Philosophical Investigations

Anyone familiar with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and also with Seinfeld is likely to be struck by their similar, contrapuntal structure.

Wittgenstein characterizes Philosophical Investigations as “really only an album,”⁵⁵ containing a number of philosophical remarks that are “sketches of landscapes ... made in the course of ... long and involved journeyings.” Some have taken Wittgenstein to be confessing failure by characterizing the book in these ways. Indeed, he seems to invite this way of taking his characterizations when he admits that he pictured the book initially as a series of thoughts that “should proceed from one subject to another in a natural order and without breaks.” He continues to say that he eventually realized that he would not succeed in writing the book he pictured:

After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. The best that I could 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.

Although Wittgenstein may sound as if he is confessing failure, his last comment suggests that he is not doing so. His last comment rates his “failure” as necessary. His initial picture of his book is an illusion—an illusion about the very nature of the investigation he is conducting. Wittgenstein’s sort of philosophical investigation cannot proceed in a single direction, without breaks.

What sort of philosophical investigation “compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction”? What sort requires sketches of landscapes? What sort requires an album? To answer these questions it will help to take a look at some of the landscape sketches in the album. Before we do that, however, allow me to provide some preliminary remarks on Seinfeld.

Seinfeld

In “The Pilot”—the episode in which Jerry and George pilot the Jerry show—Jerry remarks that Jerry is “a show about nothing.” Jerry’s remark is clearly meant to characterize Seinfeld as well. Like Wittgenstein’s characterizing of Philosophical Investigations, Jerry’s double-faced characterizing of Jerry and Seinfeld can seem to confess failure. However, even though Jerry is dropped by the network president mere minutes after the pilot airs, Jerry is not a failure. Virtually every character from earlier episodes of Seinfeld is shown watching Jerry; and, Jerry, George, and Elaine are all extremely happy with the pilot. And Seinfeld itself is, of course, no failure.

The show is a show about nothing, but this does not make it a failure. The “failure” is necessary; and, what Jerry characterizes as nothing is only nothing relative to an illusion about what a show must be (about). The sort of show Seinfeld is requires that it flirt with not being a show (since a show about nothing and no show are hard to tell apart).

But what sort of show can be “a show about nothing”? What sort of show is a show without a plot, without a central romantic couple, without even one completely likable character? The answer to these questions is connected to the very nature of the show.

Philosophical Investigations, Again

In Philosophical Investigations 129, Wittgenstein confides to his reader that

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something—because it is always before one’s eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him.—And this means: we fail to see what, once seen, is most striking and powerful.

And, in 596, he comments on

The feeling of ‘familiarity’ and of ‘naturalness’. It is easier to get at a feeling of unfamiliarity and unnaturalness. Or, at feelings. For not everything which is unfamiliar to us makes an impression of unfamiliarity upon us. Here one has to consider what we call “unfamiliar”. If a boulder lies on the road, we know it for a boulder, but perhaps not for the one which has always lain there. We recognize a man, say, as a man, but not as an acquaintance. There are feelings of old acquaintance: they are sometimes expressed by a particular way of looking or by the words: “The same old room!” (which I occupied many years before and now returning find unchanged). Equally there are feelings of strangeness. I stop short, look at the object or man questioningly or mistrustfully, say “I find it all strange.”—But the existence of this feeling of strangeness does not give us a reason for saying that every object which we know well and which does not seem strange to us gives us a feeling of familiarity.—We think that, as it were, the place once filled by the feeling of strangeness must surely be occupied somehow. The place for this kind of atmosphere is there, and if one of them is not in possession of it, then another is.

Wittgenstein is pointing out that although there are feelings of familiarity and of unfamiliarity, not everything which is familiar to us causes a feeling of familiarity and not everything which is unfamiliar to us causes a feeling of unfamiliarity. This may seem obvious enough, but Wittgenstein points it out because he believes that pressures we are under when we philosophize make it easy to miss. In the remarks preceding 596, Wittgenstein is attacking the illusion that meaning is a mental activity—in particular, that meaning a sentence is a mental act. (This is the illusion Wittgenstein attacks over and over again in Philosophical Investigations. In remarks 1 and 2 he is already attacking “the philosophical concept of meaning”; in 693, the last remark in Part 1, his Parthian shot is “And nothing is more wrong-headed than calling meaning a mental activity! Unless, that is, one is setting out to produce confusion.”) Wittgenstein is trying to show that saying and meaning a sentence is not a matter of saying a sentence accompanied by a feeling of familiarity. The fact that a speaker’s saying of a sentence is accompanied by a feeling of familiarity does not make it the case that the speaker means the sentence he says. Moreover, the fact that a speaker’s saying of a sentence is not accompanied by a feeling of familiarity does not make it the case that the speaker does not mean the sentence he says. An accompanying feeling of familiarity neither is the speaker’s meaning the sentence, nor is it the mark of his meaning the sentence. Typically, when a speaker says a sentence and means it, there is no accompanying feeling of familiarity; indeed, there is typically no accompanying feeling at all.

Why, then, would anyone insist that a feeling of familiarity accompanies any sentence that a speaker says and means? This is where 596 enters the discussion. Typically, when a speaker says a sentence and does not mean it, there is an accompanying feeling of unfamiliarity (or, unnaturalness). For example, if a speaker of English is asked to say the sentence

I said that that ‘that’ that that man used was used correctly in surroundings in which no one man has said ‘that’, the saying of the sentence will typically be accompanied by a feeling of unfamiliarity. (The feeling will typically accompany the saying of a sentence even much more common than the example I have given, so long as the surroundings in which the sentence is said are suitably inappropriate.) The fact that typically a sentence that a speaker says and does not mean is accompanied by a feeling of unfamiliarity then begins to exert philosophical pressure. The fact makes it seem necessary that the place occupied by a feeling of unfamiliarity when a speaker says a sentence and does not mean it must be occupied by a feeling of familiarity when he says a sentence and does mean it. The sentence, we might say, cannot go out alone: it must take either the feeling of familiarity or unfamiliarity along for company.

596 exerts philosophical counter-pressure. Wittgenstein reminds his reader that the absence of a feeling of unfamiliarity does not require the presence of a feeling of familiarity. A speaker can say and mean a sentence without any feeling at all; a speaker can say and not mean a sentence without any feeling at all. Feelings are easier to get at than meanings. But that does not make them meanings or make them marks of meanings. The philosophical pressure exerted by the typical accompaniment of sentences that are said and not meant by feelings of unfamiliarity makes us hypostasize feelings of familiarity where typically there are none (cf. 598). But the philosophical pressure can—and should—be resisted. 596 shows us how—and why.

I realize that discussing 596 at length may seem bootless. It is not. Discussing it at length accomplishes two things: (1) It makes clear the target of Wittgenstein’s attacks in Philosophical Investigations, the philosophical concept of meaning. And, it makes clear Wittgenstein’s central type of attack on the target: Wittgenstein will everywhere confront our apparent need for a philosophical concept of meaning with commonplaces, superficies. (2) Understanding 129 demands that we come to terms with Wittgenstein’s handling of familiarity. Consider: In 129 Wittgenstein claims that the things most important for his sort of philosophical investigation are hidden. They are hidden by their familiarity. How can this be? 596 provides an important part of the answer: Not everything that is familiar causes a feeling of familiarity. Our feelings are not a reliable guide to what is familiar. If they were, then it would be hard to see how something familiar could be hidden: our attention would be drawn to it because of the feeling it caused. Since what is familiar need not cause a feeling of familiarity, the familiar often confronts us unacknowledged, like the boulder we recognize as a boulder, but not as the same old boulder.

Familiarity hides the aspects of things of the most importance to Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations. The real foundations of Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations go unnoticed because they are omnipresent. Wittgenstein claims that the real foundations are not striking until the fact that they are not striking becomes striking. How, though, is that supposed to happen? Here, at last, we are in the vicinity of the answers to our earlier questions about Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations.

If the aspects of things of the most importance to Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations are not striking, then no list of them will be striking. Wittgenstein cannot simply list the real foundations because the list would seem a list of the most common of commonplaces—a list of things beneath notice. There would be no way to make someone accept the claim that the listed commonplaces are the real foundations of philosophical investigation. (After all, philosophical investigation is supposed to be oriented away from commonplaces, oriented toward uncommonplaces.) To get the commonplaces acknowledged as the real foundations of philosophical investigation, Wittgenstein is forced into writing an album, into sketching landscapes. Since listing the real foundations in a natural order and without breaks would fail to get the real foundations noticed, Wittgenstein does—and has to do—something different. He makes remarks: he nags, he describes, he re-arranges, he reminds. He does this in order to reorient philosophical investigation, to bring his reader to see the commonplaces doing their real foundational work.

So it is Wittgenstein’s commitment to drawing attention to commonplaces that requires an album, that requires sketches of landscapes. Wittgenstein’s sort of philosophical investigation is an investigation, not into profundities, but rather into superficies. Superficies do the real work in philosophy; they are the means to dispelling philosophical illusions (think of Wittgenstein’s attack on the philosophical concept of meaning), but they are what philosophers look through and not what they see.

Seinfeld, Again

I hope that discussing Philosophical Investigations will make discussing Seinfeld easier. Wittgenstein’s commitment to the commonplaces, his investigation of superficies, is mirrored in Seinfeld’s commitment to the commonplaces of contemporary life, its investigation of the superficies of contemporary life. Seinfeld is a show about nothing—because it is a show about what goes unnoticed because of its familiarity. The show reorients its audience to the real foundations of contemporary life.

The way Seinfeld reorients its audience is closely related to the way that Philosophical Investigations gets its reader to see commonplaces. Philosophical Investigations takes the form of an album—a series of remarks—as opposed to the normal philosophical form, the finished essay. Seinfeld takes the form of an album—a series of vignettes—as opposed to the normal sitcom form, the developed plot. What Seinfeld is trying to get its audience to see is something that a developed plot would only obscure. A plot, naturally enough, orients the audience’s attention to itself. By doing so, the plot obscures commonplaces, since they are at most the means by which the plot is developed. By rejecting the developed plot, Seinfeld reorients the audience’s attention to the commonplaces.

Seinfeld, again like Philosophical Investigations, also shows itself aware of how difficult it is to keep attention oriented to commonplaces. In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein nags, describes, re-arranges and reminds. Seinfeld resorts to many of the same tactics: the particular commonplaces to which an episode orients attention recur in each, or in most, of the episodes’ vignettes. Each time they recur, the commonplaces are in a different setting, or are slightly transposed, or are differently reacted to by the characters. Seinfeld nags by insisting that the commonplaces recur, that the commonplaces are mentioned repeatedly by the characters or are ignored repeatedly by the characters.

Musicalizing the Commonplace

I began with a tease: an all-too-brief comment about the similar, contrapuntal structures of Philosophical Investigations and Seinfeld. I want to recur to my tease. In Aldous Huxley’s novel about contrapuntal structures, Point Counter Point, one of the characters, Philip Quarles, writes in his notebook:

The musicalization of fiction... Meditate on Beethoven... The changes of moods, the abrupt transitions... More interesting still, the modulations, not merely from one key to another, but from mood to mood. A theme is stated, then developed, pushed out of shape, imperceptibly deformed, until, though still recognizably the same, it has become quite different. In sets of variations the process is carried a step further. Those incredible Diabelli variations, for example. The whole range of thought and feeling, yet all in organic relation to a ridiculous little waltz tune. Get this into a novel. How?⁵⁶

I have been trying to shed light on how Philosophical Investigations and Seinfeld get this into a book of philosophy and into a sitcom. Wittgenstein musicalizes the commonplace for philosophy; Seinfeld musicalizes it for the sitcom. For each, the commonplaces are reliably revealed only when the reader or the audience recognizes organic relations—of remark to remark, or of vignette to vignette. That in Philosophical Investigations remark stands in organic relation to remark, or in Seinfeld, vignette to vignette, demonstrates the real foundational work done by the commonplaces. The commonplaces in organic relations organize our lives: the commonplaces are the tune of our lives. But the tune of the commonplaces, like the music of the spheres, is hard to hear—because we hear it all the time. Both Philosophical Investigations and Seinfeld strive to teach “a new way of hearkening, some kind of receptivity” (232). For both, it is not ignorance (the state), but rather ignoring (the activity) that needs combating. It is not something we do not know which is the problem, but rather something we will not do.

Finale

The bathos of Philosophical Investigations gathers most affectingly in 118, the remark that I quoted as my epigraph. Wittgenstein admits to himself that his investigation is unimportant, at least in the sense that it builds nothing, creates nothing great or important. But, in that sense, Wittgenstein thinks all philosophical investigation is unimportant. Philosophy builds nothing, creates nothing, except houses of cards. To think that philosophy has built well and surely, that it has created things of greatness and importance, is to suffer from an illusion—the same sort of illusion that makes the finished essay seem the only form for philosophy, or that makes the philosophical conception of meaning seem fated. Wittgenstein attacks philosophy’s houses of cards, pulls them down. He does so because our illusional fascination with the houses of cards blinds us to the commonplaces that support them, the ground of language.

The bathos of Seinfeld gathers in Jerry’s comment about Jerry: “It’s a show about nothing!” Jerry admits to himself that Jerry—and to his audience that Seinfeld—is unimportant, at least in the sense that no plot is developed. The lesson of Seinfeld is that our illusional fascination with the developed plot blinds us to the commonplaces that develop the plot, the ground of contemporary life.

Philosophical Investigations and Seinfeld each cultivate freedom from a certain illusion. To do this, each becomes a pseudomorph of the source of the illusion from which it frees: Philosophical Investigations is a pseudomorph of the finished essay; Seinfeld of the developed plot. To free a person from an illusion, it is necessary for the freeing device to enter into the space of illusion—that is, it is necessary for the freeing device to resemble what illudes so that the illuded person pays heed to the freeing device, to the pseudomorph. The trick is then to deform the pseudomorph—to deform it so as to reveal that the illusion itself (and not merely the pseudomorph) is optional. In this way, the hardness of the illuded ‘must’ is softened; what is overlook may then be seen. And only what is seen can be seen as striking or powerful, or great or important.⁵⁷