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Florence, Italy

Philosophical Investigations Part II, xi

In these few considerations Wittgenstein shows his modernity in thematizing pencil drawn pictures, e.g. from Jastrow, and starting a philosophical discussion with aspect seeing. His modern thoughts might be correlated to the elder philosophy. But the main point is his modern point of view.

Wittgenstein starts with two categories of seeing and he speaks from a categorial difference of these kinds of seeing. He means seeing something and seeing a kindness.

111. Two uses of the word „see“.

The one: „What do we see there?“ – „I see this“ (and then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: „I see a likeness in these two faces“ – let the man to whom I tell this be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself.

What is important ist he categorial difference between the two „objects“ of sight.

Seeing a kindness is more specified with sentence 113:

113 „I observe a face, and than suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this experience „noticing an aspect.“

This remembers everyone of Immanuel Kant. On the one hand Wittgenstein uses the word categories on the other hand it refers to Kants copernican revolution, his critique oft he pure reason and his transcendental philosophy. Not the thing is considerable, only the relationship to the thing we consider is here one of the milestones of the transcendental philosophy of Kant.

I even think that Wittgenstein is a little bit more than the transcendental revolution. I want to mention that he is a very modern thinker which is visuable in his whole work and which is also written down in the Philosophical Investigations Part II, xi: Wittgenstein explains e.g. his ideas with simple pencil drawings, which is also typical for modern writing or thinking. His modernity is also visible in his understanding of the „I“, the self-understanding. The Vienna oft he 20. Century is also fame for modernity.

The transcendental idea is discussed in the analytical philosophy, e.g. by Barry Stroud and his essay about Transcendental Arguments. He referrs there to the philosophical text „Individuals“ of Strawson and he is well known that he found arguments against Strawsons text. Strouds „Transcendental Arguments“ is also a text of the sceptical idea. Stroud is here named because Kant rarely used the term transcendental arguments. He recurres in his work on Wittgenstein and in his essay, too, but without naming Wittgenstein. Stroud wants to fight for the sceptical idea.

Wittgenstein also oversteps the transcendental idea because he is a sceptical person and his philosophy has sceptical elements.

Wittgenstein brings a first and simpel exampel with a pencil drawn box. He explains that it might be seen as box, a glass tube, a wire frame or anything like that. A human beeing interprets the picture. Seeing a kindness means interpreting the visuable thing. We all know the pictures of the so called „duck-rabbit“ or „the young lady and

the old woman“. Or the picture with a male face or a naked woman. It is a game with optic illusions.

The duck-rabbit picture is described by Wittgenstein as following:

118. In my remarks, the following figure, derived from Jastrow, will be called „the duck-rabbit“. It can be seen as a rabbit´s head or as a duck´s.

And I must distinguis between the `continuous seeing`of an aspect and an aspect´s ´lightening up`.

The picture might have been shown me, without my ever seeing in it anything but a rabbit.

Wittgenstein claims „Seeing – as“ is not a part of the perception. And he describes it that it is like seeing and not like seeing. Well, it seems to be a difference between perception and seeing.

This difference remembers us of Platon and his theory of ideas. So Ludwig Wittgenstein is surely more fame for beeing influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer. (e.g. Sluga 2011) and he is also well-known for not beeing influenced from the elder Philosophers because the logical way of philosophy and the linguistic turn is one of the new challenges of Wittgenstein, Frege and Russell.

But the greece philosophy might be also a part of his thinking. So Sluga showed in his essay “Wittgenstein and Pyrrhonism” (Sluga 2004) roots of the Pyrrhonism and a relationship of Wittgenstein to the scepticism. And his collegue David Stern claims that the diologues way oft he PI might be influenced by the dialogs of Platon. So David g. Stern wrotes in "Wittgenstein's critique of referential theories of meaning and the paradox of ostension: Philosophical Investigations §§26-48" that Wittgenstein was reading Platon before writing the PI and that there is a dialogue in the PI, too:

„In 1944 when Wittgenstein was putting the first part of the philosophical investigations into its final form, he told a friend that he was reading Platos Theatetus and that „Plato in this dialogue is occupied with the same problems that I´m writing about.“

The Theatetus is the dialogue about the nature of knowledge. Sokrates discusses here also the knowledge in correlation with aiesthesis (perception) and episteme (knowledge). But if perception is correlated with knowledges, with a different perception we have also different knowledges and with this idea we are again close to Kant, who claims that the thing is not considerable. And it is also claimed Prometeus fame sentence that the man is the measure of all things.

But I don´t want to extent this essay for a relationship between Platon and Wittgenstein. I just want to remark this and that seeing and thinking is also correlated in Wittgensteins work.

Wittgenstein describes seeing and thinking as follows:

139 But since the exclamation is the description of a perception, one can also call it the expression of thought. – Someone who looks at an object need not think of it; but whoever hast he visual experience expressed by the exclamation is also thinking of what he sees

140 And that´s why the lighting up of an aspect seems half visual experience, half thought.

Also the recognizing is a theme by Wittgenstein. First he just sees the person and he needs time for recognizing him.

143 I meet someone whom I have not seen for years. I see him clearly, but fail to recognoze him. Suddenly I recognize him, I see his former face in the altered one. I believe that I would portrary him differently now if I could paint.

Wittgenstein also asks if recognizing someone in a crowd if this is a special form of seeing.

There might be also this – that things are upside down. A face, and written words. The revers figure is very different from the figure. It is e.g. more difficult to copy a reversed word than copying a right written word.

An a human beeing is also able so see this aspect in a mans face: a likeness with his or her anchestors:

239 „I noticed the likeness between him and his father for a few minutes, and than no longer.“ – One might say this if his face were changing, and only looked like his father´s for a short time. But it can also mean that, after a few minutes, I stopped beeing struck by the likeness.

So Wittgenstein shows us starting with the pencil drawn pictures and goes up to visuable things in the faces of human beeings, which is typical for his way of philosophy – starting with soemthing very easy and going up to very difficult ideas or here: more complex ideas.

It is very special to find in the last part of the PI such a broad variety of Kantian, Platonic and modern aspects. It is surely correlated with this that we are all in a humanistic tradition and if we think about some areas like these of Wittgenstein here we are easily in these contexts. And the modern way Wittgenstein shows us is at last his century. So the modern standpoint is his standpoint.

Bettina Müller

Literature:

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigation edited by Hacker/Schulte german/english by Wiley-Blackwell 2009

Sluga, Hans, Wittgenstein by Wiley-Blackwell 2011

Sluga, Hans “Wittgenstein and Pyrrhonism” (2004) in Pyrrhonian Skepticism, ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Oxford 2004

Stern, David G. "Wittgenstein's critique of referential theories of meaning and the paradox of ostension: Philosophical Investigations §§26-48"