Wittgenstein on Forms of Life and the Nature of Experience [180th ed.] 9783035100211, 3035100217

Table of contents :
Contents
Foreword 7
List of Abbreviations 9
Notes on Contributors 11
NUNO VENTURINHA Introduction 13
BARRY STOCKER Dialectic of Paradox in the Tractatus: Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard 21
MARIA FILOMENA MOLDER Cries, False Substitutes and Expressions in Image 39
JEAN-PIERRE COMETTI Aesthetic Experience and Forms of Life 65
STEFAN MAJETSCHAK Forms and Patterns of Life: A Reassessment of a So-Called Basic Concept in the Late Philosophy of Wittgenstein 75
JAMES M. THOMPSON Translating Form(s)-of-Life? Remarks on Cultural Difference and Alterity 97
JESÚS PADILLA GÁLVEZ Form of Life as Arithmetical Experiment 113
JOACHIM SCHULTE Does the Devil in Hell Have a Form of Life? 125
ANTÓNIO MARQUES Forms of Life: Between the Given and the Thought Experiment 143
ANDREW LUGG Wittgenstein on Reddish Green: Logic and Experience 155
References 183
Index 189

Citation preview

Peter Lang

LISBON PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES us es of la ngua ge i n i n t e r d i sc i p l i n a r y fi e l d s

António Marques & Nuno Venturinha (eds)

Wittgenstein on Forms of Life and the Nature of Experience

To what extent is the form of our life fixed, i.e. is there a form of life or forms of life? How does this bear on the nature of experience? These are two Wittgensteinian questions in need of clarification. Wittgenstein on Forms of Life and the Nature of Experience sheds light on a much exploited but rarely analysed topic in Wittgenstein scholarship while addressing central themes of contemporary philosophy. Bringing together essays from some of the leading scholars in the field, the book concentrates on Wittgenstein’s concept of Lebensform(en), and more specifically its evolution in the author’s thought until his death in 1951. António Marques is Full Professor of Philosophy of Knowledge and Communication at the New University of Lisbon. Nuno Venturinha is Research Fellow in Philosophy at the New University of Lisbon.

Wittgenstein on Forms of Life and the Nature of Experience

LISBON PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES uses of language in interdisciplinary fields A Pu blic ation from t he Inst it ut e o f Philo s o phy o f L a ngu ag e at t h e N e w U n i v e r s i t y o f Li s b o n edited by Antón io Marq ues (G e ne ra l E dit o r ) Nun o Ven turinh a (Exe cut ive E dit o r ) Ed itorial Board: Gabriele D e An gelis, Hum be r t o B r it o, J o ã o Fo ns e ca , Fra n c k Li h o r e au , A n t ó n i o M ar q u e s, Maria Filomena Mol de r, Dio go Pir e s Aur é lio, E r ich R a st , J o ão S àág u a, Nu n o Ve n t u r i n h a Advisory Board: Jean - Pierre Cometti (Unive r sit é de Pr o ve nce ), Lynn Do b s o n ( U n i v e r s i t y o f Ed i n b u r g h ) , Ern est L ep ore (Rutg e r s Unive r s it y), R e na t o L e ssa ( IUPE- R i o d e Jan e i r o ) , A n d r e w Lu g g (Un iversity of Ottawa ) , S t e f a n M a je t s cha k ( Unive r sit ä t K as s e l ) , J e s ú s Pad i l l a G ál v e z (Un iversidad de Cas t illa - L a M a ncha ) , J o a chim S chult e ( U n i v e r s i t ät Zü r i c h )

PETER LANG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien

António Marques & Nuno Venturinha (eds)

Wittgenstein on Forms of Life and the Nature of Experience Proceedings of the International Wittgenstein Workshop 2009

PETER LANG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wittgenstein on forms of life and the nature of experience / António Marques & Nuno Venturinha (eds.). p. cm. – (Lisbon philosophical studies. Uses of language in interdisciplinary fields, ISSN 1663-7674) Proceedings of a conference held May 22-23, 2009 at the New University of Lisbon. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-3-0351-0021-1 1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951–Congresses. 2. Life–Congresses. 3. Experience–Congresses. I. Marques, António, 1952- II. Venturinha, Nuno. B3376.W564W551 2010 193–dc22 2010035228

ISSN 1663-7674 ISBN 978-3-0351-0021-1 © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2010 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Switzerland

Contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9

Notes on Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

NUNO VENTURINHA Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13

BARRY STOCKER Dialectic of Paradox in the Tractatus: Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21

MARIA FILOMENA MOLDER Cries, False Substitutes and Expressions in Image . . . . . . .

39

JEAN-PIERRE COMETTI Aesthetic Experience and Forms of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

65

STEFAN MAJETSCHAK Forms and Patterns of Life: A Reassessment of a So-Called Basic Concept in the Late Philosophy of Wittgenstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75

JAMES M. THOMPSON Translating Form(s)-of-Life? Remarks on Cultural Difference and Alterity . . . . . . . . . . .

97

JESÚS PADILLA GÁLVEZ Form of Life as Arithmetical Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

6

Contents

JOACHIM SCHULTE Does the Devil in Hell Have a Form of Life? . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 ANTÓNIO MARQUES Forms of Life: Between the Given and the Thought Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 ANDREW LUGG Wittgenstein on Reddish Green: Logic and Experience . . . 155

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

7

Foreword

The majority of the essays published in this book were contributions to the conference entitled “Wittgenstein on Forms of Life and the Nature of Experience” which took place on 22 and 23 May 2009 at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, New University of Lisbon. The conference was organized by the Institute of Philosophy of Language which devotes an important part of its activity to Wittgenstein’s work. This book is part of the project “Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: Re-Evaluating a Project”, hosted by the Institute and funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. The choice of the topic corresponded to the perception held by many researchers, philosophers and people working in other areas that much more discussion on this issue is needed both in the framework of the strict hermeneutic of Wittgenstein’s work and in relation to other disciplinary approaches. The metaphors relating to the concept of form of life are often expressed through images belonging to the domains of depth, the given, the bedrock, the river-bed and so on. In fact it is easy to find a clear status on which to base the concept since we are always seeing it as being all the activities that human beings share as something “given” and that they must “accept” (see PPF § 345). It is also well known that in Wittgenstein the concepts of “form of life” and “language game” must be seen as intrinsically linked and if it is correct to say that the former has evident connections with fundamental functions and primary meanings, it is also true that we can only imagine a form of life insofar as we can imagine a language (PIr § 19). This is an important issue because it shows the privileged way that exists to introduce ourselves in a form of life: representing a language, not as a system detached from life but inserted in life and experience. This kind of circularity – a form of life is the ground where language evolves and the former

8

Foreword

cannot be represented without a language – is only broken through an analysis of the different uses Wittgenstein himself makes of the concept. In fact it is important to look at the way in which the concept is often used. Frequently, it seems to work just like an independent variable in the network of Wittgenstein’s concepts in the sense that whenever the form of life changes, the other components of human life also suffer certain modifications. In this sense, a form of life (or each form of life) is in itself a vast and complex system of activities (linguistic and other) which have been evolving and have become stratified during the natural history of humanity. Furthermore, the concept of experience has an essential link with form of life. Experience cannot be separated from this “complicated form” which is human life. Believing, expecting, hoping and so on are examples of these phenomena that in Wittgenstein’s words are just “modifications of this complicated form of life” (PPF § 1). Thus it seemed that an analysis of this solidarity between these two concepts would be an important line to explore. This is what justifies why experience was selected as the main topic of the Lisbon conference and why this was chosen as the inaugural volume of the Institute’s new book series: “Lisbon Philosophical Studies – Uses of Language in Interdisciplinary Fields”. Thanks are due to Carlos Pereira and Vanessa Boutefeu for their editorial assistance as well as to Oxford University Press, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen for permission to reproduce part of a facsimile of page 115a of MS 137, published in the Bergen Electronic Edition of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. António Marques May 2010

9

List of Abbreviations

AWL

Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1932–35, ed. A. Ambrose, Oxford: Blackwell, 1979.

BBB

The Blue and Brown Books, 2nd edn, ed. R. Rhees, Oxford: Blackwell, 1969.

BEE

Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. (Numbers of manuscripts (MS), typescripts (TS) and dictations (D) are according to G. H. von Wright’s catalogue.)

BT

The Big Typescript, ed. and trans. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.

CV

Culture and Value, rev. 2nd edn (by A. Pichler), ed. G. H. von Wright, trans. P. Winch, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.

DB

Denkbewegungen: Tagebücher 1930–1932, 1936–1937, ed. I. Somavilla, Frankfurt: Fischer, 2000.

DW

Dictées de Wittgenstein à Friedrich Waismann et pour Moritz Schlick, vol. I, ed. G. Baker, Paris: PUF, 1997.

EPB

Eine philosophische Betrachtung, ed. R. Rhees, in Werkausgabe, vol. 5, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984, pp. 117–237.

LC

Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. C. Barrett, Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.

LFM

Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge 1939, ed. C. Diamond, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976.

LW I

Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. I, ed. G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman, trans. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue, Oxford: Blackwell, 1982.

LW II

Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. II, ed. G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman, trans. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.

LWL

Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1930–32, ed. D. Lee, Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.

OC

On Certainty, rev. edn, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell, 1974.

10

List of Abbreviations

P

“Wittgenstein’s 1938 Preface”, ed. N. Venturinha, in N. Venturinha (ed.), Wittgenstein After His Nachlass, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 182–188.

PI

Philosophical Investigations, 2nd edn, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell, 1958.

PIr

Philosophical Investigations, rev. 4th edn, ed. P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte, Oxford: Blackwell, 2009.

PO

Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, ed. J. C. Klagge and A. Nordmann, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993.

PPF

“Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment”, in Philosophical Investigations, rev. 4th edn, ed. P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte, Oxford: Blackwell, 2009, pp. 182–243.

PR

Philosophical Remarks, ed. R. Rhees, trans. R. Hargreaves and R. White, Oxford: Blackwell, 1975.

PU

Philosophische Untersuchungen: Kritisch-genetische Edition, ed. J. Schulte, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001.

RC

Remarks on Colour, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. L. L. McAlister and M. Schättle, Oxford: Blackwell, 1977.

RFM

Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, 3rd edn, ed. G. H. von Wright, R. Rhees and G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell, 1978.

RPP I

Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. I, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.

RPP II

Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. II, ed. G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman, trans. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue, Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.

TLP

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness, London: Routledge, 1961.

VW

The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle, ed. G. Baker, trans. G. Baker, M. Mackert, J. Connolly and V. Politis, London: Routledge, 2003.

WC

Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents 1911–1951, ed. B. McGuinness, Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.

WVC

Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, ed. B. F. McGuinness, trans. B. F. McGuinness and J. Schulte, Oxford: Blackwell, 1979.

Z

Zettel, 2nd edn, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell, 1981.

11

Notes on Contributors

JEAN-PIERRE COMETTI is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Provence, Aix-Marseille, France. ANDREW LUGG is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, Canada. STEFAN MAJETSCHAK is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kassel, Germany. ANTÓNIO MARQUES is Professor of Philosophy of Knowledge and Communication at the New University of Lisbon, Portugal. MARIA FILOMENA MOLDER is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New University of Lisbon, Portugal. JESÚS PADILLA GÁLVEZ is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo, Spain. JOACHIM SCHULTE teaches at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. BARRY STOCKER is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. JAMES M. THOMPSON is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. NUNO VENTURINHA is Research Fellow in Philosophy at the New University of Lisbon, Portugal.

Introduction NUNO VENTURINHA

The topic of forms of life and its relation to the nature of experience in Wittgenstein’s philosophy can be approached in several different ways. Even if the first occurrence of Lebensform, or Form des Lebens, takes place only in the second half of MS 115, which is Wittgenstein’s attempt to revise in German the so-called “Brown Book”,1 the rationale behind this notion makes its appearance much earlier in Wittgenstein’s work. In fact, a remark penned on 27 August 1937 that focuses on “form of life” is truly reminiscent of some remarks written down during the First World War.2 It is 1

2

Cf. MS 115, 239: “Ungekehrt könnte ich wirklich einen Sprachgebrauch eine Sprache (und das heißt wieder eine Lebensform Form des Lebens) denken, der die zwischen Dunkelblau rot und Hellblau rot eine Kluft befestigt. etc.” Wittgenstein dates the beginning of this “Versuch einer Umarbeitung” of his first Philosophische Untersuchungen, posthumously published as “Eine Philosophische Betrachtung”, “end of August 1936” (cf. MS 115, 118). The corresponding passage in the “Brown Book” (D 310, 89) runs as follows: “We could also easily imagine a language (and that means again a culture) in which there existed no common expressions for light blue and dark blue […].” Cp. PI, § 19, where he concludes the first paragraph saying: “– Und eine Sprache vorstellen heißt, sich eine Lebensform vorstellen.” Interestingly enough, the same idea reappears on page 8 of TS 235, a table of contents for an unknown work, presumably prepared in 1946: “144. Eine Sprache vorstellen heißt, sich eine Lebensform vorstellen.” Cf. MS 118, 17r–17v: “Daß das Leben problematisch ist, heißt, das Dein Leben nicht in die Form des Lebens paßt. Du mußt dann Dein Leben verändert, und paßt es in die Form, dann verschwundet das Problematische.” Cp. TLP, 6.521, where the first paragraph mentions: “Die Lösung des Problems des Lebens merkt man am Verschwinden dieses Problems.” This stems from a remark in MS 103, 13r, dated 6 July 1916. The remark that immediately follows, on pages 13r–14r, reads: “Kann man aber so leben daß das Leben aufhört problematisch zu sein? Daß man im Ewigen lebt und nicht in

14

Nuno Venturinha

this particular phase of Wittgenstein’s thought that Barry Stocker explores in his contribution to this volume. Concentrating on the parallels between Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, Stocker offers a reading of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in the light of works such as Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Stocker begins by considering L. E. J. Brouwer’s 1905 essay “Life, Art and Mysticism”, showing how it illuminates Wittgenstein’s logical-ethical point of view and the way Kierkegaard understands human experience as being anchored to possible spheres of life. The rejection of “philosophical system building” by both thinkers is stressed and the theme of scepticism is analysed in detail. In this context, the concept of “irony” as developed by Kierkegaard in various texts assumes a crucial role in Stocker’s argument. The next two chapters in the book, those by Maria Filomena Molder and Jean-Pierre Cometti, deal primarily with aesthetic questions in Wittgenstein’s treatment of forms of life and experience. Starting with the Tractatus, Molder traces the development of Wittgenstein’s view of the relation between language and the world, emphasizing the significance of the concept of “image” (Bild) in its multiple dimensions. After examining the status of “similes” in the “Lecture on Ethics”, Molder compares Goethe’s morphological perspective with Wittgenstein’s ethnological approach, which can be found namely in his remarks on Frazer. In the final part of her paper, we find Molder asserting that “[f]orms of life are neither images of our choice nor projections of our constructions”. Here the remarks on self-expressivity from the Philosophical Investigations, in particular from what has been published as Part II, receive particular attention. Cometti’s interpretation of aesthetic experience revolves around the question of what is to follow a rule in this specific domain and draws significantly on Wittgenstein’s “Lectures on Aesthetics”. Building on the idea of unpredictability, he suggests that an ineffable “experience der Zeit?” Cp. also a previous remark in MS 103, 9r, in which Wittgenstein, reflecting on what we know about the world, writes: “Daß etwas an ihr problematisch ist was wir ihren Sinn nennen.”

Introduction

15

of meaning” takes place when we succeed in understanding “a work’s emotional content”. In Cometti’s view, this kind of experience “belongs to what Wittgenstein calls our ‘natural history’” and could only be fully described if we describe our whole form of life. Stefan Majetschak’s and James Thompson’s contributions tackle a different issue: Wittgenstein’s puzzling employment of Lebensform and Lebensformen. Offering an extensive review of the literature on the matter, Majetschak confronts what he terms the Garver interpretation, according to which the singular and plural forms are used to distinguish human from non-human forms of life, to the standard interpretation, which conceives “a plurality of possible socio-cultural life forms of human beings in relation to which one has to understand their multifaceted language games”. In Majetschak’s opinion, this conflict can be resolved if we look at the actual embedding of language in life that Wittgenstein had in mind, with all its psychological background. Majetschak illustrates his point by means of a genetic criticism of a much-quoted passage written in the late 1940s which made its way into Part II of the Investigations. In this version, which derives from MS 144, Wittgenstein affirms that “the phenomena of hope are modes of this complicated form of life”.3 However, as Majetschak makes clear, originally he had written that “[t]he signs of hope are modes of a much more complicated life pattern” and, as a variant: “That is, the phenomena of hope are modes of this very complicated pattern”.4 Commenting on other similar pas3

4

P. M. S. Hacker’s and Joachim Schulte’s recent translation of the text differs from G. E. M. Anscombe’s original translation (PI, II, p. 174a). We find: “[…] the manifestations of hope are modifications of this complicated form of life.” (PPF § 1) The German original reads: “[…] die Erscheinungen des Hoffens sind Modifikationen dieser komplizierten Lebensform.” The passage, from MS 137, 115a, which can be found in § 365 of the first volume of Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, is quoted and translated in full in Majetschak’s paper. I have however followed C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue in their rendering of “Zeichen des Hoffens” by “signs of hope” instead of “signs of hoping”. As Majetschak insightfully observes, the transcriber for the Bergen Electronic Edition erroneously read “Helfens” instead of “Hoffens” within the variant.

16

Nuno Venturinha

sages in the Nachlass, Majetschak sees Wittgenstein as referring to particular life patterns (Lebensmuster), in this case the pattern of hope, which is the reason why he contends against the ontological or cultural importance usually attributed to the term Lebensform(en). Thompson, in turn, adopts the standard view and discusses the “(im)possibility of communication between cultures”, and more specifically whether Wittgenstein wishes to refer (in the plural form) to “a kind of cultural relativism” or (in the singular form) to the “shared behaviour of mankind” that he talks about, for example, in § 206 of the Investigations. The main points for Thompson are what he calls “the intransparency of another person and the foreignness of another people’s culture and traditions”, which, to his mind, the singularity/plurality debate overshadows. Thompson’s thesis is that Wittgenstein uses the term “form(s) of life” vaguely because what is meant by it is intrinsically vague, namely “an interrelational constellation of activities, practices, and significance”.5 The paper that follows in the collection, by Jesús Padilla Gálvez, continues the discussion of singularity/plurality but takes a mathematical perspective. It is known that Wittgenstein worked extensively on mathematical problems in connection with his epistemological, linguistic and psychological investigations. Padilla Gálvez reflects at length on a passage first drafted in MS 133 on 7 August 1946 and later selected for Part II of the Investigations in which Wittgenstein puts the expression “forms of life” – alternatively “facts of life” – alongside that of the “given” (gegebene).6

5

6

Cf. in this regard MS 142, 20: “Das Wort ‘Sprachspiel’ soll hier hervorheben, daß das Sprechen der Sprache eine Teilvorgang /Teil/ eines ist einer Form Tätigkeit oder einer Lebensform/. /ein Teilvorgang /Teil/ einer Tätigkeit der Tätigkeit …………… …….. / oder Lebensform ist./” A later version of this remark appears in § 23 of the Investigations, where Wittgenstein opted for the first two alternatives. Cf. MS 133, 28r: “Das hinzunehmende, gegebene – könnte man sagen – seien Lebensformen. /seien Tatasachen des Lebens./” Before making its way into MS 144, 102, the remark was incorporated by Wittgenstein in TS 229, 333, and published in the first volume of Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology (§ 630).

Introduction

17

It is exactly the given that Padilla Gálvez sees articulated in Wittgenstein with arithmetic, more specifically with how the rule of the real number expresses itself in the language of the number system. This, Padilla Gálvez argues, “forms the basis on which we can study the objective structures of form of life”, and this means rejecting the cultural approach. Joachim Schulte’s and António Marques’ contributions focus mainly on Wittgenstein’s later writings on philosophical psychology. Schulte investigates an interesting passage from MS 127 in which Wittgenstein writes that “[e]ven the devil in hell has one form of life” and that “the world would not be complete without it”.7 Schulte considers other compound formulations in the corpus containing the noun “life”, among them “way of life” (Lebensweise), “stencil of life” (Lebensschablone), “custom of life” (Lebensgepflogenheit) and “carpet” or “tapestry of life” (Lebensteppich). What he tries to show is that it is not clear whether Wittgenstein had a specific “concept of a form of life”. Schulte goes on to examine various passages where the expression occurs and concludes, albeit differently from Majetschak, that in most cases Wittgenstein certainly meant something closer to a “pattern of life”. It is in this way that Schulte reads for instance the remark from MS 118 referred to above, following Peter Winch’s translation: “The fact that life is problematic means that your life does not fit life’s shape. So you must change your life, and once it fits the shape, what is problematic will disappear.”8 The remark about the devil is thus interpreted as meaning that “irrespective of whether he is one or an entire community of devils”, as the standard reading would tend to admit, he “just is this form of life”, in the sense of a representation or personification. And such a form should be taken as “a pattern or model or stencil of life”, like the one we find characterized, Schulte says, “by the Mephisto figure in various versions of the Doctor Faust story”. The “one” in

7 8

The translation is Schulte’s in his paper, where he also quotes the German original. CV, p. 31. Cf. note 2 above.

18

Nuno Venturinha

Wittgenstein’s phrase therefore has, for Schulte, a twofold reading: the representativeness of “one figure of the Mephisto type” and its physiognomic “unity”. This representational aspect is the corner stone of Marques’ paper. For him, “a form of life is a representation whose essential role is to be found in the description of a human system or systems […] and in the designing of a global reference system of communication”. Furthermore, Marques notes, a form of life “is a representation which works as thought experiment, whose function consists of fixing the properties which identify a human form of life as such”. Marques then sheds light on the thought experiments we find in Wittgenstein’s psychological philosophy, which aim at clarifying “our specific form”. However, as Marques makes evident, these thought experiments can already be found in a certain way at the very beginning of the Investigations when Wittgenstein debates the Augustinian language or the builders’ language. They serve the purpose of showing that our form of life cannot be rejected but must be accepted as the primordial given. The last paper in the book, by Andrew Lugg, articulates Wittgenstein’s ruminations about reddish green with the nature of experience. It represents an exhaustive study of colour language and its grammar in Wittgenstein’s post-1929 texts, ranging from the paper “Some Remarks on Logical Form” to what has been published as Remarks on Colour. As stressed by Lugg, Wittgenstein was already interested in the logic of colour at the time of the Tractatus, and he continuously reflected upon the subject after resuming work on philosophy. Yet he did not maintain the same perspective of the linguistic monstrosity encapsulated in “reddish green”. But more importantly, Lugg claims, “we find that he neither defends a thesis […] nor ends up, despite initial appearances to the contrary, with any such thesis”. Indeed, “he investigates without substantial presuppositions how we talk and think about colour” disclosing our system of colour concepts, a system that must be recognized as standing “on its own two feet”. Lugg extracts some interesting conclusions from Remarks on Colour, namely that its author is “genuinely perplexed” whereas the author of the Investigations “clearly knows where he wants to

19

Introduction

end up”. Nevertheless, Lugg does not concur with those who see Remarks on Colour and the later writings on certainty and psychological concepts as evidence for a “third” Wittgenstein. What Lugg tries to indicate is that Wittgenstein “is not, as he is commonly portrayed, a philosophical theorist or, as he is alternatively sometimes regarded, a philosophical therapist”. He simply clarifies “the logic of colour” in order to eliminate conceptual confusion – an approach Lugg identifies throughout Wittgenstein’s career. This way of looking at things is reflected in the contributions that make up this volume. Each author observes Wittgenstein’s remarks on forms of life and experience from a different angle, offering possible lines of interpretation. It is not without relevance that Wittgenstein did not publish the book that should be seen in contrast to the Tractatus9 and this difficulty of arranging his thoughts “was not unconnected with the nature of the subject itself”, as he writes in his 1938 Preface to the Investigations, for “[t]his subject compels us to travel through the field of thought in all directions by a host of different routes”.10

9 Cf. MS 128, 51: “Philos. Untersuchungen im Gegensatz Abh. entgegengestellt.” 10 P, p. 187. Cp. PIr, p. 3.

der

zur Log. Phil.

Dialectic of Paradox in the Tractatus: Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard BARRY STOCKER

What connects Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard? We know that Wittgenstein read Kierkegaard with deep interest, but this paper will not try to construct the exact details of that influence. The paper will be concerned with a more general comparison of the Tractatus with some texts by Kierkegaard, in order to work out underlying philosophical connections, independently from questions of influence. The aim is to add to the understanding of both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein by examining where there are Kierkegaardian elements in Wittgenstein. These might or might not result from direct influence; they might arise from shared influences, they might arise by accident.1 Whatever the case is, we can learn about both from comparison of philosophical arguments, and this might help the work of detailed construction of influence. The task of comparing all of Wittgenstein’s philosophical work with that of Kierkegaard is excessive for one paper, so it’s just the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that will be considered on Wittgenstein’s side. On Kierkegaard’s side, it’s not possible to isolate texts, they are written to be read in an interactive way. It’s also the case that each Kierkegaard text is written in such an inwardly connected, dense, and singular way, that just mining his corpus for quotes is not going to give any sense of his achievement. The compromise in this case is to refer largely to Philosophical Fragments2 and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Frag1 2

Some information about Kierkegaard’s influence on Wittgenstein can be found in Janik and Toulmin 1973. Kierkegaard 1985.

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ments,3 the Kierkegaard texts most concerned with philosophical method, and the nature of philosophical argumentation, along with a few relevant comments on other texts. With regard to the existing literature on Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, the contributions of James Conant4 and of John Lippitt with Daniel Hutto, (largely a reaction to Conant), have been of particular interest.5 The view here is distinct from either that of Conant or Lippitt and Hutto, as Conant leans too much in the direction of asserting the most radical negation, and ironic suspension of the positions advanced by Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein; and Lippitt and Hutto lean too much in the direction of a teleology in which the end religious position obscures the importance of the positions established, and never completely eliminated, on the way. Both Conant and Lippitt and Hutto fail to allow for the importance of all the paradoxes at all points in Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. Before the discussion of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, there will be a consideration of L. E. J. Brouwer, with regard to his 1905 essay “Life, Art, and Mysticism”,6 in order to situate the Tractatus in relation to mysticism and logic. We can then see how much Kierkegaard is dealing with a relation between thought and experience, which is more concerned with varieties of experience, rather than with mysticism in itself. Wittgenstein refers to the mystical, and in some ways is closer to Brouwer, but it’s important to see how those comments, and comments in the Tractatus, about the limits of thought and language can also be situated in relation to Kierkegaard’s general notions of paradox in thought.7 Kierkegaard’s notions are present in the Tractatus, but it will be argued here that Wittgenstein in some ways covers them over with the more static abstracted notions of the mystic, which are maybe in part from Schopenhauer. Brouwer’s mathematical achievements make him a good point of reference for situating 3 4 5 6 7

Kierkegaard 1992. Conant 1989, 1992, 1996 and 1997. Lippitt and Hutto 1998. Brouwer 2004. A useful discussion of paradox in Kierkegaard can be found in Wahl’s (1949) classic overview of Kierkegaard’s life and philosophy.

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Wittgenstein, in relation to the issues of the experiential basis of mathematical truths, and experience at the limits of language, present in the Tractatus. We can see some of the connection between the mathematicallogical, and the aesthetic-ethical, in Wittgenstein through Brouwer. Brouwer’s work on mathematics and philosophy of mathematics, the mystic, and the appropriate ethics of life, connects him with both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. Though in Kierkegaard, we see more of the “ethics of life” than the mystical. It’s even a bit misleading to refer to the “mystic” in Kierkegaard, in that he does not write so much on the mystic itself, rather than more general notions of experience, but he certainly provides a way of situating it. A simple response to comparing Wittgenstein with Brouwer might be to say that the element of “life philosophy” in Brouwer separates him from Wittgenstein’s criticisms of metaphysics. However, that would be to take a few programmatic statements, e. g. TLP 6.53, as the end of Wittgenstein’s philosophical argument, which cannot be right. If we follow that train of thought, we would have to deny the influence of any kind of metaphysics on Wittgenstein, on the Vienna Circle, and any other philosopher or group of philosophers, that have announced an end to metaphysics. Not many would accept such a view, and the history of the Vienna Circle shows that assertions of freedom from metaphysics in all its forms do not last very long. It would be a tortuous reading of Wittgenstein that denied the influence of Schopenhauer on his philosophy, and to a large degree Schopenhauer anticipates Brouwer’s thoughts. Far from Wittgenstein leaping free from metaphysics in the Tractatus, it would be more apposite to say that it remains within metaphysics of a kind that leans towards Schopenhauer and the hope of bring an end to willing and individuation, e. g.: Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.8 8

TLP 5.633.

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Barry Stocker The philosophical self is not the human being, nor the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world – not a part of it.9

These propositions surely stand in the way of the supposition, however widespread, that Wittgenstein simply leaves metaphysics behind. These comments try to exclude metaphysics from philosophy, but in doing so give metaphysics a place in philosophy. As Wittgenstein says in the Preface, “the aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather – not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i. e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought)”.10 Therefore if we exclude metaphysics from philosophy, we have made it philosophical in philosophising on the topic. Is there a significant difference between, what Wittgenstein says about thought, and what he says about philosophy? That cannot be because philosophy is about thought, as this quotation from the Preface makes clear. We might have to distinguish between expressions of thought and thought itself, to avoid allowing in the unthinkable, but the propositions quoted above surely show that Wittgenstein did not always follow the distinction in the Tractatus, and TLP 6.54 strongly suggests that the whole book is caught up in the tension between limiting expression of thought and limiting thought itself. Kierkegaard offers advantages over Schopenhauer and Brouwer in thinking about the philosophical project of the Tractatus, because the innate ambivalence of the Tractatus about the status of thought is an issue for Kierkegaard in a way that it is not in Schopenhauer and Brouwer. In the latter two, there is a dogmatic desire for an end to the ambivalence of thought and language. In Brouwer’s case, there is a wish to escape through mathematics but with the qualification that even mathematics is only a limited escape.

9 TLP 5.641. 10 TLP, p. 3.

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Only in the very narrowly restricted domains of the imagination such as in the exclusively intellectual sciences – which are completely separated from the world of perception and therefore touch the least upon the essentially human – only there can mutual understanding be maintained for some time. There is little scope for understanding notions such as “equal” and “triangle”, but even then two different people will never feel them in exactly the same way.11

Brouwer’s essay is rather polemical and is not high level philosophy, but in some ways that makes it all the better suited to making us think about how very formal interests connect with mysticism, as can be seen in the quotation above. In Brouwer, the necessity of restricting the will in order to achieve mathematical truths feeds into his vision of enlightened humans abandoning individuating will, and abandoning all desires and possessions. An interest in mathematics leads to an awareness of truth which can with difficulty be expressed in language, and must lead away from language and sociability. Extreme states of asceticism become more and more natural to the individual concerned with truth. Truth is obscured by desires, by possessions, and only the kind of passivity achieved by mystics can allow truth to really appear. In this process the reasoning behind mathematics disappears, as that individual is exposed to inner reality beyond the activity of reasoning. On this path intellect itself is revealed as contradictory. To start with, he will make his intellect adapt and conform meekly and zealously to the habits and ideals of society, and he will listen carefully and wait patiently for the revelations of inner contradictions of that intellect. This revelation is not forced by him and therefore it will only appear when he reaches the ultimate consequences of philosophy and gets stuck as in the vertex of a cone. At that moment the illusion of the world evaporates and the self is revealed. From them onward science and reasoning will disappear from his life, recognised as the mere products of arbitrary limitation. He now only lives in the present moment, happily accepting his condition and his environment, reacting to it with equanimity and carefully waiting for any opportunity to escape from its oppressive force. […]

11 Brouwer 2004, p. 16.

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Barry Stocker He will go on to reach a state of ever greater solitude, poverty and immobility: the last that society will see of him is when he disappears – a hermit seeking the barren heath over lush but dull vegetation, seeking the night rather than the insipid light of day.12

There are themes recognizable from both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein here, such as contradictions of the intellect and the emergence of the self in reflecting on thought and its limits. What is important here is the difference between Kierkegaard’s concern with the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious in life; and the element of ascetic passive mysticism of Brouwer, which echoes Schopenhauer. In Philosophical Fragments IV, Kierkegaard notes that Christ refers to the birds living in the moment, but suggests that this is not something that can be strictly applied to humans.13 Kierkegaard notes that the moments of human experience contradict eternity, but suggests that humans have to live in the paradox, not withdraw from the passing of moments. Brouwer’s position is in line with Wittgenstein’s comments towards the end of the Tractatus about the separation between will and world, and various comments about logical form showing itself, without reference to our explanatory will. Brouwer’s comments about transcendent truths are less in line with Wittgenstein’s comments about the transcendent nature of ethics and aesthetics, the distinction between saying and showing, and the nature of the sub specie aeterni.14 In these points, Wittgenstein is closer to Kierkegaard, and is better able to cope with the philosophical paradoxes of the limits of language because of it. Brouwer argues that transcendent truths can be expressed, if only in limited numbers of works of genius. Brouwer’s placing of transcendent truths in the beyond of representation and than back in representation, has an unexamined ambiguity lacking in Wittgenstein’s 12 Ibid., p. 38. 13 Kierkegaard 1985, p. 56. 14 A useful discussion of Wittgenstein on language and transcendence can be found in Hodges 1990. A useful discussion of Wittgenstein on ethics and the limits of language can be found in McManus 2006. A useful discussion on will and ethics in the Tractatus can be found in Edwards 1982.

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attempts to define the limits of what can be said and represented. For Wittgenstein, in TLP 6.44 to 6.45, the mystic, or the eternal, is not just the abandonment of the intellect, it is something that thought can define though defining the world of thought. The discussion of Brouwer has identified points where his “mysticism” is not close to Wittgenstein, and where we can put Wittgenstein in the context of Kierkegaard’s philosophy of subjectivity’s self-relational existence, and the inseparable paradoxes of thought. There are various broad philosophical similarities between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. Both reject philosophical system building. Kierkegaard takes Hegel and Hegelians as the target here. Wittgenstein’s target is more “metaphysics” in general, some remarks about Idealism suggest that Kant, and perhaps the Neo-Kantians, were his most direct targets. Much of what Kierkegaard says could be taken as directed against all forms of Idealism, against all attempts to turn the world into something that can exist as ideas in the head, or the historical development of ideas. Despite the anti-Hegelianism, anti-Kantianism and anti-Idealism, both deal with paradoxes of thought which are at the heart of German Idealism. Wittgenstein’s concerns with the paradoxes of trying to represent representation are at the heart of German Idealism. The dialectical sections of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason are discussions of reason getting into contradictions when it goes beyond the empirical contents of understanding. Wittgenstein’s remarks about Idealist spectacles in TLP 4.0412 can be taken as directed against Kant. However, TLP 6.36111 makes favourable reference to Kant, in an unsourced reference to the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.15 Graham Priest has demonstrated the connections between the concerns of Kant and Hegel with Wittgenstein’s concerns with saying and showing, and the limits of thought, in Beyond the Limits of Thought.16 Unfortunately, he does not bring Kierkegaard into 15 For more detail about this, and other aspects of Kant’s influence on Wittgenstein, see Stocker 2004. 16 Priest 2002.

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the discussion, but he does deal with Heidegger, who is widely acknowledged to have been close to Kierkegaard in Being and Time, referring to him briefly but significantly. The main point at present, is that Priest has a strong argument for placing Wittgenstein’s concerns with limits of thought in the Tractatus, in the context of Kant and Hegel’s thoughts on infinity and limits. The Dialectic sections of Critique of Pure Reason, along with Hegel’s comments on bad infinity and absolute infinity, are themselves placed in a history going back to the Ancient Greeks. The antinomies of reason in Kant’s “Transcendental Dialectic”, and the general problems of Kant with the limits of thought, are further explained in relation to problems of infinity. What Priest approaches from the direction of mathematical infinity is approached in Kierkegaard, from the direction of finite in relation to infinite as absolute or eternal. It’s unfortunate that Priest has not drawn Kierkegaad into the scope of his “dialethism”, of a philosophical position which rests on the inevitability of inconsistency, paradox and contradiction, in formal systems, and in philosophy, since Kierkegaard worked on paradox as much as any philosopher, but we can still illuminate this discussion with reference to Priest’s work. Wittgenstein’s comments about scepticism resting on unreal doubts is in line with Kierkegaard’s comments on scepticism in Johannes Climacus, Or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.17 Wittgenstein’s comment is, Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.18

Wittgenstein’s point is about the asking of questions where there is no answer. There is a criterion offered for the circumstance in which there is no answer, that is the criterion of what cannot be said. In this case, the point where showing, manifesting itself, 17 In Kierkegaard 1985. 18 TLP 6.51.

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emerges is the point where questions stop. The implication is that philosophical scepticism has dealt with questions that cannot be answered, because they refer to the sphere that is the sphere of showing. What this presumably refers to is the field of questions about how language refers to reality, how words refer to things, how we know something exists outside us, whether scientific laws refer to natural reality, and so on. The Tractatus tries to preclude the sceptical questions of philosophy by precluding questions about philosophy, language, and the world, as a whole. One reason that TLP 6.54 defines the propositions as nonsensical is that does undermine that criterion in explaining it. Kierkegaard writes about doubt at various points, including the Preface to Fear and Trembling, indicating the centrality of this issue in his philosophy. What those Ancient Greeks, who after all did know a little about philosophy, assumed to be a task for a whole lifetime, because proficiency in doubting is not acquired in days and weeks, what the old veteran disputant attained, he who had maintained the equilibrium of doubt throughout all the specious arguments, who had intrepidly denied the certainty of the senses and the certainty of thought, who, uncompromising, had defied the anxiety of self-love and the insinuations of fellow feeling – with that everyone begins in our age.19

Kierkegaard starts from a different point than Wittgenstein’s apparent starting point in the Tractatus. Kierkegaard’s starting point is that the modern world is prone to the wrong kind of scepticism, as opposed to the Ancient Greeks. In the modern world, we think that we begin with doubt. That position might be blamed on Descartes, but Kierkegaard at least partly exonerates Descartes from such blame, arguing that Descartes worked for his scepticism. Kierkegaard presumably refers to the ways in which Meditations on First Philosophy, Discourse on Method, and Principles of Philosophy, reach a sceptical point of rejecting the evidence of the senses, on the basis of extended argument. Reasons are offered for claiming that the contents of the ideas we receive through the 19 Kierkegaard 1983, pp. 6 –7.

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senses could be mistaken, building up into an argument for doubting everything, and the hypothesis of a systematic deceiver. However, Kierkegaard finds Descartes attempt to find a new beginning for philosophy, and science, through doubt, to be misguided. We can look at his view of knowledge, as rooted in activity in various places. Kierkegaard looks at the dialectical paradoxes of doubt, working up to a final section on repetition: that is the relation between “ideality” and “reality”, that is the relation between repeated occurrences and unique occurrences. Johannes Climacus was published posthumously, but its writing appears to just precede Fear and Trembling and Repetition20 and follow Either/Or21 (all published in 1843), and we can see how the arguments about scepticism continue in these books, and to the end of his writing career. Kierkegaard gives reasons why we should not ask the most absolute sceptical questions. The reasons are external to the Tractatus but not in contradiction with it. These aspects of Kierkegaard take us outside the scope of the internal arguments of the Tractatus, but provide context. Why should Wittgenstein reject scepticism? One reason (but not the only reason) is probably that Kierkegaard provides such strong arguments for saying that philosophy does not need a sceptical base, that it cannot overthrow knowledge and start again. We cannot question knowledge as a whole, even though knowledge of external objects is a paradox, because that paradox is a condition of knowledge. The paradox that writing a book about the limits of philosophy must breach those limits, can be seen as an expression of that Kierkegaardian spirit, present in books like Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, but present in a particularly concise form in Johannes Climacus. Kierkegaard certainly provides insights into what Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus, about the impossibility of representing the relation between language and the world, and about the nonsensical nature of what he has written. Kierkegaard wrote a number of texts in which he takes the reader through ways of thinking 20 In Kierkegaard 1983, pp. 6–7. 21 Kierkegaard 1988.

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which need to be overcome, the reading of which should lead the reader to see that they do need to be overcome. Kiekegaard’s attempts to take his readers beyond the ethical stage are a critique of any claim to have a universal, non-paradoxical, reason. His attempts have been met with a surprising amount of misreading by commentators, particularly with regard to Either/Or II, which largely presents an ethical point of view, before the “Ultimatum” section which presents a religious discourse. Some have mistaken the ethical discourses of Judge William as Kierkegaard’s own, though a comparison of “Ultimatum” with William’s position, or contemplation of Kierkegaard’s use of irony should be enough to avoid that. Davenport and Rudd’s collection, Kierkegaard After MacIntyre22 leans in the direction of confusing William with Kierkegaard, for example; though the collection does contain many good papers from various points of view, so is certainly not just a one-sided misreading. Kierkegaard did write The Concept of Irony23 and did describe himself as the master of irony, and it is important to read Judge William’s representation of ethics with that in mind; and particularly important to get some distance from William’s verbose, lengthy and didactic letters. For the benefit of everyone who did not get the irony in Either/Or, Kierkegaard makes it clear in “A First and Last Explanation” at the end of Concluding Unscientific Postscript that William’s point of view is not his: “In Either/Or, I am just as little, precisely just as little, the editor Victor Eremita as I am the seducer or the Judge”.24 William does not achieve the religious perspective, which emerges from Kierkegaard’s use of dialectic, paradox, contradiction and their expressions through irony and humour. Kierkegaard does write some more direct Christian discourses, but these are better understood if we fully grasp the use of dialectic, and rhetoric, in his more aesthetic-philosophical works. These aspects of Kierkegaard are important in understanding Wittgenstein, not because what he is doing is the same as Kierke22 Davenport and Rudd 2001. 23 Kierkegaard 1989. 24 Kierkegaard 1992, vol. I, p. 626.

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gaard. We certainly won’t find references to Norse mythology and Mozart operas at the heart of Wittgenstein’s arguments; and we certainly won’t find reference to the nature of mathematics or logical operations in Kierkegaard. The basic seven propositions, and their branching out into sub-propositions, in the Tractatus, is a definite departure from the literary explorations of philosophical dialectic in Kierkegaard. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein’s movements between propositions parallel the ways in which Kierkegaard moves from sphere of life to sphere of life. Kierkegaard’s principal movements are from the aesthetic, to the ethical, to the religious,25 that is from the momentary experiences of the self, to the universal categories of experience, and then to the absolute experiences of the self, which is the self experiencing itself as absolute. These are not just moves between opaque forms of subjectivity. One way we should be careful about thinking of Kierkegaard, is as “subjectivist”, and we should definitely not see him as an “irrationalist”. Kierkegaard is a subjectivist in that he puts subjectivity at the centre of his philosophy; he is not a subjectivist in the sense that he denies the possibility of communication, or of knowledge of external objects. He certainly sees something paradoxical in the sharing of inward meanings, or the inner grasp of external objects, but that is not denying their force and reality. It is a reference to the way that experience must join and use, what more abstract thought tends to separate. Kierkegaard is arguing that we cannot give a complete explanation of experience without reference to paradox, including the transitions between three broad structures of experience. The three spheres of life in Kierkegaard are not a retreat into subjectivity, or the upwelling of a life force. They are the necessary structures of experience, or what Kierkegaard offers as necessary structures for a complete explanation of experience.26 The transitions between those structures of experience is paradoxical, but emerges from 25 For a useful discussion on language, paradox, and religion in Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, see Ferreira 1994. 26 Useful discussions of structure and stages in Kierkegaard’s philosophy can be found in Clair 1976; Dunning 1985.

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the paradoxes of staying within one sphere of experience. The aesthetic structure cannot deal with the continuity of the self over time, because it can only deal with it through the paradox of successive moments fusing into a continuity in time, which is fundamental to the ethical structure in a way that is oriented towards the universality of rules and laws. The continuity contradicts the succession of moments of time, so the movement from aesthetic to ethical must be paradoxical. The ethical structure cannot deal with the absoluteness of the self that has continuity over time. It’s structuring of the self through following rules cannot get at the existence of the self over time, that is a self which chooses to follow or not follow rules. The ethical structure of experience can only encounter the autonomous self as something that contradicts the application of universal rules. The application of universal rules is itself already creating contradictions, because it is an empirical fact that individuals follow different rules, and a philosophical necessity that there are different possible rules to follow. The relation of this Kierkegaardian dialectic, transition between structures through paradox, and contradiction, with the Tractatus is in some respects very remote. The discussion of the “will” seems to be precluded from philosophy in TLP 6.423 and 6.43, which might seem to consign a large part of Kierkegaard’s thought to mere psychology. Kierkegaard is dealing in a systematic confusion of psychology and philosophy by the standards of those two propositions, as can be seen by looking at some book titles: Repetition: A Venture in Experimenting Psychology, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. Those propositions appear to reduce the will to the purely ineffable, when it is the subject of ethics. However, this aspect of the Tractatus must be taken together with the performative aspects of the Tractatus, which is to lead the reader to stop willing, and reach the state of TLP 6.52 where there are no more questions to be asked. This owes more to Schopenhauer and Brouwer than to Kierkegaard.

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However, we get important illuminations of the Tractatus from some broad comparisons with Kierkegaard’s writings. If we think about the transitions in the Tractatus as it moves from “The world is all that is the case” to “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence”, we can see that though those are not Kierkegaardian thoughts, the transitions between them have a Kierkegaardian dialectic. In the movement from TLP 1 to 2, we get a move from what is the case as the world to what is the case as a fact. That movement includes the transition from the totality of the world to the way it is made up of independent states of affairs, which is a movement to a perspective that cannot be held with the first perspective in a completely consistent way, because we cannot be looking at the wholeness of the whole and the distinctness of the parts at the same time. In the movement from TLP 2 to 3, there is a movement from fact to thought, and we cannot have the fact and the thought as the perspective at the same moment. The movement from TLP 3 to 4 is the movement from thought to proposition. A proposition contains a possible reality that disguises the logical picture of facts in thought. This is a particularly subtle transition, but is a transition between two ways of dealing with objects which cannot be held simultaneously. The transition from TLP 4 to 5 is the transition from propositions to truth-functions of elementary propositions. Philosophical thought cannot be equally structured by propositions, as possible reality and propositions as formal relation, at the same time. The transition from TLP 5 to 6 is the transition from truth-functions of elementary propositions to the general form of a truth-function. Though, in both cases, we are dealing with propositions, we are dealing with different levels of analysis which cannot be used simultaneously. The transition, from TLP 6 to 7, is the transition from propositions, as general form of a truth-functions, to the point where we cannot use propositions: clearly a different perspective from the formal analysis of the proposition. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein works through the problem of trying to represent representation. He tries to get the reader to see that the way language, and logic, connect with the world is not something that can be made explicit, through various pseudo-

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attempts at explicit theories. The attempt at a non-metaphysical discussion of mathematics and logic, in the terms of Frege and Russell, is apparently different from Kierkegaard’s use of the dialectic. However, the same argumentative process is taking place in Kierkegaaard, showing the impossibility of representing language and the world as a whole, of representing the way in which subjectivity has a world: “It [philosophy] must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought”.27 There are points where Kierkegaard is concerned with the absolute limit of consciousness and philosophy, where he comes close to Wittgenstein’s formulations in the final propositions of the Tractatus.28 The paradoxical passion of the understanding is, then, continually colliding with this unknown, which certainly does not exist. The understanding does not go beyond this; yet in its paradoxicality the understanding cannot stop reaching it and being engaged with it, because wanting to express its relation to it by saying that this unknown does not exist will not do, since just saying that involves a relation. But what, then, is this unknown, for does not its being the god merely signify merely signify to us that it is the unknown. To declare that it is the unknown because we cannot know it, and that even if we could know it we could not express it, does not satisfy the passion, although it has correctly perceived the unknown as frontier. But a frontier is expressly the passion’s torment, even though it is also its incentive. And yet it can go no further, whether it risks a sortie through via negationis or via eminentiae.29 27 TLP 4.114. 28 Bruce Howes (2001) compares this passage with the Tractatus in his doctoral thesis. Howes’ approach is different from that of the present paper which was largely written before chancing upon his thesis. He provides evidence that Wittgenstein was influenced in the Tractatus by this passage, along with further evidence of direct influence. Howes concentrates on metaphysics and the mystic, and on Kierkegaard’s reaction to Plato. The passage in Kiekegaard is also discussed in Lippitt and Hutto 1998. 29 Kierkegaard 1985, p. 44. “The Absolute Paradox” in Philosophical Fragments or A Fragment of Philosophy (44/IV 211–212). “Philosophical Crumbs or a Crumb of Philosophy” may be a better translation of Philosophiske Smuler eller en Smule Philosophi.

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In some respects, this passage brings Kierkegaard closer to the element of the quietistic mysticism of Schopenhauer and Brouwer in the Tractatus. There is the emphasis on subjective understanding reaching its limit at a point where we might find God, anticipating TLP 6.432. Kierkegaard just mentions “the god” indicating his reservations about bringing God under philosophical discourse. We cannot get beyond this frontier of suffering by means of standard theology. The theological options are: via negationis, the negative way, defining God by what he is not; and via eminentiae, defining God by attributing human qualities to him, in the most perfect form. Neither of these will end the passion of the paradox of the understanding. This passage might be deployed in favour of a “mystic” and “Christian” reading of Wittgenstein. That kind of reading should at least be qualified by the rejection of two theological passages out, and by the way that Kierkegaard brings this into a discussion of knowledge, and the paradoxes of knowledge. If this is mystic, it is certainly less quietistic than mysticism is often understood to be, and distinct from the kind of contemplative mysticism desired by Schopenhauer and Brouwer. The obvious place in the Tractatus to bring in this passion or discussion is the end, but it is not the end of Philosophical Fragments, which is like an introduction to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. This is ironic naming, since the Postscript is several times longer than the Fragments. Kierkegaard has criticisms in The Concept of Irony with regard to Romanic Irony, the irony that destroys the subject behind irony because every form of existence of that subject is negated. However, his view of subjectivity is deeply informed by irony, by the way that the subject keeps finding another perspective which negates the previous perspectives. The structuring of his thought round the three spheres of existence brings a form of irony into his thought. The irony of the aesthetic is negated by the ethical, but also fused with it, and the religious must be understood with regard to the aesthetic as well as the ethical. An ironic interplay of the three spheres emerges, which confirms that subjectivity is a paradox, but does not dissipate subjectivity in the way Kierkegaard attributes to

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Friedrich Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, and their apparent philosophical precursor Fichte. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is both informed by this, and falls back from this, which means that an account of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein which sees Wittgenstein as the expression of Kierkegaard’s influence is likely to be inadequate. The “later Wittgenstein” takes up themes of the paradoxes within language use and rule following that have some connection with Kierkegaard. However, the Philosophical Investigations are no more a “Kierkegaardian” text than the Tractatus, as it lacks the structures of experience and exploration of subjectivity present in Kierkegaard.30

30 For discussion of late Wittgenstein in relation to Kierkegaard, see Creegan 1989.

Cries, False Substitutes and Expressions in Image1 MARIA FILOMENA MOLDER

When the wise man points at the moon, the idiot looks at the finger. Buddhist proverb

1 I would like to begin by explaining how I see Wittgenstein in relationship to philosophy. For me, philosophy is a contemplative activity that characterizes itself by considering the very act of falling into oneself conceptually. In order to become a human being, no matter how one does it, no matter when one does it, all of us must fall into ourselves some day. But not all human beings make the falling into oneself their own conceptual object; only those who have dedicated their time to that which came to be known as philosophy. Even though falling into oneself is something that people do take into consideration in the arts and poetry, it is not taken properly as a conceptual object, but rather as something to be realized and produced, and because of this it becomes immediately absorbed in its very expression. (Dichten, as we will see later, has to do with this kind of absorption of the inside by the outside, a kind of musicality, as in the current sentence “in my heart I understood”). In philosophy, the conceptual 1

One should read the present essay as part of a research in progress. Some of its final passages may be found, albeit slightly rephrased, in Molder 2010a and 2010b.

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consideration is likely to become an expression as well, and, therefore, as we well know, it has turned into a literary genre. But here the link between the concept and its expression is recurrently problematic.

2 Wittgenstein always nurtured, despite doing so in several degrees, a critical relationship, if not a suspicious one, towards the consideration of philosophy as a literary genre, especially regarding the forms, stabilized by transmission, that such a literary genre has taken on, namely, theories, systems and even, in a particular way, certain philosophical concepts and problems. In his Tractatus,2 Wittgenstein steers this suspiciousness of philosophy as a literary genre towards language.3 This suspicion towards language is not exclusive to Wittgenstein; it has been shared by some of his contemporaries and countrymen, for instance, and just to mention some of the most remarkable, Hugo von Hofmannsthal (e. g. Ein Brief ) and Karl Kraus (e. g. Sprüche). This is a time when mediation became a critical object, when what was pointed out was the deficiency of language, its problematic relationship with that to which it refers, with that to which it allows one to reach. It seems to me that this suspicion of language is related to a kind of nostalgia (which would be trans2 3

Due to its style and the coinage of its key-concepts, the Tractatus will be quoted in its original language. TLP 6.53 Die richtige Methode der philosophie wäre eingentlich die: Nichts zu sagen, als was sich sagen lässt, also Sätze der Naturwissenschaft – also etwas, was mit Philosophie nichts zu tun hat […]. TLP 4.0031 Alle Philosophie ist “Sprachkritik”. […] TLP 4.112 Der Zweck der Philosophie ist die logische Klärung der Gedanken. Die Philosophie ist keine Lehre, sondern eine Tätigkeit. […]

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lated, in the future, into many forms for Wittgenstein) for words not being objects along with uneasiness towards language being a mediation system.

3 How does Wittgenstein see language in this work? He sees it as a set of representative facts, images in propositions, which by imagetic [bildlich] projection construct a world, a set of all facts.4 This means that under this point of view, the fact is mute. Muteness comes from the wholly constructed character of the image [das Bild]. On the other hand, the supreme overcoming of such muteness (which becomes clear by the nonsense of some propositions, that is to say, the propositions which do not represent for they lack an image) leads to a form of beatitude, revealed by the transmutation of muteness brought about by an epoché of language, which opens the space for silence.5 During his later years, 4

5

TLP TLP TLP TLP

1 1.1 2.141 3.11

Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist. Die Welt ist der Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge. Das Bild ist eine Tatsache. Wir benützen das sinnlich wahrnehmbare Zeichen (Laut- oder Schriftzeichen, etc.) des Satzes als Projektion der möglichen Sachlage. Die Projektionsmethode ist das Denken des SatzSinnes. TLP 4.021 Der Satz ist ein Bild der Wirklichkeit […]. TLP 4.023 […] Der Satz konstruiert eine Welt mit Hilfe eines logischen Gerüstes […]. TLP 4.0312 Die Möglichkeit des Satzes beruht auf dem Prinzip der Vertretung von Gegenständen durch Zeichen […]. TLP 6.521 Die Lösung des Problems des Lebens merkt man am Verschwinden dieses Problems. (Ist nicht dies der Grund, warum Menschen, denen der Sinn des Lebens nach langen Zweifeln klar wurde, warum diese dann nicht sagen konnten, worin dieser Sinn bestand.). TLP 6.522 Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist das Mystische.

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from the 1930s onwards, on the contrary, facts begin to speak, and we reach the point in which Wittgenstein declares: “Nothing is so difficult as doing justice to the facts” (PO, pp. 128–129). In other words, the fact is naturally self-expressive. Any philosophical effort is found precisely in not annihilating this self-expressiveness.

4 But let us go back to the Tractatus, in which the muteness of the fact finds a place. That which matters the most to Wittgenstein is neither a fact nor is it describable through language, because it is something out of this world in image. Not in the sense that there is another world beyond this one, but in the sense that our point of view has been altered and that that change implies an imaginative detachment from the world. What matters the most is not within the world, seen as a set of all the facts, describable by the whole set of propositions in image, which are but other facts – although endowed with representative power – describing that same world. What matters the most to Wittgenstein is not in the world and is not in the language that allows for the description of that world. The generating element of the proposition (more often than not identified with the proposition itself ) is called, as we well know, Bild, image, figure or picture.6 TLP 6.54

TLP 6

TLP TLP TLP TLP

Meine Sätze erläutern dadurch, dass sie der, welcher mich versteht, am Ende als unsinnig erkennt, wenn er durch sie – auf ihnen – über sie hinausgestiegen ist. (Er muss sozusagen die Leiter wegwerfen, nachdem er auf ihr aufgestiegen ist). Er muss diese Sätze überwinden, dann sieht er die Welt richtig. 7 Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. 2.1 Wir machen uns Bilder der Tatsachen. 2.12 Das Bild ist ein Modell der Wirklichkeit. 2.141 Das Bild ist eine Tatsache. 2.1512 Es ist wie ein Masstab an die Wirklichkeit angelegt.

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5 In summary, for Wittgenstein Bilder are not able to be models of anything that matters to him. Thus what matters to him is not a fact, is not part of the world and it is not represented by any image in proposition. What matters to him is only liveable, since the only possible approach to that which does matter to him is an intimate experience, a sort of harmony, which he calls a mystical feeling. None of this concerns language. Quite the contrary, the man who has found harmony within the world has transmuted the world of facts into “his world”, that is, a world that is not describable through propositions by imagetic projection.7 The difference between the world and my world is striking and problematic. To be exact, within the framework of the Tractatus there is no image that allows me to approach my world, my life, my intimacy, and the only access, a purely sentimental one, has no communitarian form whatsoever, at least not a linguistic one, which explains the very decisive pressure of solipsism in that text.8

7

8

TLP 5.63 TLP 5.641

Ich bin meine Welt. (Der Mikrokosmos.) […] Das Ich tritt in die Philosophie dadurch ein, dass die “Welt meine Welt ist”. Das philosophische Ich ist nicht der Mensch, nicht der menschliche Körper, oder die menschliche Seele, von der die Psychologie handelt, sondern das metaphysische Subjekt, die Grenze – nicht ein Teil – der Welt. TLP 5.621 Die Welt und das Leben sind Eins. TLP 5.62 […] Was der Solipsismus nämlich meint, ist ganz richtig, nur lässt es sich nicht sagen, sondern es zeigt sich […]. TLP 6.431 Wie auch beim Tod die Welt sich nicht ändert, sondern aufhört. See also TLP 5.64.

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6 As Ingeborg Bachmann says, this is a very disturbing vision for what matters the most to us is out of our reach, while humans who speak and live with each other and come from other human beings, etc. These are not her exact words. She says: “there is no bitter proposition in the Tractatus than that which affirms that God does not reveal himself in the world”.9 I think that “God does not reveal himself in the world” and the feeling that my intimate experience does not reveal itself in this same world are able to coincide, for God and my intimate experience entirely exceed the conditions for the description of the world and are contents of a metamorphosis of the world into a “limited totality”, i. e. an inward figure.10 We shall return to this point when we deal with the “Lecture on Ethics”.

7 In the Tractatus, das Bild in proposition is a model, a paradigm for reaching reality, whose chief matrix is of a double nature, both mechanical – we cannot forget that Wittgenstein studied engineering, as did Musil and Broch among other contemporary countrymen – and performative.11 Let us spend some time on the 9 Cf. Bachmann 1982. 10 TLP 6.432 […] Gott offenbart sich nicht in der Welt. TLP 6.41 Der Sinn der Welt muss ausserhalb ihrer liegen […]. TLP 6.45 Die Anschauung der Welt sub specie aeterni ist ihre Anschauung als – begrenztes – Ganzes. Das Gefühl der Welt als begrenztes Ganzes ist das Mystische. 11 TLP 6.343 Die Mechanik ist ein Versuch, alle wahren Sätze, die wir zur Weltbeschreibung brauchen, nach Einem Plane zu konstruieren. TLP 4.0311 Ein Name steht für ein Ding, ein anderer für ein anderes Ding und untereinander sind sie verbunden, so stellt das Ganze – wie ein lebendes Bild – den Sachverhalt vor.

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latter. The lebendes Bild finds its origin in a Baroque technique, that of the “tableaux vivants”, a theatrical expression, in which every concept (truth, justice, calamity, and so on) would be played by a character according to the precepts of the allegorical method as a translation of a pictorial scene. (We may recall the “tableaux vivants” in Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften.) Now, we find in the lebendes Bild a trace of that dramatic action as in the Baroque “tableau vivant”. It is very telling that one finds in the Tractatus performative underpinnings, which will have decisive consequences when Wittgenstein refers to the simile of the Spiel. In truth, besides its playful dimension, or better still, in connection to it, Spiel also has a theatrical value, in the oldest sense of the word, as the texture of the characters acting in relationship with one another. (This is not absolutely clear in the Portuguese “jogo”, but it is nearer to the English “play”, especially in the related phrasal verb forms.) Even though Wittgenstein did not develop this idea explicitly in the Tractatus, or in any other subsequent writing, I would argue that the attempt (between tendency and method) of seeing in each thing a face, following as it were a principle of personification (about which he speaks, for instance, in PO, pp. 126–127), is a long-range reverberation of such a matrix of the Bild, as we can see in Philosophical Investigations (2009), “Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment”, § 119: Here is useful to introduce the concept of a picture-object [Bildgegenstandes]. For instance

would be a “picture-face” [“Bildgesicht”]. In some respects I engage with it as with human face. I can study its expression, can react to it as to the expression of the human face. A child can talk to picture-man [Bildmenschen] or picture-animal [Bildtier], can treat them as it treat dolls.

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8 In short, Wittgenstein reasons that in order to find himself with that which matters the most to him, he must leave this world as a set of all facts. At the same time I understand such a feeling as the expression of the identification between the aesthetical and the ethical plan (one and the same thing, according to Wittgenstein12), which means that a contemplative gaze was taken in, a gaze that implies to jump out of the world, that is to say, “to see things sub specie aeterni”, to feel the world as a “begrenztes Ganze”. Paradoxically, it was that gaze through which he approached his intimacy. In principle, none of this would allow one to reach the ethnological point of view of maturity. However, the concept of Bild in a proposition such as lebendes Bild (“One name stands for one thing…”), the intuition of “I am my life” or “I am my world”, the intuition that ethics and aesthetics are one, predict possible changes towards the ethnological point of view – a variation of the sub specie aeterni perspective, as we shall see. That is, we can only say this because Wittgenstein has written many other texts in which we can recognize a change, or a rereading of some of the Tractatus’ key concepts – and its changed configuration is prone to provide us with a good foundation to introduce his mature point of view.

9 Whatever the case may be, the suspiciousness towards the mediations (transformed in the traditional speech of philosophy into idolized objects, deceiving concepts, illusory comprehensions) upon which the relationship between propositions and “my world” 12 TLP 6.421

Es ist klar, dass sich die Ethik nicht aussprechen lässt. Die Ethik ist transzendental. (Ethik und Aesthetik sind Eins).

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is established, lead Wittgenstein to reject the legitimacy of the similes (Gleichnisse) of ethical and religious nature, which becomes very clear in “A Lecture on Ethics”, as in the following passage: […] all religious terms seem […] to be used as similes or allegorically [“God is our father”, for instance]. […] But a simile must be the simile for something. And if I can describe a fact by means of a simile I must also be able to drop the simile and to describe the facts without it. Now in our case as we try to drop the simile and simply to state the facts which stand behind it, we find that there are no such facts. And so, what at first appeared to be a simile now seems to be mere nonsense.13

In this text, Wittgenstein takes a simile as a fact-replacing image. Therefore, and in principle, if we dropped this image we should have the fact, which stands behind it. But it is evident that dropping the image leaves us with no fact at all. Behind the image lies nothing; similes are but false substitutes.

10 According to Wittgenstein, behind the simile “God is our father” should be a fact, God himself. By dropping the image, we would have the fact. It does not sound convincing. Let us remember that according to the Tractatus doctrine (and still acting over the conference) we only recognize as fact that which is describable through another fact with a representative power, that is to say, an image in proposition. Nevertheless, behind the simile, no matter how ordinary it may be, no matter how precise its analogical ratio is, which can be analysed, there is never a fact, just a yearning for understanding (sometimes an infinite one), a tension that sometimes can never be loosened in any way. Although “God is our father” implies an analogical system, analysing its ratio will 13 PO, pp. 42–43.

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know no bounds, for it presupposes a vision whose origin lies in an affinity, that one between father and son, which presupposes a constellation of affects, emotions and actions that can not be fully explained away by the analysis of facts.

11 We witness here powerlessness by Wittgenstein. He is powerless to understand what is at stake with religious images. Nonetheless, such incomprehension will become extremely fruitful, for this resistance to the constitution of the symbol through analogy is not only blindness but also an admonition ad se ipsum whose corollary is the overcoming of the Gleichnis, understood as an analogical structure of mediation, through the bildlicher Ausdruck. In our conclusion, we shall deal with this contrast. Moreover, we can ask ourselves, are there any similes that are not “false substitutes”? Let’s not answer that just yet.

12 Now I would like to present briefly some aspects of Goethe’s criticism about philosophy in order to create a path to the morphological point of view (and from there to Wittgenstein’s ethnological point of view). Goethe is not a philosopher. He never wanted to be one: he thought he was naturally ungifted for philosophy, as in his own words: “he did not have the necessary organs for philosophy”.14 He was very critical of philosophy, yet at the same time feeling a true esteem for it.15 14 “Bedeutende Förderniss durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort”, in Zur Morphologie, II, 1 (Goethe 1982, vol. 13, p. 37). 15 Cf. Die Farbenlehre § 716 (Goethe 1982, vol. 13, p. 482).

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The philosophical schools, as history teach us, suffer generally the damages of using most of the times […] only unilateral similes, with the purpose of dominating the wholeness of the whole […] This way the objects shall never be comprehended.16

Goethe’s healthy distrust of philosophy is the same kind of healthy distrust that we find in Wittgenstein after the 1930s. A distrust in relationship to the one-sidedness of philosophy: to the propositions that bewitch understanding,17 to the theories (which, because they ignore their own one-sidedness, are but false),18 that compel reality to adapt itself to them, even if it entails enormous disfigurations: “A main cause of philosophical diseases – a one-sided diet: one nourishes one’s thinking with only one kind of example” (PIr § 593). Goethe’s distrust is obviously favoured by his poetic gift, but it also finds a sound foundation in his activities of observation and description of natural forms, which never abated throughout the entirety of his life.19

13 Goethe’s morphology is a science with no object-filled field of its own, and it does not constitute (in the Kantian sense) its own object.20 It is a science based upon the conviction that “facts are already 16 Materialen zur Geschichte der Farbenlehre (Goethe 1982, vol. 14, pp. 105–106). 17 “The propositions which one comes back again and again as if bewitched – these I should like to expurge from philosophical language”, OC § 31. 18 Cf. PO, p. 118: “none of them [the religious views of Augustine] was in error, except when he set for a theory”. 19 The relationship between Goethe’s poetic gift and the observation and description of forms is not secondary in any way. Anyone who wishes to understand Goethe’s literary œuvre will fail when excluding his activities as a nature observer and scholar, as T. S. Eliot has shown brilliantly in his acceptance speech of the Goethe prize, delivered at Hamburg University, May 1955. Cf. “Goethe as the Sage”, in Eliot 1979, pp. 207–227. 20 Cf. “Betrachtung über Morphologie überhaupt” (Goethe 1982, vol. 13, pp. 123–127).

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theory”.21 Behind facts there is nothing to discover, for all facts “speak to us”.22 They are self-expressions, and we can only find a path towards them by paying an indefatigable attention to them. No prior method whatsoever can replace such attention. To a certain extent, Wittgenstein will remember, as it were, this idea by Goethe: it is through attention to the facts that he will attempt to find his way towards them. This is something we can perceive for instance in PIr § 654: “Our mistake is to look for an explanation where we ought to regard the facts as ‘proto-phenomena’ [Urphänomene]. That is, where we ought to say: this is the language-game that is being played”.23

14 In his last texts, facts – certain beliefs, rites and uses of language – are not seen as instantiations of abstract universals but rather as variations of forms of life that allow us to see those very same forms. These variations are named by Wittgenstein games, Spiele.24 In “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough” in particular, Wittgenstein shows us in the simplest of ways what it means to fall into oneself (which is only possible within the framework of a form of life): one day, the man who had lived near a forest since his birth discovers precisely that. Wittgenstein calls this the awakening of intelligence, which is not precisely a corroboration of an affinity 21 Cf. Maxima 488 (Goethe 1982, vol. 12, p. 432). 22 Cf. Farbenlehre, Preface (Goethe 1982, vol. 13, p. 315). 23 See also, for instance, OC § 156: “In order to make a mistake, a man must already judge in conformity with mankind”. 24 PIr § 7: “[…] We can also think of the whole process of using words in (2) as one of those games by means of which children learn their native language [Muttersprache]. I will call these games ‘language-games’ [‘Sprachspiele’] and will sometimes speak of a primitive language as a languagegame […] I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the activities into which it is woven, as ‘language-game’”.

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but the finding that something which was familiar has become strange. It is apparent that this strangeness stems from affinity, from familiarity between the forest and the human being. It implies, however, a severance from it that allows a subsequent reunion at a superior level. The invention of rites and myths, as well as philosophical problems, lies precisely at this point: It was not a trivial reason, for really there can have been no reason, that prompted certain races of mankind to venerate the oak tree, but only the fact that they and the oak were united in a community of life, and thus that they arose together not by choice, but rather like the flea and the dog. (If fleas developed a rite, it would be based on the dog). One could say that it was not their union (the oak and the man) that has given rise to these rites, but in certain sense their separation. For the awakening of the intellect occurs with a separation from the original soil, the original basis of life […].25

15 In this context we must consider now another kind of simile – similes which are not false substitutes, similes that do not fool us but actually “refresh the intellect”.26 In other terms: “a new word is like a fresh seed thrown on the ground of the discussion”.27 Furthermore, one must bear in mind Wittgenstein’s avowal about what he is really doing in philosophy: the search for these similes. “What I invent are new similes [neue Gleichnisse]”.28 “And above all these similes interwoven in the dramatic structure of

25 PO, pp. 138–139. See also pp. 128–129. 26 CV, MS 105, 73, 1929, p. 3: “A good simile refreshes the intellect”. We may notice how near this date is to the redaction of the “Lecture on Ethics”. 27 CV, MS 107, 82, 1929, p. 4. See also CV, MS 137, 140a, 4.1.1949, p. 89: “There are remarks that sow, & remarks that reap”. 28 CV, p. 16. Cf. also CV, MS 134, 181, 27.6.1947, p. 71: “The labour pains at the birth of new concepts”.

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the ‘fictional concepts’”.29 However, this class of similes will also be defeated by the bildlicher Ausdruk, as we shall see.

16 Let us take a moment to focus on this second meaning of Gleichnis (which he also refers to, now and then, as Bild), which bears a remarkable heuristic fertility, particularly in its most emblematic case – that of the concept of Sprachspiel. The image that underlies this concept is not an ordinary image, but an image “of our choice”, of Wittgenstein’s choice, which develops itself within an atmosphere that is not liable to be limited to a simple listing of the common traits of all games or at least of the maximum number of games: “[…] we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities in the large and in the small” (PIr § 66). It is the respect for the very richness of the image which supports the concept of language-game’s fertility and avoids this very concept from being restricted to an exercise of induction. In its turn, the generating matrix of the image is the experience of learning to speak (as seen in the first paragraphs of Philosophical Investigations). This is not by chance, for such an experience belongs to the dramatic genre30 (whose structure we have already pointed out). Perhaps it is a good thing to remember at this point a sentence that Goethe wrote in a letter to Madame von Stein (3 March 1785) just before he travelled to Italy: “the Causa finalis of the 29 CV, MS 137, 78b, 24.10.1948, p. 85: “Nothing is more important though than the construction of fictional concepts, which will teach us to understand our own”. 30 CV, MS 119, 146, 21.10.1937, p. 36: “The origin & the primitive game is a reaction; only from this can the more complicated forms grow. Language – I want to say – is a refinement, ‘in the beginning was the deed’ [a quotation from Goethe’s Faust: Im Anfang war die Tat]”. See also PIr § 457: “Yes; meaning something is like going up to someone”.

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world and of human action is dramatic poetry”.31 There is no evidence that Wittgenstein ever read this letter, but its atmosphere seems to cast its shadow over what the philosopher wrote about the language-games, as well as over the quasi-concepts, in which perception and thought look for one another mutually (cf. PPF, xi). Consequently, the tendency to see in each object a face, using, as it were, a principle of personification, is a reverberation, that is, less an influence of Goethe than a familiar community with him. (Let us remember the concept of Bildgesicht already mentioned.) The simile as false substitute has dissipated itself in the simile that liberates intelligence, preserving the resistance against the rigidity and the idolatry of images (the ones responsible for so much “bewitchment”). Nevertheless, in both cases they are images of our choice. And this particular feature is shared also by the images in the propositions developed in the Tractatus.

17 There are similes born out of a more or less analysable comparison. For instance, the leg of a table is wholly analysable. But the presentation of language as game, and especially of God as a father, are not wholly analysable. Furthermore, there is yet another class of images that are not based on comparison (or, as in the case of the Tractatus, by projection), that are not images “of our choice”. These are images acting even more deeply than the ones which liberate the understanding. This is, for me, the most outstanding discovery about images by Wittgenstein. Its matrix is the inseparability of the inside and the outside (a subject of both Goethe and Hamann32), expunging all the rigid mediations. 31 Goethe 1988, vol. 1, p. 473. 32 Cf. “Bedeutende Fördernis”, in Goethe 1988, Vol. 1, and Maxima 58 (which is in fact a quotation of Hamann), in Goethe 1982, vol. 12, p. 373.

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This matrix appears quite often as a physiognomy. Ultimately, the resistance against mediations (which, as we have mentioned before, turn into idols and “bewitch” our understanding) is renewed here in the form of a vision of an intimacy between the inside and the outside, which is embodied in an understanding of the relationships between body and soul, relationships unsusceptible to analysis. In Wittgenstein’s words, they rest upon a “tacit presupposition”.33

18 In the motif of the cry as an expression brought about by pain, recurrently proposed by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations, we may find an ensemble of conclusive clues about what is at stake in the “tacit presupposition”. When someone cries with pain there are three elements involved: the experience of pain, the communication of pain and the acknowledgment of that communication by someone else: “[…] Just try – in a real case – to doubt someone else’s fear or pain” (PIr § 303). And so, compassion about it is a form of conviction that someone else is in pain.34 If, as Wittgenstein argues, a cry cannot be called a description since it is more primitive than a description, there are transitions between a cry and a description so that a cry may offer us the

33 “[…] Then playing our language-game always rests on a tacit presupposition” (PPF § 31). This tacit presupposition is one of the best touchstones of the impossibility of understanding what a language-game is from inductive reasoning (through which a general concept of game would arise). 34 PIr § 287: “How am I filled with compassion [Mittleid] for this human being? How does it come out what the object of my compassion is? (Compassion, one may say, is a form of being convinced that someone else is in pain)”. Translation modified.

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possibility of describing someone’s inner life [Seelenleben].35 This implies the refusal of the causality of some immaterial, occult system, the refusal of the possibility of separation of expression (seen as an illusory external under the substantial suspiciousness of the so-called “appearances”) in favour of sensation (understood as a reified internal) as well as implying the conviction that the expression of pain plays a heuristic and operative role, whether the response is a sedative or a compassionate gaze.36 In the framework of the visual experience of aspects, Wittgenstein makes a distinction between the continuous vision that originates the report and the sudden vision that is expressed through an exclamation.37 He also adds, granting us something crucial for our interpretation, that exclamation “is related to the experience as a cry is to pain”. And so the cry of pain could be considered as a model to understand what the “sudden illumination” [Aufleuchten, “lighting up”] may be: it is also forced from us (the terms are those of Wittgenstein), and it can also be communicated and shared by us.38 35 PPF § 82: “[…] a cry which cannot be called a description, which is more primitive than any description, for all that serves as a description of the inner life [des Seelenlebens]”. PPF § 83: “A cry is not a description. But there are intermediate cases [Übergänge]. And the words ‘I am afraid’ may approximate more, or less, to being a cry. They may come quite close to this and also be very far removed from it”. And also, among a large number of possible quotations, PIr § 282 (pain and compassion), PIr § 286 (the inaccurate controversy about asking if it is the body the one who feels pain), PIr § 421 (the forged paradoxes about the relationship between tangible and intangible). 36 PPF § 30: “A doctor asks: ‘How is he feeling’. The nurse says: ‘He is groaning’. A report on his behaviour. But need there be any question for them whether the groaning is really genuine, is really the expression of anything? May they not, draw the conclusion ‘If he groans, we must give him more analgesic’ without suppressing a middle term? […]”. 37 See also PPF § 118. 38 PPF § 138: “I look at an animal; someone asks me: ‘What do you see?’ I answer: ‘A rabbit’. – I see a landscape; suddenly a rabbit runs past. I exclaim: ‘A rabbit!’ Both things, both the report and the exclamation, are expressions of perception and of visual experience. But the exclamation is so in a different sense from the report: it is forced from us. – It stands to the experience as a cry to pain”.

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Here we have a wonderful exercise in what Wittgenstein affirms to be his task within philosophy: “to find new similes”. Like the cry, words can also be forced from us, as for instance, “to effect a renunciation or to confess a weakness”, i. e. “words are also deeds” (PIr § 546). At the same time, Wittgenstein calls our attention to a false analogy one must avoid: “Misleading parallel: a cry, an expression of pain – a sentence, an expression of thought” (PIr § 317). In the first instance he is referring to the immediacy between the inside and the outside, with which any disjunctive analysis would be at loss, and in the second we are in the field of mediations. I take this consideration of the cry, and its transformation into an imagetic matrix of the unmediated recognition of an aspect, as a creative consequence of Wittgenstein’s resistance against mediations.39

19 “I believe I summed up where I stand in relation to philosophy when I said: really one should write philosophy only as one writes a poem [dichten40]” – This is one of the most quoted sentences among Culture and Value (MS 146, 25v, 1933–1934, p. 28). If we are aware that the German word dichten, which means “the very action of doing poetry”, is related to condensation and to concentration (as Ezra Pound has asserted),41 we realise how this can become of the utmost importance for the understanding of the quasi-concepts of Bildgesicht or of a sentence like “in my heart I

39 PPF § 324: “If I see someone writhing in pain with evident cause I do not think: all the same, his feelings are hidden from me”. 40 Dichten does not mean exactly “to write a poem”, but the very action of doing poetry. It is very hard to find a precise equivalent to this German word. 41 Cf. Pound 1975.

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understood”, which one speaks “pointing to one’s heart”. The person who speaks these words creates a link between understanding and the heart when pointing at his or her heart. Here we are before a supreme case of the inseparability of the inside and the outside. We see the word transmuting itself into gesture and gesture revealing the word. The concept that words are actions finds in “in my heart I understood” one of its most convincing touchstones. All the questions about what dichten means seem to me to flow towards the evidence that das Bild sagt mir sich selbst (PIr § 523), which is the corollary of all the fertile and abundant considerations proposed by Wittgenstein on the image and its self-expressivity.42

20 What is the first condition allowing us to recognise something? To practise an ascetic disposition to discard all the illusory images/concepts, all the obstacles to the clear vision of that which stands before our eyes, to be willing to see. And it is at that point that we see something as if it were the first time. The best presentation of it may be found in Goethe: “What is the most difficult of all things? That which seems the easiest: to see with one’s eyes that which is before one’s eyes”,43 which Wittgenstein quotes on at least three separate occasions throughout the Vermischte Bemerkungen although he does not refer to Goethe by name (see pp. 8, 44 and 72). It also resurfaces continuously in Philosophical Investi-

42 We may find a variation of this dichten in PPF § 260, when Wittgenstein mentions that “aspect-blindness” is akin to the lack of a musical ear: “Aspect-blindness will be akin to the lack of a ‘musical ear’” or in PIr § 536: “[…] The reinterpretation of a facial expression can be compared to the reinterpretation of a chord in music, when we hear it as a modulation first into this, then into that, key”. 43 Xenien, in Goethe 1982, vol. 1, p. 230.

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gations, even if it is in a more or less diluted form, e. g. PIr § 129: “The aspects of things that are the most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something – because it is always before one’s eyes) […]”. If we are willing to discard all the bewitching mediations, we will be able to see with our eyes what is before our eyes. In this context we may acknowledge a transformation in the use of the concepts of How (Wie) and What (Was) presented in the Tractatus and tacitly accepted in the “Lecture on Ethics”. Wittgenstein points out that the Was stands before any logical application, before any image in a proposition, both of which occur only in the sphere of the Wie, related as they are to the “Sosein” of the world and its facts.44 In the “Lecture”, for instance, the most surprising aspect about the sky is not that the sky is blue or grey, but its very existence, which is not a how (Wie) but a What (Was). The existence (What) is not expressible as this or that (as a How, as a “so und so”). In the late texts, Wittgenstein is aware of the aspectual richness of each thing from the sky to the human rituals. The sky we see is blue, grey, cloudy, and so forth. This means that the Was is expressed always as a Wie, as a “so und so”: the sky is a sky expressing itself in different aspects. And what demands our admiration is the particular intensity and physiognomy of each sky, for instance, the blue one (and this impression does not belong only to oneself): “Look at the blue of the sky and say to yourself ‘How blue the sky is!’ – When you do it spontaneously – without philosophical purposes – the idea never crosses your mind that this impression of colour belongs to you […]” (PIr § 275). One of the best pieces of evidence for Wittgenstein’s overcoming of his solipsist tendency is to be found here.

44 TLP 4.5

[…] Die allgemeine Form des Satzes ist: Es verhält sich so und so. TLP 5.552 […] Die Logik ist vor jeder Erfahrung – dass etwas so ist. Sie ist vor dem Wie, nicht vor dem Was.

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21 “Here [where human habits are concerned, as for instance when dealing with their dreadful incidents of life], we can only describe [Wittgenstein underlines this word] and say: This is what human life is like.” (PO, pp. 120–121) This proposition, as I see it, is the translation or a development of the “so und so” into an ethnological point of view. The “so und do” is now a sign of acceptance of any kind of human life: “This is what human life is like.” Wittgenstein presents the ethnological point of view as a perspective that allows us to see any given theory as hypothetical and demands for any hypothesis to be discarded. “If we use the ethnological approach does that mean we are saying philosophy is ethnology? No it only means we are taking up our position far outside, in order to see the things more objectively” (CV, MS 162b, 67r, 2.7.1940, p. 45). What we should do in relationship to, say, the belief in immortality or the way we deal with the dead is to try to describe all the aspects that come across to us within those situations, and see what happens (by avoiding rushed generalizations and systematizations). What is at stake here is to get rid of theoretical hypotheses, and take in the “How” of what happens as such, accepting it, considering it as a given: this language-game is played or human life is such and such. To recognise this is to recognise forms of life: “What has to be accepted, the given is – one might say – forms of life” (PPF § 345). But Wittgenstein does not give us pause on any interpretation – which will always tend to become a theory – and calls our attention to that which remains unapparent due to the uniformization caused by the worn down garb of “our language” (the technical language of career philosophers): the relationship between the language-game and the newness, that which is “spontaneous, ‘specific’”, as for instance “the enormous variety of all the everyday language-games” (PPF § 335). Forms of life are neither images of our choice nor projections of our constructions. They are given to us and it is very hard to notice this as well as to transform it into a real understanding.

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22 There is a second condition to recognize something: a specific form of anticipation. We can only recognise something when we can somehow anticipate that which we are about to recognise. Or in Wittgenstein’s words: how can we have a “übersichtliche Darstellung” gifted with depth? We can elaborate a synopsis, but this does not mean it will be gifted with depth. To reach a synopsis of a ritual, for instance, we must place side by side all the noticed aspects of that same ritual. This is not enough, however, since the ritual will remain for us as a set of associated aspects deprived of depth. What bestows depth is the falling into oneself through the discovery of an affinity with the ritual, which allows the confirmation that “we are human” or that “human life is like this” in the form of a particular evidence such as “death is majestic”. How do we reach such evidence? We can begin by making numerous comparisons between all kinds of majesties we know and our experiences of death. But perhaps this will not take us very far, for the only thing we will have in the end is a number of associations. We will only discover the majesty of death if someone’s intimate experience with death or the omens of our own death appear before us in such a way that we suddenly coalesce all the aspects of death (the associations, the putting side by side) and we perceive majesty in death. This is called the “Tiefe der Betrachtung”, the depth of contemplation (a particular form of Evidenz): Besides these similarities, what seems to me to be most striking is the dissimilarity of all these rites. It is a multiplicity of faces with common features which continually emerges here and there. And one would like to draw lines connecting these ingredients. But then one part of our account [Betrachtung] would still be missing, namely, that which brings this picture into connection with our own feelings and thoughts. This part gives the account [Betrachtung] its depth [Tiefe].45

45 PO, p. 143.

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23 In order to achieve the set of points of view about images, let us concentrate finally on the text in which the limit case of the depth of contemplation is associated with the limit case of the subject of the inseparability of the internal and the external, that is to say, the inseparability of body and soul, in the form of how one acts out a gesture of pointing to one’s heart: “when you said that, I understood it in my heart”.46 But how about an expression like this: “When you said that, I understood it in my heart”? In saying which, one points at one’s heart. And doesn’t one mean this gesture? Of course one means it. Or is one aware of using a mere image [Bild]? Certainly not. – It is not an image [Bild] that we choose, not a simile [Gleichnis], yet it is an expression in image [ein bildlicher Ausdruck].47

Do we want to say what we are saying or are we conscious that we are using but an image (Bild)? Certainly not, it is not an image of our choice, answers Wittgenstein (or someone else?). This is a very important point. Now we have a distinction between images of our choice and images not of our choice. The images of our choice are not only those of the Tractatus’ Bilder, models that are projected in the world and promote description of the very same world, but also similes (Gleichnisse), whether understood as false substitutes or as a refreshing of our understanding and whose analysis is very often prone to be incomplete. And the more complex the simile is, the less analysable it is. If we say ‘In my heart I understood’ it is certainly not a question of an image of our choice. Therefore, we are neither before a Bild nor a 46 There is another variation of this assertion in PPF § 265 (figurative meaning and primitive meaning), PIr § 589 (“In my heart I have decided it”). See also PPF § 278 (“The secondary meaning is not a ‘metaphorical’ meaning”), § 285 (“Why did you look at me at that word, were you thinking of…?”), § 290 (“Why did you look at me and shake your head?”), § 298 (“The word on the tip of my tongue”). 47 PPF § 26 (translation modified).

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Gleichnis. Here we are facing an ‘image-expression’ or an ‘expression in image’. The concept, or the quasi-concept, of the bildlicher Ausdruck is a Wittgenstein discovery par excellence: the discovery of an incomparable image, an unanalysable image, the coming across of an evidence that allows us to see more clearly that which has qualified as “the depth of our contemplation”.

24 The very fact that one can say ‘in my heart I understood’ as if it was “just a simile” leads us both to the “Lecture on Ethics” and to several points in Philosophical Investigations, such as PPF § 265 (the figurative employment of the word and the original one) and § 278.48 The very notion that there is a proportion between one thing and the other, in such a way that they are strictly connected, does not prove that one knows one thing about proportion for it could be an analogy or an affinity. In the sentence ‘in my heart I understood’, there is no analogy between the act of understanding and the heart, for there is no list of proportions here, but rather an affinity, that is, a relationship of unity, which can be translated into a feeling of intimacy. The heart is an attractor and a reflector of the communication between body and soul. It is not “just a simile”.

48 “The secondary meaning is not a ‘metaphorical’ meaning. If I say ‘For me the vowel e is yellow’ I do not mean: ‘yellow’ in a metaphorical sense, – for I could not express what I want to say in any other way than by means of the concept ‘yellow’”.

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25 “The face is the soul of the body” (CV, MS 156a, 49v, ca. 1932– 1934, p. 26). “The human body is the best picture of the human soul” (PPF § 25). These sentences may help us to see what is at issue in ‘in my heart I understood’. The heart is evidently not a substitute for something else and there is no way to compare heart and understanding. For Wittgenstein, this is the greatest problem to which the image is concerned. ‘In my heart I understood’ is not a Gleichnis neither as ‘God is our father’ nor as the similes that refresh our understanding such as the one, for example, which stands on the basis of the language-games. The refusal of Wittgenstein to include ‘in my heart I understood’ within the symbolic is related to the conscience that its analogical ratio is something that cannot be grasped. To be exact, what becomes more significant here is the enigma of a vision: having seen something inseparable from having felt something. We learn something more about what it means to understand and we are not able to consider the heart a separable organ of our bodies. The heart had been pointed out because it is the seat of life, in which the living energy of our body is purified and from which it is distributed, and because it is the seat of mercy and compassion. Our gesture, to point to our hearts, demonstrates that what you are saying is not a mere simile.

26 ‘In my heart I understood’ reveals how everyday words can be thrust into the feeling of an initiation to life, into an emotion that shakes the whole body, that is to say, it reveals that the musicality of existence, the inexpressible, surrounds our simplest words. And this can become a supreme touchstone for the Wittgensteinian yearning of doing philosophy as dichten.

Aesthetic Experience and Forms of Life JEAN-PIERRE COMETTI

Aesthetic experience was the main notion of Dewey’s book: Art as experience.1 In more general terms, it was the corner-stone of Dewey’s pragmatism. The role of experience – as Dewey conceived it – has recently been revitalized by Richard Shusterman in his books on “somaesthetics”. Nevertheless “experience” is an uncomfortable idea. On the one hand, it means what is happening in the mind (the individual mind) and is strongly related with consciousness; on the other hand, and particularly in Dewey, it means a special and vital kind of relationship, i. e. a relationship between an organism and its surroundings. In this case, the same word belongs to a naturalistic or Darwinian way of speaking, and it contrasts with what seems to partake of the aesthetic realm. But in both cases experience appears as being self-supporting and independent of language. That is why it sounds somewhat odd and inappropriate to the ears of later post-linguistic pragmatists. From such a point of view, it seems there is no room for “experience” in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. However, we need to remember that Wittgenstein was very concerned with a special kind of understanding in fields other than language – strictly speaking – and its own rules, and this may give us reason to believe that “experience” may have a special – and rather illuminating – meaning in his work. From this point of view, we can find in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy an original contribution to aesthetics that provides us with an extension to his investigations into language, rules and forms of life.

1

Dewey 1980.

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1. Aesthetics and the Problem of Rules Aesthetics cannot be conceived without involving by necessity a conception of rules because of the role played by comprehension (how can a work of art be understood?) As Kant had already made clear in his Third Critique – although in a different way – there cannot be any field of activity that is free of any kind of rule i. e. free of any norm.2 Art should have its rules, but these rules cannot be of the same kind as those appropriate for technical functioning; otherwise, we should not be able to use the word “art” in the way we do, by which I mean as referring to a kind of product and production that contrasts with our practical activities. In other words, should rules or norms not be involved in what we call “art” and should the word “art” mean a field of activity whose meaning should be accessible to all – at least virtually or under some common conditions – then we should not use this word to refer to objects or activities that depend on following a rule as in games or arithmetical operations. If it were not so, we would be dealing with a kind of standard (and predictable) doing, without any other meaning as a technical or instrumental way of doing, i. e. without any possibility of being surprised. This means that we could not conceive how these activities could be original unless we consider that they provide themselves with their own rules. The conclusion is paradoxical: art has rules, but it cannot be reduced to any simple application of them. How can we deal with this difficulty, and in what way could it allow us to give a particular meaning and place to what we usually call “aesthetic experience”? It seems that one way of solving this problem is to take into account a special feature of language that is connected with what Wittgenstein called “forms of life” and does not depend directly on rules. The expressive power of language is this major feature of language; it lies at

2

Kant 1987, § 46.

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the crossing-point of rules governing our language games, and is one special effect of their practice and application in public surroundings within the sphere of our everyday life.

2. Expression and the Experience of Meaning: Unpredictability In Wittgenstein’s writings expression occurs in three cases: about language, about music, and in connection with the question of seeing as in some examples concerning everyday experiences such as, for instance, the way we speak about a human face.3 In such cases, what occurs is some “experience of meaning” in the way Wittgenstein uses this word (inherited from William James).4 Expression is such that it exhibits properties outside the control of any rules (which is why we ascribe a subjective meaning to it). Wittgenstein gives various examples of expression: a word, a colour, a melody. These examples are not of the same kind but they allow the same kind of analysis. On one hand, as he suggests in the second part of his Philosophical Investigations, what a melody – or a word or a painting – expresses cannot be dissociated from the melody itself – or the word or the painting – without losing the melody’s – the word’s or the painting’s – specific quality, i. e. its specific meaning, in exchange for an indifferent and standard one which occurs equally in many situations or cases of the same kind.5 Think of a melody, for instance Mozart’s Concerto in D minor; it is clear that the sound 3

4 5

PI, II, xi; or CV, p. 94: “Der seelenvolle Ausdruck in der Musik. Er is nicht nach Graden der Stärke und des Tempos zu beschreiben. Sowenig wie der seelenvolle Gesichtsausdruck durch raümliche Masse. Ja er ist auch nicht durch ein Paradigma zu erklären, denn das Gleiche Stück kann unzällige Arten mit echtem Ausdruck gespielt werden” (1949). Cf. James 1950; Cf. RPP I §§ 6 and 105: “Ist nun das Hören oder Denken eines Wortes in der oder der Bedeutungeine echte Erfahrung?”. CV, the several remarks on music from 1948.

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alone stemming from the score (we suppose such a possibility as giving in it the unaffected transposition of the inscription) cannot give us everything the music is expressing or communicating, and neither can it explain the feelings it gives rise to. However, on the other hand, these feelings are one and the same as the music (“Can you hear the moaning”);6 they don’t have any being outside of the melody and its performance. That is why their special power lies in this special bind, and that is what everyone knows and feels even if it is also why we believe in their subjective and individual, even incommunicable, nature. Naturally, we would be wrong if we were to see in this feature of musical feeling the occurrence or “expression” of something hidden in it that could only be reached by inner consciousness or by way of some special insight. However, if the expressive value of a melody or a sentence can be related to an “experience” (if it can ever be experienced), and if we take what it expresses as being characteristic of it, then that does not mean it has absolutely nothing to do with rules, or even with any training. Expression and feelings do have a normative and evaluative meaning that we could not conceive of if they were not somehow connected with some field of rules or some social and cultural background. What I feel in myself (innerly) cannot be by itself its only and sufficient ground. As Wittgenstein suggests, a better way of conceiving such a fact is to take into account the whole context of our language games and our form of life.7 What we are actually facing here are facts that cannot be clarified and explained merely by means of rules belonging to our language or by the arcane rules of subjectivity or of some kind of inner self. I would rather speak of such facts in terms of Hilary Putnam’s “fine values”8 which our conceptual riddles cannot grasp although this does not mean they are ineffable or absolutely beyond any reason. 6 7 8

This is what is suggested in PI, II, xi. This point is analysed by Hanfling (1991). LC, “Lectures on Aesthetics“, I, § 26. Putnam 2002.

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3. Ineffability and Unpredictability This paradoxical nature of expression allows us to highlight another feature of aesthetic experience: unpredictability. Unpredictability is a major feature of expression for Wittgenstein. He writes: “Ausdruck besteht für uns (in) Unberechenbarkeit. Wüsste ich genau, wie er sein gesicht verziehen, sich bewegen wird, so wäre kein Gesichtsausdruck, keine Gebärde vorhanden”.9 How can we understand this indetermination? There seems to be two kinds of indetermination in the philosophy of language games. The first belongs to the field of rules. It points to the difference between a grammatical point of view (i. e. the point of view of use) and a causal one. That there is something indeterminate or fuzzy in any rule has nothing to do with interpretation.10 Remember only that a rule is nothing more than its applications. We do not understand how a rule can be indeterminate as long as we consider any rule as containing the whole possibility of its applications. However, I do not think this is the appropriate way to describe what a rule is. Such an indetermination is a correlate of the very concept of language games and their pragmatic dimension, their plurality and their connections in the whole context of a form of life. No rule can contain in advance (in its concept or definition) all its applications as being irremediably the same. This indetermination might have something to do with the second kind of indetermination – what we call the unpredictability of expression. The indeterminate character of a rule has its counterpart in the lack of any system of rules – what there is is the heterogeneity of language games. This is the reason why the part played by contexts is so important for meaning and also for expression. What I mean is the fact that a word can make sense by itself, without any relation with any sentence, as having a “face” or a “physiognomy”.11 9 CV, p. 83 (1948). 10 PI §§ 198–201, about rules, following a rule, and what he calls a paradox (§ 201). 11 “Lectures on Aesthetics” § 12 for instance; and Budd 1989, ch. II.

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From this point of view expression plays the part of what makes our language a human language. This second kind of unpredictability – bound to expression and physiognomy and characteristic of particular “experiences” – works like a corrective to the rule, working both on its applications and its divergent ones. What allows us to immediately understand a sentence or a word coincides with the application of rules, but in the particular way that we should not be able to think of a rule independently of its applications. As Wittgenstein says in his Dictations to Waismann: a rule and its applications gives nothing more than this application.12 On the other hand, it may be that what gives some sense to atypical uses of language is their expressive power – and this makes them a gesture.13 I would like to explain this point further. Let us consider what Wittgenstein calls “secondary meaning” or uses in Philosophical Investigations or in the Blue Book. In his Investigations, Wittgenstein claims that in such uses words have no other meaning than their usual meaning.14 In other words, they do not refer to other rules we do not know or to other words such as those of the tribe. This conception contrasts sharply with romantic views on language. What we have to take into account in such cases are our common uses and their literal meaning – words do not have any other meaning apart from their literal meaning. I say (as Rimbaud or Wittgenstein did) that “a” is yellow, and yellow means the colour and only the colour that everybody knows and can think of. But on the other hand, this way of speaking is unusual and although it sounds odd, it is not strictly nonsensical. What we are dealing with here are special ways of speaking (or writing) that are half-way between sense (usual sense) and nonsense. They are unpredictable. What they mean is both what their words mean and what they express because of what is odd in the way of using them.15 12 13 14 15

DW, p. 131; Waismann 1995. CV, 1948. PI, II, xi, p. 199. See also Davidson 1986.

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In other words, to say “Wednesday is fat” or “‘e’ is yellow” is not the same as saying something like “her shirt is yellow” or “this ham is fat” although the words I use in these sentences – and their meanings – are definitely the same. They differ only in a different and special “experience of meaning” that gives them an expressive power. The point here is virtually the same as in Jakobson’s remarks on “poetical language”: stressing some words gives them a special power that appears to us as a special meaning. Such a “meaning” is experienced. It is unpredictable; its condition lies in the usual application of language and rules, but it cannot be reduced to them. It crystallizes a great number of dispositions stemming from all that I share with other human beings with the same form of life. This is the reason why it is impossible to describe the meaning of such words or to paraphrase them unless we describe the whole of our form of life. However, this is also the reason why the sense of such words or such sentences is strictly speaking neither subjective nor arbitrary. On the contrary, it is most likely an illustration of the type of necessity that belongs to what Wittgenstein calls our “natural history”.

4. Music and Emotions Music helps us to understand the close relation there is between expression and aesthetic experience in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Emotion is an integral part of understanding music. At first glance, music seems to speak to sensibility – i. e. to our capacity to react to it through our senses. In this respect, it speaks to our innermost personal abilities. The most widespread convictions we come across about music (and art) or about what it means to understand music (or art) are closely related to this view. We can judge what these convictions are worth by looking at four aspects: 1) How is understanding connected to the role of rules? 2) What is understanding and what is feeling? 3) What

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does it mean to understand something? 4) What does music refer to; what is it about? To play music is of course to follow rules. Rules are easier to locate and to identify in music than in language – or in all other arts. Nonetheless, these rules do not by themselves make it inevitable that, either as a performer or as a listener, we shall understand what there is to understand. To be able to understand a work’s emotional content, as we understand the expression of a face or of the eyes, without necessarily feeling such an emotion ourselves – even if other people can feel it – is, I think, a major feature of aesthetic experience. It also shows why causal explanations are irrelevant. Understanding music does not mean reacting to it as we would react to traffic signals or some stimulus.16 There is certainly a reactive dimension to it, but such reactions are “natural” only insofar as they are an expression of the way our rules have become embedded in our life. Whoever likes music need not be formally trained in harmony but can be – and certainly is – familiar in some other way with its rules – i. e. through their application. Thus we come back fullcircle to the important question of rules and their applications. As Brandom would say, the explicit existence of a rule is not the only mode of existence for a rule. Rules first exist as implicit, and the part played by implicit rules is probably more important than we usually believe in the arts and in the understanding of art.17 If things were different, we would not be able to even conceive that people are able to understand music without being formallytrained musicians – which, I believe, is not in itself a sufficient condition. The fact that we are able to understand music without special training or theoretical education, that there should not be any rule governing what a musical work means, and therefore what 16 “Lectures on Aesthetics”, where Wittgenstein refutes the schema of causality. In causal explanations either cause can be replaced by any other cause generating the same effect. 17 Brandom 1994, I: “Toward a Normative Pragmatics”, and the various remarks on and interpretations of Wittgenstein in the first section of this book.

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I have to understand in it is what is worth in music, is what gives us the opportunity to better conceive of the special relationship between what it means to understand and what it means to feel – and thus to better conceive of what it means to understand. Let us imagine dancers who, as the orchestra begins to play a be-bop, start dancing a tango: it would then be legitimate for me to say that they do not understand what they hear. To dance in a manner that is relevant to a given situation is one of the many ways there is to understand music. But to say that, for instance, such and such a work by Bartok or Ravel is in C minor or in 5/4 time is also to understand music. And so is the case of a music conductor directing musicians by way of relevant gestures. In other words, contrary to the example of the crazy reporter in Woody Allen’s movie, Sweet and Lowdown, who wants to know the mental events that go on in the mind of the alcoholic jazz guitarist played by Sean Penn when he is playing, it is not necessary to know what happens in a musician’s or a composer’s head in order to understand what he is playing or writing. What I feel is of course a part of it, but I should be able to say or express what I feel by other means than language or verbal formulations. This is the reason why there cannot be only one way of understanding that should be the same for music, poetry or arithmetic. Various forms of understanding exist that function in relation to the relevant “language games”. The same also applies to rules. To quote Wittgenstein’s example, suppose I say about the picture of this famous man: “This is Lloyd George”.18 The meaning of “is” in such a sentence is not the same as the sign “=” in sentences such as: “1 euro = 1 dollar” or even “1 euro is 1 dollar”. There are several senses of the word “understand”. They are different but nevertheless not alien. In order to know what “is” means in the first example, I have to know what “=” means in a significant number of ordinary occurrences. However, I should not be mistaken: what I have learned is not the “meaning” of equality, but its many uses in many contexts.

18 “Lectures on Aesthetics”, IV.

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As we have already seen with the “experience of meaning” and aspects, it is thanks to this dimension of language games that our language is familiar, almost natural, to us and may thus be said to be ours. Furthermore, this experience of language would necessarily be alien to one who is “meaning-blind” or “aspectsblind”. However, to “experience meaning” does not mean to “see” meaning: uses are the only condition of this experience. If there is something that shows itself in music, it is the whole of what makes us what we are, individually and socially or culturally. Inexpressibility, or ineffability, does not have here the same absolute status that it had in Tractatus. The intransitivity of language, as in secondary uses of it, only tells us that if we want to describe what it expresses, then we need to describe a whole culture.19 I hope with these few remarks to have shown the relevance of aesthetic experience to Wittgenstein’s philosophy. It seems to me that they give us the opportunity to take a different view of a number of traditional aesthetic questions – and perhaps to renew aesthetics itself. Perhaps the main point is that, instead of giving art or aesthetic experience a special status different from ordinary objects and experience, we had better take them as only one, or many, possible dimensions of our language games and of how they are related to our form of life.

19 Ibid.

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Forms and Patterns of Life: A Reassessment of a So-Called Basic Concept in the Late Philosophy of Wittgenstein1 STEFAN MAJETSCHAK

I. The concept of “life-form” has long been assigned by well-known scholars to be one of the “basic concepts of the mature philosophy of Wittgenstein”.2 Since the appearance of the Philosophical Investigations in 1953 many people have expressed the opinion that a note such as “to imagine a language means to imagine a life-form” (PI § 19) expresses a basic philosophical insight of Wittgenstein. Early interpretations, such as that of Wittgenstein’s pupil and friend Norman Malcolm, therefore stressed that the importance of this concept could scarcely be overestimated.3 Many adopted this view and continue to follow it by ascribing to it a key position in Wittgenstein’s late philosophy similar to that of the concept of the “language game”, to which it seems to be intrinsically related. “Language games”, i. e. those multifaceted techniques and habits of using words which the speakers of a language employ in the course of practical dealings with other people or things, seem to be impossible to detach from the particular life form in which they are embedded. It is precisely this that Wittgenstein seems to wish 1

2 3

I am grateful to Katalin Neumer and Richard Raatzsch as well as to the participants of the International Wittgenstein Workshop Form(s) of Life and the Nature of Experience, Lisbon, May 2009, for helpful comments and references. Schulte 1999, p. 157. Garver 1984, p. 33, in an overview of its early reception.

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to express in the famous passage of the Philosophical Investigations in which he writes: “the term ‘language game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a life-form” (PI § 23). As games are part of the particular culture in which they are cultivated – he seems to say – so also ought human language games be regarded as part of a particular form of life that determines and confirms the form in which they appear. This supposedly basic Wittgensteinian concept according to which language games are embedded in the variable forms of human life has become popular far beyond the academic circles that occupy themselves with his work – to such an extent indeed that, to quote Eike von Savigny, “it cannot be excluded that the buzzwords ‘language game’ and ‘form of life’ are the only things that might remain of Wittgenstein”.4 Despite the outstanding success of both concepts, one must acknowledge at least in the case of the life form concept the fact that – as one has of course seen – in the text of the Philosophical Investigations it has “something fuzzy”5 about it; that it remains “vague”,6 indeed “ambiguous”.7 An explanation of this concept has never been offered by Wittgenstein himself. In fact, it occurs in his writings – compared, for example, with the concept of “language game” – relatively infrequently: in the first part of the Philosophical Investigations only three times, and incidentally and without further elucidation (PI §§ 19, 23 and 241). In the so-called “Part II” of the Philosophical Investigations8 it is mentioned on only two more occasions (PI, pp. 148e and 192e). In addition, it occurs in the posthumous writings of Wittgenstein about another two dozen times, mostly in contexts known to Wittgenstein’s readers from the Philosophical Investigations. This infrequent and ambiguous use is undoubt-

4 5 6 7 8

Savigny 1999, p. 120. Beerling 1980, p. 165. Garver 1999, p. 51. Ferber 1992, p. 273. From a current perspective it may of course be doubted that Wittgenstein wanted to incorporate it into his book.

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edly responsible for the quite differing understandings of the concept of “life-form” in Wittgenstein research.9 In view of the fact that Wittgenstein, in the so-called Parts I and II of the Philosophical Investigations, uses the term “life-form” four times in the singular and only once in the plural, Newton Garver, for example, in a well-known interpretation has argued that Wittgenstein, in using this concept, is by no means thinking of a plurality of possible socio-cultural life forms of human beings in relation to which one has to understand their multifaceted language games. Rather, according to Garver, he wanted to demarcate the species-specific life-form of humans from animal life forms. “The Wittgensteinian life-forms” – when he uses the word in the plural – “are those of natural history: the bovine, piscine, canine, human, leonine etc”.10 The “life-form” of a human is understood in this way as one among many which can be distinguished from each other according to natural history: as the one which, unlike all the animal life forms, is determined by the human ability to use a complex natural language.11 And according to Garver, this is all that Wittgenstein wanted to work out by distinguishing the various life forms.12 However, this in9 There is a useful overview of the main lines of the interpretations of the concept of life form up to 2000 in Stosch 2001, pp. 29–38. Moreover, some scholars also discuss the question of which sources Wittgenstein may have had for this concept (e. g. Janik and Toulmin 1987, p. 308 ff.; Garver 1984, p. 40; Haller 1984, p. 60; Ferber 1992, p. 274). Because the various references to possible sources, in my view, have so far not really contributed to a better understanding of the life form concept, the question of sources in the present context may perhaps be ignored altogether. 10 Garver 1984, p. 34. 11 Garver 1984, p. 45. 12 Even though I do not go along with Garver's interpretation in what follows, it may be emphasized at this point that Garver stresses a thought that is of extraordinary importance for Wittgenstein: the natural-historical fact of human language use, which Wittgenstein, for example in the Philosophical Investigations, addresses when he writes: “Commanding, questioning, storytelling, chatting are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing” (PI § 25). Nevertheless, I will try to make clear that the life form concept is not intrinsically connected with this fact.

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terpretation has been rejected by others, the first being Rudolf Haller, with the observation that one cannot “deny that Wittgenstein himself uses the expression ‘life forms’ in other contexts and other writings not only clearly in the plural, but also in an anthropological-sociocultural sense”.13 Thus Haller has helped to propagate the most widespread current standard interpretation, according to which “‘life-forms’ mean various cultures, stages of civilisation or socially specific ways of living”,14 as emphasized for example by Joachim Schulte. According to this interpretation, to which I myself inclined for a long time, a “life-form” can be characterized as the “totality of practices of a language community”,15 in which life-form specific language games are embedded.16 If one accepts this interpretation, one is perfectly justified not only in talking of the life form of human beings, but also in distinguishing the multifarious forms in which they appear, e. g. the life form of the Hopi Indian from that of the Western European. In relation to such culturally different life forms, in the opinion of many scholars, peculiarities of the languages spoken in those life forms can be understood. Both the Garver and the standard interpretation of the lifeform concept can be supported by several remarks of Wittgenstein; but both are also in conflict with others. Additionally, both agree in ascribing to a “life-form” “the role of a social system in which language is embedded”.17 And this is undoubtedly a philosophically interesting interpretation of the life-form concept that rightfully enjoys certain popularity among philosophers until this day. But does it really correspond to Wittgenstein’s views? I would like to explore this question in the following essay by considering a few of Wittgenstein’s remarks in which he himself discusses the embedding of language games in wider contexts. In contexts of this sort it might easily be expected that Wittgenstein 13 14 15 16 17

Haller 1984, p. 57. Schulte 1999, p. 160. Schulte 1989, p. 146. Cf. Majetschak 2000, p. 203. Savigny 1999, p. 136.

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would speak of either “life-form” in Garver’s sense or “life-forms” in the sense of the standard interpretation. But this is not the case. In the contexts in question, however, he always speaks of an embedding of language in human life. Therefore I will firstly try to provide a brief sketch of how he imagined this embedding of language in human life. Owing to the fact that Wittgenstein never speaks of “life-form(s)” in precisely those passages where it would be so obvious, in what follows I will secondly justify the supposition that his use of this notion might have meant something quite different from “social systems embedding language games”. I will offer though an interpretation of “life-form” that – as far as I can see – is sustainable in all the passages of Wittgenstein’s writings in which the expression occurs. If my suggestion is right, the notion of “life-form” will – I admit – suffer the loss of the status it enjoys as a basic concept of Wittgenstein’s mature philosophy.

II. Should the Garver or the standard interpretation be true, one might – as has been said – expect that the concept of “life-form” (sing. or pl.) be discussed when Wittgenstein speaks explicitly of the embedding of concepts in contexts that prove to be decisive for their meaning. As is known, this is quite often the case in his late philosophy, particularly in some of his late manuscripts and typescripts dating from 1946 to 1949 which were written while he was trying to finish his Philosophical Investigations and selectively published under the titles Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology and Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology. In these texts he discusses primarily those language games that we play with psychological concept words such as “hope”, “think”, “believe”, “expect” and others of a similar nature when we supposedly talk of the so-called “psychic states” of people. It is even more important for Wittgenstein in the case of these words than in that of others to pay attention to the “surroundings” (PI § 583)

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or, as he writes, the “context” (RPP II, § 150) in which they are embedded, since by doing so he can make it clear that we fundamentally misunderstand the logic of their usage if we think that we are using them to refer to ontologically independent facts of the psychic world, e. g. so-called “events” or “states” within the human psyche. In fact, they refer, according to his analysis, to “a phenomenon of human life” (PI § 583), and it is precisely to make this fact clear that he investigates their embedding in human life in his late manuscripts over and over again. If one considers these investigations as a whole, it is quite remarkable that Wittgenstein in these writings never speaks of an embedding of the psychological concepts in a life form. Certainly, as he himself once stressed, he has often “used the term ‘embedded’”, and has often “said that hope, belief etc., were embedded in human life, in all of the situations and reactions which constitute human life” (RPP II § 16).18 But he only ever mentioned embedding of the concepts in “life”. “The words stand in a flow. They have their meaning only in a life” (MS 137, 41b),19 as he once writes in another manuscript of the same period. It is for that reason that one should emphasize that “human life”, in the terminology employed by Wittgenstein during those years, represents that which many scholars have wanted to see in the concept of “life form”: the most extensive embedding context or the widest background in which our language games with psychological – and other – concepts are placed. He once described this background as the complex totality of individual “actions of a variety of humans, as they are all mixed up together”, and he adds: “Not what one man is doing now, but the whole hurly-burly, is the background against which we see an action, and it determines our judgement, our concepts, and our reactions.” (RPP II § 629; Z § 567). Understood as such a “swarming mass” of individual actions of people, the “background within human life”, in 18 Cf. MS 136, 28b; PI § 337; PI § 581; etc. 19 Here and below, all translations from texts included in the Bergen Electronic Edition or other writings which are not yet published in English are mine.

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which Wittgenstein sees all judgement, concept usage, and indeed every human reaction anchored, is thus “not monochrome” (RPP II § 624), but multifarious and polychrome; just as confusing as human life as such in the variety of its manifestations. Nevertheless, something like regularity or structure can be seen to some extent in this swarming mass of confusion – and this insight is decisive for his argumentation in more than one respect. As he writes, one is also able to imagine the life background of our speaking and acting as a very complicated filigree pattern, which, to be sure, we can’t copy, but which we can recognize from the general impression it makes.20

Indeed, human life reveals itself to us in that non-biological sense that Wittgenstein in this context might have had in mind, not merely as the chaotic confusion of individual human behaviour. Rather we perceive it altogether as a complex pattern, recognize in it recurring partial patterns of similar appearance, register more or less constant, more or less variable regularities and structures in it and so on. That is to say, in the complicated overall pattern of life, besides individual actions, we also see recurring public action and behaviour patterns, which are not cultivated by merely one person and which we usually designate as “customs and institutions” within the social world. And it is in these regularities and habits that our use of linguistic expressions is also “embedded” (PI § 337). It is true that we might not be able to trace the overall pattern of life if we were requested to do so, as Wittgenstein aptly says, because the complexity of the manner in which partial patterns are interlocked is beyond our relatively inept conceptual or representational abilities. But we do at least generally get an impression of the fact that partial patterns recur in the complexity of the whole and how they do so. If one – to give more plastic shape to the notion of the complicated filigree pattern of life – compares the complex overall pattern of life with the pattern of a carpet, as Wittgenstein occasion20 Ibid.

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ally does, one might also say that recurring regularities can be distinguished in the overall pattern of the carpet. Regularity of this sort, i. e. a partial pattern within the whole, has been described by Wittgenstein explicitly as “a pattern of life” (RPP II § 652; LW II § 211).21 Patterns of this kind can be conceived of as typified arrangements of action, situation and language features that can be recognized although they constantly recur with variations. That is, they are ordered feature-complexes that we apprehend as coherent units because when we position ourselves in our social world, we assemble, as Wittgenstein says, “diverse elements into a ‘Gestalt’ (pattern), for example, into one of deceit” (RPP II § 651), which we encounter repeatedly as a life pattern in the form of a conjunction of typical features. For what people call “deceit” is not an ontologically independent fact, but rather – like every so-called “fact” – a human construct. “Grief” is for Wittgenstein another example of a “pattern which recurs, with different variations, in the weave of our life” (PI, II, i, p. 174b).22 Another relatively complicated pattern is “hope”, which is embedded in human life in the same way. Just as we do not ascribe “grief” to someone merely on the basis of his inner condition, but also because he exhibits a particular behaviour, makes certain statements and so on, so we also say that someone “is hopeful” when his linguistic and non-linguistic action displays that specific pattern that motivates us to speak of “hope”. In other passages of his texts, about which something will be said in detail later, Wittgenstein also mentions less complicated constellations of action and utterance features, such as “greeting”, as examples of such forms in our lives. First, however, it is important to emphasize that the embedding of language in life that Wittgenstein has in mind, can be explained by the fact that linguistic utterances are parts of life patterns which embrace linguistic and non-linguistic features, as one recognizes immediately when one only considers the act of 21 Cf. also RPP II § 672 ff.; LW II § 406; Z § 568 ff.; on one occasion he speaks in connection to this also of “life stencil” (LW II § 206). 22 Cf. similarly LW II § 406.

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“greeting”, to which linguistic and non-linguistic performances normally belong in equal measure. Furthermore, our use of language can be said to be embedded in life because we refer to such life patterns with numerous, especially psychological, concepts of our language.23 “Language”, as Wittgenstein puts it, “refers to a way of life” (MS 164, 98) and is at the same time part of it. And according to Wittgenstein, this explains the considerable indeterminacy in the use of many concept words of a natural language. “If a pattern of life is the basis for the use of a word then the word must contain some amount of indefiniteness” because the “pattern of life”, to which we refer, is itself “not one of exact regularity.” (LW II § 211) Actually, “the pattern in the weave is interwoven with many others“ (RPP II § 673; Z § 569) in such a way that it is not always clear, especially in borderline cases, whether something is to be designated as “this” or “that”, for instance as “hope” or as “expectation”. Also, a pattern of life does “not always” appear “complete”, but emerges rather “in a multiplicity of ways” (RPP II § 672; Z § 568). However, as Wittgenstein comments perhaps alluding to Nietzsche, we, in our conceptual world, keep on seeing the same, recurring with variations. That is how our concepts take it. For concepts are not for use on a single occasion.24

Rather, used repeatedly, they tend to regard individual occurrences in our life as being similar. Our language games therefore refer to patterns of our life and are – to emphasize this once again – also a part of them. And so 23 For Wittgenstein, this is of course, especially in the framework of his discussion of the grammar of psychological concepts, an extremely important statement because it emphasizes that we refer in no way to inner-psychic events when we use these concepts, as one frequently means in the course of an obvious “mentalist” misjudgement of the grammar of such concepts. However, this aspect may be ignored in the present context. 24 Ibid. Nietzsche uses similar language to express these thoughts in his essay Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne (cf. Nietzsche 1980, p. 879 ff.), which Wittgenstein might have known as Hans Sluga thinks (cf. Sluga 2006, p. 9).

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Wittgenstein notes on one occasion: “By indicating the language game”, which is played with a particular word, “one reveals the connection between language and life” (MS 137, 61b) i. e. between the use of language and other life events which belong to a particular life pattern. Thus it seems to me noteworthy that considering this connection he never speaks of an embedding of language in a life form, although one should expect this in the light of the standard interpretation of the life form concept. He also – this too should not be forgotten – has no particular theory about the manner of the connection between language and life. In particular, he does not want to assert any “causal connection” (ibid.) between the two. In fact he is even unsure about which interpretation of the relationship between language and life he inclines to (cf. MS 137, 8b). As he once notes: But what do I want to say? That – that we would have other concepts if our environment and our life were different? And would that be a scientific // natural-historical // hypothesis? Or do I want to say: Other concepts – i. e. other language games, thus another life?25

But a clear answer to these questions that would permit us to attribute to him, at least implicitly, a particular theory on this connection was never provided anywhere by Wittgenstein. Nevertheless, it becomes clear in the late texts that he does not understand “life” – in which the human use of language with all its particularities is embedded – exclusively in that naturalhistorical sense emphasized by the Garver interpretation of the life-form concept.26 Actually, as he expressly says, Wittgenstein can easily imagine within human life a “life other” than that led by himself and his contemporaries; or, as the proponents of the standard interpretation of the life form concept would say: a life form alternative to ours with language games appropriate to it. But an expression of this sort is not used by Wittgenstein for reasons which will soon become clear. Rather he speaks of “another 25 Ibid. 26 Cf. note 12.

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life” and writes, in order to emphasize the attachment of language games to it: Another life moves quite different images into the foreground, makes quite different images necessary. As necessity teaches praying. This does not mean that one necessarily alters one’s opinions through the other life. But one lives differently, speaks differently. With a new life one learns new language games.27

Thus one might also, according to Wittgenstein, easily “say people’s concepts show what matters for them and what doesn’t.” (RC, III, § 293) They reveal what people in their life consider to be a recurring pattern. But as he immediately adds, “not as if this explained the particular concepts they have” (ibid.). His concern here is not to provide an explanation, but rather he wishes “to rule out the view that we have right concepts and other people the wrong ones” (ibid.). In fact he wishes to say “an education quite different from ours”, another way of emphasizing the pattern, “might also be the foundation for quite different concepts” (RPP II § 707; Z § 387). Therefore one might ask: “Must people be acquainted with the concept of modesty or of swaggering, wherever there are modest and swaggering men?” (Z § 378). The answer has to be: not especially, if, according to our concepts, modest or swaggering persons are rare in a particular environment. “Where e. g. a certain type is only seldom to be found, no concept of that type will” perhaps simply “be formed.” (Z § 376). These people, it may be said, accordingly perceive that life pattern, which we designate as “modesty” or “swaggering”, not “as a unity, as a particular physiognomy” (ibid.), since for “us, too, many differences are unimportant, which we might find important” (Z § 378) within a different environment. Would it therefore, in light of what can be found in Wittgenstein’s late texts about the connection between language and life, be “correct to say our concepts reflect our life?” (RC, III, § 302). Significantly, he does not answer this question and here too avoids

27 DB, p. 75.

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any theory of the type of relationship between language and life. Rather, he adds in place of an answer: “They are standing in the middle of it” (ibid.). And this is really all he wants to say about this relationship.

III. In view of the fact that Wittgenstein does not mention the concept of “life form” wherever he considers the relationship between language and life, one may now wonder what this concept in his thought actually means. How does it relate to that human life as such in which all language games of a natural language are embedded? An answer to this question might possibly be found by a closer and more accurate consideration of a famous and frequently quoted remark on “life form” in the so-called “Part II” of the Philosophical Investigations. “Can only those hope who can talk?” asks Wittgenstein here. And his answer is: Only those who have mastered the use of a language. That is to say, the phenomena of hope are modes of this complicated form of life.28

In the light of his above-mentioned idea that concepts such as “hope” and “expectation”, “modesty” and “swaggering” do not designate ontologically independent phenomena of the psychic or social world, but rather refer to patterns of life which are felt to be significant within a language community and singled out by means of concept words, the first part of his answer is clear. The question of whether he who can speak is the only one who can hope is, in this light, to be answered in the affirmative, because only he who has command of a language can make linguis-

28 PI, II, i, p. 174a. The original German version reads: “Nur der, der die Verwendung einer Sprache beherrscht. D. h., die Erscheinungen des Hoffens sind Modifikationen dieser komplizierten Lebensform.”

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tic utterances which we ascribe to the life pattern of “hope” or “hoping”. But what does Wittgenstein say in the second part of his well-known remark, in which he states his answer more precisely in the comment that “the phenomena of hope are modes of this complicated form of life”? Garver29 as well as important proponents of the standard interpretation understand this remark to mean that the deictic expression “this” in “this complicated lifeform” refers to the “use of a language” in the previous sentence. Thus, what is being said is that the “phenomena of hope” – i. e. our linguistic and non-linguistic utterances of hopeful attitudes – are “modes of this complicated form of life”, viz. the life-form of creatures that have command of a language.30

But is this reading really inevitable? As I would like to make clear, Wittgenstein might have meant something quite different in this passage. His talk of “this complicated life-form” might also be, to avoid an inelegant repetition, elliptical and, by means of the deictic expression “this”, a reference to “hope” as a constant, a repetitive pattern in human life. In this case, the reading here would be: The manifold individual “phenomena of hope” that we encounter in life are “modes of this complicated life-form” of hope. And in this respect “hope” would be the form of life envisaged by Wittgenstein, which as such is much more complicated than the phenomena of hope that an individual might reveal in his language and behaviour. That this is exactly what is meant is clear not only from what Wittgenstein goes on to say immediately in the next remark about a further life-form, which is no less complicated than “hope”, namely “grief ”. Grief, to use his words, describes another “pattern which recurs, with different variations, in the weave of our life” (ibid.). In particular, this reading is also confirmed by an earlier version of his remark about “this complicated life-form”, which has so far not received the attention it deserves. Although it has

29 Garver 1984, p. 43 ff. 30 Schulte 1999, p. 159. Cf. in the same sense also Majetschak 2000, p. 349.

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found its way into the Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology (LW I § 365), here it does not immediately allow one to discern Wittgenstein’s thought. Since an unfortunate error has crept into the transcription of this passage in the Bergen Electronic Edition, I will quote the remark from Wittgenstein’s manuscript:

Kann nur der hoffen, der ‘wer’ sprechen kann? Nur der, der die Verwendung ‘Anwendung’ der Sprache beherrscht. Die Zeichen des Hoffens sind m Modifikationen eines viel kompliziertern Lebensmusters. // D. h., die Erscheinungen des Hoffens sind Modifikationen dieses sehr komplizierten Musters.//31

In this formulation, the concept of “life-form” from the abovequoted remark from Part II of the Philosophical Investigations is replaced by the concept of “life-pattern”, but the meaning of the remark on the whole is not changed. Accordingly, it is said here, as there, that the “signs of hoping”, which we perceive and by which we are motivated to speak of “hoping” or “hope”, are modes of a life pattern, i. e. the life pattern of “hope”, which as such is – much (!) – more complicated than any of its empirical realizations in certain signs. That is, all those empirical realizations of signs of hoping are “modes” of this very complicated pattern or, as it is formulated in the Philosophical Investigations, “Part II”, modes of this very complicated form of life, which has to be characterized in this way because the phenomena that make up “hope” for us have far-reaching ramifications and are very 31 MS 137, 115a: “Can only hope who can speak? Only he who has the ability to use ‘apply’ the language. The signs of hoping are modes of a much more complicated life pattern. // That is, the phenomena of hope are modes of this very complicated pattern.//”

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complex.32 Apparently, this remark from MS 137 contains no mention of human life form at all, neither in the sense of the Garver interpretation nor of the standard one. Therefore, one may properly exclude the possibility that Wittgenstein, when he took it over with a tiny change into the manuscript that became “Part II” of the Philosophical Investigations, meant something quite different from what is obviously said in MS 137. On the contrary, comparison of the two versions allows no other interpretation than that the sense of the remarks has remained the same in both manuscripts. The remark cited from Part II of the Philosophical Investigations can thus be appropriately read as the observation that the “phenomena of hope”, which we encounter every day in various ways, are “modes of this complicated life form” of “hope” to which we refer using this word in our everyday language. Moreover, at the same time it becomes definitely clear that a “lifeform” in Wittgenstein’s understanding is nothing other than a “life pattern”: a recurring and recognizable order of action, situation and linguistic utterance features, which the speakers of a language apprehend as structuring regularities within their life and thus designate by a word. If one finds this interpretation of the life-form concept in the late philosophy of Wittgenstein strange, one should realize that this impression is created in particular because it runs counter to influential traditions of interpretation. These traditional readings of the life-form concept, however, usually attach their interpretations to those legendary one-sentence utterances that have acquired almost Delphic status, such as “to imagine a language means to imagine a life-form” (PI § 19): one-sentence utterances from which the meaning of this concept obviously cannot be read simply because Wittgenstein avoids providing any explanation here at all. In this way, it has been possible for such opaque remarks to become opportunities for the projection of philosophical fantasies. If, however, one looks around in the writings of Wittgenstein, it will become clear that in the few passages where

32 See, however, Garver 1984, p. 44.

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he furnishes the concepts “life form” – or, in the plural, “forms of life” – with examples, he is using the concepts in the sense presented here. Thus, in a remark on the problem of following rules in a pocket notebook from 1943/44,33 he points out that the “environment of certain life and language forms” (MS 127, 92) is the condition according to which we understand or do not understand a form of behaviour as following a rule. And by this he seems to mean in this context that certain constellations, certain patterns of linguistic and non-linguistic manifestations, have to be in place to motivate us to speak of rule-following or rule-breaking. This interpretation is supported by a further remark from MS 165 (written between 1941 and 1944), which represents a variant on PI § 206. As in this well-known passage of the Philosophical Investigations, he discusses here the question of when we would ascribe to the members of a foreign culture, of whose language we have no command, patterns of speech and behaviour that are similar to those that we are familiar with. “If we came to a foreign country with a foreign language and foreign customs,” he writes, it would sometimes be easy to find a language and life-form that we would have to call giving orders and obeying them, but perhaps they would have no language and life-form that corresponded entirely to our orders etc. As perhaps there is a people that has no life form corresponding to our greeting //that has nothing corresponding to our greeting//34

Here it is expressed in all desirable clarity that “giving orders” and “obeying them” is understood by Wittgenstein as language and life form, respectively. He says that in the foreign culture there may be a counterpart to these forms, but the language and life forms cultivated there might also perhaps correspond only 33 Dating according to Wright 1986, p. 53. 34 MS 165, 110 ff. The original German version reads: “so wäre es manchmal ‘in manchen Fällen’ leicht eine Sprach- & Lebensform zu finden «sehen» die wir Befehlen & Befolgen zu nennen hätten, vielleicht aber besäßen sie keine Sprach- & Lebensform die ganz unsern Befehlen etc entsprächen. So wie es vielleicht ein Volk gibt, das nichts ‘keine’ unserm Gruß entsprechenden Lebensform besitzt. //das nichts unserm Grüßen entsprechende besitzt//”.

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partially to ours. And, in addition to “giving orders” and “obeying them”, he even designates “greeting” in this passage explicitly as a life-form in our social world, to which there is not necessarily a counterpart in a foreign culture. “Greeting” is of course a relatively simple life form: that is to say, a more primitive pattern of speech and action, in which linguistic and non-linguistic features combine to a much lesser extent to make a form than, for example, in the complicated case of “hoping”. In fact Wittgenstein seems to wish to distinguish primitive and fundamental from complicated and derived forms that vary the fundamental forms. This is at any rate what it looks like in a remark datable to 1947/4835 in which he claims that that pattern designated by us as “doubt” presupposes certain more fundamental forms of speech and action because it is to be apprehended as one of their variations. He wants, as he expressly emphasizes, to say: Only in a life that knows providing information, asking question etc. appears what we call “doubt” […] as a variation of these forms of life.36

Here “providing information”, “asking questions” and other language and life forms are understood as more fundamental than “doubt”, which is interpreted as a variation based on the fundamental forms. And this is so, as Wittgenstein puts it in another manuscript, because it is characteristic of our language that it grows on the basis of fixed life forms, regular doing. Its function is determined above all by the action it accompanies.37

Here too “life-forms” do not mean cultural systems in which language games are embedded in the sense of the standard interpretation, but the “regular action forms / forms of acting” (ibid.) of which linguistic utterances are parts. Speaking accompanies regularities of this sort in the course of our everyday life; indeed it is – as the Philosophical Investigations will then emphasize – so closely 35 Dating according to Wright 1986, p. 54. 36 MS 136, 141a-b. 37 Ibid. = MS 119, 74v.

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and firmly associated with them that imagining a language almost means imagining a form of life. Wittgenstein’s use of the expression “life-form” in the Philosophical Investigations is, of course, the same as that revealed in the remarks of the writings already quoted. When he claims in this book that “speaking a language is part of an activity, or of a life-form” (PI § 23), he is not intending thereby to introduce a new technical term into his late philosophy of language. Rather, in light of the interpretation submitted here, he only wants to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that speaking a language is bound into patterns of linguistic and behavioural features. Moreover, Wittgenstein uses the life-form concept in the Philosophical Investigations in two other remarks that I have not yet examined in the preceding considerations. Traditionally, both passages encouraged scholars to offer subtle interpretations. However, it is my intention to demonstrate in my concluding remarks that they have a simple and clear meaning when set against the background of the interpretation of the life form concept offered here. The first of these two passages comes from Part I of the Philosophical Investigations, § 241: “So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?” – It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.

With this remark Wittgenstein excludes a possible misunderstanding of his thoughts; the misunderstanding that he is advancing a consensus-theoretical understanding of truth, according to which the agreement of people is a criterion of rightness or wrongness of their judgements. In contrast, he emphasizes in the passage that he adheres completely to the common opinion that what people say can be right or wrong. However, he points out that he is emphasizing the agreement of people in quite a different respect: their agreement in the language in which they formulate their right or wrong statements. The substance of this agreement is that people who speak a particular language designate the same thing as “red”, the same thing as “feeling pain” and the same thing

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as “calculating”, to give only a few of the examples discussed by Wittgenstein in the context of Philosophical Investigations, § 241. Although in each of these examples there is room for doubt whether in the individual case one really calls something “red”, “pain” or “calculating”, it is nevertheless a fact that we prove to be unimpressed by the possibility of such doubt while speaking a language and therefore use the words in agreement with others. This agreement, according to Wittgenstein, is not an agreement “in opinions, but in form of life”. Let us take as an example of what is meant the agreement of people in mathematics, which Wittgenstein addresses in the previous remark. Among mathematicians there is usually complete agreement about whether “a rule has been obeyed or not” (PI § 240). “Disputes do not break out” (ibid.) about whether someone has done the calculation or not. As Wittgenstein comments with perfect irony, “people don’t come to blows over it, for example” (ibid.). This measure of agreement cannot, of course, be explained on the grounds that everyone, independently of each other, has formed a subjective opinion about whether certain rules were really followed; an opinion in which coincidentally everyone agrees. The consensus here is more the result of the situation that all those competent in mathematics agree on a particular life form, i. e. in a certain pattern of action that is eminently important for our life, viz. that everyone does that which we attribute to the pattern of “calculating”. “Calculating” is thus in this case the life form shared and it is part of this life form that certain things are done – whether on paper, or on a board or with the aid of other devices – and that certain things are said, namely the result of a calculation which is by agreement regarded to be correct.38 We are drilled remorselessly in the techniques for calculating – mul38 “This consensus in the result is a major part of” what we call “calculating” (RFM, p. 193). Only if the expected result is named is it a matter also of the “life form” of “calculating”, which is so important for our orientation in the world and not, for example, of the game of “number guessing” or suchlike. These connections, which affect Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, are mentioned merely in passing. Cf. in more detail Majetschak 2000, p. 296 ff.

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tiplication, subtraction, addition etc. – in the course of our socialization and so Wittgenstein is able to say in another context that our agreement in what we call “following a mathematical rule” goes back to “training, drill and the forms of our life” (MS 160, 26r). It is thus not a matter of “a consensus of opinions but rather of life forms” (MS 160, 26v–r). Which life forms are to be found among the people of a language community and how types of linguistic utterance are interwoven with them, according to Wittgenstein, is beyond the possibility of substantiation. As a result, in his view, it makes no sense to ask whether the forms of our life are in themselves correct, justified or in some other way anchored in reality. The existing forms rather should be accepted as they are. Therefore, Wittgenstein, in the second part of the Philosophical Investigations, also notes on one occasion: “What has to be accepted, the given, is – so one could say – forms of life.” (PI, p. 192e) To use the example of a less complicated life form, it is part of our life form of greeting, for example, that we utter certain words – “Guten Tag”, “Bonjour” or “Hello” – and perform certain actions. We often raise the hand in a sort of wave or offer others a handshake. Of course one could also imagine that we tap ourselves lightly on the back of the head three times with a clenched fist when we greet each other, and if someone asks “Why don’t we do something like that?”, what is one to answer? This is not part of our pattern of greeting. How we connect linguistic and non-linguistic moments with each other in this life form is simply one of the “facts” of our life.39

IV. I now wish to summarize my position briefly. The concept of “lifeform” in Wittgenstein’s late philosophy is certainly an interesting concept, but by no means a “basic concept” in the sense of the main 39 See also MS 133, 28r; TS 229, 333; TS 245, 245.

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currents of interpretation sketched out at the beginning of this article. For what is meant by it – a constellation of regularities of linguistic and non-linguistic action that we regard as a recurring structure in our life – Wittgenstein in other contexts is able to write also “life pattern”, even on one occasion also “life stencil” (LW II, § 206). This meaning is philosophically interesting not only in respect of Wittgenstein’s understanding of language games, but above all in respect of his analysis of the semantics of psychological and sociological terms. The latter refer – as we saw in the first part of this article – to life-forms and life patterns. As the possibility of replacing the life-form concept by other concepts makes evident, Wittgenstein, who positively loathed philosophical jargon, would by no means have wanted to place it side by side with the expression “language game” as a technical term of his late philosophy. This much can be supposed from its rare, rather incidental and always unremarked occurrence in the Philosophical Investigations as well as in other posthumous writings.40 Thus it 40 In the posthumous writings of Wittgenstein there is only one remark that could be used at all as proof of the standard interpretation (Cf. in this sense Schulte 1999, p. 160, and Stosch 2001, p. 33). It is in Wittgenstein's German language reworking of the Brown Book. The text is as follows: Imagine a use of language (a culture) in which there was a common name for green and red on the one hand, and yellow and blue on the other. […] We could also easily imagine a language (and that means again a culture) in which there existed no common expression for light blue and dark blue, […]. (D 310, 89) The German translation of Wittgenstein is as follows: Stellen wir uns einen Sprachgebrauch vor (eine Kultur), in welchem es einen gemeinsamen Namen für grün und rot, und einen für blau und gelb gibt. […] Umgekehrt könnte ich mir auch eine Sprache (und das heißt wieder eine Form des Lebens) denken, die zwischen Dunkelrot und Hellrot eine Kluft befestigt. etc.“ (EPB, p. 202) Here the expression “Form des Lebens” / “life-form” is actually used once instead of the word “culture” in the English original. But can it be deduced from this that Wittgenstein generally understood a “life-form” as a “culture”? In view of the fact that there is no parallel passage to the one quoted, it seems to me to involve the use of extraordinary hermeneutical force to

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seems at any rate unnecessary to impute to Wittgenstein ambitions to enrich the terminology of philosophy in the use of this concept.

wish to derive the argument from it that the real meaning of the word “lifeform”, which Wittgenstein implicitly uses in all other contexts in which it appears, is being expressed. Because he does not translate his English original literally, but often clarifies and states it more precisely, it appears very much more likely that in the German version text he replaced the far too general expression “culture” in the second use with the narrower and more precise concept of “life-form”. Why should one have to imagine an entire culture simply to find it plausible that a language has no common expression for dark red and light red? One has to imagine a pattern of life in which a commonality of both colours is not emphasized, and no more than that! With Wittgenstein one could then say: That which we designate with the superordinate concept “red” affects the people who speak this language, not “as a unity, as a particular physiognomy” (Z § 376), whatever their culture may look like. Thus it is more precise to speak here of “life-form”, and not, as in the English original of the Brown Book, of “culture”.

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Translating Form(s)-of-life? Remarks on Cultural Difference and Alterity JAMES M. THOMPSON

Das Fremde als das, was in seiner Unzugänglichkeit zugänglich ist, bedeutet kein unbestimmtes X, das auf seine Bestimmung wartet. Waldenfels 1997

The discussion in the secondary literature concerning Wittgenstein’s expression of Lebensform(en) or “form(s)-of-life” has primarily focused on the question of whether there is only one shared human form-of-life or multiple forms-of-life. As is commonly known this situation arose in connection with Wittgenstein’s use of the term in the Philosophical Investigations both in the singular and plural form. Of course, this debate has long since moved beyond the confines of the Investigations and spilled over into the Nachlaß in the hopes of finding other uses of the term as well as insightful references that might shed light on what Wittgenstein meant by it. Although Wittgenstein does use the expression in other places, unfortunately, they are just as enigmatic and vague as those found in the Investigations. However, as Wittgenstein is well-known for his cryptic and indirect approach to philosophic problems, this lack of a clear and positive definition of the term is nothing new to those engaged in Wittgenstein scholarship. In fact, it is the term’s vagueness, infrequent use in his writings, and the close relationship Wittgenstein draws to the concept of language-game that has spawned a considerable amount of speculation and literature as to the meaning and significance of form(s)-of-life within Wittgenstein’s thought.

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As briefly mentioned above, a great deal of the research on this topic has been focused on the issue of the term’s use in the singular and plural and, more importantly, the implications of this regarding the question of the (im)possibility of cross-cultural understanding. In other words, the issue here seems to be whether Wittgenstein’s “form-of-life” entails either a kind of cultural relativism (in the case of a plurality of forms-of-life) or that there are no real boundaries – epistemic or otherwise – prohibiting our ability to understand and judge other cultures (in the case of a singular form-of-life).1 However, this mingling of topics often leads to a conflation of two closely related, yet different issues: on the one hand, there is the question as to how one should understand the expression form(s)-of-life both in terms of meaning and number. It should be noted that the comments here regarding the singularity or plurality are directed only toward the issue of human form(s)-oflife. On the other hand, we have the question concerning the encounter and experience of the Other, of the foreign or alien. While it is clear that the former question has significant and wide-reaching implications for the latter, it is still worth mentioning that Wittgenstein on only one occasion dealt with the two issues at the same time. Instead, the situations in which the term form(s)-of-life appears are primarily concerned with three things: 1) comparision/differentiation, 2) situatedness, and 3) security or assuredness. Cultural otherness, the possibility of cross-cultural communication, and foreignness or Fremdheit are themes treated in different passages and contexts. These three aspects are not an attempt to define or formally characterize form(s)-oflife; rather they are a description of the role the expression plays within context bound philosophical difficulties. In this paper, I will talk about the role of the term “form(s)-oflife” in Wittgenstein’s writings, and then attempt to ascertain what this means for our encounter and engagement with the Other. I hope to show that the question of the term’s singularity or plu-

1

See Saari 2004.

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rality is secondary compared to the structural role it plays within the passages. Furthermore, I contend that the term “form(s)-oflife” by no means determines or exhausts the issue of alterity within his work. Instead, it is precisely the open-endedness of the term that underlines a fundamental and important tension in the encounter of the Other and the (im)possibility of communication between cultures.

The Meaning of Lebensform(en) As I have indicated above, I see two related, nevertheless, distinct issues that within the secondary literature often seem to have collapsed into one. In order to get clear about the two issues and their relationship to one another, I think it is helpful to ask again what is meant by the expression “form-of-life”. Rather than concentrating on the term itself, I propose that we look at it within the respective context of the passages in which it occurs. In other words, in this admittedly brief analysis I want to examine the role it plays within the passages and the general subject matter. Let us begin by look at several passages from the Investigations: It is easy to image a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle. – Or a language consisting only of questions and expressions for answering yes or no. And innumerable others. – And to imagine a language means to imagine a form-of-life.2 And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten. (We can get a rough picture of this from the changes in mathematics). Here the term language-game is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.3

2 3

PI § 19. PI § 23.

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James M. Thompson It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not an agreement in opinions but in a form of life.4 What has to be accepted, the given, is – so one could say – forms of life.5 Does it make sense to say that people generally agree in their judgments of colour? What would it be like for them not to? – One man would say a flower was red which another called blue, and so on. – But what right should we have to call these people’s words “red” and “blue” our “colourwords”?6

The striking aspect of these passages is that the term form(s)-oflife is not at the center of the discussion. In the first passage (PI § 19), the issue at hand involves imagining very simple or basic language-games. The term form-of-life is secondary, and only introduces the point (albeit a very important one) that language and language-games are not isolated practices or activities, but rather they belong to a larger context. In the second passage (PI § 23), what is being discussed is that language-games (and their number) are not linked to eternal and unchanging essences. On the contrary, human activities come and go; they come into being and sometimes cease to exist. It is only as an aside that Wittgenstein points out that the term language-game was chosen in order to emphasize that using language is an act within an activity or within an even broader context of significance. Here again, we see that his use of the concept is merely an addition underscoring the situatedness of our practices.7 The same basic observation applies to the other passages as well. In the third passage (PI § 247), Wittgenstein indicates that truth and falsity are not simply a matter of agreement amongst individuals; they are not merely a collective stipulation that this or that is the case. Instead, truth and falsity belong to a broader context of social practices; something that we perform and participate in as part of our everyday lives. 4 5 6 7

PI § 241. See alternative version “facts of living” in RPP I § 630. PI, II, xi, p. 226. Cf. OC § 204.

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The fourth passage (PI, II, xi, p. 226) states that there are aspects of our linguistic practices and lives that simply cannot be further reduced or analyzed. The “given”, as Wittgenstein refers to it here, is that which is beyond what we would normally refer to as reasons, evidence, or judgment. As such, in this passage forms-of-life cannot be explained, rather they can only be described. Other references to form(s)-of-life in Wittgenstein’s Nachlaß seem only to reinforce this reading. Let us take a look at two more representative examples where the term occurs. The primitive form of the language-game is security [Sicherheit], not insecurity [Unsicherheit]. For insecurity could never lead to action. I want to say: it is characteristic of our language that the foundation on which it grows consists of firm forms-of-life [fester Lebensformen], regular ways of acting.8 One might say: “‘I know’ expresses comfortable security [Sicherheit], not the security [Sicherheit] that is still struggling.”9 Now I would like to regard this security [Sicherheit], not as something akin to hastiness or superficiality, but as (a) form-of-life. (That is very badly expressed and probably badly thought as well.)10 But that means I want to conceive it as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as it were, as something animal.11 8 BEE, Item 119, Band XV, 74v. Although I am not entirely satisfied with my translation of “Sicherheit” and “Unsicherheit” as “security” and “insecurity”, the purpose in doing so is twofold: First, given the prominence and significance of the term “certainty” [Gewißheit] in Wittgenstein’s later thought, especially in On Certainty, it is important to distinguish between the terms. Second, while the translation of these two terms as “certainty” and “uncertainty” would, indeed, in many cases throughout Wittgenstein corpus be plausible, in these two instances it does not quite capture the way in which the word is being used. Here, the term expresses something more akin to a “sense of security” or “assuredness” underlying our social interactions. 9 OC § 357. 10 OC § 358. 11 OC § 359. This phrasing would seem to suggest a biological reading along the lines of Hunter. While I would not rule out that biological considerations might factor into form(s)-of-life, it is clear that in this passage Wittgenstein is drawing an analogue, and not defining the term.

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Here again, we see in both sets of passages that the term form(s)of-life is not the focus of discussion, but rather is used to distinguish something, place something in context, or emphasize the unreflected stability of our relationship to the world, artifacts, and people. In the first passage (Item 119, Band XV, 74v), the main issue is “security” and the role it plays in language-games and our actions. He emphasizes that our linguistic practices are not foundationless; rather they are grounded in enduring and persistent ways of acting. At issue in the second example (OC §§ 357–359) is again the notion of “security”. Here, Wittgenstein talks about a sense of security that acts as the basis of our actions and judgments, and thus is not (normally) the subject of reflection or doubt. It is something that requires no justification, because it is what makes things like doubt and judgment possible. Even though Wittgenstein indicates that he is not entirely satisfied with this formulation of the issue, it is, nevertheless, clear that this is not a description of a form-of-life, but rather that he wishes to characterize this sense of security or assuredness12 in terms of a form-of-life, i. e. that a form-of-life embodies this kind of self-evidence. Taken on their own, these passages do not represent a problem regarding the experience of the Other. It is only when the term form-of-life is brought into connection with other passages from the Investigations – most prominently PI § 415 and § 206 – that the conflation of the two issues occurs. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that the singularity/plurality controversy can be traced back to the interpretation of the two phrases: “the common behavior of mankind”13 and “natural history of human beings”.

12 See footnote 8. 13 In this particular instance I have chosen to leave the term “gemeinsame” as “common” (Anscombe’s translation) in order to show how this translation helped contribute to the debate. Eike von Savigny mentions that the English translation of “gemeinsame” as “common” is misleading. Instead he proposes “shared” as a more fitting translation. For more on this see Savigny 1996.

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A Conflation of Issues Let us look more closely at the passages where these phrases occur in the Investigations in order to get a better idea of how the singularity/plurality debate got started: 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 because they are always before our eyes.14 The shared behaviour of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.15

The implication made by commentators such as Garver and Saari is that both the phrase “the common behaviour of mankind” and “natural history of human beings” are references to the expression form-of-life, i. e. that Wittgenstein is simply describing the concept in other terms. While I would not deny that an analytical connection between these two ideas and form(s)-of-life exists (and I think to a degree there is one), it is not at all clear from this context that they are one and the same. Moreover, even if they were synonymous or very closely related, it is, nevertheless, troublesome that Wittgenstein did not make the direct connection himself, and thus would only seem to support that idea that he did not have a coherent conception of “form-of-life” in mind16. Finally, it should be said that the discussion surrounding PI § 415 is not even concerned with alterity. Here, Wittgenstein is discussing things like introspection, the “self ”, and “consciousness”. PI § 206, in contrast, is certainly relevant to the present discussion of alterity. In the paragraph immediately preceding the statement “common behaviour of mankind” Wittgenstein writes:

14 PI § 415. 15 PI § 206. 16 Contrary to Malcolm’s assessment, I agree with Black that the term “Lebensform” was probably not central to Wittgenstein’s thought. See Black 1978.

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James M. Thompson Suppose you came as an explorer into an unknown country with a language quite strange to you. In what circumstances would you say that the people there gave orders, understood them, obeyed them, rebelled against them, and so on?17

If the answer to the question is that it is the common or shared behavior of human beings which allows us to understand a foreign language, then this would seem to support, for example, Garver’s reading of the passage. Yet, even here, I think that the matter is being oversimplified, for Wittgenstein says that this “system of reference” is how we would attempt to comprehend these people’s actions – it is the means by which we try to make sense of their activities from our perspective. However, the “by means of which we interpret” is not the same thing as a common system of reference. In other words, there is still no guarantee that we have understood or even could understand them; instead it only signals that if we attempt to grasp the meaning of their actions, then we would do so drawing upon our own practices and patterns of significant interaction. The crux of the singularity/plurality debate, I believe, is encapsulated in Garver’s contention that Wittgenstein was not emphasizing “those transient cultural variations that separate” but rather “those conditions common to us all”. He continues stating that the “central thrust” of Wittgenstein’s work is “to describe phenomena typical of the human world”,18 and which belongs to a singular, yet complicated, form-of-life. Saari is also concerned with saving Wittgenstein from the cultural relativism that he believes certain interpretations of formsof-life imply. He too has an anthropological reading, and defines forms-of-life as “human activities and practices that are rooted in man’s biological and social nature. Forms of life cut across cultural boundaries, because they are basic forms that human life takes in all cultures”.19 The use of the plural in his statements 17 PI § 206. 18 Garver 1994, p. 265. 19 Saari 2004, p. 141. This position lies somewhere between that of Garver and Hunter.

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does not imply a rejection of the singularity view. Instead, both Saari and Garver explain Wittgenstein’s use of the plural “formsof-life” in terms of an “imaginary” or “hypothetical” otherness, i. e. what life would be like for people if their concepts, beliefs, and practices were radically different than ours. This hypothetical otherness is to be contrasted with what Saari calls “empirical otherness”, in which the actual differences existing between cultures are of a merely superficial nature; at the core, all human beings participate in a form-of-life. He states that the anthropologist is capable of understanding a foreign culture – even if he or she is not familiar with the language, because “he understands the point of their [indigenous peoples’] basic activities and practices”.20 Thus, the differences that we (and social scientists) find between cultures are simply variations of themes or modifications of a shared human form-of-life by which we are able to grasp the logic of other cultural practices “from within”, and consequently ensures the possibility of cross-cultural understanding. While Saari rightly points out that Wittgenstein’s remarks should not be interpreted as an attempt to develop some kind of theory or methodological approach for anthropologists and ethnologists, he, nevertheless, thinks that Wittgenstein provides us with clues as to how we are able to understand intentions, beliefs, and practices of other people without imposing our concepts and systems of belief upon them. Before moving to the discussion concerning the Other and Otherness, I want to point out that although the question of singularity and plurality is a legitimate one, I do not believe that it is the main point of the term.21 Moreover, it should be noted that my treatment of this issue is unfair to those commentators who 20 Saari 2004, p. 146. See also p. 160. 21 In conjunction with the validity of this issue there are several points that I think should not be overlooked: Is there only one human form-of-life shared by all human beings regardless of time, location, or culture? If so, then what should we make of Wittgenstein’s occasional use of the term in the plural? Does the term actually designate something or is the vagueness of the term intentional? If the latter, then what purpose does the vagueness of the term serve?

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advocate the singular reading of form-of-life, in that I have left the other side, i. e. those contending that Wittgenstein meant that there are, indeed, multiple forms-of-life – some even going so far as to claim that Wittgenstein equates a form-of-life with every language-game, uncommented and uncriticized. I do this for two reasons: first, the purpose of this paper is to investigate Wittgenstein’s remarks concerning Otherness, and not describe at length or directly participate in the singularity/plurality debate, and second since both sides of the debate adhere (to varying degrees) to a form of essentialism and universalism, my remarks are equally applicable to those in the forms-of-life camp.

Encountering the Other In the last section I attempted to show that, while related, the issues surrounding the expression form(s)-of-life, are distinct from those of experiencing the Other and “cultural otherness”. The conflation of topics, and thus the danger I see therein, is allowing one discussion to determine or structure another: in this case the debate concerning form(s)-of-life dominates the discussion of alterity. I would now like to turn to Wittgenstein’s remarks concerned with Fremdheit and alterity without being encumbered by the singularity/plurality model. Let us start by taking a look at three passages from Zettel: I want to say: an education quite different from ours might also be the foundation for quite different concepts.22 For here life would run on differently. – What interests us would not interest them. Here different concepts would no longer be unimaginable. In fact, this is the only way in which essentially different concepts are imaginable.23

22 Z § 387. 23 Z § 388.

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“These men would have nothing human about them.” Why? – We could not possibly make ourselves understood to them. Not even as we can to a dog. We cannot find ourselves in them. And yet there surely could be such beings, who in other respects were human.24

At first glance, these paragraphs would seem to belong to the aforementioned category of imaginary otherness. After all, here Wittgenstein is setting out the conditions under which one could hypothetically talk of the formation of different concepts, practices, and institutions – or put differently, another way of living. However, there is more at work here than just hypothetical considerations of alterity. He is not only discussing how different concepts arise in order for them to be considered fundamentally different, he also opens the possibility for alterity by stating in Z § 388 that the different ways of life necessitated by different concepts are, indeed, imaginable – that a radical form of Otherness is something we can experience. Pushing the point even further Z § 390 states that despite our extreme differences to such beings – perhaps even wanting to go so far as to deny their status as human beings – Wittgenstein still maintains that these beings could exist. In the Investigations we find another insightful and oft cited passage dealing with the intransparency and enigmatic aspect of the Other. We also say of a person that he is transparent to us. However, for our observation it is important that a person can be a complete enigma to another. One experiences this when coming into a foreign country with altogether foreign traditions; and, what is more, even given mastery of the country’s language. One does not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find ourselves in them.25

This passage belongs to a discussion involving the apparent asymmetry of my own relationship to my intentions, feelings, and 24 Z § 390, modified translation. 25 PI, II, xi, p. 223, modified translation.

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thoughts, against that which another individual has to them. During the course of the discussion the undisclosed interlocutors use terms like “inner” and “hidden”, “knowing” and “guessing”, “certainty” and “doubt”. Yet, this passage stands out from the others within the exchange in that it draws a direct connection between the intransparency of another person and the foreignness of another people’s culture and traditions.26 In order to understand this passage we need to clarify both in what sense a person can be opaque, and in what way or ways the intransparency of another person is like that of encountering a foreign culture? Let us take up the latter question first and then work our way back to the former. Let us imagine the situation Wittgenstein outlines where we enter a foreign land with customs very unlike the ones we are acquainted with. This scenario would not be difficult to imagine except for the fact that Wittgenstein wants us to furthermore imagine that we have an excellent command of the language. For those who are competent speakers of a “foreign” language, much less those having “mastered” one, this is most certainly a peculiar stipulation. Nonetheless, if we take this stipulation seriously and assume that we have attained the highest level of linguistic proficiency, in what way would the people and their traditions appear foreign to us? A situation would certainly have been easy to imagine in which a person with a limited grasp of the language might run into trouble as the result of grave misunderstandings (i. e. an inexperienced speaker). Or perhaps one learned a foreign language without ever having studied the culture, and thus knows how to form grammatically correct sentences, but his or her use of vocabulary and concepts does not correspond to how the language is actually spoken (e. g. learning the language via a grammar book). Yet, these are not the kind of cases Wittgenstein has in mind, for his use of the verb “to master” [beherrschen] ap26 Parts of the analysis of the passage above (PI, II, xi, p. 226) stem from a paper I delivered at the International Wittgenstein Symposium in 2006. See Thompson 2006.

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pears deliberate, and serves the purpose of radicalizing the example in order to make a very specific point. But, as I have just mentioned, the connection between the intransparency of another human being and the foreignness of another culture is by no means obvious. Put differently, given the conditions prescribed above, in what sense could one say that “one does not understand the people?”.27 The difficultly presented in this passage is that of the problem of the observer. Our experience of the Other – in this case both that of a foreign culture and an individual – is neither an object to be described, nor a static situation involving distinct elements, but rather a relational disruption. It is our relational mode to the Other that has become confused, and thus we feel unable to move. This (at least initial) inability to move – or to appropriate Wittgenstein’s expression, to say “I don’t know my way about” – is brought about because our relationship to the usual way we do things has been interrupted. As such, the Other represents a departure from our familiar habits and activities, and reminds us of the contingency of our own practices. We find this same inability to relate to the Other when Wittgenstein writes on the same page: “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him”.28 It is first with the establishment of a shared practice to which we both commit ourselves that movement within a shared space is possible. We do not understand the lion not because it speaks a different language, but because we have no relation to the world of the lion.

27 There are a few possibilities that would fit the situation Wittgenstein describes in the passage. For instance, one goes to a different country where they speak the same language or one’s parents/grandparents are from another country and have taught you the language. In each case, what the speaker is missing are the traditions embedded in the culture that underlie and inform language. 28 PI, II; xi, p. 223, modified translation.

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Some Concluding Remarks As mentioned toward the beginning of the paper, there are several obstacles that make it difficult to grasp Wittgenstein’s expression form(s)-of-life. First, his vague and very probably inconsistent use of the term precludes a straightforward and positive conception of the term.29 Secondly, (and connected to the first point), the relative infrequent occurrence of the term within his writings does not provide a substantial enough textual basis from which to extract a coherent and positive meaning. When considering these points in light of the almost universal significance ascribed to this term within the scholarship,30 not to mention its close relationship to the concept of language-game, it is not surprising that a bewildering number of interpretations as to what he meant by form(s)-of-life have been generated. And despite these acknowledged shortcomings, there is, nevertheless, a strong tendency within the secondary literature to try to elicit a unified and homogenous conception from his writings. I think that the imprecise and sparse use of the expression form(s)-of-life, however, is quite telling: firstly, his statements regarding form(s)-of-life are not meant to emphasize some readily identifiable composite set of practices. Instead, this opaque expression serves to demonstrate the situatedness of practices within a field of signification broader than just a singular language-game. Without a background of practices, one cannot participate in or play the individual language-games. Secondly, and closely related to the first point, the term form(s)-of-life also delineates the end of a meaningful inquiry; that going beyond a certain point only serves to mislead or takes us down a Holzweg, rather than get us closer to the “truth” or “essence” of our practices. As such, the term represents an implied critique of the

29 This is why I have expressly avoided the designation “concept” when referring to form(s)-of-life. 30 See Malcolm 1966 and 1986.

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logo-centric approach of the natural sciences and humanities, i. e. the relentless pursuit of the final or ultimate ground in Reason. Instead of viewing the vagueness of the term’s use as a deficiency, which thwarts our efforts to grasp its essence, perhaps we should, as Merleau-Ponty suggests, try to see the indeterminate as a positive phenomenon.31 In this case, the indeterminacy in the use of the term is an inextricable aspect of form(s)-of-life; it is not (necessarily) a poor representation or depiction of what form(s)-of-life are, but rather a description of an interrelational constellation of activities, practices, and significance. It constitutes the background against which phenomena, actors, artifacts, actions, etc. are carried out. Thus, the difficulty in defining or identifying what a form-of-life is lies in the role it plays in the manifestation of situations or language-games. Although there has been dispute as to the relationship between form(s)-of-life and language-games, the two terms exhibit certain similarities in Wittgenstein’s writings, e. g. serving as “objects of comparison”.32 Regardless of how closely the two are related, they are, nevertheless, two different movements within an event of signification. My intention in this paper was to show that the singularity/ plurality debate concerning form(s)-of-life wrongly overshadows Wittgenstein’s remarks about the Other. From the passages discussed it is clear that he is also interested in the phenomena of foreignness and experiences of the Other. Not all of the situations and possibilities that Wittgenstein sketches out are of an imaginary nature. As the passage toward the end of the last section (PI, II, xi, p. 223) indicates, we need not travel to exotic and faroff lands to find examples of radical Otherness much less the intransparency that he describes. These kinds of experiences are not only to be found outside of our so-called “own culture”. The Other (in all of its forms) can be uncovered in our encounter with strangers, close friends, family, and even within ourselves.

31 Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 6. 32 PI § 130.

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I see a strong parallel between the various positions in the form(s)-of-life debate, the most extreme of which deny the possibility of radical alterity by either making the Other impossible because a shared human form-of-life underlies all of our languages and practices or by construing the Other so radically that we cannot even encounter it, and what Rottenburg characterizes as the “thorn of anthropology”. The paradox of the Other is an issue with which social scientists are constantly confronted in their research. He writes: On the one hand, it seems highly unlikely that we could ever even approach the absolutely strange or strictly heterogeneous…let alone comprehend it. On the other hand, it becomes immediately clear that if we can only talk about that which is strange in our own terminology, its strangeness threatens to be lost in the process.33

As described in the quote there is a tendency in social anthropology to either place the Other – “the absolutely strange” – beyond the realm of the knowable or to conceive of it such that – given sufficient time and effort – it is capable of being translated into our own terms. Considering that the former position would effectively render the job of the social anthropologist (among others) impossible, it is clear that the majority involved in this kind of research believe that they are capable of grasping the logic behind another culture’s language, practices, etc. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the question of the Other and its implications has been resolved. On the contrary, it seems that in the end we are left with no definitive solution to the (im)possibility of the Other. It is not a simple either/or dilemma that we can choose between or somehow overcome. Instead, the Other represents an experiential tension or disruptive moment. In Wittgenstein’s remarks concerning the Other I see this same real, irresolvable, yet, positive tension within experience that belongs to the phenomena itself – a tension that among others philosophy, anthropology, and we in our everyday interactions simply must learn to live with. 33 Rottenburg 2006, p. 27.

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Form of Life as Arithmetical Experiment JESÚS PADILLA GÁLVEZ

Wittgenstein’s works are a continuing source of surprise and inspiration for further philosophical thinking. The author introduced the interesting notion of “form of life” in the Philosophical Investigations although he used this expression only sparingly in his work.1 In the following sections I will approach this issue from different angles and try to analyse it in more detail. For instance, at the beginning of the Philosophical Investigations the author describes language as being linked to a form of life: Und eine Sprache vorstellen heißt, sich eine Lebensform vorstellen.2

This statement contains two interesting aspects, the link between language and form of life and the mental activity of imagination (Vorstellung). This raises the question of how language can actually be imagined or represented. What kind of analogy is there between imagining a language on the one hand and imagining a form of life on the other? These questions may be reduced to the crucial problem of how language and form of life are interrelated. Obviously, Wittgenstein suggests that the reader imagine language and form of life as related phenomena. However, this assumption gives rise to more queries because our imagination is

1

2

See Fred 1919 (pseudo. for Alfred Wechsler) and Hofmannsthal’s review (1979) of Wechsler’s book. The origin of the word “Lebensform” was characterized as remarks on the technique of social life (“Anmerkungen über die Technik des gesellschaftlichen Lebens”). “And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.” (PI § 19).

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based on past experiences. Does the author imply that we shall draw on inner representations of perceptions that we have made previously? Or rather, does Wittgenstein understand form of life as an abstraction without any link to reality? In this context the process of language acquisition seems relevant. It is known that the author uses a teacher-student model to explain language acquisition. Within this model, language and particularly “language games” are seen as part of form of life: Das Wort “Sprachspiel” soll hier hervorheben, daß das Sprechen der Sprache ein Teil ist einer Tätigkeit, oder einer Lebensform.3

Although the assumption that “speaking” is viewed as activity is nothing new, the statement is still interesting. A verb denotes an action (e. g., as in the phrase “I am writing just now”, or “I am reading”) but in this context speaking is viewed in a broader, more general sense. As such it is considered a part of the form of life. It is noteworthy, however, that the author does not relate language to form of life but emphasizes the process of speaking. Form of life refers to a technique of language use. This language use is embedded in the social environment. In this paper we will try to distinguish the elements that are involved in this process.4 Hence, a definition of form of life seems to be related to the predicate rather than to the noun. Form of life is more related to the verb and, as such, to the activity that it denotes. This distinction may also be relevant for another problem that is mentioned in Wittgenstein’s works, which is “the arithmetic experiment”. As with the notion of form of life, the author uses the expression without giving any detailed description of the problem, leaving further explanations aside. Therefore, it gives rise to further philosophical investigation. At one point the Philosophical Investigations contain an internal dialogue on how point of view and form of life are related to 3

4

“Here the term ‘language-game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.” (PI § 23). See Fred 1919.

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one another. In these considerations Wittgenstein distinguishes between concurrent points of view on the one hand and agreement due to analogous forms of life on the other: “So sagst du also, daß die Übereinstimmung der Menschen entscheiden, was richtig und was falsch ist?” – Richtig und Falsch ist, was Menschen sagen; und in der Sprache stimmen die Menschen überein. Dies ist kein Übereinstimmung der Meinung, sondern der Lebensform.5

According to this statement, people do not reach agreements because they have concurring standpoints. Rather, agreements are achieved if people have resembling forms of life. Let us imagine that people with different language backgrounds happen to coincide. This agreement, however, is not reached because they are of the same opinion but because they have matching forms of life. How can this be explained? Statements that express an opinion are based on prior subjective evaluations and assessments. However, such concurrent opinion may not simply be reduced to one single subjective opinion (Doxa). According to this view, individuals from different cultural backgrounds would never be able to forge links with each other even if they were of the same opinion. Viewpoints are part of one’s knowledge and are based on individual experience. They are grounded in the conditions of a society which provides a model for interpretation. We may therefore conclude that social circumstances have an effect on individual viewpoints. Thus, form of life can be understood as dependent on context, culture and history. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein does not assume mutual agreement to be a pre-condition for consensus. Therefore he seeks to find an objective basis or unbiased foundation on which mutual agreement could be established. Form of life may be such an objective basis on which mutual agreement can be founded.6 It is still unclear, however, where the problem 5

6

“‘So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?’ – It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.” (PI § 241). BEE, Item 124, 213; Item 180a, 5r.

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of form of life is exactly situated. According to Wittgenstein, it is linked to the evaluation of “right – wrong” and that can be analysed via the language. Again, the text leaves many questions unanswered.

1. Lebensform versus Lebensformen In Part II (MS 144) of the Philosophical Investigations we come across an interesting paragraph, which sheds some light on the problem and may lead to a clearer definition of form(s) of life. The author says: Man kann sich ein Tier zornig, furchtsam, traurig, freudig, erschrocken vorstellen. Aber hoffend? Und warum nicht? Der Hund glaubt, sein Herr sei an der Tür. Aber kann er auch glauben, sein Herr werde übermorgen kommen? – Und was kann er nun nicht? – Wie mache denn ich’s? – Was soll ich darauf antworten? Kann nur hoffen, wer sprechen kann? Nur der, der die Verwendung einer Sprache beherrscht. D. h., die Erscheinungen des Hoffens sind Modifikationen dieser komplizierten Lebensform. (Wenn ein Begriff auf einen Charakter der menschlichen Handschrift abzielt, dann hat er keine Anwendung auf Wesen, welche nicht schreiben.)7

The Gedankenexperiment with the animal shows that the relation between language use on the one hand and form of life on the other hand needs clarification. As the statement does not give 7

“One can imagine an animal angry, frightened, unhappy, happy, startled. But hopeful? And why not? A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe his master will come the day after to-morrow? – And what can he not do here? – How do I do it? – How am I supposed to answer this? Can only those hope who can talk? Only those who have mastered the use of a language. That is to say, the phenomena of hope are modes of this complicated form of life. (If a concept refers to a character of human handwriting, it has no application to beings that do not write.)” (PU, Teil II (MS 144), , |1|, p. 993; PI, p. 174).

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any details on the type of relation, we may ask how are forms of life and language use interrelated? Does the fact that the animal shows human-like behaviour mean that animals are capable of hoping? Can mankind hope at all? And how can we find out about all this? Is the phenomenon of hope any sufficient proof for its existence? And are there any variations of form(s) of life? Only at the end of the second part of the Philosophical Investigations we find a relevant hint at what Wittgenstein calls form of life when he says: Das Hinzunehmende, Gegebene – könnte man sagen – seien Lebensformen.8

This passage is outstanding because of four characteristic features. It is the only extract of the Philosophical Investigations in which the expression occurs in the plural9 and is written in italics. Apart from Wittgenstein’s notebooks, it is the only passage in which he used the alternative expression – “facts of living” (“Tatsachen des Lebens”)10 – and, finally, he combines forms of life with “the given” (“das Gegebene”), which is an uncommon expression in the author’s work. There are several ways in which “What has to be accepted, the given” can be interpreted. First, taking into account the context in which it occurs, it could be an example for form of life as it is preceded by remarks about mathematics and followed by annotations about colour. It occurs within the section of remarks on types of discourse that contain certain or necessary propositions. Second, the expression “What has to be accepted, the given” could also imply that there is a relation between different forms

8 “What has to be accepted, the given, is – so one could say – forms of life.” (PU, Teil II (MS 144), , |99|, p. 1082; PI, p. 226). 9 See Garver 1984, pp. 33–54; Haller 1979, pp. 521–533; Haller 1984, pp. 55–63; and Lütterfelds and Roser 1999. 10 Wittgenstein says: “Das hinzunehmende, gegebene – könnte man sagen – seien Tatsachen des Lebens” (RPP I § 630). See about “Tatsache”: Padilla Gálvez 2009, pp. 65–81.

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of life. It could be a characteristic element of forms of life or even a definition. What remains unclear is whether the author names characteristics of the “accepted, the given” or whether forms of life are classified by it. Even the subjunctive “sei” (English “be”) permits several interpretations. We will first deal with the grammatical features of the expression.

2. What Does Wittgenstein Mean by “What has to be accepted, the given”? According to the context of the text, the statement “what has to be accepted, the given” denotes form of life. But what does “given” exactly mean? The expression denotes an immediate experience.11 It is typical for such direct experiences that we feel a desire to communicate them to others once they have happened to us. In other words, a person may want to share his or her experience with another person so that the respective other can understand it. For instance, if I wanted to explain to somebody the criteria for selecting an applicant for a vacant university post, I would have to recall the memory of my personal experience in this matter. What could I exactly recall and describe? I would describe and explain all the related events that have remained in my memory. But Wittgenstein underlines that making reference to one’s own mind should be avoided. This is mainly because the human memory is error-prone and therefore cannot be completely relied upon as a source of knowledge. In other words, I could easily deceive myself and depict the situation in a different way to how it actually happened. The author states, however, that the memory is part of the logical structure of our world. As he puts

11 BEE, Item 110, 9.

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it: “[…] bestimmten Teil der logischen Struktur unserer Welt”.12 If I disregarded this logical structure or if I tried to manipulate my memory, I would thereby distort the given. Therefore, it seems inappropriate to base the evidential value on the personal subjective experience of our mind. But how can I investigate the structure of “the given” without falling into the trap of subjectivity misleading me? In order to avoid this trap we have to find a tool that prevents us from this subjective temptation. Wittgenstein seems to have found this tool in the field of arithmetic. He says that the number system is the originally given language in which the rule of the real number expresses itself, “[d]as Zahlensystem die ursprünglich gegebene Sprache ist […] in der sich das Gesetz der reellen Zahl ausdrückt”.13 The language of numbers is a paradigm for the given. The rules are expressed in this language. Accordingly, Wittgenstein says about language and rule: “Es ist die Sprache, die Ausdrucksform die das Gesetz vorfindet”.14 Language is the mode of expression in which rules are communicated. We shall have a closer look at this relation. Language is viewed as a frame within which the rules are expressed. The system of numbers forms the basis on which we can study the objective structures of form of life. Contrary to the common view among researchers that form of life advances mainly within society or culture, it seems to develop instead within the system of numbers. However, the question is what comes first – the language or the rules? Wittgenstein considers language as the first element, a form of expression in which rules are transmitted. But which arguments does he give for this assumption and how can it be explained? Wittgenstein responds with the following analogy: Wie wenn ein Magnet Eisenfeilsspäne vorfindet und sie nach den Kraftlinien ordnet.15 12 13 14 15

Ibid., 10. BEE, Item 107, 38. Ibid. “As if a magnet finds iron for sale splinters and arranges it according to the field lines” (Ibid.).

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This quotation contains two aspects such as the lines of force that are organized by a magnet and the iron chips following this force. Then the author deals with the array and introduces the rules for numerals. These then provide a frame for the rules in which they are expressed. This substratum forms the basis for language skills and language use. One of Wittgenstein’s claims is the uniformity or homogeneity of the form of expression, which he calls the “Einheitlichkeit der Ausdrucksform”.16 It is in this context that he warns of the destruction of this uniformity because this would obliterate human communication. Let us now approach the problem from a different point of view. Individual conduct should follow the rule completely and must not be dependent on any factors that additionally emerge during the process.17 After having addressed the previous question, we may now turn to further problems. We are interested in the question of what constitutes the so-called “given” and several authors have dealt with this.18 For instance, Joachim Schulte interprets Wittgenstein’s use of the given as if the philosopher wanted to withdraw or attenuate some of his earlier theses. He puts it like this, “[…] als wollte Wittgenstein mit dieser beiläufigen Rede von Hinnehmen den Kern seiner eigenen Thesen zurücknehmen oder zumindest aufweichen”.19 But this does not seem to be the point because Schulte’s interpretation neglects the substratum. He refers to the Tractatus when he justifies Wittgenstein’s assumptions and comes to the following conclusion: Die Einstellung der Hinnahme, auf die Wittgenstein hinaus will, enthält beide Elemente – sowohl das Trotzige als auch das Phlegmatische oder gar Fatalistische –, aber sie enthält diese Elemente in einer dialektischen Mischung, die einen qualitativen Sprung bedeutet.20

16 Ibid. 17 BEE, Item 107, 46. 18 See Garver 1984, pp. 33–54; Haller 1979, pp. 521–533; Haller 1984, pp. 55–63; Lütterfelds and Roser 1999. 19 Schulte 1999, p. 165. 20 Schulte 1999, p. 167.

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However, in my view, there does not seem to be any discordance in Wittgenstein’s work in this respect. I will try to give arguments for my view by making reference to arithmetic.

3. The “Arithmetical Experiment” A recurrent theme in Wittgenstein’s considerations on the given is the notion of what he calls “arithmetical experiment”.21 He mentions that in arithmetic the result is determined by the given, though he does not provide any more information on the kind of determination. Therefore, my aim is to ask how this works. The author gives the following explanation: Es tritt bei diesen Überlegungen immer wieder etwas entgegen, was man “arithmetisches Experiment” nennen möchte. Was herauskommt ist zwar durch das Gegebene bestimmt, aber ich kann nicht erkennen, wie es dadurch bestimmt ist.22

In order to understand this passage we have to go back to the discussion of the foundational crisis of mathematics. Since this crisis, we have become used to distinguishing between formalistic, axiomatic and intuitionistic languages, a distinction that had also influenced Wittgenstein. As a consequence, mathematicians searched for a new perspective (Begründungszusammenhang). More specifically, they focused on the question of the origin of mathematical knowledge. According to Platonism, mankind can perceive invariable unchanging ideas. If I say perceive, this means that knowledge consists of fundamental propositions. There are axioms that represent, for instance, the idea of a number, a point and so on. Let us assume that we express our mathematical perception by way of Euclidian geometry. For example, I am reading

21 BEE, Item 107, 88. 22 Ibid., 88. Cp. Item 212, 1842.

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the following postulate: “to draw a straight line from any point to any point”.23 Thus I go to the blackboard and draw a line between two points, the line representing the postulate. However, as I have drawn the line by hand, it is not perfectly straight. This raises the question whether the Euclidian postulate has the same logic characteristics as the correlate given in the Euclidian definition. Or in other words, the question is: do the Euclidian postulate and the line on the blackboard have anything in common? It seems as if we have translated the postulate into a language of signs.24 For instance, if a student asked the following question: “What does this line mean?”, then the answer would have to be the explanation of the sign language to which the given sign belongs: “[…] müßte die Antwort die Erklärung des Zeichensystems sein, zu dem das gegebene Zeichen gehört”.25 Accordingly, we would expect the teacher to explain that the line on the blackboard stands for a straight line. We are able to understand spoken and visual languages because we recognize the systems behind the language. This method of the ancient world was overcome by the method of calculus and subsequently set theory was introduced. However, the formalization of set theory led to the occurrence of contradictions. As a reaction, David Hilbert developed a formalized theory including axioms and logic rules but at the same time the formalized language had its limitations. Later calculi were understood as a system of rules that did not need any marks on paper but in which stones or other artefacts could be utilized. Wittgenstein was aware of the different conditions that the various approaches were based upon. His aim was to analyse them. Let us take up the image of the line on the blackboard once more. What happens if the listener is a layman or is not familiar with mathematics? How would such person understand the line on the board? Would he or she understand the Euclidian statement? Compared to a mathematician, would a layman perceive 23 Euclid, 1. Postulate. 24 BEE, Item 110, 293 ff. 25 Ibid., 294.

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the line in a different way? According to Wittgenstein, the “arithmetical experiment” shows that one line may be perceived and interpreted in different ways depending on how the line is given or depicted. He puts it like this: Wir haben ein Experiment gemacht – aber im Experiment wurde ein Satz erzeugt (wie sonst etwa eine chem. Verbindung). Und nun gibt es einen andern Satz, der sagt, daß jener Satz erzeugt wurde.26 We have made an experiment – however in the experiment a sentence (as usual for instance a chem. connection) was produced. And now there is another sentence, which says that sentence was produced.

According to the author, the experiment with the line is a description.27 The line can be viewed in different ways depending on the background knowledge of the reader or how he or she comprehends the line. In contrast to Euclid’s view, the line is not considered the result of an experiment.

4. Language and Form(s) of Life Only now can we analyse Wittgenstein’s brief comments on the notion of form of life within a broader context. When we use language we are usually not aware of the fact that the content of what is verbally expressed is determined by the given, that which exists. The so-called “arithmetical experiment” allows Wittgenstein to delimit what he calls the given. In other words, the so-called given allows us to speak a language but we cannot recognize how the language is determined by it. Therefore we cannot answer the question of the meaning of the given. On the contrary, this question would only bring us back to the beginning, similar to a

26 BEE, Item 117, 183a. 27 BEE, Item 208, 87r and 106.

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recursive calculus. The given always requires a technique of language use, which is grounded in social life and society. In order to understand the given one has to understand its constitutive elements and must have acquired its basic components. Finally, we are again confronted with the foundational crisis. Wittgenstein is interested in the fact that we speak a language and the assumption that basic elements are mirrored in language use. Once the substratum is defined our mode of expression is determined by it and this again enables us to speak. Language is characterized by uniformity. Wittgenstein underlines this aspect and points out that a bi- or multilingual person might even run the risk of losing a sense of language uniformity. Only within this uniformity – as he says – can the rule run free. The rule finds its expression in language that is originally given. Thus the rule is a result which is determined by the given. The necessary relation between the rule and the given corresponds to the relation between language and rule in general. The given can be noticed and recognized, but unfortunately defies any form of explicit description.

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Does the Devil in Hell Have a Form of Life? JOACHIM SCHULTE

The title of my paper comes from a little-known passage to be found in a manuscript Wittgenstein wrote in 1944. The passage is short and apparently not connected with the material surrounding it, some of which is accessible in the last part of Wittgenstein’s Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. The passage reads as follows: Even the devil in hell has one form of life; and the world would not be complete without it.1

It is surely worth trying to understand what this passage means, but I shall make an attempt to do so only at the end of this paper. Before I get there, quite a few things need to be clarified. So I shall return to this nice quotation after a number of preparatory remarks. The English expression “form of life” is the usual translation of Wittgenstein’s compound noun “Lebensform”. This term enjoys a certain reputation, perhaps even notoriety, among people interested in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Like the expression “family resemblance”, for instance, it is well-known and much discussed, even though it does not occur all that often in his published writings. There are three occurrences of the word in the Philosophical Investigations proper and two in the fragment on philosophy of

1

MS 127, 128: “Auch der Teufel in der Hölle hat eine Form des Lebens; & die Welt wäre nicht vollständig ohne sie”. Quotations from Wittgenstein’s manuscripts are here given in a much simplified and normalized form; English translations of manuscript passages are by myself. In this paper I am greatly indebted to the excellent study by Almut Kristine von Wedelstaedt (2007).

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psychology (which used to be called “Part II” of the Investigations).2 There is one occurrence in On Certainty, which has caused some debate, one in the German version of the Brown Book, which has caused none, one in Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (p. 414), and one in Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology – Vol. II (p. 126), both of which hardly anyone seems to have noticed. And that’s about all, as far as printed publications go. The occurrences of the expression in the Investigations and the fragment on philosophy of psychology have received a great deal of attention, but there is not much of a consensus on how to read them. Sometimes the controversy assumes such a polemical tone that observers may be forgiven for feeling that there is something artificial about it. But probably at least part of this polemical discussion is due to real difficulties presented by Wittgenstein’s text: it is uncommon hard to make sense of some of these passages. One way of making progress may involve taking another look at the manuscript context of these controversial remarks. Of course, this has been done by some people, but it doesn’t seem to have helped them to arrive at a consensus, or at least partial agreement. Still, as I believe that this is a useful method of getting to the bottom of many of Wittgenstein’s difficult observations, I shall do a little more of this kind of work in the present paper. Another strategy I shall avail myself of is that of extending the range of expressions to take into account. Most scholars have restricted their attention to the compound noun “Lebensform”. But I suppose that there cannot be any harm in counting the phrase “Form des Lebens” as an orthographical variant of “Lebensform”. This decision, however, seems to yield not more than another handful of remarks that can be found in the corpus of Wittgenstein’s writings. 2

See the revised 4th edition of Philosophical Investigations (PIr), where an amended text of the former “Part II” is published under the title “Philosophie der Psychologie – ein Fragment / Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment” (PPF).

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These are to be added to less than three dozen occurrences of “Lebensform”. The occurrences of “Lebensform”, however, reduce to a mere dozen when you notice that quite a number of them are versions or reformulations of other ones. Whether a remark is to be counted as a version of another one or as a remark in its own right is of course not always easy to decide. But for our purposes we can simply start from the provisional result that there are a dozen occurrences of “Lebensform” and at most half a dozen of the expression “Form des Lebens”. Now, you need not fear that I shall go through all these occurrences. I shall do something a little different, and the first step on this different path is that I shall widen the horizon. It is worth noting that in Wittgenstein’s late writings, particularly in those of the second half of the 1940s, you will find an increased number of expressions building on the noun “Leben”. To be sure, compound expressions employing the word “Leben” are very common in German. Indeed, they are so common and the formation “Lebensform” appears so natural that Hanjo Glock has quite rightly pointed out that it makes little sense to look at other authors’ use of the expression in order to find out whether they influenced Wittgenstein in any way.3 Similarly, there is little point in paying much attention to compounds like “Lebensfreude”, “Lebensgefahr” and so forth. But even the very common expression “Lebensart”, which is a normal German word for “style of life”, takes on a peculiar meaning in Wittgenstein’s only remark employing that word. It is not quite clear that the transcriber of the relevant passage in the Bergen edition got it right, but if he did, Wittgenstein wrote that “it may be that a sentence describes a picture and that this picture is variously rooted in our way of looking at things, that is, our way of living and acting”.4

3 4

Glock 2000, pp. 66–67. MS 125, 55r: “Ein Satz kann ein Bild beschreiben & dieses Bild mannigfach in unserer Betrachtungsweise der Dinge, also in unserer |Lebensart- &| Handlungsweise verankert sein”.

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Well, we needn’t bother any further about this remark, but it shows that in the context of discussing Wittgenstein’s term “form of life” it is surely worth looking at a number of compound and complex expressions involving the noun “Leben”. Perhaps the most obvious one of these is the word “Lebensweise”, which I shall throughout translate as “way of life”. Again, this is a pretty ordinary word that cannot really be claimed to have the makings of a technical philosophical term. Another relevant word is the expression “Lebensmuster”, which I shall translate as “pattern of life”. A slightly odd-sounding variant of this is the expression “Lebensschablone”, or “stencil of life”. This we shall come to later, so I shall not say more about it here. And then there is the curious expression “Lebensgepflogenheit”, sometimes translated as “custom of life”, which will also be discussed below. Some of these words are connected with a metaphor Wittgenstein uses two or three times, viz. the idea of a “Lebensteppich” or a “carpet of life”. A freer and more poetical rendering would be “tapestry of life”.5 Before getting down to the real nitty-gritty I wish to get clear on a question that some readers may already have raised in their minds. You may have noticed that I have avoided speaking of Wittgenstein’s “concept of a form of life”. I have not even mentioned a notion of a form of life. Well, I have avoided these words on purpose, and I have done so for the simple reason that I am not sure whether it would be correct to use these words in this context. That is, I am not sure whether there is such a thing as Wittgenstein’s concept or notion of a form of life. Perhaps unfortunately, what I have to say will not contribute very much to answering the question whether Wittgenstein did have such a concept or notion in mind. But I suppose I am right in thinking that a good deal of work needs to be done before this question can be usefully asked. It is this work that the following considerations are meant to be a contribution to.

5

See PPF § 2.

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As I said, most of the relevant remarks were written and revised after Wittgenstein had begun to draft the earliest versions of what became the Philosophical Investigations. What appears to be the earliest remark involving the word “Lebensform”, however, can be found in Wittgenstein’s translation of the Brown Book, a manuscript which has been edited by Rush Rhees and published under the title Eine philosophische Betrachtung.6 In the original Brown Book Wittgenstein asked his readers to “[i]magine a use of language (a culture) in which there was a common name for green and red on the one hand and yellow and blue on the other”. And a few lines later he goes on to say that “We could also easily imagine a language (and that means again a culture) in which there existed no common expression for light blue and dark blue”. In Wittgenstein’s later German version the whole passage is embellished and, while the first occurrence of “culture” is rendered by the German equivalent “Kultur”, the second occurrence of the word “culture” is translated as “Form des Lebens”. As a matter of fact, and it is an interesting fact indeed, the first manuscript version had the compound noun “Lebensform” to which the phrase “Form des Lebens” was added as a possible variant.7 What is also interesting about this remark is that in its new German version it foreshadows the chronologically next remark involving the term “Lebensform”, which you all know in the form it was given as § 19 of the Investigations. This remark, which was written a few months later in the same year 1936, reads: It is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle. – Or a language consisting only of questions and expressions for answering Yes and No – and countless other things. – And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.8

6 7 8

Cf. BBB, p. 134, and EPB, p. 202. MS 115, 239. “Man kann sich leicht eine Sprache vorstellen, die nur aus Befehlen und Meldungen in der Schlacht besteht. – Oder eine Sprache, die nur aus Fragen besteht und einem Ausdruck der Bejahung und der Verneinung. Und unzähliges Andere. – Und eine Sprache vorstellen heißt, sich eine Lebensform vorstellen.”

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So, just like the remark quoted from the German translation of the Brown Book, the beginning of § 19 of the Investigations connects the idea of imagining a language with the idea of bringing in the, or a, form of life. The notion of imagining a language is clearly related to a topic discussed in manuscripts of the early thirties, where Wittgenstein wonders about what is involved in inventing a language. A relic of this can be found in § 492 of the Investigations, where he writes: Here I am saying something about the grammar of the word “language”, by connecting it with the grammar of the word “invent”.9

So, in a way the version we know from the Investigations adds a new element to a familiar thought. The familiar thought was this, that inventing or imagining a language is, or can be, different from constructing a certain device for a certain purpose in the light of past experience as formulated in terms of scientific and technological results. In the early thirties, this difference is spelled out by comparing the invention of a language with the construction of calculi or games. But now, in 1936, Wittgenstein emphasizes that imagining a language, which evidently is one way of “inventing” one, involves or amounts to imagining a form of life. This thought immediately raises at least two questions. The first one would concern the nature of the language which we are supposed to be able to imagine. I do have views on that, but the question need not interest us here.10 The second question would concern the nature of the form of life invoked by Wittgenstein, and that obviously concerns us a great deal. But for the time being, I suggest, we should shelve the question and see whether a look at some later material may help. Now I want to examine a number of passages written in 1948. Here, Wittgenstein discusses the word “verstellen”, that is, the notion of pretending or simulating. As so often, he introduces this discussion by imagining people who lack the concept in ques9 “Ich sage hier etwas über die Grammatik des Wortes ‘Sprache’ aus, indem ich sie mit der Grammatik des Wortes ‘erfinden’ in Verbindung bringe.” 10 Cf. my paper “The Builders’ Language” (Schulte 2004).

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tion, or part of this concept. What is particularly intriguing about the idea of pretending is that it seems to be essentially connected with a certain image: the image of an inner and an outer side. This image appears to underlie the question whether someone who exhibits a certain kind of behaviour is being sincere or faking his being in a certain condition. He may, for instance, appear to be sad, but I for my part wonder whether he puts it on in order to soften me up. It is in this sort of context that Wittgenstein asks himself how pretending comes about: How does it begin? A child cries, and nobody will speak of pretending. If something looks like pretending, it would be an animal kind of pretence, a form of life //an instinctive movement//. At a certain point we shall have a case where we suspect that he may be pretending. It may be a primitive kind of pretending. We don’t know, however, whether one may really call it that. It depends on the development of the child’s “capacities”. One doesn’t know what he is able to do unless one has observed a certain course of actions. (••••••••) This is a case of conceptual indeterminacy: “the beginning of a routine”. – It is only in a certain way of life //routine of life// that this is called .11

Where I have “routine”, Wittgenstein’s word is “Gepflogenheit”. The question how to translate it is very much a matter of interpretation. As you know, the word occurs in famous remarks of the Investigations like §§ 198, 199 and 205. Usually it is translated as “custom”. But this is too much on the institutional side to fit the present case. I might have opted for the opposite extreme and 11 MS 137, 59a: “Wie fängt es denn an? Das Kind schreit, & niemand spricht von Verstellung //möglicher Verstellung.// Sollte etwas ausschauen wie Verstellung, so wäre es eine tierische Verstellung, eine Lebensform. //eine instinktive Handlung.// [¶] Dann einmal tritt ein Fall ein, wo man an Verstellung denkt. Es ist etwa eine primitive Verstellung. Man weiß aber auch nicht, ob man’s so nennen darf. Es hängt das mit der Entwicklung der ‘Fähigkeiten’ des Kindes zusammen. Man weiß nicht, was es schon kann, ehe man nicht einen gewissen Lauf der Handlungen gesehen hat. (••••••••) Es ist hier eine begriffliche Unbestimmtheit: ‘der Anfang einer Gepflogenheit’. – Erst in einer bestimmten Lebensweise //Lebensgepflogenheit// nennt man das …..”. In the above translation, the word “pretending” (“Verstellung”) has been supplied in angle brackets.

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chosen “habit”, but a “habit of life” doesn’t sound right either. So I suggest we try “routine”. What may seem particularly striking if one remembers the usual discussions of forms of life is the fact that here “form of life” is used in such a way that it amounts to something similar to an “animal kind of behaviour” and “instinctive movement”. In that sense, a form of life would be an instantiation of what is most natural in us: a continuation or extension of what we all are before training and education get a chance to do their civilizing work on us. And this would of course fit well-known statements like the following two from On Certainty: “I want to regard man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not ratiocination. As a creature in a primitive state” (§ 475). And: “… I want to conceive [this specific kind of certainty] as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as it were, as something animal” (§ 359). No doubt there are more remarks to this effect that I could have quoted. The second one is, by the way, the immediate continuation of the only remark in On Certainty that mentions forms of life. Later, we shall briefly return to it. Clearly, in this passage the term “form of life” comes very close to expressing a biological notion, a notion of natural history, and Wittgenstein’s bringing in instinct and primitiveness goes in the same direction. What contrasts with this form of life is the “way of life” or “routine of life” mentioned at the end of our quotation. These involve, as Wittgenstein says, a certain amount of training, of developing the child’s capacities. Our criteria for deciding whether the child has learned enough to be called a potential pretender are based on observation of behaviour, and our answers will depend upon whether this behaviour exhibits a certain course, a certain pattern. This course or pattern, however, will be a course or pattern of the relevant behaviour only in the context of a certain way of life. And this expression is here clearly meant to allude to practices that presuppose membership in a community (and so forth). What we must not overlook is Wittgenstein’s allusion to conceptual indeterminacy. This is important because it is a kind of

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leitmotif of his considerations as set out in these pages of his manuscript. The conceptual indeterminacy he has in mind is connected with the fact that in a case like that of the concept of pretending there are certain situations where we simply cannot tell whether or not this concept applies to anything. Of course, one might want to say that this is just a characteristic of these peculiar situations. But this is not what Wittgenstein means. He wants to make it clear that here, as in many other cases, we are dealing with a structural feature of the relevant concept. For the concept to apply to potential candidates these candidates need to have mastered certain techniques; they need to have become proficient in certain practices or routines. But there is a stage in the process of acquiring mastery where no standard in the world can help us to decide in a yes-no fashion whether or not the relevant concept is true of our candidate. And what is more: this stage in the process of acquiring mastery can count as such a stage only if that process is more or less successfully brought to its envisaged conclusion, that is, if our candidate has actually learned to do what he was expected to learn. Some of this surely sounds familiar enough, but what one may easily overlook is Wittgenstein’s insistence that “this indeterminacy is”, as he says, “an infinitely essential feature of our concept; it means infinitely much to us”.12 I take it that when he says that it means so much to us he wants to stress that this sort of concept is really dear to our hearts; that its significance is such that a concept lacking this indeterminacy would in some ways be disappointing; and that in a situation without this concept we would regret having lost the indeterminate concept. Something like this “argument from nostalgia”, as one might perhaps call it, can be found in the following passage, which was written two weeks before Wittgenstein’s death and should arguably have ended up in On Certainty but was then tucked away on

12 MS 137, 57b: “Die Unbestimmtheit ist ein unendlich wesentliches Merkmal unsres Begriffs. Sie bedeutet uns unendlich viel”.

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the last page of Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology – Vol. II: And now the question remains whether we would give up our languagegame which rests on “imponderable evidence” and frequently leads to uncertainty, if it were possible to exchange it for a more exact one which by and large would have similar consequences. For instance, we could work with a mechanical “lie detector” and redefine a lie as that which causes a deflection on the lie detector. So the question is would we change our way of living [Lebensform] if this or that were provided for us? – And how could I answer that?13

As we know from Wittgenstein’s writings on the philosophy of psychology, language-games resting on imponderable evidence are those that depend on acquiring forms of expertise that cannot be tested by simple, straightforward means. They depend on having a good nose for certain things, having a fine judgement that other people tend to appeal to and so on. And of course life would be very different without this sort of thing. Giving up our indeterminate concepts and exchanging them for determinate ones would, accordingly, entail drastic changes in our way of living, our form of life. It is thus a question of great moment whether we want to change these concepts and trade them in for shiny new ones. The way in which our concepts and our form of life are connected is a complicated matter. It is complicated because life doesn’t function like a clockwork. It is not absolutely regular but pulsates with various kinds of rhythm. Nonetheless, its pulsating 13 MS 176, 51r-v: “Und es bleibt nun die Frage, ob wir unser Sprachspiel, das auf ‘unwägbarer Evidenz’ beruht & oft zu Unsicherheit führt, aufgeben zu Gunsten eines andern aufgeben würden, wenn wir die Möglichkeit hätten, es mit einem andern exactern zu vertauschen, das exacter im großen & ganzen /in gewissen Fällen/ ähnliche Folgen hätte. Wir könnten – z. B. – mit einem mechanischen ‘Lügen-Detektor’ arbeiten & alles eine Lüge |so | als das |neu| definieren, |als dasjenige| was dieser Apparat durch |in diesem Apparat| einen Ausschlag dieses Apparats |des Lügen-Detektors| erzeugt. [¶] Die Frage ist also: Würden wir unsre Lebensform ändern, wenn uns das & das zur Verfügung gestellt würde? – Und |s|wie ka|ö|nn|te| ich nicht die beantworten? //Würden wir also unsre Lebensform …… gestellt würde? – Wie könnte ich diese Frage beantworten?//”.

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thus is quite compatible with its exhibiting certain patterns. And if a concept depends on such a pattern, it must, as Wittgenstein says, contain a certain indeterminacy or indefiniteness. For if a pattern is not quite the same as in standard cases, we may be hard put to tell whether or not the relevant concept applies.14 But if we are dealing with patterns of life, then deviations from the norm are bound to occur; it wouldn’t be life if all patterns were always regular. It is in this context that Wittgenstein makes some very important observations on the work our concepts can do. Concepts, he says, are instruments, and it is an essential feature of these instruments that they allow for the sort of indeterminacy mentioned. But calling our concepts instruments can be misleading in that it makes us expect them to be amenable to the same sort of criteria as other instruments. That is, we may expect to be able to judge them according to whether or not they are practical, useful instruments. But this is a sort of consideration that is not in place here. Wittgenstein writes – and at this point I rely on unpublished and partly crossed-out material – that we have no choice in this matter. Or, perhaps better: we don’t choose. This is how we act and talk, and that’s where the matter ends: considerations of practicality simply don’t come in, any more than our needs or requirements. But this way of putting it should be qualified. It is not as if our needs played no role at all in this context, but we easily misunderstand this role because we are tempted to explain them by means of invoking our need for these very concepts. But that’s not right, Wittgenstein says. “In reality”, he says, “this would only be the need for a certain way of living which includes this employment of the concept”.15 This, I take it, is Wittgenstein’s way of saying that we should not try to explain concepts as instruments that can be explained independently of how they are, or can be, used in the context of a certain way of life. This, of course, is the point where the idea of a language-game comes in, for it is by pointing out the lan14 MS 137, 60a = RPP II § 652. 15 MS 137, 61b.

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guage-game that we show how language and life are connected. And that means, as Wittgenstein says, that we show how language is interwoven with other phenomena of life. Wittgenstein’s word is “Lebensvorgänge”, but that doesn’t seem to mean much more than “what happens in life”. The crucial and difficult point, however, comes at the end where he says that pointing out the connections between language and life does not amount to pointing out causal connections.16 This would of course be an extremely puzzling claim if it were meant to be a statement about the functioning of real language in a real, empirically given life-context. If it were a statement about that, or exclusively about that, then it would be unclear how reference to causal connections could be avoided; and it would be equally unclear why it should be avoided. But, to put it in very rough terms, I take it that both the notion of a language-game and that of life or a way of life contain a certain element of idealization – after all, Wittgenstein talks about patterns, samples and paradigms – and that is why causal considerations don’t come in, or at least not directly. Something like this must be the point of a remark published in Vermischte Bemerkungen, where Wittgenstein speaks about “life’s infinite variations”. The beginning of Peter Winch’s translation, however, seems to me wrong, and I myself am not clear about the exact meaning of part of the remark. But perhaps something like the following will do: “Life’s infinite variations are essential to our life. And so to the routine of life. Expression consists for us in unpredictability”.17 The variations that Wittgenstein talks about 16 Ibid. 17 MS 137, 67a–b: “Die unendlichen Variationen des Lebens sind unserm LEBEN wesentlich. Und also eben der Gepflogenheit des Lebens. Ausdruck besteht für uns Unberechenbarkeit. Wüßte ich genau wie er sein Gesicht verziehen, sich bewegen wird, so wäre kein Gesichtsausdruck, keine Gebärde vorhanden. – Stimmt das aber? – Ich kann mir doch ein Musikstück das ich (ganz) auswendig weiß immer wieder anhören; & es könnte auch auf / von/ einer Spieluhr gespielt werden. Seine Gebärden blieben für mich immer Gebärden obgleich ich immer weiß, was kommen wird. Ja, ich kann sogar immer wieder überrascht sein. (In einem bestimmten Sinne.)”

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are not necessarily to be found in real life. Rather, they are possibilities that we have to be able to envisage if we are to understand our life and its routines. And even these routines have to be seen in the light of these possible variations. Otherwise, our understanding of them would be insufficient. The way of looking that Wittgenstein has in mind here is explained by an example about expression. One may want to say that a facial expression can count as such only if it is to some extent unpredictable. A completely predictable face would not be an expressive one. But perhaps, Wittgenstein goes on to say, we should qualify this idea of predictability, for we can listen to a piece of music that we know by heart and still hear every musical gesture as a gesture, and in a certain sense we may even continue to be surprised by certain moves – or, rather, to find them surprising – again and again. If we apply this idea to our perspective on life, we may say that we need something analogous to the musical training required to perceive certain gestures as surprising ones without actually being surprised. Once we are able to look at life in this way, we may be able to discern its patterns and, what is perhaps equally important, to discuss these patterns with other people who have also learned to look at life in this way. Here, I don’t have the time to elaborate on this idea. Instead, I shall introduce two images that Wittgenstein uses in this context and that may be helpful in trying to understand a certain aspect of his use of the term “form of life”. The first notion is that of a carpet, or tapestry, of life. There are poetic ancestors of this idea, but they need not concern us here.18 At one point Wittgenstein says that if life were a carpet – that is, if we compare life with a carpet – then certain patterns (like that of pretending, for instance) would not always occur in their complete forms, but we who have learned to use the relevant concepts always perceive the same patterns, even if we perceive them as variations of

18 One poet who comes to mind is Stefan George; cf. my paper “Wittgenstein on Emotion”, note 10 (Schulte 2009). Severin Schroeder has pointed out to me that the phrase also occurs both in Goethe and Schiller.

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a single basic pattern. And Wittgenstein adds that these patterns are interwoven with many other ones.19 The second image, which in my view nicely fits the first one is that of a stencil of life. It is explained by saying that we should imagine a regular, continuous pattern running on and on, e. g. like ornamental bands in a carpet. Now, as Wittgenstein tells the story, an irregular picture is placed on top of this pattern, and we are supposed to describe the picture by reference to the pattern. The method will work smoothly until anomalies in the pattern turn up and make it necessary for us to exercise our judgement or to stand defeated. The analogy, I suppose, is one between this stencilled sort of pattern and our conceptually impregnated patterns of life that help us understand and describe what is going on. If I have told my tale successfully, you will by now have seen what I am driving at. You will have seen that my next step will be to ask why it should be wrong to use the word “form of life” instead of “pattern of life”. My reason for asking this question is not that I want you to read all the relevant passages containing the word “form of life” as if Wittgenstein had written the expression “pattern of life” and meant it in the way I have tried to suggest. But I do want you at least to consider this possible understanding of the term “form of life” and to see if it indicates a reading of familiar passages that would be different from the usual ones. A form of life, thus understood, would be a form, a shape, a pattern that life assumes under certain conditions. So, “life” is the basic term here, and the word “form” is not meant to allude to a certain delimited context within which things happen but to a certain shape that life embodies. So a form of life would not be an embedding; it would be an object of comparison, to use one of Wittgenstein’s terms, a pattern that can fulfil an explanatory function if it is used as a model, for instance, or as a point of reference.

19 MS 137, 63b–64a; cf. RPP II §§ 672–673.

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A clear use of this kind can be found in a diary passage printed in Vermischte Bemerkungen. The translation runs as follows: The fact that life is problematic means that your life does not fit life’s shape. So you must change your life, and once it fits the shape, what is problematic will disappear.20

This shape is a pattern, a mould, a stencil that can be used as a basis for deciding to cut off whatever doesn’t fit. To repeat, I am not in the least proposing to apply this reading to all passages in Wittgenstein’s writings where he uses the term “form of life”. But I want to suggest that it may be helpful to bear this reading in mind when you approach these passages. In conclusion I want to try out this reading by looking at two remarks. The first one is to be found in On Certainty, the second one is our passage about the devil in hell. This is the passage from On Certainty: Now I would like to regard this certainty, not as something akin to hastiness or superficiality, but as a form of life.21

To this Wittgenstein adds in parentheses that this “is very badly expressed and probably badly thought as well”. But however this may be, it need not concern us, as we are basically interested in understanding how to read the term “form of life”. And here, I think, it is pretty clear that this attitude of certainty, which should not be confused with hastiness or superficiality, cannot really be explained in the usual terms of a “system or pattern of (linguistic and non-linguistic) activities which provides the context of specifically linguistic [and social] activities or language games”.22 I would suggest that the form of life intended here is a certain kind of behaviour which can be exemplified by people under certain circumstances; it is an attitude that can be seen to be a 20 MS 118, 17r (17.8.37); CV, p. 31: “Daß das Leben problematisch ist, heißt, daß dein Leben nicht in die Form des Lebens paßt. Du mußt dann dein Leben verändern, und paßt es in die Form, dann verschwindet das Problematische”. 21 OC § 358. 22 Glock 2000, p. 69.

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typical pattern of life if it is compared and contrasted with other such attitudes; it is a certain shape that our life can assume if we have learned certain things. Perhaps this characterization does not directly contradict standard explanations of the term “form of life”, but it surely differs from such explanations in various respects. Now let’s have another look at our title quotation and see whether the considerations put forward in this paper are any help. The passage runs as follows: Even the devil in hell has one form of life; and the world would not be complete without it.

The first point to notice is this: that it is highly unlikely that Wittgenstein wants to claim that the devil has his own “system of practices which provides the context of specifically linguistic [and social] activities or language-games”. This would surely be going too far in the direction of taking the devil to be one of us or someone like us. It would also throw a very strange light on the statement that the world would be incomplete without this form of life, as it would imply some sort of principle of plenitude which stipulates that a certain set of forms of life be realised. Also, such a reading would find it difficult to make much sense of the italicized word “one” in “one form of life”. In view of the social, or community, aspect underlined by most standard readings of the term “form of life” we would probably have to assume that there is, not one single devil, but a community of devils. And if we do so, the existence of exactly one form of devilish life either follows trivially because we have decided from the start to count every relevant feature of the devils’ life as part of their one system of activities or it is not clear why the number of possible such systems should be restricted to one. Of course, one may simply reply that this test-case is not to the point or unfair and need not be taken seriously at all. But I think we can make better sense of it, and that sense is, at least up to a point, in accord with the reading I have tried to champion in this paper.

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I think the phrase “has one form of life” needs to be taken in the sense of “represents (or: personifies) one form of life”. This can then be taken to amount to saying that the devil, irrespective of whether he is one or an entire community of devils, just is this form of life. This form of life should in its turn be taken to be a pattern or model or stencil of life. It is a typical kind of existence as exemplified, for instance, by the Mephisto figure in various versions of the Doctor Faust story. Taken as such a paradigm of everything that is devilish, this form of life as exemplified by Mephisto can then be used as an object of comparison, either to compare it with other forms of life or to compare it with individuals regarded as representatives or instantiations of other forms of life. The emphasis on the word “one” can then be explained in two ways, and I guess that both of them are relevant. The first point would be this: that since the form of life of the devil is something that has to allow for the possibility of being represented by one figure of the Mephisto type, the emphasis is used to underline this aspect of representation. The second point would amount to saying that the word “one” is used to bring out, not so much uniqueness, but unity. It would hence serve to stress that for a foreign or unfamiliar form of life to be intelligible to us it must allow us to read it as presenting one recognizable face or physiognomy to us. This unity would be needed to enable us to interpret this form of life as someone’s form of life and would hence connect these considerations with the whole aspect of language and language-use that I have here been so silent about. If this is on the right track, the second part of the devil remark would simply amount to a version of the good old English proverb “It takes all sorts to make a world” – a proverb that Wittgenstein, as we know, held in high esteem.23

23 Cf. Drury 1984, p. 148: “he [Wittgenstein] was fond of quoting the proverb, ‘It takes many sorts to make a world’, adding, ‘That is a very beautiful and kindly saying’”.

Forms of Life: Between the Given and the Thought Experiment ANTÓNIO MARQUES

So the question is: Would we change our way of living [Lebensform] if this or that were provided for us? – And how could I answer that? Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology – Vol. II Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than constructing fictitious ones. Culture and Value, 1948

If one takes into consideration the frequency with which Wittgenstein uses the notion of “form of life” (Lebensform) it would seem that it plays only a minor role in his philosophy. It is well known that in the Philosophical Investigations it occurs but five times. However, the infrequent occurrence of the notion does not seem to correspond to its real importance: either it means a last, not constructed level of life, a “given” that one must accept,1 or it means what makes agreement in language possible, particularly in relation to our judgments.2 In this sense, “form of life” would always be a fairly broad and general concept, which can be understood as what lies at the deepest level of the limitless set of human activities. Certainly this meaning of “form of life” exists in Wittgenstein, given that our simplest and most primitive languagegames lie in forms of life in which we participate since our birth

1

2

See PI, II, xi, p. 226. The English translation of Philosophical Investigations has undergone several editions since its first publication in 1953 but the paragraphing remains the same. See PI §§ 241–242.

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and in which we learn to express our own experiences. Besides this, it is plausible to associate another meaning to it: form of life is par excellence a holistic communicative concept. It is enough to think that a being situated far enough from our form of life would not be understood even though it could speak our language; it would not be able to communicate with us. With the famous phrase, “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him”,3 Wittgenstein means that to hear someone and understand him is more than just to hear him speaking the same language with words that are well-known to us. Speaking is an activity that only acquires, so to speak, a physiognomy when it is connected to processes that do present a physiognomy of a specific form of life, and it is relatively easy to identify the two most fundamental processes at the heart of a form of life: behaviour (corresponding to the German word “Benehmen”) and training (corresponding to “Abrichtung”). The fact that a form of life is a representation (Vorstellung) has relevant methodological consequences. In first place, a representation is not an image that imposes itself, perhaps from the exterior, on a subject who describes it in a more or less accurate way;4 in second place, representation is a much broader concept than image since, for example, there is the language game “representing a pain” to which no picture corresponds; finally, representing allows something very important, namely some distortion of reality, which the subject can in some sense manipulate for certain purposes.5 It is not without interest that nowadays cognitive psychology stresses the fact that visuospatial representations can differ systematically in many ways from situations in the world. This approach, which is called by some cognitive psy3 4 5

PI, II, xi, p. 223. RPP II §§ 85–88. See on the difference between “representation” (Vorstellung or Darstellung) and “image” (Bild), PI § 301: “An image (Vorstellung) is not a picture (Bild), but a picture can correspond to it”. Perhaps even more instructive on the nature of representation are §§ 85 and 87 of RPP II. The translation of these terms in the Philosophical Investigations’ edition by Anscombe and Rhees is clearly not adequate.

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chologists the “distortions program”, contrasts with the classical imagery approach.6 Representing a language on the battle field where people communicate with orders and reports, or a language consisting only of questions and expressions for answering yes or no (PI § 19), is of course a kind of distorted representation of the kind one can refer to as a form of life. These are examples (given by Wittgenstein himself) which stress the elementary nature of a possible grammar and the corresponding form of life. In another sense, it shows that in order to represent a form of life it is enough that a certain way of using language can be taken as part of an activity. The important point here is that one can either expand or reduce ad libitum any system one refers to as a form of life: from the very simple communication system of the builder and his assistant (PI § 2) to the most complicated systems (as in fact our natural human languages are). There is limitless space precisely to create thought experiments7 as can be found in the first sections of the Philosophical Investigations. At this point, I wish only to call your attention to the way Wittgenstein, after inviting us to imagine such an elementary language as that of the builder and the assistant (in fact the whole language of A and B), still adds “even the whole language of a lineage (tribe)”.8 This first reference (in the Philosophical Investigations) to a lineage with a different form of life and perhaps far from ours will be taken up again by him and it is a remark that 6

7

8

About recent developments on visual thought, representing and distorted representations and similar concepts in the framework of Gestalt Psychology, see the informative article “Visuospatial Reasoning” (Tversky 2005). Thought experiment must be here understood in a somewhat classical sense, particularly that already promoted by Kant when he speaks about the advantage in looking at an object from two different points of view (See the Critique of Pure Reason, Preface, B, XVIII). In general, one of these points is a distorted or even an unreal or impossible one and it serves to fix the clear boundaries of the real concept or representation. In the Critique of Judgment, one also finds interesting examples of these experiments, like the famous distinction between a human “intellectus ectypus” and a non-human “intellectus archetypus” (Critique of Judgment, § 77). PI § 6.

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will be of great interest to what follows. At this point it is useful to stress that Wittgenstein’s argumentation from the very first remarks of the Philosophical Investigations makes huge use of thought experiments. They are not simply a kind of ethnological point of view whose role would be to fix the relativism of our rational practices, although that perspective is not without value as can be confirmed either from his remarks on Frazer’s book The Golden Bough (1890) or from some assertions like this one: “If we look at things from an ethnological point of view, does that mean we are saying that philosophy is ethnology? No, it only means that we are taking up a position right outside so as to be able to see things more objectively”.9 The importance of the ethnological view of forms of life, at least the one which preoccupies Wittgenstein in his commentaries to Frazer, consists of the criticism of the conception of a form of life without mythology or, in other words, merely the possibility of a human form of life that is against any mythology whatsoever. What he questions here is whether pure rationalized forms of life, where nobody burns an effigy or kisses the picture of their beloved (Wittgenstein’s own examples), are conceivable. The answer is they are not because “that is obviously not based on the belief that it will have some specific effect on the object which the picture represents. It aims at satisfaction and achieves it. Or rather: it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied”.10 Wittgenstein is not aiming here at imaging unreal forms of life in order to fix our essential human form and in this sense the study of the ethnological perspective allows us much more easily to reach a place in the exterior of our form of life. One could even claim that the ethnological representation is closer to the meaning of form of life as something “given”. At this point our question about forms of life in Wittgenstein can be possibly formulated in two different directions: the first one, a form of life is a representation whose essential role is to be

9 PO, p. 37. 10 PO, p. 123.

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found in the description of a human system or systems (regardless of their degree of similarity) and in the designing of a global reference system of communication; while the second alternative is a representation which works as thought experiment, whose function consists of fixing the properties which identify a human form of life as such. In his article on “Die Hinnahme von Sprachspielen und Lebensformen”, Joachim Schulte claims that “forms of life exhibit general, very comprehensive and achieved or possible to achieve (achievable) reference systems, which allows us, as observers and questioners to understand other human beings who are as far from us as possible”.11 One can also see the usefulness of describing forms of life, particularly forms very far from our form of life, by the fact that, by contrast or through the total asymmetry between these different forms, one can more easily design the physiognomy of our own form. So the movement can be, so to speak, the inverse one: it is not a human form of life that serves as the reference pattern to understand or interpret other more distant forms; on the contrary, it is by the representation of other fictitious, unlikely or even unreal forms that it is possible to reconstruct our specific human form of life. It is from this point that I would like to start in order to explore the very peculiar use of thought experiments in the late philosophy of Wittgenstein, particularly in his so-called philosophy of psychology. I shall refer to some apparent ethnological representations of forms of life which Wittgenstein uses, as mentioned earlier, to fix our specific form. In this sense I agree with authors like Schulte and Garver, who conceive the concept in articulation with a way of general human activity, but, as I have already said, I disagree with them when the focus is also placed on the role of form of life as serving the interpretation of a radical strange language.12 Before I take up this point more systematically, it will be instructive to see how Wittgenstein operates with this concept in

11 Schulte 1999, p. 161. 12 See Schulte 1999 and Garver 1994, p. 253.

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the first sections of the Philosophical Investigations. There, one can remark how the concept has the status of thought experiment, although without the purposes one finds in the remarks on psychological philosophy. At this point his aim is to show that there is no language without or outside a communication system and simply because one takes it as a communication system to be necessarily seen as a form of life. In other words, it would not be sustainable if one did not represent it as a form of life. What Augustine or anyone else is describing when they try to explain what the meaning of the words is, or how their relation with the world must be conceived, or when they present such and such a theory of learning and teaching, is always (even implicitly) a more or less complicated communication system. Under what circumstances does this representation take place? We have talked about a kind of “distorted” representation and in fact it is always kinds of minimal holistic representations of communication systems that are exhibited by Wittgenstein. It is perfectly possible to imagine these most simple systems as independent, although of course unreal, forms of life. What Wittgenstein supposes in these first sections of the Philosophical Investigations is that it is sufficient for a minimal holistic system to fulfil certain characteristics to acquire the status of a form of life. Namely what he has in mind is that “we could imagine (vorstellen) that the language of § 2 was the whole language of A and B; even the whole language of a tribe. The children are brought up to perform these actions, to use these words as they do so, and to react in this way to the words of others”.13 Here the thought experiment is a tool designed to prove that forms of life are communication systems, which demand learning and teaching and are a sort of embodiment of reactions, training languagegames and associated praxis. I shall not go further in this direction but only leave the idea that these unreal micro systems of communication show that there is no meaning which is sustainable without a form of life. Getting a “clear view of the aim and functioning

13 PI § 6.

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of the words”14 requires not so much a broad representation of a language, but a representation of micro forms of life. In other words, “It disperses the fog to study the phenomena of language in primitive kinds of application in which one can command a clear view of the aim and functioning of the words”. Representations of forms which work as thought experiments are used frequently in the late writings, namely in the so-called writings of philosophical psychology, where to my mind the most interesting cases are to be found: interesting not only because they show so nicely the amazing philosophical imagination of Wittgenstein, but also because through them he goes beyond the boundaries of our human form of life in order to trace them. They are not simply unreal designs like those referred to in the first sections of the Philosophical Investigations. Moreover, these experiments do not fulfil any conditions of communication between humans. I would say that now what is at stake are the first conditions that make any human form of life possible. (I must add that I am not sure whether the communication systems in the first sections of the Philosophical Investigations were designs of truly human forms of life since they were explicitly primitive, far away from the “complicated forms” that Wittgenstein’s dog cannot experience.) In what follows let us choose some unreal experiments that I like to call pseudo-ethnological and which are tools used to clearly establish the first conditions required for a human form of life. Anticipating a little, I would suggest that now Wittgenstein’s deep motivation can be formulated thus: 1. What does it mean for a human being to have a soul? 2. In what sense is having a soul a real burden? And finally, we are invited to philosophical reflection, that is: 3. If given those burdens we are nonetheless inclined to give up our human form of life or the contrary.

14 PI § 5.

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In order to understand in what sense human beings have a soul is practically the same problem as that of tracing the boundaries of a human form of life. These limits are traced by the asymmetry of first and third person, by the status of an interior and what could be knowledge of that interior. In brief, Wittgenstein’s aim is to explore the boundaries of a form of life for beings with a soul. It is certainly worth exploring the boundaries of a form of life if it is possible to clarify the following problem: The inner is hidden from us means that it is hidden from us in a sense in which it is not hidden from him. And it is not hidden from the owner in this sense: he utters (äussert) it and we believe the utterance under certain conditions and there is no such thing as his making a mistake here. And this asymmetry of the game is brought out by saying that the inner is hidden from someone else.15

These lines indicate much of the meaning of having a soul: the mentioned asymmetry between persons, the relative closure of each mind, and the expression of the inner (in the specific sense of Ausdruck or Äusserung, used by Wittgenstein). Let us remember some of the remarks above: the concept of form of life as holistic systems of communication did not equate to the concept of what properly makes a human form of life.16 As we have already mentioned, the problem of beings with a soul comes up in the late writings on philosophical psychology. What is now at stake is not merely the multitude of uses of language woven with embodiment of training and reactions. To the concept of form of life as a holistic concept of communication, asymmetry of persons was not a fundamental issue. However, asymmetry of persons is a condition for a human form of life and for Wittgenstein. It is precisely at this point that some thought experiments (which I have called pseudo-ethnological designs)

15 LW II, p. 36. 16 Referring to the behaviour of apes, Wittgenstein remarks that the meaning of the soul’s activity is only fulfilled through the special use of the first person. On this topic: RPP II § 230.

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can be introduced. Let us see, for example, the following one that speaks about an unlikely lineage that never or seldom dissimulates. A tribe (Stamm) in which no one ever dissimulates, or if they do, then as seldom as we see someone walking on all fours in the street. Indeed if one were to recommend dissimulation to one of them, he might behave like one of us to whom one recommends walking on all fours. But what follows? So there is also no distrust there. And life in its entirety now looks completely different, but not on that account necessarily more beautiful as a whole. It doesn't yet follow from a lack of dissimulation that each person knows how someone else feels. But this too is imaginable. – If he looks like this, then he is sad. But that does not mean: “If he looks like this, then that is going on within him”, but rather something like: “If he looks like this, then we can draw with certainty those conclusions which we frequently only can draw without certainty; if he does not look like that, we know that these conclusions are not to be drawn”, One can say that our life would be very different if people said all of those things aloud that they now say to themselves, or if this could be read externally.17

The incapacity to pretend or that strange coincidence of pretending as when one walks on all fours (probably obeying an order or as an imitation gesture) occurs in a place where there is no place for distrust and “life in its entirety now looks completely different” but, Wittgenstein adds, “not necessarily more beautiful as a whole”. Also meaningful, and at first sight it would seem to be a paradox, is that this sort of radical sincerity does not mean having any more adequate or interesting knowledge of the other. Here one could say that too much sincerity is an epistemological obstacle. If he looks sad or depressed or whatever, one can draw some conclusions with certainty but this transparency is, all in all, false simply because there is only transparency. People of this lineage can be “recognized with certainty from appearances (we are not using the picture of the inner and the outer). But wouldn’t that be similar to coming from a country where many masks are worn into one where no, or fewer, masks are worn? (Thus perhaps from England to Ireland.) Life is just different there”.18 17 LW II, p. 27. 18 LW II, p. 28.

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In other remarks, Wittgenstein describes in greater depth the characteristics of these sorts of unreal lineages (which have nothing to do with the primitives whose different “rationality” he defends against Frazer). One of the most striking features of these lineages is the fact that in these cases training and reaction are induced by humans not to sustain and reproduce a form of life but, on the contrary, to argue that without a soul training and reaction originate something only similar to a human form of life. Since we are considering beings without a soul, the following remark starts from an obvious consequence which is that these radical sincere beings are transformed into slaves. What picture results from this transformation? These beings can even perform certain intellectual activities which seem to belong sui generis to a human form of life. These performances seem to put them so near to our way of life that one could almost ask the question: Well, are these slaves so far from us since in fact they can compute like us, and so on? Moreover, despite all the performances they can learn, as Wittgenstein observes in a very nice image, “the process of calculating is as it were submerged, and goes on under the mirror surface of the water”. These beings now learn e. g. to calculate on paper or orally. But somehow we bring them to the point of being able to say the results of multiplication after they have sat still for a while without writing or speaking. When one considers the kind of way in which they learn this “calculating in the head”, and the phenomena that surround it, the picture suggests itself, that the process of calculating is as it were submerged, and goes on under the mirror surface of the water. (Think of the sense in which water “consists” of H and O). […] And what goes for calculating in the head also goes for other forms of thinking. – If anyone among us voices the idea that something must surely be going on in these beings, something mental, this is laughed at like a stupid superstition. And if it does happen that the slaves spontaneously form the expression that this or that has taken place in them that strikes us especially comical.19 With these beings we also play the game “Think of a number – Multiply it by 5 – …Does that prove that after all something has taken place in them?”20

19 RPP I § 97. 20 RPP I § 98.

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The members of this lineage do not behave under dissimulation because they are completely transparent and do not experience the first person in truly propositional attitudes. It can be said that their form of life includes not only radical transparency (that is, a form of life that has no place for asymmetry) but also performances similar to processes of thinking, which nonetheless are far from mental processes. There are much more stimulating, pseudo-ethnological thought experiments that are designed to establish the characteristic of a form of life of beings with a soul. The following and final one I would like to refer to is focused on the lack of “exact rules of evidence” in order to know what goes on in someone else. This means, however, that in our form of life we are not always wrong as we are not always right about another mind. Nevertheless, it seems that there is no soul, no form of life, without experience of uncertainty. The remark ends with a question about giving up our human form of life: “Would we change our way of living?” in favour of another much more exact one. Is the impossibility of knowing what goes on in someone else physical or logical? And if it is both – how do the two hang together?” For a start: possibilities for exploring someone else could be imagined which don’t exist in reality. Thus there is a physical impossibility. The logical impossibility lies in the lack of exact rules of evidence. (Therefore we sometimes express ourselves in this way: “We may always be wrong; we can never be certain; what we observe can still be pretence” […]). But of course it isn’t true that we are never certain about the mental processes in someone else. In countless cases we are. And now the question remains whether we could give up our languagegame which rests on “imponderable evidence” and frequently leads to uncertainty, if it were possible to exchange it for a more exact one which by and large would have similar consequences. For instance, we could work with a mechanical “lie detector” and redefine a lie as that which causes a deflection on the lie detector. So the question is: Would we change our way of living if this or that were provided for us? – And how could I answer that?21

21 LW II, pp. 94–95.

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In fact, the problem Wittgenstein is referring to in these lines is the most radical that human beings can put to themselves: should we, if we could, give up our human form of life based on asymmetry, on sincerity, but also on dissimulation for another form of life where radical transparency and evidence about other people’s interiors would be available? Let us call it a kind of Faustian negotiation for a life without lie, dissimulation and radical sincerity. How could Wittgenstein, how could we, answer that supreme challenge? If one takes into consideration the well-known remark, “What has to be accepted, the given, is – so one could say – forms of life”22 and suppose that by “forms of life” Wittgenstein understood “human forms of life”, one finds the right answer we are searching for. The statement that human form of life is to be accepted, since it is what is given, seems prima facie a trivial resignation. However, it can also be understood as the expression of a genuine willingness to preserve our humanity. This is precisely a philosophical task that Wittgenstein never did give up.

22 PI, II, xi, p. 226.

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Wittgenstein on Reddish Green: Logic and Experience ANDREW LUGG

Between 1916 and 1950 Wittgenstein regularly discussed questions concerning colour and colour concepts. Initially he was exercised by the problem of explaining why nothing can be two colours all over at the same time, and on returning to Cambridge (and to philosophy) in 1929 after a decade away, he ranged further afield. He considered other questions – whether colours like red and blue are properly regarded as simple, whether there are three or four primary colours, whether it makes sense to speak of a shade of orange as closer to red than to yellow, whether pure blue is necessarily darker than pure yellow and, especially, why reddish green is impossible even though reddish blue is possible. In writings from 1930 to 1950, including his final discussion of colour in Remarks on Colour, he returns time and again to the thought that reddish green is linguistically monstrous.1 He does not, however, always articulate this thought the same way, and how his thinking about the topic shifted during the two decades is instructive, not least for the light it sheds on his conception of philosophy. When his remarks concerning reddish green down the years are traced out, it becomes clear that common views about his later philosophy are misleading, indeed at variance with what he explicitly states. In the manuscripts that have come down to us, Wittgenstein first refers to the impossibility of something being reddish green 1

It is not true, as sometimes thought, that Wittgenstein did not discuss colour between 1933, when he compiled The Big Typescript, and 1950, when he drafted Remarks on Colour. See, e. g., Blank 2008, p. 312.

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in a remark dated 2 February 1930 (MS 107, 279). Here he speaks of the impossibility as grammatical and observes that the relevant principles are encapsulated in the colour octahedron, a double pyramid with yellow, red, blue and green located at the base and black and white at the apexes.2 Similarly in Philosophical Remarks, a work compiled in the Spring of the same year from earlier manuscripts, he writes: “An octahedron with the pure colours at the corner-points e. g. provides a rough representation of colour-space, and this is a grammatical representation, not a psychological one” (PR § 1). And a bit further along he adds: “The colour octahedron is grammar, since it says that you can speak of reddish blue but not of reddish green, etc” (PR § 39).3 Wittgenstein does not tell us how the octahedron expresses what can and cannot be said, but it is not hard to understand what he is driving at. He is making two points: first that the vertices of the octahedron represent pure colours while the points on the base represent intermediate colours like orange and purple (more accurately, our concepts of them), and secondly that all possible colours are represented by points on the surface of the octahedron. (Greys are represented by points on the line joining the apexes of the octahedron.) On this account reddish green differs from reddish blue because there is a line joining the red and blue vertices but not the red and green vertices, these being on opposite sides of the base. Whence taking the colour octahedron to represent “grammar”, Wittgenstein concludes that reddish green is grammatically impossible.4 2

3 4

Wittgenstein referred to the “form of the colour-body” in discussion with Moritz Schlick and Friedrich Waismann in Vienna on 29 December 1929 (WVC, p. 42). Waismann includes an octahedron in the text, albeit one with curved faces, and has Wittgenstein saying: “The elementary colours [are] very pointed”, a remark that makes sense only if the elementary colours are understood as represented by a device like the colour octahedron. There is a picture of the colour octahedron on p. 278. In Philosophical Remarks Wittgenstein anticipates an important remark of the Investigations. He writes: “Using the octahedron as a representation gives us a bird’s-eye view [übersichtliche Darstellung] of the grammatical rules” (PR § 1; also MS 108, 89, 23.2.30). Compare PI § 122: “The concept of a perspicuous representation [übersichtlichen Darstellung] … earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things” (also MS 110, 257, 1.7.1931).

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Wittgenstein also discussed the impossibility of reddish green in his 1930 lectures in Cambridge. On the 24th February, he is reported to have said: “Grammar lets us do some things with language and not others … The colour octahedron is used in psychology to represent the scheme of colours. But it is really part of grammar, not of psychology. It tells us what we can do: we can speak of greenish blue but not of greenish red, etc”.5 As Wittgenstein sees it, grammar “fixes the degree of freedom”, i. e. it allows for all the possibilities regarding the colours (and only such possibilities). We can be sure that we shall never encounter something reddish green since grammar – as specified by the colour octahedron – determines “the multiplicity of facts” and “give[s] us the same degree of freedom as do the facts”. Put otherwise, as Wittgenstein goes on to note, the colour octahedron is like Euclidean geometry in that it says what is and is not possible. It too is “a convention of expression”, one that states the possibilities “expressed (contained) in language itself ”. It is no mystery, at least in retrospect, why Wittgenstein would stress that reddish green is logically impossible since it is barred by the colour octahedron, which is “grammar”. In the Tractatus he had taken monochromatic surface colours (above all red, blue, green and yellow) to be located in colour space (Farbenraum). But he had not realised that this space is different from other spaces and the concept of colour is governed by its own special grammar. Nor in mid-1929, when he wrote “Some Remarks on Logical Form”, a paper in which he revises the view of colour language sketched in the Tractatus, had he seen that the colour octahedron expresses the grammar of colour concepts, still less addressed the question of why reddish green is an impossible colour.6 It was in late 1929 at the earliest that he turned the spotlight on intermediate colours (greenish blue, reddish yellow, bluish red and the rest) and noticed that colour concepts are compendiously summarised by the colour octahedron. It was only then that he entertained the idea that one of the grammatical 5 6

LWL, p. 8. Also see PO, p. 108. PO, p. 35.

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rules the colour octahedron perspicuously represents is that reddish blue is permitted, reddish green impermissible, and recognized that this last idea serves to explain why there is no such colour as reddish green. The impossibility of reddish green is very different from the impossibility of something being red and green simultaneously all over – and much harder to explain.7 “Reddish green” no more means “red and green” than “reddish blue” means “red and blue” (evidently many surfaces are reddish blue though nothing is both red and blue). Moreover “This is reddish green” is much less clearly “a contradiction” than “This is red and green” and much less readily compared with the statement that a point is located at two places or has two velocities (compare TLP 6.3751). Whatever the explanation of the impossibility of reddish green may be, it will inevitably differ from the explanation in the Tractatus of incompatible colours. Even granting that the impossibility of something being both red and green can be explained by praying in aid the idea that colours are represented by points in a space of colours (Farbenraum), the difference between reddish green and reddish blue remains to be accounted for.8 What is required, evidently, is an account of mixed colours of the kind Wittgenstein provides in Philosophical Remarks, one that appeals to the special grammatical or logical rules governing the use of colour language, those perspicuously represented by the colour octahedron, for instance. In Philosophical Remarks Wittgenstein stresses that statements about colours such as “Reddish green is impossible” are nonfactual, non-empirical truths (PR § 1). Whereas the question of whether an after-image, say, can arise in such and such circumstances is settled by observation or experiment, the question of whether

7 8

When not missed altogether, this is often insufficiently appreciated. See, e. g., Bouveresse 2004. Incidentally, it does not help to think of the colour spectrum as a yardstick (compare PR § 84), there being colours on the spectrum between red and green as well as between red and blue (and reddish green is certainly not yellow).

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anything is reddish green is, he observes, settled by grammar, i. e. by engaging in what is sometimes referred to, none too helpfully, as conceptual analysis. We are not in the position of people who in days gone by had no exposure to fluorescent pink nor are we in the position of the red-green colour-blind who are incapable of distinguishing between red and green. There is no ducking the fact that reddish green is not a colour that has not been conjured up or a colour that just happens to fall outside the range of what we can perceive given our visual system (in the way the sound of a dog whistle falls outside our auditory range). The impossibility of reddish green, Wittgenstein would have us agree, is “a priori” (PR § 1, also MS 107, 279, 2.2.30).9 Later he will go further into the matter but in 1930 he takes it to go without saying that the notion of reddish green is on a par with the notions of one-legged bipeds, married bachelors and royal commoners.10 It also bears emphasizing that Wittgenstein is concerned with colour concepts, not with pigments or lights, and when he discusses mixtures of colours, he is referring to mixtures of colours, not mixtures of pigments or lights. He does not make the elementary error of supposing that reddish green is whatever colour results when red and green pigments are mixed (or whatever col9 This has nothing to do, as G. E. Moore seems to have supposed, with school grammar (PO, p. 69). What matters is not whether Wittgenstein uses the word “grammar” as it is standardly used but whether he is right in regarding our system of representation as “a priori”. For Wittgenstein's response to Moore, see LWL, pp. 97–98. Moore seems not to have appreciated that Wittgenstein was correcting what he said in the Tractatus about the “scaffolding of the world” (TLP 6.124; also TLP 3.42 and TLP 4.023). 10 Wittgenstein says nothing in Philosophical Remarks about alleged counterexamples to this and he would doubtless have dismissed them out of hand. In the case of autumn leaves, for instance, he would, I fancy, have noted that they are not reddish green but green with red speckles. The claim that reddish green can be perceived under special laboratory conditions, which has been urged since Wittgenstein was writing, is briefly discussed in an appendix to this paper. Of course the claims about the perceivability of reddish green would not have found their way into prestigious scientific journals were it is true that autumn leaves were properly described as reddish green.

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our is obtained by combining red and green lights). He knew full well that mixing red and green pigments yields black while mixing red and green lights yields yellow (and nothing can be both black and yellow). Moreover, as Wittgenstein underlines, even when mixing pigments or lights gives the right colour – e. g. when yellow and green are mixed to produce yellowish green – the resulting mixture does not define the concept. After all, chemical or other sorts of reaction may result in the wrong colour being obtained – blue rather than yellowish green from yellow and green, for example.11 What Wittgenstein is discussing is our colour concepts, i. e. colour as such. He concentrates on the meaning of colour words (including the meaning of words for mixtures), and he leaves it to others to determine the facts about colour (and about mixing pigments and lights). Taking the colour octahedron to summarise the grammar of colour concepts, he assumes, not unreasonably, that the incoherence of the concept of reddish green has nothing to do with pigments or lights. Philosophical Remarks comes from the period when Wittgenstein was still committed to the general vision adumbrated in the Tractatus. In 1929/1930 he set aside some basic Tractarian assumptions, including the idea that “This is red and green” can be analysed into independent elementary statements. In “Some Remarks on Logical Form”, he took “This is red” and “This is green” as elementary and treated “This is red and green” as precluded by “rules of syntax”, while in Philosophical Remarks he adds that “This is reddish green” violates the rules governing colour language (alternatively counts “There is no reddish green” as such a rule) and observes that the colour octahedron summarises these rules (at least “rough[ly]”). He has not yet begun to speak of language-games, and one may be forgiven for thinking that he will soon modify his conception of colour language (and correlatively his treatment of the impossibility of reddish green). More specifically if, as commonly believed, Wittgenstein traded the con-

11 See AWL, p. 176, and LFM, p. 235.

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ception of language as comprising a set of rules (comparable to the highway code) for a conception of it as comprising a multitude of activities or practices, one would expect him to have dropped, if not repudiated outright, the idea that the octahedron, which encapsulates rules of syntax, precludes reddish green but not reddish blue.12 This, however, is not what transpired. Reviewing Wittgenstein’s writings about colour after Philosophical Remarks, we find that he speaks about it in much the same way. He remains drawn to the view that relationships among colour concepts are given by the colour octahedron. (Sometimes, when black and white are not at issue, he refers to the colour circle, which represents red, blue, green and yellow as points equally spaced on its circumference.)13 Even in Remarks on Colour, his leading thought is much the same.14 At RC, III, § 52 he writes: “It is a fact that we can communicate with one another about the colours of things by means of six colour words. Also, that we do not use the words ‘reddish-green’, ‘yellowishblue’ etc”. At RC, III, § 30 he observes that “[w]e might be inclined to say of people who pointed consistently to an olive green on being instructed to ‘point to a somewhat reddish-green’ (and who never said: ‘I don't know what that means’ or ‘There is no such thing’) that they ‘had a different colour concept … or a different concept of ‘…ish’”. And at RC, I, § 21 / RC, III, § 94 he notes (without the slightest hint of disagreement) that the 19th Century painter Philipp Otto Runge said: “If we were to think of a bluish-orange, a reddish-green, or a yellowish-violet, we would have the same feeling as in the case of a southwesterly northwind”. 12 Here the thought is that from 1933 on Wittgenstein thinks it is a mistake to regard language on the model of a calculus and views it instead on the model of a game. See, e. g., Glock 1996, p. 67. 13 There are references to the colour circle in Wittgenstein’s post-1933 writings as well as his 1930 lectures. 14 To forestall a possible confusion I should mention that Part II of Remarks on Colour was written first, Part I last. Also I might note that I am persuaded, on the basis of internal textual considerations, that all three parts of the work date from 1950 and it is a mistake to think Part II was composed in 1949 and Part I compiled in 1951.

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While Wittgenstein expresses himself somewhat differently in Remarks on Colour from how he expressed himself in Philosophical Remarks, there is no major shift in his thinking, never mind one involving the rejection of the idea of language as a calculus for the idea of it as comprising language-games. No doubt Wittgenstein’s late thoughts about colour can be rephrased in terms of language-games. The notion of a languagegame is exceptionally elastic and hardly incompatible with the notion of language as a rule-governed calculus. (Compare PI § 7: “I shall […] call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, ‘the language-game’”). What I mean to stress is that after introducing the notion of a language-game, Wittgenstein refers to language-games when discussing colour only rarely – mostly he continues to speak of it in calculus-like terms. Indeed in Remarks on Colour the references to languagegames are few and far between and none show Wittgenstein to have repudiated the “calculus model” in favour of the “languagegame model”.15 What goes by the board is the idea of language as a calculus disconnected from use and practice (and the picture of rules buried in the recesses of our minds). In his later work Wittgenstein takes the language-game analogy to be useful for bringing out some features of language, the calculus analogy useful for bringing out others. He invokes the comparison of language with a calculus when and where he deems it appropriate, an important case in point being his discussion about the impossibility of reddish green. This, he still thinks, is best discussed in terms of the colour octahedron (or colour circle). He takes it to go without saying that it is right and proper to speak of the grammar of colour, even to regard it as a calculus. This is true, indeed especially true, of Wittgenstein’s last writings on colour. In 1948/1950 he regards colour, as he did in his 1930 lectures, as comparable to geometry and focuses mainly, if not exclusively, on the language of colour (separately from “the actions into which it is woven”). Thus in Remarks on the Philoso15 The references to language-games in Part III are sparse and those in Part I (RC, I, §§ 1, 6 and 8), incidental to the main thrust of his discussion.

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phy of Psychology he writes: “‘There’s no such thing as a reddish green’ is akin to the propositions that we use as axioms in mathematics” (RPP I § 624), says: “I want to say there is a geometrical gap, not a physical one between green and red” (RPP II § 423) and declares: “We have a colour system [System der Farben] as we have a number system [System der Zahlen]” (RPP II § 426).16 In addition he holds that “‘There is no such thing as bluish yellow’ (whence also ‘There is no such thing as reddish green’) could be called a proposition of colour geometry, i. e. it is a proposition determining a concept” (RPP II § 421; also Z § 356). And he wonders whether it is better compared with “a road that is physically impassable, or of the non-existence of a road? I. e. is it one of physical or of mathematical impossibility?” (RPP II § 425; also Z § 357). Even in Remarks on Colour he refers to “the mathematics of colour” (III, § 3) and “the geometry of colour” (I, § 66; III, § 86). Wittgenstein is not speaking figuratively when he speaks of colour this way. In his 1939 lectures on the foundations of mathematics, he compares the concept of reddish green with the concept of a biangle and suggests that the former is ruled out by our system of colour concepts no less than the latter is ruled out by our system of geometrical concepts.17 Just as we are not inclined to continue the series “pentagon”, “square”, “triangle” with “biangle”, he is on record as saying, so “we are not inclined to continue the series ‘red and soft’, ‘red and oblong’, and to say ‘red and blue’. Or we might continue in that direction and say that a thing is red and blue if it is purple, but yet be disinclined to continue it to ‘red and green’” (LFM, p. 233). He allows that nothing about the way we are or the nature of the world precludes our calling “black reddish green” but thinks this is not something we would normally want to call it. More strikingly still, on being asked whether he is using “mixture” like “multiply”, he says: “Exactly so. That is just what I am driving at. We are calculating with these colour terms” (LFM, p. 234).18 16 These remarks are reproduced in Z §§ 346 and 354. 17 LFM, p. 233. 18 The question was posed by the famous mathematician Alain Turing.

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Wittgenstein seems to have found the “biangle” analogy more than merely suggestive. In the early 1930s he compared the observation that nothing is red and green all over with the observation that nothing is a biangle (here, to circumvent the objection that biangles are straight lines, he also mentions the concept of a monogon).19 And in addition to invoking the analogy in his 1939 lectures when discussing the impossibility of reddish green, he refers to it again some ten years later. In Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology and Remarks on Colour he not only compares “There is no such thing as a bluish yellow” with “There is no such thing as a regular biangle” (RPP II § 421), he observes that someone’s balking at the instruction to produce a reddish green is like someone’s balking at the instruction to construct a biangle (RPP II § 422). Similarly in Remarks on Colour he notes that a person who is asked first to produce various colours, then a reddish green, may “react as though he had first been asked to point out regular four-, five-, and six plane figures, […] then asked to point out a regular one-angled plane figure” (RC, I, § 10). In these remarks Wittgenstein is plainly working with a view of colour concepts as functioning like geometrical or mathematical concepts. None of this is to suggest that Wittgenstein is advancing a philosophical theory about colour and colour language, one that explains among other things the impossibility of reddish green. It is tempting to treat as theoretical both his observation about the internal relatedness of our colour concepts and his suggestion that we have a colour system just as we have a number system. Similarly he may well be thought to be propounding, at least presupposing, a philosophical theory when he equates the impossibility of reddish green and other impossible colours with the impossibility of a biangle and “the square root of -25” (RPP II § 422; apparently he is disallowing complex numbers). If nothing else, Wittgenstein would seem to be wedded to the proposition that certain claims about colour – that there is no reddish green, for one – are “a priori”. Still we would do well to pause before 19 “Red and Green in the Same Place”, in VW, p. 397. Also compare Friedrich Waismann’s development of the point in “Red and Green”, in VW, p. 409 ff.

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jumping to conclusions. Wittgenstein’s remarks about colour in general and reddish green in particular do not unequivocally commit him to a theory of colour (or colour language or concepts), and there are plenty of remarks that suggest that the thrust of what he says is critical and exploratory rather than speculative and explanatory. Taking a closer look at what Wittgenstein says about colour language during the period, we find that he neither defends a thesis about its special character nor ends up, despite initial appearances to the contrary, with any such thesis. Rather he investigates without substantial presuppositions how we talk and think about colour. While he compares the colour system with the number system and treats “reddish green” and “biangle” as equally grotesque, he does not leave it at that. He explores actual and possible uses of various colour concepts. Thus in Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology he takes up the question of how reliable a guide the colour octahedron is to our use of colour grammar and notes that were we only to see red “extremely seldom” in connection with the changing colour of autumn leaves, “nothing would be more natural than to call red a degenerate green” (RPP I § 47). And instead of denying the possibility of people being acquainted with reddish-green, he questions the suggestion that this is impossible. In response to someone’s exclaiming: “But there is no such thing!”, he exclaims: “What an extraordinary sentence. – (How do you know?)” (RPP II § 429; also Z § 362). He even writes in Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology (within quotation marks to indicate he thinks the matter deserves further discussion): “‘Nothing is as common as the colour of reddishgreen; for nothing is more common than the transition of leaves from green to red’”.20

20 LW II, p. 59. It should not be assumed that Wittgenstein subsequently offers a theory of colour. He does no such thing. Also note that he asks in a manuscript around the same time (MS 137, 6b, 5.2.1948): “Is the colour octahedron a picture of the nature of colour? [Das Farben Oktaeder, ist es ein Bild der Natur der Farben?]”.

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When Wittgenstein declares in Remarks on Colour: “We do not want to establish a theory of colour … but rather the logic of colour concepts [die Logik der Farbbegriffe]” (I.22/III.188), he is not saying that he aims to provide a conceptual, non-empirical account of colour (and the impossibility of reddish green). In the Investigations, he says: “If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them” (PI § 129), and he is most plausibly regarded as proceeding in the same spirit in Remarks on Colour, indeed in his remarks from 1929 on and, arguably, even earlier. He does not rule out the possibility of a logic of colour – this would have been exceedingly unWittgensteinian. But neither does he presume there must be such a logic (he merely declares that he would like one). What he is attempting to do is get clear about the colour concepts we work with day in and day out and determine why it is that reddish green, in contrast to reddish blue, is held to be an impossible colour. In Remarks on Colour his investigations are directed at spelling out how we think and speak about colour and at clarifying the sense in which the concept of reddish green resembles the concept of a southwesterly northwind. From what has already been said, it can hardly be doubted that Wittgenstein thinks the impossibility of reddish green is a matter of logic, not of fact. This, however, is not the whole story. While Wittgenstein refers to the colour octahedron as grammar, he does not think facts do not come into the picture at all. In a discussion of impossible colours such as reddish green in Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, for instance, he writes: “Do the [colour and number] systems reside in our nature or in the nature of things? How are we to put it? – Not in the nature of numbers or colours” (RPP II § 426; Z § 357). In this connection he adds by way of response to the question of whether this means there is “something arbitrary about this system”: “Yes and No. It is akin to what is arbitrary and to what is non-arbitrary” (RPP II § 427; Z § 358). What he means, I take it, is that the system of colours (and hence the impossibility of reddish green) is not forced on us by the way we are or the way the world is but neither is it by chance that we have the system we have and we discount the

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possibility of reddish green. It is, he notes further along, “an extremely important fact” that what we call “reddish yellow” can be produced by mixing red and yellow and “we are not able to recognise straight off a colour that has come about by mixing red and green” (RPP II § 433; Z § 365).21 In these remarks Wittgenstein is exploring the idea that “There is no reddish green” is not a (psychological) law of thought or a law of nature but comparable to the so-called law of non-contradiction, the gist of which is that nothing is both p and not-p. What follows from this, he notes in his 1939 lectures on mathematics, is that nothing “would go wrong if we denied these laws … except that it would upset our system” (LFM, p. 235). We would find it bothersome to allow for the possibility of reddish green – it would upset “us”, no more and no less. Denying the principle that there is no such colour is not something we would rush to do if only because “[i]t hangs together very closely with the use we make of [it]”. In particular, Wittgenstein adds, we are disinclined to call black “reddish green” (however easy it is to imagine someone calling it that), there being “all sorts of reasons to be given against such a practice”. In other words, we stick with what we have since the alternative is too disruptive of our system of colour concepts. To call black reddish green would put us in the position of having to construct another system of colours, something “which would be decidedly impractical”. What makes the difference is expediency, not human psychology or nature.22 So experience does, in the final analysis, have a place in Wittgenstein’s treatment of colour language. It comes in in a roundabout way. As he says in Remarks on Colour in the course of 21 Wittgenstein adds (within parenthesis): “But what does ‘straight off ’ signify here?”. 22 Incidentally Wittgenstein’s remarks about “There is no reddish green” in his 1939 lectures on the foundations of mathematics provides considerable insight into his much maligned discussion of the possibility of accepting contradictions. In fact he writes: “This has all been in order to get something clear about ‘laws of thought’.” (LFM, p. 235). It is instructive, but not possible here, to compare what Wittgenstein says about such laws with the rather different views of Carnap and Quine.

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discussing of the appearance of a particular colour, the question of the nature of our system of colour concepts is “not a question of physics, but … connected with physical questions” (RC, III, § 252). On the one hand, the question of the possibility of reddish green and reddish blue is not an empirical question since the answer depends on the meaning of the words “reddish”, “blue” and “green”. On the other hand, whether we have a system of concepts that makes provision for reddish blue and excludes reddish green is an empirical question, the answer to which depends on what we have – as a matter of fact – adopted by way of concepts. As he notes near the end of Part III of Remarks on Colour: “We could say people’s concepts show what matters to them and what doesn’t. But it’s not as if this explained the particular concepts they have. It is only to rule out the view that we have the right concepts and other people the wrong ones” (RC, III, § 293). We have the system of concepts we have because of the way we are and how the world is, but the system itself stands on its own two feet. It reflects, but is not determined by, the facts.23 These last remarks dovetail with Wittgenstein’s discussion of reddish green in Philosophical Remarks and later writings up to and including Remarks on Colour. Throughout the period he questions the possibility of a people who perceived reddish green, more specifically the idea that the concept of reddish green has a significant use (aside from the use of it as an example of an incoherent concept). Viewing the colour octahedron as “grammar”, he holds that perceiving reddish green is no more in the cards than obtaining four by adding one to two, indeed reiterates his previous line regarding colour language and declares straight out

23 Compare RC, III, § 302: “Would it be correct to say our concepts reflect our life? They stand in the middle of it”. On this theme see also PI § 242: “If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also … judgements. This seems to abolish logic, but does not do so. – It is one thing to describe methods of measurement, and another to obtain and state the results of measurement”. With obvious changes this remark holds of Wittgenstein’s view of the methods and results of colour attribution as well.

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that nothing is reddish green. It is no accident that he has been read as arguing that “[p]eople who called the colour brown (for instance) ‘reddish green’ would either be misusing language (perhaps playfully) or possessed of concepts other than ours” and as holding that “if [people] really had different concepts, this would have to be shown in our inability to figure out their use of words”.24 Nobody can deny that he takes the colours to be our colours, i. e. takes our conception of colour to be definitive of the very notion of a colour and believes this shows it is impossible to perceive reddish green in the sense we perceive reddish blue. In several passages in Remarks on Colour Wittgenstein develops this last thought, in fact provides what seems to be a strong argument for thinking that perceptions of reddish green are out of the question. He writes: “[I]f there were […] people for whom it was natural to use the expressions ‘reddish-green’ or ‘yellowish-blue’ in a consistent manner and who perhaps also exhibit abilities which we lack, we would still not be forced to recognize that they see colours which we do not see. There is, after all, no commonly accepted criterion for what is a colour, unless it is one of our colours” (RC, I, § 14 / RC, III, § 42). Similarly he writes: “Can't we imagine a people having a geometry of colours different from our normal one [eine andere Farbengeometrie]? […] The difficulty is obviously this: isn't it precisely the geometry of colour that shows us what we're talking about, i. e. that we are talking about colours?” (RC, III, § 86). (At RC, III, § 88 he adds: “The difficulty is, therefore, one of knowing what we are supposed to consider as the analogue of something that is familiar to us”). Moreover at RC, III, § 123 he wonders whether a people who call a certain brown “reddish green”, just have “another word for something [we] have a word for” (see also RC, III, § 127). Wittgenstein would appear to be on firm ground in continuing to treat the colour octahedron as “grammar” and regarding reddish green as impossible. His thought that colour is defined by the space of possibilities given by the octahedron or some

24 Brenner 1999, p. 125.

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other scheme seems as solid as the thought that Euclidean points are points in Euclidean space. On the face of it the relationships between red, green and the rest are comparable to the relationships between spatial concepts such as up/down, right/left and behind/in front (and no less properly regarded as constituting a calculus). (Here one is reminded of the pictures in language books giving words for colours and spatial terms.) Yet it is also tempting to think there could be a people who perceive colours in addition to those we perceive and to conclude that the concept of reddish green makes perfectly good sense. Bats hear sounds we do not hear, and it would seem obvious that other species (or different kinds of human being) could see colours we do not see. And if one thinks, as Wittgenstein does, our colour concepts depend in part on how the world is, reports of reddish green could, were things otherwise, surely be as commonplace as reports of reddish yellow. In Remarks on Colour Wittgenstein confronts head-on the question of whether reddish green can be perceived. He wonders whether there could be a people – “[e]ven if green is not an intermediate colour between yellow and blue” – “for whom there is bluish-yellow, reddish-green” (RC, I, § 9) and asks what we should say if someone conversant with the language of mixtures who, on being ordered to point to a reddish green, “unhesitatingly pointed to a colour sample (say, to one that we would call a blackish brown)?” (RC, I, § 10).25 Moreover far from coming down on the No side of the question, in a number of remarks he comes down squarely on the Yes side. Thus he imagines a person who “sometimes sees brown and sometimes reddish green” where “we always see the same shade, e. g. of brown”, even “can differenti-

25 By way of clarifying the question Wittgenstein writes at RC, I, § 66; RC, III, § 154: “‘Can’t we imagine certain people having a different geometry of colour than we do?’ That, of course, means: Can’t we imagine people having colour concepts other than our own? And that in turn means: Can’t we imagine a people who do not have our colour concepts but who have concepts which are related to ours in such a way that we would also call them ‘colour concepts’?”.

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ate between the colours of two chemical compounds that seem to us the same colour”, one of which “he calls … brown, … the other reddish green” (RC, I, § 11; RC, III, § 163). And he notes that “the expression ‘reddish-green’ need present no difficulties” for a people who only speak of something as reddish yellow “in cases where a transition from yellow through orange to red took place before their eyes” (RC, I, § 78; RC, III, § 129). In these passages Wittgenstein allows that reddish green is perceivable and concedes that the concept “reddish green” may in certain circumstances have a significant use. More than once in Remarks on Colour, moreover, Wittgenstein observes that we could be like a colour-blind person who cannot see all the colours we see or like those of us who do not have perfect pitch in relation to those who have it. He writes: “[C]ouldn't there be people for whom there is […] reddish green? I. e. people whose colour concepts deviate from ours – because, after all, the colour concepts of colour-blind people too deviate from those of normal people, and not every deviation from the norm must be a blindness, a defect” (RC, I, § 9). It is, he avers, no less possible for us to go through life without noticing that we are missing colours than it is for “a man [to] go through life without his colour-blindness being noticed, until some special occasion brings it to light” (RC, III, § 31).26 And after raising the possibility that “yellowish-blue” might mean something to someone (RC, III, § 27), he observes that just as “[t]here is such a thing as perfect pitch and there are people who don’t have it”, so “there could be a great range of different talents with respect to seeing colours” (RC, III, § 28). Patently here as well Wittgenstein feels the lure of the suggestion that someone might perceive red-

26 Here Wittgenstein is probably alluding to John Dalton, who was long unaware of his colour blindness. It is, I imagine, not fortuitous that RC, III, § 164 ff. on colour blindness occur immediately after RC, III, § 163 on the possibility of a person sometimes seeing brown, sometimes reddish green, where we only see brown. Wittgenstein’s discussions of colour blindness and perfect pitch in Remarks on Colour are not, as often thought, makeweight.

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dish green (and not simply be referring to what we call black or brown or maroon or olive green). It should not be thought that Wittgenstein first accepts one view regarding the possibility of reddish green, bluish yellow and the like, then the opposite. He goes back and forth – some would say he vacillates. The remarks already cited are drawn from various places in Remarks on Colour, and it is a mistake to suppose that he straightens things out in Part I. Even more tellingly he sometimes hesitates in the same remarks (or group of remarks). At RC, III, § 27 he first states that bluish yellow and yellowish blue (and presumably reddish green and greenish red) “don’t mean anything at all [to him]”, then asks: “But mightn’t they mean something to someone else?” At RC, III, § 42 he no sooner stresses our only criterion for what is a colour is whether it is one of our colours than he says: “And yet we could imagine circumstances under which we would say, ‘These people see other colours in addition to ours’”.27 And at RC, III, § 124 – immediately after questioning whether a people would “really have a different concept than [he does]” – he writes: “I have kept on saying that it’s conceivable for our concepts to be different than they are. Was that all nonsense?”. The most reasonable conclusion would seem to be that Wittgenstein is genuinely puzzled, that he is pulled in two directions and cannot commit himself either way.28

27 This remark occurs immediately after Wittgenstein had asked: “What advantage would someone have over me who knew a direct route from blue to red? And what shows that I don’t know such a path? – Does everything depend on my range of possible language-games with the form ‘…ish’?” (RC, III, § 41). 28 Also compare RC, III, § 32: “Is it possible … for different people […] to have different colour concepts? – Somewhat different ones. Different with respect to one or another feature”, and RC, III, §§ 110–111: “One person may react to the order to find a yellow blue by producing a blue-green, another may not understand the order. What does this depend on? I say blue-green contains no yellow: if someone else claims that it certainly does contain yellow, who’s right? How can we check? Is there a verbal difference between us?”. These are not rhetorical questions but ones Wittgenstein is seriously exercised by.

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There is no discounting the tension in Remarks on Colour about the possibility of perceiving reddish green.29 To ignore it or play it down would mean missing an important hint regarding Wittgenstein’s philosophical method as well as riding roughshod over his actual words. When discussing reddish green, he proceeds as he is said to have proceeded in his classes – he “trie[s] to work his way into and through a question in the natural order and in the nontechnical way in which any completely sincere man thinking to himself would come at it”.30 Instead of arguing that reddish green is an impossible colour or defending the proposition that it is perceivable, he attempts to think through the question, his hope being that he can sort out the matter and show that, properly understood, the problem resolves itself. What is remarkable and unusual in Remarks on Colour is that he is genuinely perplexed. Whereas in the Investigations he clearly knows where he wants to end up, in Remarks on Colour he is – in the words of the Investigations – unable to show “the fly the way out of the fly-bottle” (PI § 309). As far as reddish green is concerned, he does not manage to surmount the stumbling blocks he isolates, just clarifies them and underscores the trouble they pose. In Part II of Remarks on Colour, the part written first, Wittgenstein includes two important comments about philosophy and the problems of colour. At RC, II, § 11 he writes: “In philosophy we must always ask: ‘How must we look at this problem in order for it to become solvable?’”, and at II, § 12 he observes that as far as colour goes “there is merely an inability to bring the concepts into some kind of order”. This, I am suggesting, describes pretty well what Wittgenstein is aiming to achieve and the predicament he finds himself in regarding reddish green (actually regarding colour as such). He seeks a standpoint for viewing the problem of reddish green from which it is solvable, 29 The tension cannot be alleviated by referring to language games. This would not solve the problem, merely recast it. There would still be the question of whether alien colour language-games make sense and, if so, how they are related to our own. 30 Gasking and Jackson 1951, p. 77.

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actually resolves itself, and he is best described as striving – with much less than complete success – to bring the concepts of red, blue, green, yellow and the rest into some kind of order. What he says at the outset about our inability to do this he could have said at every stage of his investigation. At the end of Part III of Remarks on Colour (and the revision published as Part I) he is still hesitating. He remains in the quandary he thinks we typically find ourselves in when considering colour. He does not know how to proceed but stands there, as he puts it, “like the ox in front of the newly-painted door” (RC, II, § 12). Wittgenstein never tired of extolling Heinrich Hertz’s approach to the problems of mechanics, and his treatment of reddish green is reminiscent of nothing so much as Hertz’s treatment of force and electricity.31 To Wittgenstein’s way of thinking philosophical problems are comparable to such scientific problems as Hertz regarded them. Like Hertz he thinks “we have accumulated […] more relations [around certain concepts] than can be completely reconciled among themselves” and we need to bend our energies to removing “these painful contradictions”.32 He believes, again like Hertz, that what is required is not “an answer to [a] question” but rather the elimination of the contradictions surrounding whatever concept is causing us trouble so that “our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions” (p. 8). In particular in Remarks on Colour he proceeds with an eye to setting our minds at rest rather than with an eye to establishing a general philosophical account of colour language. He aims to find a standpoint where reddish green does not puzzle us, i. e. where,

31 Wittgenstein cites Hertz in BBB, p. 26, and refers to him in a note composed in 1931 as an influence (see CV, p. 16). Also he initially planned to use Hertz’s remarks as a motto for the Investigations and he is reported as having mentioned Hertz’s thinking at the Moral Science Club in Cambridge in 1939 and 1946 (see WC, pp. 296 and 404). 32 Hertz 1956, p. 7 and p. 8. Notice also that like Hertz, who contrasts “force” and “electricity” with “gold” and “velocity”, Wittgenstein has little to say about concepts where, in Hertz’s words, “we find no contradictions that offend us” (p. 7).

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to borrow another phrase from Hertz, we are “satisfied and ask no further questions” (p. 7).33 Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy is not as much in favour as it once was, and given that in Remarks on Colour he finds himself stymied at practically every turn about the impossibility of reddish green (in fact about colour generally), this may seem to be no great loss. It is difficult not to conclude that he should have thrown in the towel and treated the problem of reddish green naturalistically, i. e. as a scientific rather than a logical or grammatical problem. In Remarks on Colour he notes (albeit in connection with psychological phenomena, not colour) that “it could now be asked what I really want, to what extent I want to deal with grammar” (RC § 309), and I can well imagine it being thought that he should want to deal with it much less, if at all. As many philosophers see it, our colour system is more like an empirical theory than a mathematical system and the colour octahedron is psychology, not “grammar”.34 They hold that “There is no reddish green” is an empirical law rather than a syntactical rule and the impossibility of reddish green is best explained by noting that our perceptual apparatus excludes such a colour (and it makes perfect sense to think a people with a different apparatus could perceive it).35

33 In the Tractatus Wittgenstein provides an account of representation comparable to Hertz’s account of mechanics. Early and late, Wittgenstein proceeded differently from Russell, who – despite extolling the virtues of piecemeal investigation – sought a comprehensive philosophical system comparable to the great philosophical systems of the past. 34 Compare Bouveresse 2004, p. 190: “No theoretician believes today, as [Wittgenstein] did, that philosophy can deal with the problem of colour by essentially or exclusively focusing on the conceptual or grammatical aspect and not directly considering the facts of physics, physiology or psychology, as well as the theories we now have at our disposal to explain these facts”. 35 Compare Hardin 1993, pp. 121–123. Hardin thinks the impossibility is accounted for by appealing to the theory of opponent processing, according to which the human visual system comprises a red/green channel, a blue/ yellow channel and a black/white channel and the colours are organised as the colour octahedron represents them.

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Had this view been put to him, Wittgenstein would doubtless have resisted it – and not without reason. Naturalism in all but its crudest form makes provision for what Wittgenstein refers to as grammatical remarks and for representations of grammar, a prime example of which is the colour octahedron. The thoughtful naturalist, no less than Wittgenstein, takes the likes of “2 + 1 equals 4” and “What is below is on top of what is above” to be grammatically otiose, and “This is reddish green” is no more otiose. It is, Wittgenstein would argue, perverse to regard “There is no reddish green” as falling in a different category from “There are no married bachelors”, a sentence generally regarded by naturalists as well as non-naturalists as true come what may.36 While naturalists are inclined to think there could be a people who perceive reddish green, so too, as noted, is Wittgenstein. Both Wittgenstein and the naturalist, in short, are committed to recognising that reddish green is logically excluded and both parties feel the need to allow for the possibility of its perceivability. Naturalism does not put to rest the questions that Wittgenstein raises about the concept of reddish green, and the fact that he does not answer them himself does not show he is misguided.37 Wittgenstein would also have noted that his view of language acquisition is itself naturalistic. The crux of his argument is that it is a consequence of the colour system we learn at our parents’ knees that one of the colour concepts we tend to think is intelligible without a second thought is in fact unintelligible. He works 36 Compare Quine 1974, p. 79. It is all-too-often forgotten that Quine, a naturalist if there was one, accepts what he calls a vegetarian notion of analyticity (Quine 1960, p. 67). In fact regarding this topic the main difference between him and Wittgenstein is that he is always keen to move on and say something positive about our language while Wittgenstein devotes himself almost exclusively to exposing what he takes to be conceptual confusion. 37 It is important to recall that Wittgenstein allows that systems of concepts can be changed. In Remarks on Colour he acknowledges the possibility of constructing “an ideal use” for “pure white” (RC, I, § 3; RC, III, § 35) and notes that the introduction of such a concept poses no more of a problem than the introduction of “the chemical concept of a ‘salt’” or “a more refined concept of precise determination of time” (RC, I, § 5; RC, III, § 36).

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with the (naturalistic) picture of children as learning “red” along with – and shading into – “blue” and “yellow”, as learning “green” along with “blue” and “yellow”, etc, i. e. as learning the rules encapsulated in the colour circle (and when “black” and “white”, “lighter” and “darker”, etc, are factored in, the rules encapsulated in the colour octahedron). (Compare III, § 110 in Remarks on Colour: “How do I learn the use of the word ‘yellowish’? Through language-games in which, for example, things are put in a certain order. … In the course of this I learn to proceed independently just as I do in arithmetic”.) This being so, we are, Wittgenstein concludes, obliged (regardless of the nature of the underlying neurophysiology) to think of “red-green” (or “reddish green”) in a way we do not want to think of it, namely as precluded by the way we learn colour words. This thought may be challenged but not on the grounds that it presupposes or entails anti-naturalism or supernaturalism.38 I began by suggesting that an examination of Wittgenstein’s remarks about reddish green helps clarify his approach to philosophy, and I am hopeful that it is now clear that he is not, as he is commonly portrayed, a philosophical theorist or, as he is alternatively sometimes regarded, a philosophical therapist. In Remarks on Colour (and, I am persuaded, in other works) he does not defend a substantive philosophical view and offer a theory of colour grammar, never mind advance philosophical explanation of the impossibility of reddish green. Nor does he aim to show that philosophers’ claims are nonsensical or insinuate that their views about colour collapse under their own weight (actually he hardly mentions philosophers at all). Rather he tries to find a way of negotiating our mistaken and conflicting thoughts about colour

38 To anticipate an obvious rejoinder, I should mention that Wittgenstein criticises the view that “red” and “green” are ostensively defined labels (and hence the view that it is an empirical question whether red and green are combinable). For him, indeed, the idea of colour terms as labels is responsible for much confusion about colour. Also it is worth noting that – given the view of words as labels – it is hard to resist treating “1 + 1 = 2” as empirical. See PI § 28 ff.

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by clarifying “the logic of colour”, something he thinks “accomplishes what people have often unjustly expected of a theory” (RC, I, § 22; RC, III, § 188). In Remarks on Colour, as in Philosophical Remarks, he attempts to organise our concepts of colour so that the problems associated with them no longer arise. The main difference between these works is that whereas he initially thought the colour octahedron serves this purpose, later on he is much less sure, indeed finds himself wondering whether our colour concepts are subject to such perspicuous representation.39

Appendix It has been suggested that philosophers like Wittgenstein set out on the wrong foot since reddish green has been perceived under special experimental conditions. In this regard work reported in the 1980s in a leading scientific journal and other work reported more recently in a leading scientific magazine may be thought to establish that the physical factors that prevent us from perceiving reddish green can be overridden in the laboratory by using what is called an eye tracker. Thus H. Crane and T. P. Piantanida, the authors of the earlier report, state that “[b]y stabilizing the retinal image of the boundary between a pair of red and green stripes … but not their outer edges, the entire region can be perceived simultaneously as both red and green”, while V. A. Billock and B. H. Tsou, the authors of the later report, claim to have demonstrated, using a technique similar to Crane and Piantanida’s, the “remarkable” fact that “[u]nder special circumstances … people can see … ‘forbidden’ colors’”.40 Do such results serve as a 39 Thus I am disinclined to speak of a “third Wittgenstein” – or a fourth or fifth one. Wittgenstein’s philosophical approach is the same in 1950 as 1929–1930 (and, if I am right about the “Hertzian” character of the Tractatus, even earlier). 40 Crane and Piantanida 1983, p. 1078; Billock and Tsou 2010, p. 73.

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“salutary warning” about the sort of philosophising in which Wittgenstein engaged and reveal that discussions of colour such as his, which take no notice of the relevant colour science, are “barren”?41 Reviewing Crane and Piantanida’s paper, we find the reported results less compelling than advertised and without critical significance for Wittgenstein’s approach. Though reddish green is no more abstruse a concept than reddish blue, never mind “orange”, “purple” or “cyan”, there was no consensus among the subjects – Crane and Piantanida say there were “more than a dozen” – regarding “the unusual stimulus” (p. 1079). Some saw “a regular array of just resolvable red and green dots”, some “a series of islands of one colour on a background of the other” and some – including “an artist with a large color vocabulary” – were “unable to name or describe the color”. Moreover there is the awkward fact, not budgeted for as far as I know, that the perceived colour may well have been mischaracterised as reddish green given the strangeness of the experimental situation (and perhaps the colour itself).42 Red-speckled green leaves are regularly referred to as reddish green, and it is not improbable that, in the circumstances, the subjects fell into the same trap. It might even be predicted that a person who saw green at the unstabilised green boundary and red at the unstabilised red boundary would refer to what he or she saw as reddish green for want of anything better to call it.43

41 Arthur Danto’s “Foreword” in Hardin 1993, pp. xii and xiii. 42 For what it is worth, a colour scientist who had tried the experiment told me he had found the colour “weird”. 43 While Crane and Piantanida note in the body of their paper that seeing reddish green is like seeing reddish blue or lavender (1983, p. 1079), in their abstract they report, rather vaguely, that their subjects perceived the entire region “simultaneously as both red and green” (1983, p. 1078). In his “Further Thoughts: 1993” Hardin is more sceptical about Crane and Piantanida’s experiment than in the 1988 edition (1993, pp. 124–125). “It would”, he ends up saying, “have been fun if everyone had seen what Piantanida says he saw” (p. xxix).

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In their follow-up study, Billock and Tsou aimed to reinforce Crane and Piantanida’s finding. Recognising that the response to Crane and Piantanida’s paper has been lukewarm, Billock and Tsou redid the experiment ensuring that the illumination was uniform across the bands of colour. Whether their results are any more believable is, however, debatable. They do not quote their subjects’ responses (or address the question of whether the perceived colour was regarded as comparable to reddish blue), only say that six of the seven vision researchers they drafted as subjects “saw forbidden colours”.44 While they claim to have chosen “credible subjects” (Crane and Piantanida having been criticised for having unreliable ones), they do not seem to have controlled for the possibility of colour scientists having their own biases. Nor does Billock and Tsou’s description in another paper of what they found inspire confidence (or show Wittgenstein wrong).45 In this paper they say: “Typically the perception of [the] phenomena would last a few seconds before the entire field would switch abruptly to blackness or nothingness” and add that their subjects were, as in Crane and Piantanida’s study, “tongue-tied in their descriptions … using terms like ‘green with a red sheen’, or ‘red with green highlights’” (pp. 2398–2399). I do not mean to suggest that the experiments are not ingenious or the reported effects uninteresting. I am merely questioning whether reddish green, properly so called, was perceived and hence whether inquiries like Wittgenstein’s are passé. My point is twofold. First ordinary science philosophy can be as simple-minded as ordinary language philosophy, and scientists bearing gifts should be unreservedly welcomed no more than dictionary writers bear44 Billock and Tsou say: “The border between the two colors would vanish, and the colors would flow across the border and mix. Sometime the result looked like a gradient that ran from, say, red on the left to green on the right, with every possible shade of greenish red and reddish green in between. Other times we saw red and green fields in the same place but at different depths, as if seeing one hue through the other without any discoloration of either of them. Often we saw a nice, uniform reddish green or bluish yellow fill the whole field” (2010, p. 75). 45 Billock, Gleason and Tsou 2001.

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ing them, the deliverances of common science and technical language being no more foolproof than the deliverances of commonsense and everyday language. Secondly it is wrong to think of Wittgenstein as “doing anticipatory science badly” and treat his remarks “as obsolete as astrology” on the grounds that the phenomena that concern him are “real rather than artefacts of language, to be dealt with through the methods of science rather than the analysis of words”.46 His writings on colour are not antithetical to the scientific study of colour. He is out to remove confusions about colour to which the colour scientist no less than the man or woman in the street are prone.47

46 Arthur Danto in Hardin 1993, p. xiii and p. xi. Danto concludes: “How sweet it after all is to be in touch with the truth … and to learn that the complexities are not in our language but in ourselves and in the world” (p. xiii). To Wittgenstein’s way of thinking the claims of colour theorists deserve the closest scrutiny. He does not anticipate the results of scientific inquiry, just holds that were new colours shown to exist, a new vocabulary would be required (if only for laboratory work). 47 I am indebted to Lynne Cohen, Mauro Engelmann, Puqun Li, Richard Schmitt, Zara Rabb and especially Paul Forster for comments and criticisms.

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Index

Anscombe, G. E. M. 15n3, 102n13, 144n5 Aue, M. A. E. 15n4 Augustine (St.) 49n18, 148 Bachmann, I. 44 Bartok, B. 73 Beerling, R. F. 76n5 Billock, V. A. 178, 180 Black, M. 103n16 Blank, A. 155n1 Bouveresse, J. 158n7, 175n34 Brandom, R. 72 Brenner, W. H. 169n24 Broch, H. 44 Brouwer, L. E. J. 14, 22–27, 33, 36 Budd, M. 69n11 Carnap, R. 167n22 Clair, A. 32n26 Conant, J. 22 Crane, H. 178–180 Creegan, C. L. 37n30 Dalton, J. 171n26 Danto, A. 179n41, 181n46 Davenport, J. 31 Davidson, D. 70n15 Descartes, R. 29–30 Dewey, J. 65 Drury, M. O’C. 141n23 Dunning, S. N. 32n26 Edwards, J. C. 26n14 Eliot, T. S. 49n19 Euclid 122n23, 123 Ferber, R. 76n7, 77n9 Ferreira, J. M. 32n25 Fichte, J. G. 37 Frazer, J. G. 14, 50, 146, 152 Fred, W. 113n1, 114n4 Frege, G. 35

Garver, N. 15, 75n3, 76n6, 77–79, 84, 87, 89, 103–105, 117n9, 120n18, 147 Gasking, D. A. T. 173n30 George, D. L. 73 George, S. A. 137n18 Gleason, G. A. 180n45 Glock, H.-J. 127, 139n22, 161n12 Goethe, J. W. v. 14, 45, 48–50, 52–53, 57, 137n18 Hacker, P. M. S. 15n3 Haller, R. 77n9, 78, 117n9, 120n18 Hamann, J. G. 53 Hanfling, O. 68n6 Hardin, C. L. 175n35, 179n41, 179n43, 181n46 Hegel, G. W. F. 27–28 Heidegger, M. 28 Hertz, H. 174–175 Hilbert, D. 122 Hodges, M. 26n14 Hofmannsthal, H. v. 40, 113n1 Howes, B. 35n28 Hunter, J. 101n11, 104n19 Hutto, D. 22, 35n28 Jackson, A. C. 173n30 James, W. 67 Janik, A. 21n1, 77n9 Lippitt, J. 22, 35n28 Luckhardt, C. G. 15n4 Lütterfelds, W. 117n9, 120n18 Kant, I. 27–28, 66, 145n7 Kierkegaard, S. 14, 21–37 Kraus, K. 40 Majetschak, S. 15–17, 78n16, 87n30, 93n38 Malcolm, N. 75, 103n16, 110n30 McManus, D. 26n14

190 Merleau-Ponty, M. 111 Molder, M. F. 14, 39n1 Moore, G. E. 159n9 Mozart, W. A. 32, 67 Musil, R. 44 Neumer, K. 75n1 Nietzsche, F. W. 83 Padilla Gálvez, J. 16–17, 117n10 Piantanida, T. P. 178–180 Plato 35n28 Pound, E. 56 Priest, G. 27–28 Putnam, H. 68 Quine, W. V. O. 167n22, 176n36 Raatzsch, R. 75n1 Ravel, J.-M. 73 Rhees, R. 129, 144n5 Rimbaud, A. 70 Roser, A. 117n9, 120n18 Rottenburg, R. 112 Rudd, A. 31 Runge, P. O. 161 Russell, B. 35, 175n33 Saari, H. 98n1, 103–105 Savigny, E. v. 76, 78n17, 102n13

Index Schiller, J. C. F. v. 137n18 Schlegel, F. 37 Schlick, M. 156n2 Schopenhauer, A. 22–24, 26, 33, 36 Schroeder, S. 137n18 Schulte, J. 15n3, 17–18, 75n2, 78, 87n30, 95n40, 120, 130n10, 137n18, 147 Shusterman, R. 65 Sluga, H. 83n24 Stocker, B. 14, 27n15 Stosch, K. v. 77n9, 95n40 Thompson, J. 15–16, 108n26 Tieck, J. L. 37 Toulmin, S. 21n1, 77n9 Tsou, B. H. 178, 180 Turing, A. 163n18 Tversky, B. 145n6 Wahl, J. 22n7 Waismann, F. 70n12, 156n2, 164n19 Waldenfels, B. 97 Wedelstaedt, A. K. v. 125n1 Winch, P. 17, 136 Wright, G. H. v. 90n30, 91n35

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