PHILOSOPHER OF THE WEEK.

 

Ludwig Wittgenstein.

BACKGROUND.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Wittgenstein made a major contribution to conversations on language, logic and metaphysics, but also ethics, the way that we should live in the world. He published two important books: the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (1921) and the Philosophical Investigations (1953), for which he is best known. These were major contributions to twenty century philosophy of language.

HIS BIG IDEAS.

It is important to note that Wittgenstein was a difficult character. Those who knew him assumed he was either a madman or a genius, how strange. He was known for working himself up into fits of frustration, pacing about the room decrying his own stupidity, and lambasting philosophers for their habit of tying themselves in semantic knots. In his favour, Wittgenstein was not afraid to admit his own mistakes. He once said: ‘If people never did anything stupid, nothing intelligent would ever get done’. He also said: ‘I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves’. Students approached his classes at Cambridge University with due trepidation, never sure if they were about to witness a brilliant act of logical deconstruction or the implosion of a tortured mind.

Wittgenstein’s early work inspired a generation of logical positivists – critical analytic thinkers who set out to debunk unverifiable ‘pseudostatements’ in an effort to define the limits of meaningful language. ‘That whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent’, Wittgenstein intoned in the closing passages of the Tractatus. To become a philosopher, one must learn to hold one’s tongue. Logical positivism was a powerful movement that defined the shape of analytic philosophy well into the 1960s. However, it was undercut by the work of the same man who was its founder. By the 1930s, Wittgenstein had decided that the picture theory language was quite wrong. He devoted the rest of his life to explaining why. ‘Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow’, he commented. ‘You doze off and die in your sleep’.

Communication, according to Wittgenstein on this model, involves using conventional terms in a way that is recognised by a linguistic community. It involves playing a conventionally accepted language game. If a lion could talk, we should not be able to understand him’, Wittgenstein argued, because the language games of lions are too different from our own to permit understanding. It is worth noting, as an aside, that Wittgenstein’s theory does allow that lions have a language, based in the social dynamics of their hunting and mating activities. The roaring of two adult male lions, challenging each other for leadership of the pride, is arguably as much of a language gaming activity as the banter of two human rivals, each attempting to outdo the other through a play of words.

Wittgenstein’s view of language as social practice is instructive for anyone who seeks to communicate clearly and effectively. Writers and communicators are always told to think about the audience that they are speaking to and to craft their communiques accordingly. Wittgenstein’s philosophy pushes this point of view beyond linguistics into ethnography. In order to communicate with a social tribe, listen to how they play with language. In many cases, slang, banter, and jokes are not poorly structured ‘secondary’ forms of communication, but a coded means of crafting pointed exchanges within a community. A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words, but a well-timed joke can express a world-view. Wittgenstein once said that a ‘serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes’. Jokes are not ephemera. They may be logically incoherent (this is often what makes them funny), yet they play an important role in the language games that bind a community together.

 

Uther