What is it that makes the Investigations an especially tricky book? One glaring and immediate difficulty is the book looks like a collection of disconnected paragraphs, perhaps a mere collection of aphorisms or sayings. Further, the paragraphs seem to be pulled out of thin air. They begin with a quote (in Latin no less) from Augustine’s Confessions and then seem to ramble over various topics, sometimes with abrupt breaks into some new idea, often retracing previous thoughts. Then it all seems to stop in the middle of nowhere. All along one waits patiently (sometimes desperately) for Wittgenstein to make a point, but by the end very often we feel it hasn’t happened.
Many explanations have been offered for this state of affairs. Critics have attributed the book’s form to the author’s mental impairment, to his dyslexia, sexual orientation, or his use of a secret code. Wittgenstein’s own explanation from the preface may strike the reader as at least overmodest.
After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into . . . a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. The best that I could ever write would never be more than philosophical remarks; my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination. And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation. For this compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction. The philosophical remarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in the course of these long and involved journeyings.
The same or almost the same points were always being approached afresh from different directions, and new sketches made. Very many of these were badly drawn or uncharacteristic, marked by all the defects of a weak draughtsman. And when they were rejected a number of tolerable ones were left, which now had to be arranged and sometimes cut down, so that if you looked at them you could get a picture of the landscape. Thus this book is really only an album.1
On the surface Wittgenstein seems to simply be issuing a disclaimer: “I tried to turn out a book that isn’t a mess, but this is the best that I could do.” However, I think there is a little more to it. In order to understand Wittgenstein’s method of composition, the comparisons he makes here with sketching, drafting, and so on should not be overlooked. Art, especially music, was central to Wittgenstein’s life. Wittgenstein grew up in a very artistic household and was himself a talented musician as well as—at various times—a sculptor and an architect. Given this background, I think it would be rash to assume Wittgenstein had no literary aspirations for his work and so was happy to publish a haphazard collection of thoughts. On one level I do think Wittgenstein is serious here—in the sense that he is being honest and to the point. The Investigations is in many ways more like a collection of research than a traditional work of philosophy. His first period at Cambridge produced the Tractatus. During his second stint at Cambridge, Wittgenstein developed a new method of inquiry that he used to investigate many of the same philosophical topics that captured his imagination during the Tractatus period. He worked diligently, making voluminous notes.
Looking at the above passage from the preface to the Investigations, I think he is saying that tried to take these notes and work them into a systematic presentation but found that a systematic philosophical work was contrary to his results. As we probe the Investigations, I think we will see why this is the case.
Instead of trying to create a systematic philosophical treatment, Wittgenstein tried a novel approach, but this approach is guided by a particular aesthetic. The Tractatus has a very precise, rigid, logical structure. There is no ornamentation or flourish to the work, and we can certainly see that this is in keeping with the main theme of the work—whatever can be said can be said clearly, or not at all. This approach has much in common with the modern aesthetic of Wittgenstein’s architectural mentor, Adolf Loos, and is evident in Wittgenstein’s own work as an architect.2
However—and this is a point we will have to amplify in what follows—Wittgenstein’s ideas have undergone some modification by the time of his second sojourn at Cambridge. The need for logical purity still guides his work, but logic no longer appears as a rigid structural background for language and thought. Rather, he sees logic, language, and meaning as more “fluid”—part and parcel of the tangled weave of human life.
The apparent “formlessness” of the Investigations might dissipate if we look at it in terms of modern art or music. Imagine a composer having a grand idea, and he works out several themes to express the various parts of this idea. These individual musical passages are distinct, yet related to the work as whole. These relationships do not form a smooth progression because it is not the composer’s idea to build one theme on another. Rather, the musical passages are related in a variety of ways. Sometimes the composer will announce a theme and then abruptly move off into something similar, yet because of the uniqueness of the new theme, he gives it its own key. He may return to the original theme, but he wants to express it in a new light, perhaps because of something “discovered” in a related theme, so he inverts the passage or modulates the key. The result is more like a Bach fugue or perhaps Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition than a Mozart symphony. We might also think of a work of art such as Picasso’s Guernica, which apparently was supposed to be viewed from right to left as people entered the exhibition hall.
A comparison with architecture may also be instructive. An architect may try to make a house livable and intimate. He may also try to accomplish many other effects, such as making the space interesting or making the occupants feel secure. The architect has many “themes” as well, but he has only the arrangement of space and materials to work with. One room may have many uses, and when approached from different angles can seem to be very different, yet all the uses intersect to make a whole. For example, the library is usually used for reading, so the light must be good; hence large windows, which could also accommodate a view for meditating, might be in order. The walls should be for bookcases, of course, and a good height for lots of books, but not so high as to detract from the coziness of the room—should the scholar need a nap after reading several pages of Wittgenstein. To create a contemplative mood, rugs and some sort of acoustic tile, perhaps, would be preferred for absorbing sound, rather than, say, marble and terracotta. Thus, the same room can be seen from many points of view and incorporate an array of different materials, giving rise to many complexities that are resolved by the skillful architect into a whole.
The comparisons with art and architecture are only meant to be illuminating and suggestive. Wittgenstein never announces that his work ought to be seen as literary art. But again, it doesn’t follow that we should assume he had no literary aspirations for his work. On the contrary, the place that art had in his life, his various artistic endeavors in other fields, the care he took with his work, and its thoroughly modern character, suggest otherwise. We will examine this topic to a greater degree in what follows. For now, although the temptation to do so is understandable, I only want to caution the reader against looking at the Investigations as a badly drawn pastiche. The structure of the book is far from “standard.”
In many ways the structure of the Investigations mirrors its theme: language. Wittgenstein tells us that “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by the means of language.”3 Although his ideas underwent considerable development over the course of his life, Wittgenstein claimed, from the period of the Tractatus onward, that the source of the problems of philosophy and their solution lay in language. What Wittgenstein means by “language” is a large part of the Investigations, and elucidating this idea will occupy an equally large part of our study. But for right now I think it is helpful to realize that for Wittgenstein “language” means our words, what words we choose, how and when and why we choose them—our sentences, our paragraphs, our descriptions, etc. Although care must be taken here, and a great deal of elucidation is necessary on this point: according to Wittgenstein, we should not confuse “language” with ideas, or the essence of language, the accompaniments of language, or even the structure of language. Again, this is a major them of the Investigations. “Language” is just what we speak and write.
It only takes a little reflection to see that language, what we ordinarily speak and write, is extremely messy. It is jumbled, tangled, flexible, twisted, and twistable, and as such it is a source of amazement, humor, and of course artistic expression. Clearly poetry very often trades on the inherent ambiguities of language. A good deal of modern poetry seems to focus on how far we can stretch language in the service of art. Reading Joyce or Faulkner shows that this idea is important to modern prose as well. In literature this feature of language is expressive. In music and painting, stretching and bending harmony or color and line beyond traditional parameters allows the artist to reach new heights. But for Wittgenstein, in philosophy, the inherent flexibility of language is a source of error.
Hence Wittgenstein addresses philosophical problems by dealing with them at what he sees as their source: the misuse of language. This is not to say that Wittgenstein’s Investigations consist of reading philosophical works and declaring, e.g., “Ah ha, Descartes has used the word soul incorrectly!” Wittgenstein goes deeper than that in showing us that we misunderstand how language functions. Because we fail to understand the workings of language, we fail to understand its limits, or as we shall see its logic—what it can and can’t do—and so we fall into error.
Anyone who struggles long enough with Wittgenstein’s text will see him returning to the above point over and over again. But right away we usually hit a major stumbling block in interpreting the text. As I mentioned earlier, we often think that Wittgenstein is defending a theory of language that will deal effectively with its misuse. But, really, this is not the case. The job of a scientific theory is generally to explain some fact of nature, and this is why the term logical theory is something of a misnomer. Unlike a theory of gravity that tells us why objects are attracted to one another, logic doesn’t really “explain” anything in the sense of providing causes or reasons for an effect. Logic, as Wittgenstein sees it, when it is useful, is a tool for analysis and description. If there is a logic to language, as we will see, we may only analyze and describe that logic. In this sense Wittgenstein’s work in the Investigations is logical—merely descriptive, not explanatory. Logic does not tell us why something is so—as Freud’s theory of the unconscious attempts to “explain” nervous disorders—it only tells us that it is so. Thus in the Investigations, Wittgenstein tries to display, not explain, the workings of language. Wittgenstein’s response to a theory of the operation of language is most often—“Well, let us see what language would actually look like if we accept this as the way language actually operates.” As students of philosophy, we are constantly looking for explanation and theory, and Wittgenstein responds with “Well, look at it this way. Look at the theory in operation. If it is wrong it will fail.” This approach on the surface seems counterproductive, but we will see that this is the only way to show or display the problem of language and its solution.
Historically, when one philosopher thinks another is wrong about something, the response is usually to critique the idea and provide a better one. Thus, Aristotle thinks Plato’s theory of ideas is wrong. He points this out and offers an alternate theory of ideas. But what if the whole enterprise is misguided? Let us for the sake of argument say that it is impossible (for whatever reason) for any theory of ideas to be correct. If this were true then the proliferation of theories on this topic would be pointless. The only way to help the situation would be to show those seeking the best theory of ideas that their search is in vain.
Point of view and perspective often dictate an approach to a problem. Consider the difficulty that we would encounter trying to convince anyone that the earth is round, using ordinary observation. Because of our particular position in relation to the earth, it would be extremely difficult to prove to anyone that the earth is not flat. However, you could put the doubting Thomas in a boat and tell him to keep sailing east. For the entire journey he could keep affirming that the world is flat—until he got back to where he started, at which point he would have to cede the argument.
Trying to understand the workings of language leaves us in a similar predicament. You cannot use language to dissect and analyze language in order to search for its ultimate foundations. Any theory of language is expressed in a language, and so you go around in circles. This point might seem difficult at first, but it is important for understanding the Investigations. In our hypothetical situation above, since any observation will produce the same conclusion—“the world is flat”—we cannot solve our problem with more of the same type of observation. We have to try something else. If you were reading a book and thought the author made some sort of mistake, you couldn’t check this out by buying another copy of the same book. If you wanted to find out how your television worked you wouldn’t be able to do so by just simply watching more television. You would have to buy a book on the subject, look at the schematics, take it apart, or something of that nature. It seems as if we should be able to do the same thing with language. After all, we simply want to discover the components of language, the nuts and bolts, just as we would with anything else. However, Wittgenstein wants us to realize that language presents us with a unique challenge. Think for a moment about trying to give the final or ultimate definition of a word. We might define a circle as a geometric figure in which every point on the circumference is equidistant from the midpoint. But each of those words can be defined, and so we would have an additional twelve definitions. And each of those definitions could spawn more definitions, and so on. So instead of an analysis that finds some sort of bedrock or ultimate description, we have gone in the opposite direction and greatly multiplied the object of our inquiry, failing to produce the desired result of exactly defining the word. The reason is simple: talking about language begets more language. Any sentence that purports to analyze or describe language can itself be analyzed or described. Now of course we might want to argue that the point is not the language—the point is the ideas on which the language is founded. Unfortunately, this approach will also fail to solve our problem. Although this case will have to be made more completely in what follows, Wittgenstein wants to show us that it is essentially impossible to separate thought and language. Any idea or thought, certainly one that supposedly is foundational for language, that has no expression in language, is certainly useless and might as well be nonexistent. For all practical purposes language and thought are the same—we think in language. So it would be incorrect to say that we can use language to somehow get to those ideas that are at the base of language. Thus, if language has failed you because of its flexible nature and it has led you into error, the best someone can do is show you how to follow out the thread and show you where the cloth unravels. This is what Wittgenstein does in the Investigations.
Wittgenstein thinks most philosophical problems are generated in the following way. In essence, the philosopher often “borrows” words that have a clear meaning in their original context and then transports them to a context where they work less well—or perhaps not at all. For example, we often say: “I see what you are talking about.” Taken literally—restricting the meaning of see to something done with the eyes—this statement is nonsense. But see is a very elastic word, and we understand its meaning in this context. The problem arises when we think that see has some sort of special, independent meaning of its own that it brings with it wherever it is moved. If we took the above idea as literally true—that all uses of the word see must have a visual reference—then perhaps a philosopher might explain the statement “I see your point” as meaning “seeing with the mind’s eye.” Now, again, this is all right as long as we don’t think of “the minds eye” as a theoretical entity. But, Wittgenstein tells us, this is just what happens in philosophy with this very word. Philosophers often seem to think that the word seeing must always have the same basic meaning—that of some sort of visual experience—and then they construe “mental” seeing on the model of physical seeing. We say something like: “The mind ‘sees’ the truth.” If we take this statement literally, then of course this “mental seeing” is something odd, both like and unlike seeing with the eyes, and so “mental seeing” requires a theory to explain it. And so beginning with an assumption about the word see we set off on a theoretical quest, but with no hope of getting back to where we started. No amount of theorizing can explain “mental seeing” because there is no such thing. The theoretical entity “mental seeing” is a chimera conjured out of the labyrinth of language. Chasing it is like being the doubting Thomas in the boat mentioned above, blissfully sailing along insisting the world is flat. The only hope is to get back to where we started—to bring the word see back to its original home.
So the solution to the problem lies in showing that there is no actual “mental” seeing. Proving this is not done for Wittgenstein empirically, and rightly so. The idea of “mental seeing” or the “mind’s eye” in the above paragraph did not arise as the result of scientific investigation, and so it is not to be dispelled scientifically, through experiment, etc. This idea of seeing, Wittgenstein tells us, was just a “dream of language.” We may of course talk about “understanding” in terms of seeing—“I see your idea.” The problem is that the word see in this context doesn’t carry the implications of physical seeing. It was the philosopher that brought along this excess baggage and dropped it where it didn’t belong. A correct analysis of “understanding,” or comparing understanding to actual seeing, should convince us that a concept of understanding constructed in visual terms is okay as long as we don’t take it as indicating a theoretical object—as something that requires scientific or empirical investigation. So, just what is the correct “theory” of understanding? What is Wittgenstein’s epistemology? Wittgenstein is not going to answer that question, and trying to pull an answer to that question out of the text is only going to lead to further misunderstanding. However, if you have a picture of understanding that rests on a misunderstanding of language, then Wittgenstein just wants you to let that picture go.
Demonstrated here is one of Wittgenstein’s key points that bears remembering when reading the Investigations. To try to analyze, understand, augment, or otherwise tinker with an idea or concept apart from its application or actual employment will probably result in a useless idea or concept.
Of course, this is just an overview. The book considers many other concepts besides understanding. But I think if you keep the above ideas in mind, then understanding the work is hopefully a little easier.
1. PI ix.
2. Cf. Bernard Leitner, The Wittgenstein House (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000); see also Engelmann, 1968.
3. PI 109.