Mind, Soul, Language in Wittgenstein

Mind, Soul, Language in Wittgenstein

ABSTRACT: I show that the latter Wittgenstein's treatment of language and the mind results in a conception of the human subject that goes against the exclusive emphasis on the cognitive that characterizes our modern conception of knowledge and the self. For Wittgenstein, our identification with the cognitive ego is tantamount to a blindness to our own nature — blindness that is entrenched in our present culture. The task of philosophy is thus transformed into a form of cultural therapy that seeks to awaken in us a sensitivity to different modes of awareness than the merely intellectual. Its substance of reflection becomes not only the field of conscious rational thought, but the tension in our nature between reason and vital feeling, that is, between culture and life.

It is well known that Wittgenstein is responsible for two great moments in the philosophy of this century; the first initially and incorrectly identified with logical positivism, and the second even now considered as paradigm of Analytic philosophy. Insofar as identifications, both interpretations seem to me to show an imperfect and only partial understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophical motivations, but I do not intend to discuss that point on this opportunity. What is important to our present purposes is that what separates his two great works is his discovery of a kind of intellectual blindness produced by the almost exclusive predominance of one single conception of knowledge or rationality in our culture.

The first signs of this philosophical shift are found in Wittgenstein's observations not specifically about language but rather about ritual practices, as they were considered in The Golden Bough. In his opini...

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...of devotion their incessant, inevitable and essential tension.

Notes

(1) "Remarks on The Golden Bough", (OF), p. 58.

(2) OF, p. 73; Cf. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, II, § 39-40, pp. 84-5.

(3) OF, p. 78.

(4) OF, p. 83.

(5) All these attempts announce what Wittgenstein will call our "form of life".

(6) Cf. Philosophical Investigations II, iv.

(7) This example is derived form Stanley Cavell's discussions in: "Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy" in: Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge University Press, 1969.

(8) Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, v.1, § 313

(9) Cf. Marcia Cavell: The Psychoanalytic Mind: From Freud to Philosophy, Harvad University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 102.

(10) César Vallejo, in El arte y la revolución, Lima, Mosca Azul Editores, 1973, p. 70

(11) Cf. Philosophical Investigations, II, xii