Ludwig Wittgenstein

KARCZMARCZYK, PEDRO

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible

Palgrave-MacMillan

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2021; p. 1 - 15

Wittgenstein´s philosophy is developed in two different stages. However, his conception of the nature and goals of philosophy reflects no change in essence: he denies there are genuine philosophical problems, and hence, philosophical knowledge. When a certain philosophy is presented as a body of knowledge or questions, as happens in traditional philosophy, Wittgensteinian philosophy shows there is a confusion at the ground. Traditional assertive philosophy can be seen as an ´illness´ or ´disease´ and Wittgensteinian philosophy as a peculiar activity, as a ´therapy´. Therapeutic philosophy relies on a diagnosis of the source of philosophical problems, which arise because the logic of language is not clearly understood. Changes in Wittgenstein?s philosophy depend on developments in Wittgenstein´s own understanding of the logic of language. In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) elucidation of meaningful language has its core in the bipolarity of propositions (its necessarily true or false character). This starting point leads to the notion of a ´logical space´ (all possible ?states of affairs?) and to the crucial notion of a ´logical form´ shared by all meaningful language. Philosophical Investigations (1953), on the contrary, starts from the many different actual uses of language and offers a much broader conception of meaning. Wittgenstein´s main concept in this work is ´language game´. As he has previously shown for games, neither do language games rest on an underlying essence below the multiplicity of particular linguistic activities. Languages games relate to each other by way of a complicated network of similarities and differences, among which are ´family resemblances´. Wittgenstein develops this entirely new conception on the basis of a critique of his previous view, also implying a new understanding on logic and possibilities.