Wittgenstein: Late

Five dialogues into the Investigations — meaning, rules, and forms of life

A course on the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

What you will learn

Understand the Turn as a change of METHOD, not a recantation: the move from building a theory of language to dissolving the confusions language breeds — framed as release from a captivating picture, not 'being wrong.'
Grasp 'a picture held us captive' (PI §115): the Tractatus's picture (meaning as a named object, the proposition as picture, one crystalline logical order) was a grip lying in language, not a discovered fact.
See the new starting point: the Augustinian picture of language (PI §1) as too simple, and the call to come 'back to the rough ground' (PI §107) — to look at how language actually works.
Grasp 'the meaning of a word is its use in the language' (PI §43) — meaning as the role a word plays in an activity, not an object it names.
Understand language-games (*Sprachspiel*): language as countless kinds of use woven into forms of life — the builders' 'Slab!', describing, joking, praying — not one uniform thing.
Understand family resemblance (PI §66-67): general words like 'game' name no common essence, only overlapping similarities — and 'don't think, but look!' as the cure for the craving for hidden essences.
State the rule-following paradox (PI §201): no course of action is determined by a rule, because every course can be made out to accord with it.
See the interpretation regress: adding an interpretation only adds another sign that itself needs interpreting — interpretations alone cannot fix meaning (PI §198).

The Turn — The reversal: the crystalline system you learned as the truth begins to crack. Why Wittgenstein came back in 1929 — the Sraffa gesture, the picture that held him captive, and the new method that…
Meaning Is Use — The new picture of meaning: words as moves in language-games, "the meaning of a word is its use," and family resemblance — why 'game,' and language itself, have no single hidden essence.
Following a Rule — The rule-following paradox: no rule, by itself, determines its own applications — every course of action can be made to accord with it. The resolution: to grasp a rule is to be trained into a…
The Private Language Argument — Could there be a language only I could understand, naming my private sensations? The diary 'S' with no criterion of correctness, and the beetle in the box — why a private inner object drops out of…
Forms of Life and Philosophy as Therapy — The bedrock on which all meaning rests — shared forms of life — and the new conception of philosophy itself: not theory but therapy, a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence, showing the…

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus — Wittgenstein's early masterwork in numbered propositions: the picture theory of meaning, the saying/showing distinction, the limits of language, and the closing silence — 'whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent'.
Notebooks 1914-1916 — Wittgenstein's wartime notebooks recording the genesis of the Tractatus, including the origin of the picture theory.
Philosophical Investigations — Wittgenstein's later masterwork (published posthumously, 1953): meaning as use, language-games, family resemblance, rule-following, the private-language argument, and philosophy as therapy.
The Blue and Brown Books — Dictated lecture notes from the early 1930s — the transitional thinking, including the first 'language-games', between the Tractatus and the Investigations.
Philosophical Remarks — A transitional work from 1929-30, Wittgenstein's first sustained writing after returning to philosophy, moving beyond the Tractatus.
On Certainty — Wittgenstein's last writings (posthumous), on knowledge, doubt, and the 'hinge' propositions that stand fast and make doubt itself possible.
Culture and Value — A posthumous selection of Wittgenstein's personal remarks on art, religion, music, and culture, gathered from his notebooks.

Sprachspiel, Lebensform, Übersicht

Part of the Simposeum course library.