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Wittgenstein’s Investigations pp 21–40Cite as

Conceptual Delights

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Part of the book series: Nordic Wittgenstein Studies ((NRWS,volume 1))

Abstract

Wittgenstein shares with many early twentieth century artists a preoccupation with forms of representation. He investigates differing perspectives, spatial and temporal flux, ambiguity concerning the inner and the outer, and the particulars of everyday life. Like early Cubist painters, he seeks clarity of form and a new way of seeing. His use of grammar is similar to the Cubist use of geometry, and his texts are similar in form to Cubist paintings. At the beginning of the Cubist movement, Apollinaire notes that:

the new painters [are] sharply criticized for their preoccupation with geometry. And yet, geometric figures are the essence of draftsmanship…It may be said that geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of writing (Apollinaire 1960: 222).

Early Cubists reduce forms to a combination of cubes, cones, and cylinders so that the elements of any one form become interchangeable with another. Thus, they create a continuity of structure. By rendering all objects similar in form, they attempt to render the interactions between figures clear. In other words, in the Cubist manner of representation, forms are reduced to basic geometrical components in an attempt to present a multi-perspectival or multi-aspectival view of a scene (Miller 2001: 163–7). This is similar to Wittgenstein’s art of investigation, in which essence is expressed by grammar (PI 371).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This list is borrowed from Miller ’s Einstein, Picasso (Miller 2001). This chapter is also indebted to the writings of John Berger .

  2. 2.

    A similar (aesthetic) movement was also taking place in science. See, for example , the works of Heisenberg and Einstein.

  3. 3.

    Wittgenstein asks whether this form of account or way of looking at things is a Weltanschauung [a world view]. It is important that he leaves this question open.

  4. 4.

    The house that Wittgenstein helped design (the Kundmanngasse) is also described in terms of cubic volumes, intersecting planes and shifting axes. Wijdeveld writes that it is ‘stripped of all ornament and reduced to an austere composition of lines, planes and volumes’ (Wijdeveld 1994: 104).

  5. 5.

    ‘The way Wittgenstein represents the relationships between remarks is shown by the second remark: 2 = 3.2 which means that his remark refers to the second remark on the following, third, manuscript page’ (Nedo 1998: xxi).

  6. 6.

    Wittgenstein’s numbering system enables us to refer to individual remarks, the movement between them, and their relationship to the whole.

  7. 7.

    We find movement from §§48–65, §§65–89, §§89–133, and §§133–142.

  8. 8.

    This movement continues throughout the book.

  9. 9.

    ‘What is difficult here is to put this indefiniteness correctly and unfalsified, into words’ (PI 193e).

  10. 10.

    For further discussion see BB 130–136.

  11. 11.

    Wittgenstein is not dismissing such grammatical movement . He writes, for example , that ‘what a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but a fertile new point of view [eines fruchtbaren neuen Aspekts]’ (CV 18e).

  12. 12.

    See, for example , his investigation of naming, ostensive definition, and the expression of sensation in PI 1–89, PI 243–293, and PI 304 ff.

  13. 13.

    ‘Minutes of the Cambridge Moral Science Club Meetings: Feb. 23, 1939’ (PPO 379).

  14. 14.

    This description is borrowed from Manguel 1998 where it is used in a different context.

  15. 15.

    The 2001 edition of the Investigations translates Lebensform as both life -form (PI 19, 23) and form(s) of life (PI 241, 148e and 192e). I will refer to ‘form of life’ throughout this chapter. The expression occurs approximately 30 times (in the singular and plural) within the Nachlass . Most are variations of the remarks found in the Investigations.

  16. 16.

    See, for example , Black 1978; Ross 1978 and Palavecino 1991. Almost all articles concerning forms of life have, in one way or another, attempted to address (and redress) one or both of these concerns. One exception is Thompkins 1990.

  17. 17.

    Black describes this concept as ‘very elusive – as a kind of terra incognita or contour suggesting the presence of things partly hidden and not yet fully disclosed’ (Black 1978: 325, 330). Read and Guetti describe it as ‘a quasi- mystical marker, a name for something that cannot be theorised’ (Read and Guetti 1999: 292). And Rudder-Baker states that ‘it is hardly surprising that little meaningful can be said about it’ (Rudder-Baker 1984: 288). For further discussion see Glock 1996: 124–129.

  18. 18.

    See, for example , Sherry 1972: 161, Gier 1981: 20, 32, Rudder-Baker 1984: 278, Lurie 1992: 199, Gilmore 1999: 117 and Mosser 2009: 19.

  19. 19.

    For an example of the former see Peterman 1992. For an example of the latter see Hunter 1968.

  20. 20.

    There is also a third interpretation that attempts to combine the two. Stickney writes that a ‘form of life is both part of our natural history and a cultural and historical creation ’ (i.e. it is behaviour grafted onto animal reactions) (Stickney 2008: 627). And Brice writes that ‘Wittgenstein’s foundationalism is a natural human development, manifested biologically and socially in our societies, cultures, forms of life ’ (Brice 2009:14).

  21. 21.

    Tompkins writes that ‘the problem of “form of life ” is intrinsically non-Wittgensteinian in its persistent obscurity and tendency to generate reams of explanation’ (Thompkins 1990: 183). He argues that the problem is grammatical rather than philosophical (i.e. a problem of translation). However, the grammatical and the philosophical are not so easily separated. Thus, while agreeing with many of his claims, I develop this investigation differently.

  22. 22.

    See, for example , ‘The Language of Sense Data and Private Experience’ (PO 367).

  23. 23.

    See Black 1978; Hinman 1983; Minar 1991; Genova 1995; Lee-Lampshire 1999 and Gilmore 1999.

  24. 24.

    Gilmore writes that ‘forms of life are where all language -games begin and all explanations come to an end ’ (Gilmore 1999). And Gier agrees that forms of life ‘are found as the givens at the end of any chain of explanations’ (Gier 1981: 31).

  25. 25.

    This is a paraphrase of BB 1.

  26. 26.

    This concept of simultaneity differs from that of Bergson. Cubists describe simultaneity in terms of creation or life itself. ‘All else is but notation, contemplation and study’ (Apollinaire 1960: 265).

  27. 27.

    For further discussion see Chap. 3.

  28. 28.

    He confirms this in remarks about talking parrots, pots, and lions. See, for example , PI 282, 344, 346 and 190e. He writes, ‘But couldn’t we imagine God’s suddenly giving a parrot understanding , and its now saying things to itself? – But here it is an important fact that I imagined a deity in order to imagine this’ (PI 346).

  29. 29.

    He also suggests: ‘you can describe a physical object / describe its colour and shape. You can describe a tune / say what notes occur and in what order . But what is in common between these two – and again between either and describing the taste of coffee?’ (LPP 86–87)

  30. 30.

    For an interesting discussion of Wittgenstein’s early philosophy, descriptive geometry , and machine drawings see Hamilton 2001.

  31. 31.

    Wittgenstein also writes that the word ‘hope ’ refers to a phenomenon of human life (PI 583).

  32. 32.

    He writes, ‘How should the general phenomenon of natural history be described? – i.e. “Man hopes”. – One does not say that a suckling hopes that…nor yet that he has no hope that…and one does say it of a grown man. – Well, bit by bit daily life becomes such that there is a place for hope in it…’ (Z 469)

  33. 33.

    ‘Here it is difficult to see that what is at issue is the fixing of concepts’ (PI 174e).

  34. 34.

    Thompkins translates this passage as follows: ‘What we have to make do with, our data, might be said to be patterns of living’ (Thompkins 1990: 190). This translation also connects with the repetition and variation of concepts, and their patterns in our lives.

  35. 35.

    Elsewhere he writes that ‘one cannot contrast mathematical certainty with the relative uncertainty of empirical propositions . For the mathematical proposition has been obtained by a series of actions that are in no way different from the actions of the rest of our lives, and are in the same degree liable to forgetfulness, oversight and illusion’ (OC 651). Also, ‘if the proposition 12×12 = 144 is exempt from doubt then so too must non-mathematical propositions be’ (OC 653). He writes, ‘Now I would like to regard this certainty, 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.)’ (OC 358).

  36. 36.

    For further detailed discussion see Chap. 7.

  37. 37.

    Wittgenstein asks, ‘Why should one be puzzled just by the lack of a definition of time and not by the lack of a definition of “chair”?’ (BB 26) Further, in response to the question ‘What are the simple constituent parts of reality?’ Wittgenstein writes, ‘What are the simple constituent parts of a chair?’ (PI 47)

  38. 38.

    Grohmann is referring to Klee (who, though not himself a Cubist, shares this aspect of their work ).

  39. 39.

    Riley makes a similar claim about Klee ’s method of abstraction: ‘Klee was the first artist to point out that for the painter the meaning of abstraction lay in the opposite direction to the intellectual effort of abstraction…It is not an end , but a beginning . Every painter starts with elements – lines, colors, forms – which are essentially abstract in relation to the pictorial experience that can be created with them’ (Riley as quoted in Riding 2002). Grammar plays a similar role in Wittgenstein’s later writings.

  40. 40.

    ‘Movements of Thought: Diaries 1930–1932, 1936–1937’ (PPO 149). In 1949 he writes, ‘And what I basically am after all is a painter and often a very bad one’ (CV 95e).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada

    Beth Savickey

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Savickey, B. (2017). Conceptual Delights. In: Wittgenstein’s Investigations. Nordic Wittgenstein Studies, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45310-1_2

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