philosophical Investigations ( Philosophische Untersuchungen ) is a work of Ludwig Wittgenstein published in posthumous title in 1953. The author worked on this book during many years, and it “was finished” about 1949. With the Tractatus logico-philosophicus , it is the second major work of Wittgenstein.

Also named philosophical Research in the last French translation in date (2004), the book was originally published in German. It treats mainly semantics and way in which confusions concerning the use of the language are at the origin of the majority of the philosophical problems. Questions about logic, the foundation of mathematics and the nature of the conscience are also tackled.

Method

This work is regarded as remarkable by its approach of the Philosophie, by the use of experiments of thought; what requires of the reader an important participation and the effort to follow the philosopher in the imagination of different worlds to test the terminals of those.

Rules of the language

According to Wittgenstein, the majority of the problems of Philosophie rise from the incapacity of the Philosophe S to correctly include/understand the rules of the language ( Regeln der Sprache ). When a philosopher asks for example what is the beauty, it is convinced that it must exist something of essence which must make a being beautiful. However, it is actually only about a Erreur caused by the grammatical form of the question what…? Ainsi Wittgenstein points out it that we do not need to include/understand what is the gasoline of the beauty to use the word “beauty correctly”; the research of the gasoline creates even confusions on the correction of the use of a term. Also, instead of seeking a Substrat which defines the beautiful one, Wittgenstein proposes to find of them the direction in our real use of the Mot; for example, by wondering how the children learn the use from it.

Natural language, direction and use

The main argument of Wittgenstein is thus: Bedeutung STI der Gebrauch , the correct significance is in the use. In other words, we do not define the words while referring to us in the things, but in the way in which use we them. It is thus not necessary to suppose the existence of beings independent of all the characteristics of the physical objects.

Plays of language

Is the language a play “What a play? ”. To know what it east is a question typically wittgensteinienne. A play is a inter-human activity (even if one can play all alone). It is an activity which pragmatically functions. The plays which do not go, one cannot play there. A play functions because he was learned. One can play when one learned. (process of training). A play is something which seems to observe rules, but there are no inevitably rules (ex: play of the animals, coded but not regulated). The problem it is not to know if there are rules or not, but to know if these rules are describable rules, that one could explain. The concept of explicit rules is relatively fuzzy.

Thus the language functions like a play, and the questions which one puts on his rules are the same ones. The rules of the language, we apply them without to have learned them: native tongue.

Why are the rules best observed than one did not learn? It is not because a rule is observed that it is known.

Air of family

Private language

See too

External bonds

  • the first 100 chapters with comments (English)

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