The Philosophical Investigations and the Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus - Coursework Example

In what ways do the Philosophical Investigations differ from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ? Wittgenstein’s philosophy is usually divided up into two quite different philosophies. Each of these is circumscribed by its own summa, namely the Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations. The Philosophical Investigations is one of the great works of twentieth century philosophy and it is destined to join the philosophical canon. But when the Philosophical Investigations was published, it had adverse effect on the earlier theories set forth by Wittgenstein in the Tractacus and consequently, its reputation. For starters, we have Wittgenstein’s statement in the Preface, which said: For since the beginning to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I have been forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book. He then, in the early paragraphs of the book, subjects a series of doctrines of the Tractacus to sustained criticisms. Although the Tractacus is only occasionally mentioned explicitly, the critiques in the Philosophical Investigations certainly read like a dismantling of the most characteristic ideas of the earlier opus. Because of this, the attitude arose that the Tractacus should be regarded as of largely historical interest and that many of its deepest insights were in danger of being completely overlooked and lost. In light of these, the differences in the Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus can be seen in the discourse of concepts such as ‘confusion” and “consciousness” as well as in terms of the issue of continuity of Wittgenstein’s philosophies. There was also a radical shift in his conception of language. The Tractacus is considered to be a classic of Western philosophy. In a sense it can be seen as representing both the zenith and the nadir of certain philosophies. It was taken up by the logical positivists as representative of their work. The Tractacus, wrote, Milbank, Pickstock and Graham (1998), embodies the philosophical desire to explain the world, to be able to break it down into analytical parts, whether non-composite simple objects, elementary propositions (elementals), or logical structures. (p. 66) The Philosophical Investigations meanwhile is usually viewed as radically altering Western analytical philosophy, ushering in the “linguistic turn.” In an attempt to present a synopsis of the thought, Milbank, Pickstock and Ward point to the usual suggestion that it refutes the picture theory of language and its metaphysical explanation while examining various metaphysical problems by dissolving them through an examination of the language used to generate them rather than trying to resolve any of them. (p. 68) Style The Tractacus is a carefully constructed set of short propositions spanning only seventy-four pages. It carefully elaborates a schema not unlike that of logical positivists or atomists. The Philosophical Investigations on the other hand, though also consisting of numbered sections, is longer, less clearly organized, and more rambling, at least in appearance. Duncan Richter posits that this reflects Wittgenstein’s rejection of the idea that there are just few central problems in philosophy, and his insistence on paying attention to particular cases, going over the rough ground. Furthermore, to borrow Joseph James Chambliss’s commentary, the Tractacus gave the appearance of being a magisterial theory of logical form and that Philosophical Investigations was fashioned rather after a dialogue with interlocutors or students. (p. 679) Moreover, this style/structure dimension to the comparison highlights the differences Wittgenstein’s early and late works in terms of their themes and substance. In this regard, Martin Stokhof (2002), for example, said that whereas the Tractacus is monistic and absolutistic, the Investigations is pluralistic and, to some extent, relativistic. (p. 2) Hence, it is easy to understand how the earlier work seeks to unravel one, unvarying, necessary, common core in all of language and how in later work this goal is abandoned, and description of “the motley of language” takes it place. Generality and Language Over time, the one of the most obvious discontinuities from the Tractacus to the Philosophical Investigations is: whereas the Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus is concerned with the general form of proposition, the general nature of metaphysics, and so on, in his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein is very critical of the “craving for generality” which he associated with much philosophical confusion. (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 17) In addition to this area, Wittgenstein speaks of central problems of philosophy in Tractacus, while in the Philosophical Investigation treats no problems as central. This has a tremendous impact on Wittgenstein’s concept of language, which, when compared basing from his views expressed in the Tractacus and those in the Philosophical Investigations, appeared to have changed radically, indeed. In his latter work, the philosopher argued that discovering the way language work can no longer be a matter of uncovering an underlying logical structure to the language involved in particular philosophical disputes. This is in contradiction to one of the fundamental propositions: the idea of there being a “general form of propositions.” (Investigations, §65) The following is an illustration of the dramatic difference between the early and latter work on the central issue of the structure of language: It is clear that in the description of the most general form of sentence only what is essential to it may be described – otherwise, it would not be the general form. That there is a general sentential form is proved by the fact that there cannot be a sentence whose form could not have been foreseen (i.e. constructed). The general form of the sentence is: Such and such is the case. (Tractacus 4.5) But how many kinds of sentences are there? Say assertion, question, and command? There are countless different kinds of use of what we call “symbols,” “words,” “sentences.” And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games… come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten. (Investigations, §23) Here, we see that, in contrast to the crystalline simplicity of the Tractacus’s depiction of an ideal, Wittgenstein focused on the differences within and between real or imagined language-games, by emphasizing that there is a tendency to overlook the particular contexts without which our linguistic practices cease to be of any use. Wittgenstein argued for a kind of metaphysical atomism in the Tractacus, the contents of which – atomic particulars and their relations to each other – would be chartered in their relationships by a powerful logical language. According to Eugene Kelly (2004), this procedure appear to limit what language can say to atomic facts and that the only genuine proposition in this analysis would be the factual claims empirical science makes. (p. 127) On the one hand, in Investigations, Wittgenstein’s stand is that we must understand language in the context in which it is used. For instance, we have the cases of scientists and the members of the clergy who use the same words drawn from their common language. Here, the words may be the same but the contexts in which they were used are different. “In everyday contexts, language is not used only to describe purported facts, it is used to pray and to tell a joke, to play guessing games, and to praise and to blame people.” (Kelly, p. 128) Contradiction Another dimension in the Philosophical Investigations that radically deviates from the propositions set by the Tractacus is in regard to contradiction. In Tractacus, Wittgenstein treated contradictions as complements of tautologies. Like tautologies, they are without sense, saying nothing. However, unlike tautologies, which are unconditionally true, they are false in all conditions. A proposition that is false for all truth-possibilities is a contradiction as “contradiction is the outer limit of propositions.” (Tractacus, 5.143) Contradiction was treated differently in Investigations as Wittgenstein explained here that the philosophical problem is the status of a contradiction in civil life. (Investigations §125) Because of this fact, contradictions claim a special importance for philosophy although it was emphasized that they are not in themselves problematic. A contradiction could be perfectly in order such as those found in a game or in a work of art. The contradiction that generates confusion is the one the does harm, particularly if these contradictions are those that we either do not notice or we do not refuse to give up. These contradictions become the problem. The Will A brief comparison of the ways in which Wittgenstein deals with difficulties about will in his earlier and later philosophies show something of the changes that took place in his thinking. In the doctrine of the Tractacus, the world is the totality of facts in logical space; and the world, Wittgenstein argues, “is independent of my will.” (Tractacus, 6.373) In Notebooks 1914-1916, which contain much of his preparatory work for the Tractacus, he wrote “I will call ‘will’ first and foremost the bearer of good and evil. (21.7.16) The will for him is therefore inseparable from ethical matters and propositions about the will that fall into the category of “what cannot be said”. This has some philosophical problems. Here, Tractacus sees the will as somehow outside the world, there is an awareness in Wittgenstein that the will penetrates the world. Wittgenstein struggled to give an account of will that conceives of it as an attitude towards the world. However, he himself, was profoundly dissatisfied with it. In all this, wrote Diané Collinson (1987), it is important to notice that Wittgenstein speaks of “the will” and of “willing” in a very broad sense which in later view would be criticized as an approach that often leads us astray. (p. 149) In the Philosophical Investigation, Wittgenstein succeeded in dismantling the metaphysical structure that had generated the problems about the will and, indeed, a whole range of connected problems in the philosophy of mind, and turns wholeheartedly to an examination of how words are actually used in particular cases. (I, 611-28) According to Collinson, this later theory releases us from the conception of the will as some kind of distinct entity or power that somehow operates levers to produce change, or is a kind of ‘attitude towards the physical realm, as argued in Tractacus. (p. 150) An interesting insight was put forward by John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward who points to the fact that the Tractacus was published during Wittgenstein’s lifetime and that Philosophical Investigations was published by Blackwell within two years of Wittgenstein’s death. According to them, it may well be that editorial influence has contributed towards establishing the prevalent view that there are two philosophies and as polarized their respective theories in the process. (p. 65) This approach, however, cannot simply dismiss the differences that characterize these two major philosophical works. In reading both of the materials, one will find that there are just too much textual evidence which makes it explicit Wittgenstein’s determinations to see a fundamental difference between his earlier tractrian work and his later significant revision of his philosophical methodology. All in all, there are both important resemblances and major differences between Wittgenstein’s early thought and his later work. For instance, there is the conventionalism in language – an issue that both Tractacus and Investigations agree on. Philosophical Investigations say that all language is founded on convention. (§355) It agreed on the Tractacus’s proposition, which stresses that the understanding of everyday language depends on tacit conventions. (Tractacus 4.002) Nonetheless, the differences are many and they have received extensive attention and examination from academics, scholars and contemporary philosophers. That is why there is an understandably numerous body of literature on the subject which underscores the significance of the topic. Some of the major changes in Wittgenstein’s philosophy have been outlined in this paper. A fundamental variable here is not the differences and the conflicts of the two philosophy as put forward by the Tractacus and Philosophical Investigations. Here, one sees an evolution of ideas that is characterized by a certain degree of continuity and discontinuity as the philosopher’s perspectives change. The most important thing, however, is that with the Tractacus and Philosophical Investigations, we have seen how in his early philosophy Wittgenstein strove to uproot the deeply entrenched traditions of thought and how he accepted, used and transformed these thoughts in his later work. Indeed, much of his greatness as a philosopher consists in doing just that. References 1. J. Chambliss, Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis, 1996. 2. D. Collinson, Fifty Major Philosophers. London, Routledge, 1987. 3. E. Kelly, The Basics of Western Philosophy. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004. 4. J. Milbank, C. Pickstock, and G. Ward, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology. London: Routledge, 1998. 5. L. Wittgenstein, Preliminary Studies for the "Philosophical Investigations." Generally Known as the Blue and Brown Books. Blackwell Publishing, 1969. 6. L. Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-1916. trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Blackwell, 1969. 7. L. Wittgenstein, Tractacus logico-philosophicus. 1921. trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuiness. London: Routledge, 1961. 8. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Blackwell, 1953. 9. M. Stokhof, World and Life as One: Ethics and Ontology in Wittgensteins Early Thought. Stanford University Press, 2002. Read More