 Boulez, Pierre, 166 Bourdieu, Pierre, 154 Bouveresse, Jacques, 28-29, 36, 41, 47, 50, 57-58, 148, 212

Brendel, Alfred, 145 Brahms, Johannes, 151 Brentano, Franz, 65, 78 Breuer, Josef, 50, 55 Brouet, Louis, 126 Bruckner, Anton, 151 Cage, John, 122, 187 Calle, Sophie, 185 Cappelletto, Chiara, 8 Carducci, Giosuè, 193 Castel, Pierre-Henri, 50 Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, 171 Christo, 186 Cioffi, Frank, 100, 112-113 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 39 Coppola, Francis Ford, 189 Dahlhaus, Carl, 145, 147 D’Alembert, Jean-Baptiste le Rond, 141, 146-147 Danto, Arthur, 183, 190, 193 Darsel, Sandrine, 11, 119, 127 Darwin, Charles, 30-32, 41 Davidson, Donald, 84, 94 Davies, Stephen, 123-124, 127 Da Vinci, Leonardo, 49, 141 Delacroix, Eugène, 143 De la Motte, Diether, 145-146, 153, 156 Del Cossa, Francesco, 204 Derrida, Jacques, 190, 193 Descartes, René, 142, 156 Descombes, Vincent, 54, 58 Distaso, Leonardo, 10 Drury, Maurice, 30, 32, 41, 203, 212

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Duchamp, Marcel, 184-186 Dummett, Michael, 103 Dvorak, Anton, 161 Engel, Pascal, 98-100, 113 Ferraris, Maurizio, 11, 124, 127 Fish, Stanley, 191, 193 Fontaine, Olivier, 127 Fontana, Lucio, 191 Foucault, Michel, 211 Francès, Robert, 147, 156 Frazer, James George, 30-34, 3839, 41-42, 79, 154, 157 Frege, Gottlob, 57, 84, 94, 105, 175 Freud, Sigmund, 8, 40, 45-59, 196, 201, 206, 212 Gallerani Cuter, João Vergílio, 8 Galton, Francis, 40-41, 48, 54, 200-202, 206, 212 Geach, Peter, 175 Goehr, Lydia, 124, 127 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 41-42, 50, 57, 142, 145, 154 Goffi, Jean-Yves, 178-179 Goodman, Nelson, 83, 84, 94, 123, 190, 193 Gottardi, Giovanni, 32, 41 Gress, Thibaut, 195, 208, 212 Hacker, Peter, 57, 58, 78-79, 9092, 94, 101, 113, 149 Hanfling, Oswald, 117, 127 Hascher, Amanda, 12 Haydn, Joseph, 119, 164 Heidegger, Martin, 79, 183, 190, 193 Hertz, Heinrich, 32-33, 41, 51 Holland, Roy, 113 Houellebecq, Michel, 166

Hume, David, 20, 31, 173, 180, 191, 193 Husserl, Edmund, 79, 212 James, Henry, 199 Imberty, Michel, 147 Janik, Allan, 50-51 Jankélévitch, Vladimir, 149, 156 Johnson, Mark, 83, 85, 87-89, 92, 94 Joyce, James, 188 Kandinsky, Wassily, 143 Kant, Immanuel, 27, 150, 189 Kivy, Peter, 11, 161-163, 165, 166 Kretzschmar, Hermann, 147 Kuhn, Thomas, 39-41, 204 Lacan, Jacques, 46, 54 Lakoff, George (see Johnson), 83, 85, 87-89, 92, 94 Le Du, Michel, 9 Lescourret, Marie-Anne, 10, 146, 156 Levinson, Jerrold, 11, 120, 123, 127, 161, 163-164, 166 Levy, Janet M., 119, 127 Lewis, Clarence Irving, 87, 94 Lewis, Peter B., 7, 127 Lewy, Casimir, 19, 23 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 40, 42 Lodge, David, 171 Lopes-Curval, Julie, 177 Lorenz, Konrad, 91-92 Luckner, Marshal Nicolas, 126 Lyas, Colin, 89, 94 Lynch, David, 171, 174 MacDonald, Margaret, 43, 45 McGuiness, Brian, 42, 50-51, 78, 139 Mach, Ernst, 72-73, 75-76, 79

INDEX NOMINUM

MacIntyre, Alasdair, 92, 94 Mahler, Gustav, 161 Mapplethorpe, Robert, 166 Mameli, Goffredo, 126 Mann, Thomas, 147-148 Manzoni, Piero, 188 Maxwell, James Clerk, 91, 94-95 Meinong, Augustus, 107 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 29, 135136, 139, 151 Michel, François, 156 Mill, John Stuart, 105 Milner, Max, 49, 58 Mondrian, Piet, 166 Monroe, Marilyn, 125 Moore, George Edward, 118 Mörike, Eduard, 152 Moses, 143, 190 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 147, 151-152 Musil, Robert, 29, 31, 41, 72-73, 79 Nabokov, Vladimir, 166 Nedo, Michael, 77, 128, 201, 212 Neurath, Otto, 38, 42, 45 Newton, Isaac, 39, 113 Novaro, Michele, 126 Nussbaum, Martha, 170, 179 Ogden, Charles Kay, 19 Ortony, Andrew, 83, 95 Orwell, Georges, 174 Padilla Gálvez, Jesús, 9, 80 Panofsky, Erwin, 208, 212 Pavlov, Ivan, 25 Pfitzner, Hans, 155 Pink Floyd, 122 Pinsent, David, 143 Pinter, Harold, 104-105

215

Plato, 36, 54, 57, 111, 141, 171, 180 Plaud, Sabine, 12, 199, 200, 212 Pouivet, Roger, 124, 128 Ptolemy, Claudius, 39 Putnam, Hilary, 86, 95 Puybaret, Eric, 171 Rameau, Jean-Philippe, 141, 146, 152, 156-157 Ramsey, Frank, 19 Reich, Willy, 150, 156 Reyes, Eliane, 145 Rhees, Rush, 25, 33-34, 42, 49, 77-78, 128, 212 Richards, Ivor Armstrong, 83, 95 Riefenstahl, Leni, 166 Rosat, Jean-Jacques, 41, 127, 199, 212 Rothko, Mark, 166 Rouget de l’Isle, Claude Joseph, 126 Russell, Bertrand, 25, 33, 37-38, 42, 57, 105-106 Ryle, Gilbert, 98-101, 104-7, 109110, 113 Saumande, Juliette, 171 Scheffler, Israel, 87, 95 Schiller, Friedrich von, 172, 180 Schlick, Moritz, 63-64, 198 Schoenberg, Arnold, 143, 145, 149, 151, 156 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 15, 18-19, Schubert, Franz, 122, 143 Schulte, Joachim, 41-42, 78 Schumann, Robert, 155 Scruton, Roger, 120, 122, 127 Searle, John, 188 Sebestik, Jan, 53, 58 Shakespeare, William, 171, 203

216

Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates

Simon, Claude, 173 Soulez, Antonia, 8, 25, 48, 53, 5859 Spengler, Oswald, 37-39, 41-42, 49 Stern, Joseph Peter, 40, 42 Stanislavski, Constantin, 104, 107 Strauss, Richard, 143 Strozzi, Bernardo, 205 Stumpf, Carl, 154 Styron, William, 169, 177 Summerson, John, 90, 95 Tanney, Julia, 9-10, 112-113 Tarasti, Eerro, 147 Titian, 206 Tchaikovsky, Piotr Ilitch, 164 Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich, 18-19

Turner, Joseph, 91, 95 Valéry, Paul, 31, 35, 42 Van Gogh, Vincent, 190 Velasquez, Diego, 211 Von Wright, Georg Henrik, 37, 40, 42-43, 78, 128, 180 Wagner, Richard, 187 Walton, Kendall, 123, 128 Warburg, Aby, 36, 186 Warhol, Andy, 185, 187 Waismann, Friedrich, 50, 56-58 Whitehead, Alfred North, 30, 42 Wilde, Oscar, 166 Wimsatt, William, 112 Wisdom, John, 100-102, 113 Wu, Echo, 178-179 Zweig, Stefan, 56