Abstract
Wittgenstein engages in the art of grammatical investigation for over 20 years. As discussed in Part I, his grammatical investigations are descriptive, improvisational, and performative. They are also humourous, imaginative, and collaborative. This stands in stark contrast to three of the most influential and enduring interpretations of Wittgenstein’s work. Although all three draw attention to philosophical acts, they interpret these acts as confessional, therapeutic, or the articulation of a commonsense view of the world. (All three readings attempt to return us to ordinary, everyday activities.) As a result, description is replaced by explanation and theory, and public acts are treated as personal or private. Not only do these interpretations prove inconsistent with many of Wittgenstein’s texts and practices, they also call into question the practice of philosophy itself. Based on the quotation from Augustine’s Confessions in the opening remark of the Investigations, the first of these interpretations reads Wittgenstein’s philosophy as confessional. Public interaction is replaced by private, inner dialogue. Philosophical temptation is characterized as a personal inclination to illusion or emptiness, and attributed to a willful separation of words from the contexts in which they have meaning. Such inclination calls for self-interrogation and self-knowledge. Thus, the aim of philosophy becomes one of bringing temptation, and philosophy itself, to an end. However, Wittgenstein’s response to Augustine, and his investigation of the nature of confession itself, challenges this interpretation.
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Notes
- 1.
This interpretation privileges Wittgenstein’s remark that nearly all of his writings are private conversations with himself (CV 77e).
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
All references are to Chadwick ’s translation of the Confessions (Oxford University Press, 1991).
- 5.
Wittgenstein writes of temptations throughout his later works. See, for example , BB 23, 41–46, 59, 72, 121 and PI 254, 277, 288, 345, 374, 549, 207e.
- 6.
He contrasts humility with arrogance and cleverness throughout his writings. For further discussion see Chap. 1.
- 7.
Like Augustine , Wittgenstein writes for readers who are in sympathy with the spirit in which he writes (CV 6e). For further discussion see Chap. 1.
- 8.
Wittgenstein tends to speak of academic questions or debates as ‘problems’, while characterizing philosophical interests (or needs) as ‘difficulties’, ‘troubles’, ‘confusions’, etc.
- 9.
Compare and contrast this with Wittgenstein’s remarks concerning Moore and his defence of common sense (OC 100, OC 137). Wittgenstein claims that it is philosophically uninteresting whether Moore knows what he claims to know for his statements apply to everyone if they apply to Moore. For further discussion see Chap. 7.
- 10.
This act of acknowledgement is also an act of humility .
- 11.
It is a human and historical (not divine) reference.
- 12.
Throughout the Confessions emphasis is placed on humility in contrast to arrogance, vanity, and pride. When Augustine is confused, it is his own conceit or pride that causes blindness. He confesses, ‘my swelling conceit separated me from [God] and the gross swelling of my face closed my eyes’ (VII.7). Similar metaphors occur in Wittgenstein’s writings. For further discussion see Chap. 6.
- 13.
For a detailed discussion of Augustine ’s remarks concerning time see Chap. 7.
- 14.
‘Augustine does describe a calculus of our language , only not everything that we call language is this calculus. (And one has to say this in many cases where we are faced with the question ‘Is this an appropriate description or not?’ The answer is: ‘Yes, it is appropriate, but only here, and not for the whole region that you are claiming to describe.’) So it could be said that Augustine represents the matter too simply, but also that he represents something simpler’ (PG 19).
- 15.
The emphasis placed on description continues in both The Blue and Brown Books and the Investigations.
- 16.
‘Augustine , in describing his learning of language , says that he was taught to speak by learning the names of things. It is clear that whoever says this has in mind the way in which a child learns such words as ‘man’, ‘sugar’, ‘table’ etc. He does not primarily think of such words as ‘today’, ‘not’, ‘but’, ‘perhaps” (BB 77).
- 17.
Wittgenstein’s remarks become less, not more, theoretical as he edits and revises them.
- 18.
See, also, PI 114–115.
- 19.
In German, his remark reads: ‘we get or obtain from these words a picture of the essence of human language ’.
- 20.
Augustine presents theories of language acquisition in several writings but not in the Confessions . It is significant that Wittgenstein quotes from the Confessions and not from The Teacher or City of God.
- 21.
For further discussion of these mixed metaphors see the conclusion.
- 22.
Cavell suggests that Wittgenstein quotes Augustine because accosted by him, although Augustine is someone he cares about and has to take seriously (Cavell 1996: 263). The implication is that Wittgenstein does not begin to philosophize on his own but is led to philosophical reflection. This interpretation also misses the significance of acknowledgement and confession .
- 23.
- 24.
For further examples see III.12, VII.2, VII.18, and X.24 concerning the concepts of evil, existence, the good, and forgetfulness. According to Wittgenstein, grammar tells us what kind of object anything is, and he gives as an example ‘theology as grammar’ (PI 373).
- 25.
We find similar grammatical shifts throughout the Confessions . See, for example , Augustine X.3–4 (quoted above).
- 26.
For further discussion see Savickey 2015.
- 27.
Wittgenstein further explains, ‘the only method of doing philosophy is not saying anything and leaving it to another person to make a claim. That is the method I now adhere to’ (Waismann 1979: 183).
- 28.
Kuusela provides the following translation: ‘Philosophy only states what everyone grants to it’ (Kuusela 2008: 247).
- 29.
Wittgenstein himself uses a similar analogy when he writes, ‘People who are constantly asking “why” are like tourists who stand in front of a building reading Baedeker and are so busy reading the history of its construction, etc., that they are prevented from seeing the building’ (CV 40e).
- 30.
For Wittgenstein, one of the most important tasks is to express all false thought processes so characteristically that the reader says, ‘Yes, that’s exactly the way I meant it’ (BT 409).
- 31.
Variations of this remark appear in PG 18, PG 19, and BB 77.
- 32.
‘To assume’ is to take up a particular position, not to presuppose a hypothesis without adequate knowledge or evidence.
- 33.
And this is precisely Wittgenstein’s point. All descriptions involve already being able to speak.
- 34.
He also writes: ‘I read: “…philosophers are no nearer to the meaning of ‘Reality’ than Plato got…”. What a strange situation. How extraordinary that Plato could have got even as far as he did! Or that we could not get any further! Was it because Plato was so extremely clever?’ (CV 15e)
- 35.
For further detailed discussion and analysis of VIII.29 see Miles 1992: 43ff. She suggests that this is a variation of the phrase ‘take, eat’. This draws attention to the fact that for Augustine reading is devouring or savouring a text. This imagery is drawn from a passage in Ezekiel in which an angel commands the prophet to eat a book (Manguel 1998: 263). We hear echoes of these passages in Wittgenstein’s metaphors concerning philosophy and nourishment. For further discussion see Chap. 6.
- 36.
Augustine also agrees that confession is not instruction concerning what is happening within someone (whether before God or other human beings) (V.1).
- 37.
A proposition is not the expression of thought in the way in which a cry might be the expression of pain. ‘As if the purpose were to convey to one person how it is with another, only, so to speak, in his thinking part and not in his stomach’ (PI 317). Augustine writes of memory as the stomach of the mind.
- 38.
See, for example , his remarks concerning William James and introspection (PI 413 and PI 314).
- 39.
Many of these themes are discussed in more detail in Chap. 6.
- 40.
In the 2001 commemorative volume of the journal Philosophical Investigations it is striking that not one prominent Wittgenstein scholar describes their first encounter with Wittgenstein’s philosophy in terms of pleasure .
- 41.
Also see PI 422, PI 425 and PI 157e.
- 42.
See PI 422–427. ‘In a certain sense one cannot take too much care in handling philosophical mistakes, they contain so much truth . / It is never a matter of simply saying, this must be given up’ (MS 112, 99r).
- 43.
There is pleasure and delight in his creative, imaginative, and playful remarks.
- 44.
Anscombe confirms that Wittgenstein considered his method good and capable of producing a great work (Anscombe 1969: 376). Malcolm writes that Wittgenstein expounded and defended his philosophy with confidence and power, and suggests that he did not think of his philosophy as ‘possibly in error’ (Malcolm 1984: 51).
- 45.
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Savickey, B. (2017). Acts of Confession. In: Wittgenstein’s Investigations. Nordic Wittgenstein Studies, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45310-1_5
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