Seeing Style

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Seeing Style

Three perspectives on Wittgenstein's style in

the Investigations

Master thesis Gijs Kort, 9818928

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Seeing Style

Three perspectives on Wittgenstein's style in

the Investigations

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Cover image:

´Abstraktes Bild (809-4)´ by Gerhard Richter, as seen at a 2012 Sotheby‟s auction

Feast your eyes! Look!

Jules Verne

Self-effacement is not a virtue

but a necessity, recognized most often toward evening

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1. Introduction

If there ever is a work of philosophical writing to have come with its own disclaimer, it must be Wittgenstein‟s Philosophical Investigations1. Already in its preface, Wittgenstein states that it is a work of great diversity, covering all kinds of subjects, ranging from meaning and understanding to the foundations of mathematics and logic. These subjects are presented in the form of a collection of remarks on the different subjects, through which the reader is guided in a “natural fashion”. They are approached from different angles and are treated to different extents. In the Introduction, Wittgenstein acknowledged he would never succeed in presenting all of his thoughts on these matters in a traditionally coherent way, and the result of his efforts he himself describes as “crisscross”.

Therefore, I hope one will get an impression of the difficulties that can be expected when attempting to pin-point Wittgenstein‟s idea on one particular subject. Of course, there are passages on, for instance, logic, and they can be quoted, even with reference to paragraph-numbers. But putting the right paragraphs in a row will, in all likelihood, not give one a straight-forward answer to the questions that lay at the beginning of one‟s search. One may get several answers, and different, if not opposing ones at that. The best one may hope for is an idea of a possible answer, an impression or a sketch.

At first sight, this seems to be a bit disappointing, such a lack of precision, especially from the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus2, which, in the philosophical library, can be seen as the equivalent of a dentist‟s drill. What, then, is Wittgenstein aiming at? From an author who, in his previous main work, displayed such an amount of clarity and precision, one cannot help but suspect there must be more going on. Such vagueness must be used on purpose.

As stated above, PI has the form of a collection of remarks. Therefore, in order to get a better understanding of Wittgenstein‟s presumably deliberate vagueness, I decided to take a closer look at the way in which PI are vague and imprecise. Or rather, where and, how this vagueness can be seen and, most important, what impact this has when judging PI on its merits as a piece of philosophical writing.

When doing so, we should keep in mind what Wittgenstein thinks what the aim of philosophy is, or rather, its task, namely to be a kind of therapy. There are different ways of perceiving this notion of therapy. Eugen Fischer, in his article „A cognitive self-therapy‟3,

1_{From here on, I shall use the abbreviation “PI” for referring to the Philosophical Investigations.} 2_{Henceforth: “The Tractatus”; references to paragraph numbers will be in the form of “T x.xx”.}

3_{Fischer, E. „A Cognitive Self-therapy, PI 138-197‟, in Wittgenstein at work: method in the Philosophical Investigations,}

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argues that Wittgenstein practices a kind of therapy for himself and on himself, at a personal level. Fischer analyzes and diagnoses PI according to models used in cognitive therapy, and describes in great technical detail how Wittgenstein is actually trying to “cure” himself of his philosophical issues. He describes how Wittgenstein‟s writing can be seen as proof of the way he reasons, and what the underlying thought patterns and assumptions are and how he, eventually, cures himself. The peculiar style and composition of PI, then, are a consequence of, and an expression of, the way he deals with his thought processes. One of Fischer‟s conclusions is that PI should be considered to be intended by Wittgenstein as a guide for fellow philosophers, which they can use to cure themselves of their philosophical thoughts. So, indeed, philosophy is therapy, for philosophers, on a personal level.

Judith Genova, in Wittgenstein: a way of seeing4, also starts with the notion that philosophy is therapy, and also focuses on Wittgenstein‟s way of writing. She, however, claims that Wittgenstein intended to provide a therapy for language as it is used in philosophy. Language has its limitations, and this has its consequences for philosophy. The ordinary use of language is not sufficient for “getting the message across”. Therefore, a new use of language should be adopted, and according to Genova, Wittgenstein‟s way of writing is such a new use of language. She analyzes the use of stylistic and rhetoric means, with which she sees Wittgenstein attempting to do away with the notions of philosophy and language and bringing words “back to their everyday use”. In a sense, a form of meta-philosophy is present in PI, but not at a meta-level: Wittgenstein does not only say something about certain topics, but at the same time shows how these issues can be dealt with. Therefore, PI should be seen, according to Genova, as a guide for dealing with philosophical issues in a new fashion. Wittgenstein explains what perspective on philosophical issues would be a proper one and demonstrates what the language looks like that is apt for dealing with them.

Chantal Bax, in the second chapter of Subjectivity after Wittgenstein5, starts by pointing out that Wittgenstein can be seen as an anti-essentialist: among certain scholars, the remark that words are to be brought back from their metaphysical use (PI 116) is considered as indicative of Wittgenstein‟s anti-essentialist or even anti-philosophical stance. Since philosophy, ever since Descartes, has concerned itself with the search for the nature or essence of things, any questioning or renunciation of this search must be anti-philosophical. Bax demonstrates how Wittgenstein is actually anything but: he shows that a search for essences, a noble yet naïve effort as it may be, is not always possible. When looking at

4_{Genova, J. Wittgenstein: a way of seeing, Routledge, New York, 1995.}

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(philosophical) language properly, it should become evident that essences cannot always be captured, simply because they may not lie within one particular phenomenon but rather in an interwoven-ness, a network of family resemblances between phenomena. Her conclusion from this is that, rather than seeing him as an anti-philosopher, Wittgenstein should be considered to expand philosophy beyond its traditional form.

So, we have three different ways of looking at Wittgenstein‟s way of writing, from the standpoint of philosophy being therapy. For Fischer, it is therapy at a personal level, for Genova, it is therapy for philosophical language and for Bax a valuable addition to philosophy as we know it.

In the following, I shall give renditions of the three texts mentioned above. In spite of their different approaches and differences in focus, I will try to keep the notions of Wittgenstein‟s style, way of writing, therapy and perceived aims of philosophy in view. I will then elaborate on the different ways in which they interpret PI and what consequences this may have for their views on Wittgenstein‟s intentionality with regard to his way of writing. Since, as was mentioned above, the notion of therapy plays an important role in (the interpretation of) PI, this will be addressed next. The notion of therapy entails a goal or a (possible) ending, and therapy in a philosophical context may entail an end to us practicing philosophy. I will discuss this lastly.

Firstly, however, the distinction between saying and showing needs to be addressed, since it plays an important role, explicitly in the work of Genova, and more implicitly throughout the rest of the present.

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2. Saying and showing

One important distinction mentioned in the Tractatus, is that between showing (zeigen) and saying (sagen). A sentence can say that such and such is the case, but it shows how it is the case (T 4.022). The relation between language and the world is one of representation: a sentence is a depiction or a representation of a possible situation in the world. The Tractatus makes a distinction between sentences that are either sensical (sinnvoll), or senseless (sinnlos) or nonsense (unsinnig). The first pertains to scientific propositions: propositions that say something about the world, and if true, they show something about the world. “Senseless sentences” refers to propositions of logic. These say nothing about the world, and show that they say nothing. The third category, nonsensical sentences neither say nor show anything6. This gives us an idea of how to “classify” various sentences according to the Tractatus, but this does not tell us anything yet about how “saying” and, more importantly, “showing” are to be seen. I said “more importantly”, because in the following I will focus on Wittgenstein‟s use of language. Because of the abundant “vagueness”, I got the suspicion Wittgenstein wants to show his readership something, precisely by means of being unclear intentionally. I found some justification for my suspicion in the Introduction, where Wittgenstein says he wants to stimulate his readership in their own thought. I understood this to mean that, in PI, Wittgenstein would not describe to his readership, what to think, or, more broadly speaking, what philosophy should be about. Clearly, we should not just focus on what is being said, but also on how it is being said, precisely because, as we will see in the discussion of both Genova and Bax, PI is to a great extent concerned with things that cannot be said directly.

The notion of “showing” is addressed by Wittgenstein in both the Tractatus and in PI, and some even see it as the only notion that is continuous throughout Wittgenstein‟s work, both the earlier and the later7. However true this may be, there is a difference between the way Wittgenstein uses this distinction in the Tractatus and in his later work. In the Tractatus, what is shown is the logical form of the world. This is not something that can be represented in sentences (i.e. it cannot be said), but it can be shown8. A sentence that is not a representation of a contingent situation is senseless: it says nothing about the world, but it does show something about the logical form of the world. In PI, however, the notion of

6_{Read, R. & Deans,R. „“Nothing is shown”: a resolute response to Mounce, Emiliani Koethe and Vilhauer‟, Philosophical}

Investigations 26:3, July 2003.

7_{McGinn, M. ´Saying and showing and the Continuity of Wittgenstein‟s Thought´. The Harvard Review of Philosophy IX,}

2001, pp. 24-36.

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showing is broader: it no longer pertains to logical form, but to conceptual relations in a broader sense, namely to the “grammatical aspects” of a language game. The grammatical “only describes and in no way explains the use of signs” (PI 496): grammar is that what describes what can and cannot be said within a particular language game. It is these aspects that cannot be said, but can be shown. A sentence such as “Every rod has a length” (PI 251) would cause us to say something like “Yes, obviously”. However, since this sentence does not constitute a valid move within a language game, it is senseless, due to the grammar of a language game. “Essence is expressed by grammar” (PI 371): the fact that a sentence is senseless is expressed by the grammar of a language game. It is from this senselessness that we can “read” the grammar of a language game; this is what a sentence shows.

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3. Wittgenstein: a way of seeing

For Judith Genova, in her Wittgenstein, a way of seeing, the starting point of her analysis of Wittgenstein‟s style of writing in PI is what Wittgenstein himself says on the subject of the use and role of language in philosophy. Language is seen as the tool for practicing philosophy, and Genova, one could say, gives a description of what this tool may look like. And, as is the case with any tool, it is designed for fulfilling a particular task, in other words: she sees Wittgenstein‟s style as specific for practicing philosophy in a particular way. In order for philosophy to be able to fulfill its (therapeutic) task, it must be practiced using a particular kind of language and this kind of language plays a particular role with respect to its subject. For Genova, the main feature of this kind of language is perspicuity, or perspicuous representation, and her main argument is that this is what Wittgenstein is aiming at by writing in the way he does.

In order to see how she comes to this conclusion, I shall give a rendition of what she says on the relationship between philosophy and language; what different kinds of language can be distinguished (and why this particular distinction is relevant); what uses these kinds of language have in philosophy; how Wittgenstein actually uses language in PI and what effects this has on the reader; what the consequences of traditionally used language are and how one is to be cured from these consequences, and finally, how one may identify Wittgenstein‟s method.

i. Philosophy and language

Philosophy is descriptive as to the how of things, not the why. It should make apparent what is already before our eyes and make us remember what we have forgotten along the way. In the practice of philosophy, we tend, according to Wittgenstein, use language in a “metaphysical” sense (PI 116). This means that, in philosophy, words are used in a particular sense, dictated by the philosophical context, outside of or apart from “normal” use. Because of this metaphysical use, language has become incomprehensible, foggy, or, better: obscure. And this is peculiar, because one would, intuitively, think that philosophy strives for precision, in order to determine and discuss its subject. In Wittgenstein‟s view, however, this situation has led to a false dichotomy, namely that between “philosophical” language and “normal” language. Philosophical language may be more precise, but only is so with respect to the field of philosophy itself. Hence, it would become impossible, outside of philosophy, to speak of philosophy. Philosophical language, then, does serve a purpose, but it is impossible to get a grip on it. Friction is needed.

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7 ii. Logic and friction

“We must return to rougher grounds”, Wittgenstein says in par. 107. Language does not work without a certain amount of friction. Wittgenstein sees language as the expression of thought. Logic is the essence of thought (PI 97); it is the order of all possibilities of the world, and it is a priori to experience. Therefore it must not be stained with the uncertainties of experience. An illusion that we9_{live in, according to Wittgenstein, is that we believe that}

we have the task of grasping the unfathomable essence of language, the relations between concepts such as “sense”, “word”, “conclude”, “truth”, etc. We tend to look for a meta-order between meta-concepts10. But the concepts we use when seeking such an order are not of any special nature: they are not “meta”, they are part of language. And the order they are supposed to describe is also part of language, not outside of it. We understand sentences as they are; there is no need for us to transform each sentence into a perfect one, in which the order of things can be seen on the surface. Sentences give a muddled view by their very nature. On the other hand: they do give a view, i.e. they have sense. Therefore, they must contain some sort of order, even though we cannot directly see it. The interaction between logic and language is a subtle one. A sentence describes a certain state of affairs in the world, but does not always have to do this in a perfect way. Logic, on the other hand, shows how the world is, rather than describing it. The idea that we generally have is that of a sentence enclosing meaning in the way we imprison a man, in a closed room, with no doors (PI 99). But the way language in this sense actually works is like locking a man up in a room with one door open. We can now ask ourselves: a limitation with a gap in it, how does that work for setting limits, for being precise? In other words: how can language be precise? How far can we leave the door open before things become incomprehensible? The fact that we ask ourselves these questions indicates that (PI 100) we have the wrong idea about what expression exactly is. We seek to describe criteria for it, but we do so from an outsider point of view. In a sense, we busy ourselves too much observing the rules instead of playing the actual game.

We are (mistakenly) convinced that the ideal of language must be in reality. Language is used in reality, logic is part of language, and therefore logic is part of reality. Language has a certain in-built vagueness to it, as we saw above, but this vagueness cannot be in logic. Logic can show that something is ambiguous, but is not ambiguous itself. Vagueness must therefore be in “real” language, in used language. But this keeps on nagging us, because we

9_{Throughout PI, Wittgenstein addresses his readership as fellow philosophers, by speaking of “we” and “our”. Due to the}

way Genova conducted her analysis, namely by staying close to Wittgenstein‟s own words, I deemed it appropriate to follow her lead by maintaining the use of “we” and “our”.

10_{See also PI 121: when, in philosophy, speaking of philosophy, one falsely presupposes a kind of meta-philosophy.}

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are very much attached to our “ideal language”, like a zoo-animal that has so much become used to its cage that it doesn‟t escape when we leave the door open. We know there is such a thing as a perfect, indefinitely precise language, because we see traces of it in everyday language, signs or traces, so to speak. The closer we look at language, the more unbearable the dichotomy becomes between language in its actual use on the one hand and what we think we can expect from language, namely: perfect (re-) presentation on the other hand. However: in such a perfect language, nothing could be said; you don‟t play a game by knowing the rules, you play it by applying rules. This is what Wittgenstein refers to in PI. 107: in a perfect language, you are on slippery ice: a perfectly smooth and transparent surface. However: it is impossible to walk there. If the surface you walk on has bumps and dents in it, imperfections, you have friction, and you can move about. These are the “rough grounds” he refers to in this paragraph. We therefore should accept that language, even though it may have a “base” of crystalline purity, it only works in a “contaminated” form. Our view on language then should make a 90 degree turn, away from perfection, towards imperfection.

iii. What use of language?

In the above, we have seen that language used in what Wittgenstein calls the “metaphysical” sense has its limitations, which can be overcome by using language in a broader, more everyday sense.11_{But even when doing so, we are confronted with the limits of the strictly}

sayable. Language expresses thoughts, but the limits of these thoughts may exceed the limits of what is sayable. One may wonder, of course, whether, in order to practice philosophy by means of language, it should not be concerned with matters that cannot be expressed in language anyway. In this sense, language, by means of its sheer nature, would be dictating the boundaries of philosophy. According to Wittgenstein, this may actually be the case. One adagio one may remember from the Tractatus is that the limits of language coincide with the limits of thought (T 5.6): whatever is sayable is thinkable and vice versa. In this respect, however, it is crucial to have a proper understanding of how things can be said with language. In 293, Wittgenstein gives one example of the kind of difficulty we may encounter in saying things with language. Suppose someone has a box, containing something that he refers to as a “beetle”. Now this person may refer to the content of his box as a “beetle”, but as long as we are not able to open this box, we can never be certain whether this box actually contains an actual beetle or not, and therefore, we remain unable to verify if his

11_{One could one say that his method is to “show” his point by displaying that language has inherent points of “vagueness”.}

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reference to his “beetle” is correct. As this example shows, the limits of language can easily be reached for its intended purpose.

iv. Saying the obvious

What philosophy needs to state is the obvious. It should not be concerned with what is hidden or disguised, but rather map out what is right in the open. Every life-form has its own image of the world, from which it looks out, and from which it speaks. Philosophy‟s task is to map out what is visible, what is obvious (PI 126), whatever comes before any new inventions.12 Philosophy in itself is, then, rather a practice then an act of creation. It does not create new words, new concepts or new facts. In mapping out the obvious, it can only trace the outlines of concepts and tell us how to carry on with these concepts. If philosophy is to be just descriptive, it should refrain from interfering with language. Language should also stay clear of the temptations of wanting to describe things that cannot be described in the first place, even though we are perfectly familiar with them: for instance how a clarinet sounds (PI 78), how coffee smells (PI 610), what a game (PI 75), or what time is (PI 89). The foundation of ineffability of certain phenomena is to be found in these phenomena themselves, not in any defects or shortcomings of language. So, philosophical language is not creative or productive “outwards”, it has its own limitations; and it is limited inwards as well: even though it should be concerned more with the “everyday”, even there, there are things that cannot be said. To stay with the cartographical metaphor: there‟s the edge of the world, where you fall of the map, and there are areas on the map marked “terra incognita” within the known world. So, how to make progress in a world looking like this? Since language‟s occupation should be the everyday, and only, or at least mainly, that, that also is what its main vocabulary should consist of. But, Genova asks herself, how does one reiterate the obvious without sounding stupid and foolish? The solution she sees Wittgenstein giving us, is to detach language from its usual content, namely: information. A kind of language that no longer speaks for itself, but rather shows what it could not say. Using language in this (new) sense allows for showing what cannot be said, namely by means of repeating or re-presenting the obvious. This gives the freedom of focusing not on what is being said, but rather on the way in which it is being said. Function instead of content. As Genova puts it: he instructs not by giving examples, but by being an example. This, of course, calls for an unusual and new attitude from the part of his readership. We no longer have in our hands the manual to a product: the manual is the product. In this sense, the content of PI is not the description of practicing, it is philosophy being practiced.

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Genova draws a parallel between Wittgenstein at work in PI and the notion of a (theater) play, the book itself being the stage. In this sense, Wittgenstein has redefined the “scene of instruction”: the play no longer takes place in the text, the play is the text. The place where the reader may learn something has moved from in the text to above the text: in the experience of reading, one quite has literally taken a different point of view.

In using verbal sketches to illustrate scenes of instruction, Wittgenstein “plays” with language to show the everyday. Wittgenstein calls these plays “reminders”, as to remind us of what we may have forgotten: re-cognition. He is, however, not referring to lost memories of events, for example. One should rather think of ways of looking at philosophical issues that, along the way, have become troubled or muddled by the use of “metaphysical” language. We have become accustomed to speak of certain matters using a particular kind of language. This kind of language has started to function as a sort of “spectacles”, giving us a certain perspective. Using everyday language on the other hand, would be like looking at the same matters, but with these spectacles removed (PI 103). This brings us back to the moment when we were able to look at things before our sight got troubled. In returning words from the metaphysical to the ordinary, the “way of seeing” is brought (back) into view.

So: the change in use of language makes us look at the same things differently. The question is, however: how does this work? Genova states that the use of a different type of language, namely everyday language, makes us treat subjects differently. But how does the mere stating of this fact explain the fact that the reader is involved in reading PI from a different point of view? It would be intuitive to say that the use of a more accessible type of language allows for the reader to take a bit of a distance from the mere content of the text. This type of distance may allow for some room to look around, to look at what else may be going on with the text, apart from the content. Thus, one may notice that there isn‟t much content, that the text is not very coherent, that Wittgenstein contradicts himself from time to time.

As we have seen above, Wittgenstein opposes the use of everyday language to the everyday use of language. The everyday aspect of language in PI can be identified by the use of simple words and short sentences. The everyday use of language consists, among other things, in short bits, quick changes of subject and parlando utterances. Using the first, one just talks about difficult things in a simple manner, but the experience of the reader may still be the same. By writing as if speaking, the writer creates more of a distance between the text and the reader: one no longer has the experience of reading, but rather one of being spoken to.

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11 v. Language as activity

With PI, Wittgenstein changed his view on language from it having a representational to a presentational function. “Langue” instead of “parole”, in which words are tools and language is the activity in which they are used. In philosophy, language should be reconnected to its roots in actual use. Only used language is meaningful, in the sense that language users make language mean and therefore, meaning is a function of use. And so, use determines whether a sentence is meaningful or not. Also, use determines the boundaries of language. Language is an open activity, like a game. It is not an activity towards an end, but something that is done for the sake of doing it. Secondly, language has, like games do, rules. A game does not have a meaning outside of itself.

vi. Philosophy as performance

Philosophers should not use language for playing a game of information, but rather imitate playing a game of information. They must perform the deed or complete it outside the context of the everyday to show how language normally informs. Elaborating on philosophy as performance, as an act, firstly philosophers must play with language, in the sense of a toy. “Suppose this” and “imagine that” should become “let‟s pretend”. Secondly, just as teachers of children create verbal games using the using the word in question in teaching language, philosophers engage in verbal play in order to teach adults a way of seeing and eventually free them from the fly-bottle. Stage utterance, rather than saying them, in order to demonstrate the applicability of uses. Thirdly, language must be seen as a play itself. Wittgenstein stages language-games for us, dramatizing the dynamics of a linguistic situation; he enacts fly-bottles for us. The results of playing 1) at, 2) with and 3) in language lead to perspicuity. These uses appear misleading or unsettling at first sight. One is enacting a game of language in front of an audience in order to show something about the world. Clarity or perspicuity is the “reward”, but not by means of analysis or by paring away the superfluous, but by reiteration, magnification, multiplication of cases.

Perspicuity is not achieved by means of analysis, but by looking at the bigger picture. The stage for this “bigger picture” is the everyday use of language. Namely: only in context is a unit a unit: only in context can meaning come to exist. Wittgenstein‟s rejection of analysis can be seen as the starting point of his idea that philosophy is a form of therapy.13 Philosophy is a form of treatment. Generally speaking, philosophy‟s practice is one of drawing conclusions after hearing expressions of “civilized men” (PI 94). This, however

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leads to three kinds of mistakes easily being made, and treating philosophy as therapy (no pun intended) might prevent these from being made.

Firstly, a general misconception is that whatever cannot be expressed easily, must be some kind of “secret knowledge”. For instance: knowing what “time” is, or how to define the idea of a “game”. It is however, not the task of philosophy to give us a definition of such things. Philosophers must be cured of this misconception.

A second mistake that we as philosophers make is that we easily misuse expressions from ordinary language to prove philosophical points. We must be aware that the use of certain expressions become very particular when used in a philosophical context, and should be used with a modicum of caution.

Thirdly, it is often forgotten what the task of philosophy is, what its use is. Its task lays in being practiced. One must remain thoughtful as to what philosophy does. Philosophy is pure performance.

Wittgenstein‟s therapy is nothing more than playing a particular game, Genova continues. Philosophy is constantly tailored to its current subject by means of adapting the language game in which it is discussed. He is therefore not to be mistaken for someone whose speech has content. Or rather, the content of his words is not what is at stake here. Rather, he is to be seen as someone who does something with language. When comparing language to tool, one could say that we do not hammer the nail into the wood with the content of the hammer, or with the idea of a hammer, but with a hammer itself.

vii. Rhetoric of reminders

Wittgenstein speaks without necessity and the reader will not have to transcend what Wittgenstein says in PI: nothing philosophically illegitimate is being uttered. PI strike one almost as something banal. This, however, is intentional, according to Genova. He lays out the pictures or images that may free us from the fly-bottle. It reminds us of what we forget, and in doing so, it is pure action. It self-annihilates when it has done its job, namely: to change a way of seeing. Words are deeds, or “probes”, but special ones at that. Wittgenstein‟s ideal language is not poetry, in the sense that it is not to stay or to pertain: it is to dissolve. Also, logic will not do: the “obvious” that Wittgenstein wants to state is not what logic knows and shows as tautologies. Philosophical propositions should leave no trace. Speech and writing as we know them will not meet up to Wittgenstein‟s standards. Therefore, a new rhetoric is required. “What we say will be easy, but to know why we say it

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will be very difficult”, as Wittgenstein allegedly once said at the beginning of a lecture14. Here, one may be reminded of the simple question “What is time?” from PI 89. In order to attain his goals, namely to remind us how to escape the fly-bottle by being reminded of what we may have forgotten, the one-time goals of rhetoric and logic, being theory, explanation, truth and persuasion, will have to be renounced. These goals, Wittgenstein undermines by engaging a number of strategies: 1) talking to himself, 2) contradicting himself, 3) avoiding arguments and conclusions and 4) refusing orientating structures.

1). Talking to himself: In fact, Wittgenstein does not speak to anyone in particular. No references are made to others, and his various interlocutors are not defined. Sometimes he speaks to the reader, sometimes to himself, and sometimes to other philosophers. In none of these cases is the interlocutor he addresses named explicitly. The boundary between himself and others appears to fade. There is no strict delineation between the respective speakers in the text and subjects being treated at that moment: at one moment, his interlocutor may be a skeptic, but a few lines later, he may be addressing an apprentice. Also, there is no consistency as to the relationship between the type of interlocutor and the subject being treated at a certain moment; that is to say: subjects do not have their own way of being talked about: they do not have their own particular voices. This lack of consistency makes it difficult to understand what he is saying. But this is the whole point. Wittgenstein does not want us to understand anything, he wants us to remember. The text is full of voices, like the world itself. There are many points of view and there is not one type of discourse capable of capturing or reflecting them all, but it is hard to capture this chaos. Rather, Wittgenstein chose to reduce it to a small number of lines of thought, or rather: select a limited number of lines of thought.

2). By contradicting himself from time to time, Wittgenstein wants to present us with different points of view on the same matter. Or in fact: he almost forces us to let go of any fixed position: he unsettles us. While reading these, we can then decide for ourselves whether we agree, or need to change our point of view. In a way this makes our points of view resonate between the two (or more) points of view presented by Wittgenstein, and this resonance may shake us loose from our original positions. In this context, though, it must be said that he does not want us to reject a priori everything we know. Rather, he wants us to reconsider, to look at the same things from a different point of view. Also for this reason, Wittgenstein denies the law of the excluded middle, because it prevents us from seeing a

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third option, namely the one that may enable us to overcome the dichotomy. Philosophers cannot proclaim, only suggest. It is their task to look for uncertainties and present us with them. The fact that Wittgenstein writes his reminders in the form of sketches or remarks stresses the (inherently) unfinished nature of his thoughts15. They replace the earlier use of aphorisms of the Tractatus. He loosely experiments with saying the same thing not only in different words, but also in different modes of expression. By doing so, by free-handing the scene of instruction, Wittgenstein hopes to circumscribe the domain of instruction without literally inscribing its boundaries.16_{In other words: by not treating one particular subject in}

one particular way, or giving it one particular voice, but by giving it (the subject) several different voices, he demonstrates in which ways it can be discussed, how one can talk about it. (Voice, in this sense, is to be understood in the sense of “discursive position”.) One can think of several people, from different backgrounds, looking at a sculpture, from different angles. Wittgenstein does not describe the sculpture, be presents us with the remarks the spectators make. New information, conclusions or arguments are conspicuously absent.

3). Avoiding conclusions: the text itself does not conclude, it text remains open on purpose. After having read it, we are left to continue expanding it by ourselves, continuously developing our own form of life, with our positions re-determined17. Its only conclusion seems to be that there is no end to philosophy18.There are, however, “clusters” of arguments or reasons for accepting one view rather than another. If arguments come to a conclusion, it is usually one of an ironic sort, or they have the form of some sort of an afterthought or a personal anecdote. All of this is to illustrate that arguments have only a very limited value: they “convert the already converted”. Arguments alone do not bring peace, truth or progress; however, they are necessary steps to be taken. They fulfill the role of reminders.

4). Wittgenstein disorients us on purpose: we are forced to lose our ways, so that we are forced to rely on what we know already. In this way, the use of concepts is rendered useless, or at least we‟re shown they are not soul-saving. Seeing things aright requires a constant redrawing of the connections, since both language and life itself constantly change shape themselves and the lack of an ordering structure can be seen as an illustration of this fact. In the Tractatus, of course, the ordering system is one of its most eye-catching features. Its

15_{Later on I shall return to this point: does Wittgenstein see his thoughts, or thought (philosophy) as finite?}

16_{Each different way of discussing has, of course, its own characteristics, and therefore its own boundaries, both internal}

and external. Being presented with the method of taking different perspectives makes us realize that each different approach shows a certain side of a subject, but another side will remain obscure.

17_{One may wonder, of course, if Wittgenstein wants us to keep learning. Does he want to unsettle us for the rest of our}

lives? Is PI limited to itself only, or should it be seen in a broader picture, us taking on an attitude?

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seven principal theses are in a consecutive order, but in the sub-paragraphs between them, Wittgenstein allows himself some freedom to elaborate on them in a more meandering fashion. For instance, the sub-paragraphs numbered X.0.n.n seem to have only a very loose relation to the further explanations given in numbers X.1.n.n. PI, though, seem to have no purposeful order to it, and certainly not a correct one. This, however, is the point: the reader is forced to undergo an experience of wandering about. As Wittgenstein says himself in PI 524: “Don‟t take it as a matter of course, but as a remarkable fact that pictures and fictitious narratives give us pleasure. […] Find it surprising, as you do with something which disturbs you.” Pictures or narratives need not necessarily be true, yet Wittgenstein refers to them in order to give an example of things that may strike us, just because they are not true. They “work” for us, in the same way the hypothetical situations he sketches throughout PI. He uses them in order to be able to identify the practice that we call philosophy. So, one could say that, when reading PI, we are looking at and experiencing what, according to Wittgenstein, the practice of philosophy should look like. By reading PI, we are looking at a possible way of work in progress.

So, Genova has identified a method in what at first glance appears to be an aspect of randomness in Wittgenstein‟s way of writing. Indeed, PI are written in an “album-like” form, he jumps from one topic to the next and addresses his readership and various interlocutors. This aspect may make PI difficult to understand for a novice reader, but once one sees the possibility of Wittgenstein actually having composed in this fashion, one may identify an intention behind it. An intention that Genova sees as being interwoven with his views on the means with which philosophy should be practiced, namely language that is used correctly.

By taking a new stance at the use of language in philosophy, Wittgenstein wants to remind us of what we already know. This is important to him, because this is what he thinks what philosophy should be concerned with: it is concerned with demonstration. Philosophy and philosophers, and their use of language in particular, need to undergo therapy, which will enable them to see matters from a new perspective. Paraphrasing Genova, one could say that Wittgenstein, with PI, gives us something to look at, and the references Genova makes regarding “staging” and (“theater-”) play seem appropriate. In order to be able to change one‟s perspective or way of seeing, there first must be something to look at.

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4. Wittgenstein and / as philosophy

In chapter 2 of her Subjectivity after Wittgenstein, called „Wittgenstein and / as philosophy: a constructive reading of Wittgenstein‟s method‟, Chantal Bax starts out by claiming that Wittgenstein can be seen as an anti-essentialist and even an anti-philosopher19. To illustrate this claim, she quotes PI 116, in which Wittgenstein describes the task of philosophy as “to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use” when trying “to grasp the essence of the thing”. Philosophy had traditionally busied itself, among other things, with the nature or essence of things, but according to Wittgenstein, (traditionally) philosophical problems mainly arise due to our ignorance or distortion of the use of language, which has philosophers occupying themselves with “phantasms” (PI 108), “chimera‟s” (PI 94), and illusions (PI 96). The correct use of language, language brought back from its metaphysical to its everyday use, would then be a simple yet effective solution to their problems: it would solve problems in the very same place as where they originate. This approach to philosophical problems is not based upon just one all-encompassing theory with regard to language, philosophy or the relationship between the two. Rather, it relies on the application of different kinds of “therapies” (PI 133) that should render the formation of philosophical theories redundant.

Among Wittgenstein scholars, Bax continues, the above can be considered to be a commonly accepted reading. However, especially Wittgenstein‟s notion of therapy has sparked a debate on the matter of Wittgenstein‟s intention with or envisioned purpose of such therapies. The so-called “New Wittgensteinians”20, for instance, (I generalize here) consider PI not in the first place as a work with philosophical content, but as a reflection of Wittgenstein‟s views on (philosophical) therapy, and only differ among themselves on the question as to what kind of therapy he could have had in mind and what the object of such therapy might have been. This approach of PI, as not being intended in the first place as a work of philosophy but rather one of therapy, is what Bax refers to as anti-philosophy. Others, and Bax counts Judith Genova among them, do see PI as having philosophical content. An awareness of both the stance of the New Wittgensteinians and the more traditional attribution of philosophical content to PI, as Bax aptly remarks, leads to an interesting question: how does one approach the philosophical content of PI, bearing in mind that Wittgenstein himself, in PI 89-133, elaborates on a method for approaching

19_{Here one might, for instance refer to Alain Badiou‟s Wittgenstein’s philosophy (Badiou, A: Wittgenstein’s}

anti-philosophy (transl. B. Bosteels), Verso Books, London, 2011.). It should be noted, however, that this work takes the Tractatus as its starting point, rather than PI.

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philosophical problems? How does one determine the relation between what Wittgenstein says on the one hand, and how he says that the subject matter should be treated on the other? Should one only approach PI and the methods described in them using their own method? Instead of elaborating on these and related questions, which might, for instance, end up in a full-on “right-or-wrong”-discussion of the New Wittgensteinian‟s approach, Bax will focus on Wittgenstein‟s methodological comments in order to demonstrate that the (current) debate on the application of Wittgenstein‟s method is a replication of an opposition within Wittgenstein‟s own writing; she claims that Wittgenstein identified a tension in the field of theory formation and he himself incorporates this tension in his own way of contributing to philosophical theory.

Bax will elaborate on this in a tripartite way. First, when focusing mainly, yet not exclusively, on PI 89-133, she will show that there is no categorical rejection of the idea of investigating into the essence of things, but rather an investigation into the how to investigate. She will then challenge her own interpretation of PI 89-133, by looking at the notion of “grammatical investigations”, inspired by Wittgenstein‟s claim that he studies grammar or concepts themselves, rather then what these concepts stand for. Lastly, she will marry her own interpretation of the Wittgensteinian approach to Wittgenstein‟s actual practice: his remarks, she says, on matters such as mind and meaning precisely aim at conveying the complex nature of such things, and not, as are not to be perceived of as an “anti-philosophical bulk of questions and observations.

i. Rethinking the notion of essence

It has already been remarked several times throughout the present : in general, PI lack a consecutive or sequential line of reasoning. On several occasions, however, Wittgenstein sticks to one subject for a longer stretch of text. One such passage ranges from PI 89 to 133. In this passage, Wittgenstein frequently addresses his readership directly, when speaking of “we” or “our”. Bax infers from this that he does not intend to set himself apart from philosophy as such, in the sense that he apparently sees himself as being involved in a dialogue with other philosophers. Problems in philosophical investigation are “our” problems, not “theirs”. This, in turn, would suppose that PI 89-133 contain a straightforward recommendation of a method for philosophical investigation. This method pertains to philosophy‟s interest in the essences of things. Wittgenstein focuses on the notion of essence, although he does question whether philosophy‟s search for essences can come to a satisfactory end.

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In PI 89, Wittgenstein asks “In what sense is logic something sublime?”, in other words, should philosophy be seen as superior to the sciences21_{? In principle, it should not.}

Philosophy may concern itself with similar topics, namely “facts of nature” (PI 89), but it is not its inquiry into the essence of things that makes it something “of the purest crystal”. Rather, it is not superior because it appears to have forgotten that this inquiry is not immune to “empirical cloudiness” (PI 97). In order to understand the “essence of everything empirical” (PI 89), we do not have to “hunt out new facts”: what philosophy tries to understand is “already in plain view”, and this is something we “need to remind ourselves of” (PI 89). The essence of language, for instance, can be understood in terms of its “function, its structure” (PI 92), that are both already present before our eyes, on the surface. In PI 108, Wittgenstein distinguishes between two possible perspectives on the essence of language. On the one hand, it can be seen as a formal unity, his “former” perspective22, and on the other as a “family of structures more or less related to one another”. In PI 65, Wittgenstein‟s interlocutor “accuses” him of not explaining what “the essence of [language] is”, and indeed, he acknowledges, he does not produce “something that is common to all that we call language” (ibid.), although it is not the case that he refuses to provide us with a deeper insight into the workings of language. It is rather because language itself does not lend itself to being characterized in a simple fashion. The one thing that “all [things] that we call language” have in common is a “family resemblance”. When dealing with language, or any other topic that a philosopher might be interested in, one might may find oneself faced with a subject that has a multifaceted or ambiguous nature, which is reflected in the way the subject is approached. When looking at a phenomenon, and insisting that it has a single and singular essence, one may in the process distort one‟s perspective on it: looking for the essence may blind us the nature of this phenomenon. And since the essence of a phenomenon does not always present itself in the form of a narrowly circumscribed essence, philosophical questions, as a consequence, cannot always take the form a precise theory. In fact, in the case of a phenomenon such as language, an inexact explanation probably is the most viable, if not the only one, one can give.

Philosophers in the traditional sense would object that “there can‟t be any vagueness in logic” (PI 101), and this is where Wittgenstein would say that they make a fundamental mistake, because they take it as a given that things have a clear and distinct essence. This perspective, however, is proof of a distorted outlook because it does not allow for phenomena that derive their essence from an interconnectedness with others, and this is

21_{Please note that here, Bax suggested that “logic” and “philosophy” may be used interchangeably.} 22_{“Former” here refers to his perspective on the essence of language as he described it in the Tractatus.}

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where they “tread on slippery ice where there is no friction” (PI 107). But, we need friction, when “we want to walk” (ibid.), and therefore, we should not look above and beyond what is already before our eyes, but rather at the state of the ground beneath our feet.

How this is done, Wittgenstein describes in the last part of what Bax calls his “methodological manifesto”, (PI 109-133). A philosopher‟s interest should lay in seeing family resemblances between differential everyday phenomena. “We must do away with all explanation [that is the task of the scientist, GK.], and description alone must take its place” (PI 109), a description (consisting in) “arranging what we have always known” (ibid.). This is not to say, though, that everything we look for is already present to us. It could also be that we are unable to notice the interrelations we seek to understand, precisely “because [they are] always before our eyes” (PI 129): it is our sheer familiarity with phenomena such as language that makes their essence harder to grasp. In fact, “we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful” (ibid.), and thus philosophy fails to reach its (Bax) “final destination”. And it is precisely this that Wittgenstein aims his investigations at: his method is designed to capture the essence of things in the light of their vagueness, inter-relatedness and multifacetedness. He aims at finding “objects of comparison which are meant to throw light on on the facts of our language by way not only of similarities, but also of dissimilarities” (PI 130), and the idea of language games, for instance, is a means to this end. Most central to his approach, however, is the notion of “perspicuous representation” (PI 122), which “produces just that understanding” which consists in “seeing connections” (ibid.). The essence of things is best captured by describing their relations of similarity and difference, both between members of a family of phenomena and between interrelated families as a whole. One may wonder, of course, how such relations can be represented perspicuously, or if they lend themselves to such representation at all. According to Bax, Wittgenstein hardly gives any clear examples of this. But, what kind of representation is most adequate in a particular case depends on what one wants to describe by means of it. Apparently, then, “perspicuous” is context-relative notion. But still, how would one go about combining perspicuity one the one hand with vagueness on the other? By quoting what Wittgenstein says on the matter of describing the human psyche, namely: “[t]he greatest difficulty […] is to find a way of representing vagueness”23, Bax shows that precisely this matter represents one of philosophy‟s greatest challenges.

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ii. Grammatical investigations and the possibility of constructive philosophy

In order to be able to deal with this difficulty, one needs to realize that Wittgenstein does presuppose that it is possible in the first place to investigate the essence of things. We have access to the world through language, and we divide the world up according to our grammar24. His “grammatical” investigations clarify the use of our words, but ultimately leave things themselves untouched. His investigations are not aimed at the things themselves, but at the “the kind of statement that we make about phenomena” (PI 90). This does not imply a detachment from the phenomena that we talk about, quite the contrary: “the money, and the cow you can buy with it25. But contrast: money and its use” (PI 120). The latter is to say that, even though the use of language may not affect the things that we talk about, it is used in the same world as where the things are. This notion of language being (or taking place) in the world entails a two-way, thoroughly dynamic and interactive relationship between language and the world (also refer to PI II, par. Xii230a): language shapes our world, and vice versa. Getting to grips with our concepts, then, means getting to grips with the world.

iii. Wittgenstein as philosophy: methodology applied

We had already seen elsewhere (when discussing Genova and Fischer), that Wittgenstein‟s remarks do not always follow each other in a logical order, that he asks questions rather than making statements and has dialogues with various interlocutors. According to Bax, this is done in order to accentuate that fact that the phenomena at hand do not make for “clearly circumscribable objects”. Remarks on diverse phenomena can be said to bring family resemblances between them to light. Also, the fictional cases that he uses as examples can be said to function as a proving ground for testing the limits of our concepts, both inner and outer. In the case of the discussion regarding rule-following, for example, one can clearly see how he approaches the subject from different angles and decides on a case to case basis when we still speak of rule following, and when we no longer do so. Since many phenomena do not have a clear essence, and have relationships with other phenomena or share similarities with them, philosophers can free themselves from confusion by looking at precisely these relationships and similarities. This will give insight into both the complexity of the essence of these phenomena and into the extent to which they are actually defined by their relationships with other phenomena.

24_{PI 371: “Essence is expressed by grammar”} 25_{Implying a separation between language and world.}

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The fact that, for Wittgenstein, the core method for investigations is not the search for essences, but for the interrelatedness of phenomena, may account for the fact that PI have the collage-like form of an album. It demonstrates, or indeed shows, the multifactedness of the topics he discusses, or rather: the fact that he first of all considers these topics to be multifaceted. So he appears to stress the indefiniteness or indefineability26 of his topics. But, as we saw earlier, he also stresses the importance of perspicuous representation, which the methods described thus far appears to lack. Bax does give us examples, quoted from Wittgenstein‟s „Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology‟, that give us accurate and open descriptions about, for instance, the way we talk about other minds and the way we relate to our own mind. For Bax, this is sufficient proof that Wittgenstein‟s method is both attentive to the multifariousness of phenomena and enables him to give a perspicuous representation of (other) phenomena. She takes this as a demonstration of Wittgenstein walking the fine line between vagueness on the one hand and perspicuity on the other. The passages from the Remarks do not give extensive descriptions of all family resemblances between phenomena related to the topics under investigation, but they do group remarks together, or show connections between them. Each remark on its own may be vague, but once one sees them in (the indicated) connection to others, their relations become perspicuous. Perspicuity is something that can be attained through seeing connections between remarks that may in themselves be vague. However, an overarching discussion of a particular topic, in which many aspects of this phenomenon are touched upon, need not be conclusive, or even consistent. In PI 154, for instance, it reads: “In the sense in which there are processes […] which are characteristic of understanding, understanding is not a mental process”, which appears to be a rejection of PI 139, according to which understanding the meaning of a word amounts to seeing something before one‟s inner eye.

But, according to Bax, it is precisely this lack of conclusiveness or consistency that adds to the perspicuous nature of Wittgenstein‟s discussions. It gives an insight into the fact that a particular phenomenon is not suited to an accurate description, precisely because it has certain aspects or characteristics are cannot be reconciled with one another. It is, then, difficult to reconcile both the aspect of vagueness on the one hand and that of perspicuity on the other. For Bax, herein lies the essence of Wittgenstein‟s method: he does not want to make matters perspicuous at the cost of their nature. Rather: a too narrow a description would not be able to capture the (multifaceted) essence of a phenomenon.

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Wittgenstein has, according to Bax, identified a tension rather than a flaw in “traditional” philosophy. This tension may explain how philosophy may confuse itself, namely by focusing on generality and univocality, rather than on particularity and ambiguity.

Wittgenstein brings this tension into view, and describes a method that allows for inscribing particularity into generality and ambiguity where there once was univocality. When we read Wittgenstein with this in mind, he need no longer be seen as the anti-philosopher whose work is “merely” therapeutic.

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5. A cognitive self-therapy

In the above, we saw that, according to Genova, PI put philosophy on a particular track, on which it may continue its journey: philosophy need not come to an end. For Fischer, on the other hand, Wittgenstein vehemently seeks to bring philosophy to peace. Although, saying that, as a starting point for looking into Fischer‟s article, the notion of “philosophy” may be a bit too broad. Namely, Fischer starts by looking at Wittgenstein himself, not in the first place as a philosopher, but as a person. For this reason Fischer approaches PI armed with the vocabulary of psychotherapy. We have already seen that many perspectives are possible on Wittgenstein‟s way of writing in PI, and therefore, it has proven to be a fruitful subject of investigation. But most of these, including those of Genova and Bax, approach PI, so to say, from within. They look at the philosophical content of the text. Their starting point is to take the text of PI to have (philosophical) meaning, and then they start working with this meaning, or rather, and this is an important distinction: they start by looking at those parts of the text that have meaning. Because, as we saw when discussing Genova, it is easy to deny the text of PI straightforward argumentative meaning when looking at the way the text is structured. Genova argued that the text derives a lot of its force from its lack of structure, and that this feature may even be seen as its forté. Fischer zooms in on the text even further, and picks out all those little remarks that one would easily cast aside because they do not appear to contribute to any argument that may be “taking place” at that particular point in the text. In other words: phrases that appear not to carry any meaning at all. For Fischer, however, these little remarks are vital.

The difference between the approaches of Genova and Bax on the one hand and Fischer on the other could be characterized by saying that the former lays its focus on the cognitive content of PI, whereas the latter focuses on its emotional expression.

Central to Fischer‟s argument is the idea that Wittgenstein, in PI, is practicing therapy, which is in itself, within the context of PI, not a new notion. What is new, though, is that Fischer argues that Wittgenstein is practicing therapy on a personal level. Wittgenstein is displaying behavior that is indicative or symptomatic of someone suffering from an automatic cognitive habit. Later on I will elaborate on this technical term further. In writing in the way he does, Wittgenstein shows how he deals with an autonomous cognitive habit, and in doing so, tries to show how he tries to free himself from this habit. Since Wittgenstein is not the only philosopher suffering from this kind of habit, Fischer continues, his work can be seen as

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instructive for others dealing with similar issues. Hence, the fact that one is engaged in philosophy might mean one suffers from habits similar to those Wittgenstein suffers from. Fischer starts by explaining what this autonomous cognitive habit is, how we may recognize its symptoms in the text, specifically in the passages PI 138 to 197, and how we can see Wittgenstein dealing with them.

i. Introduction

Wittgenstein compared his treatment of philosophical problems to the treatment of an illness and his method to “therapy” (PI 133). In his article „A cognitive self-therapy‟, Fischer investigates the sections PI 138-197 with the use of a number of concepts adapted from clinical psychology, to be precise: these concepts are adapted from Aaron Beck‟s description of “cognitive therapy”27. In the above-mentioned passages, he does not try to analyze Wittgenstein‟s argument in terms of its content, i.e.: he does not enter into a discussion on the relevance or correctness of the argument itself. Rather, he dissects the line of the argument in terms of “marks of ineptitude”. These marks are, for instance, the fact that Wittgenstein moves through different topics swiftly without them being clearly connected, that he digresses into apparently non-relevant topics and the fact he keeps coming back to one main problem, the discussion of which he is unable to treat conclusively. In his article, Fischer tries to demonstrate that there is a system underlying this “apparent chaos” (Fischer‟s term) by means of a methodical approach of philosophical therapy, in the light of which these marks of ineptitude may make sense. He investigates what Wittgenstein‟s aim is and how the attempts to attain it, or rather: how Wittgenstein copes with his problem. Here, both the words “coping” and “his problem” are important. Later on, we will see why.

ii. Some new notions

All lot of features of the text of PI normally go unnoticed, or can rightfully be discarded as irrelevant or meaningless, since they do not (directly) contribute to the course of any argument, but they are abundantly present in the text. For approaching these, new concepts are needed.

The ones Fischer uses were initially introduced in clinical psychology. They will be used to bring into view those features of PI that we would not normally consider to be philosophical notions or propositions, but rather things that one would cast aside.

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In our daily lives, we have a certain amount of “active” thinking. There are, however, also thoughts we have no control over, so called “autonomous thoughts”. The formal definition Fischer works with goes as follows:

A subject‟s thought is autonomous iff it spontaneously occurs to the subject when he is exercising a low degree of control over his thinking, and recurs in the same form or as a variation on the same theme, even once it has been reflectively dismissed.

A characteristic of such autonomous thought, Fischer stresses, is that when a thought has been dismissed, one may still be inclined or tempted to utter it. These thoughts are part and parcel of a more comprehensive habit of thought, and often they are interpretations of events or remarks made by someone else. At the time of their occurrence, these may be factually wrong, and the subject may even know that they are wrong, yet they are a reflection of underlying assumptions made by the subject. These assumptions are hidden from the reader and may even be unbeknown to the subject himself. As a consequence, the expressions of autonomous thoughts may appear to be leaping: they lack consistency, because the underlying assumption is only implicitly present in the mind of the subject. This implicit presence of the underlying assumptions leads to misinterpretations and invalid inferences. The fact that the subject is often unaware of his or her autonomous thoughts may cause these thoughts to form a habit of jumping from one subject to the next. Autonomous thoughts also have emotional consequences: they cause the subject to have emotions that are intelligible in the light of such thoughts, yet they are unreasonable in the light of the beliefs that the subject holds when reflecting upon them. So, the subject suffers from emotions caused by thoughts that he would actually reject when reflecting upon such thoughts. Hence, Fischer characterizes the occurrence of such emotions as pathological28. In psychology, an emotion caused by an autonomous cognitive habit is cured by putting an end to pathological feelings29. Because the pathological feelings are caused by a certain kind of thoughts, a cognitive therapy can be applied to them by looking into the cognitive habit underlying these pathological feelings.

Fischer shows, that in the sections PI 138-197, Wittgenstein displays a number of symptoms that are similar to the kind normally addressed in cognitive therapy, but also that he actually

28_{Please note the it is the occurrence of such emotions caused by certain thoughts, that is deemed pathological, not the}

emotions themselves. The latter are “mere” signals of underlying, pathological, processes.

29_{That is: not by putting an end to the thoughts that caused it in the first place. The effectiveness of a therapy is always}

measured along the lines of its initial intention. If the therapy is set up in order to treat certain thoughts, or to make certain thoughts disappear, then one should look at the nature of such thoughts and at the nature of their pathology.

Seeing Style

Seeing Style

Three perspectives on Wittgenstein's style in

Seeing Style

Three perspectives on Wittgenstein's style in

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Saying and showing

3. Wittgenstein: a way of seeing

4. Wittgenstein and / as philosophy

5. A cognitive self-therapy