PHENOMENOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF WITTGENSTEIN'S PHILOSOPHY

Transcription

1 PHENOMENOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF WITTGENSTEIN'S PHILOSOPHY

2 SYNTHESE LIBRARY STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Managing Editor: JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University Editors: DIRK VAN DALEN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands DONALD DAVIDSON, University of California, Berkeley THEO A.F. KUIPERS, University of Groningen, The Netherlands PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California JAN WOLENSKI, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland VOLUME 268

3 BYONG-CHUL PARK Pusan University of Foreign Studies, Pusan, Korea PHENOMENOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF WITTGENSTEIN'S PHILOSOPHY id SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

4 A CLP. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner

5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Vll CHAPTER I. Wittgenstein's Phenomenology 1 1. Wittgenstein's Phenomenology 1 2. The Background ofwittgenstein's Idea of Phenomenology 8 3. Phenomenology VS. Phenomenalism 18 CHAPTER II. Phenomenology of the Tractatus Russell's Influence on the Early Wittgenstein The Nature of Tractarian Objects Husserl, Russell, and Wittgenstein Phenomenology and Solipsism Solipsism I Phenomenology and Logical Analysis 67 CHAPTER III. The Languages of Phenomenology The Shift of Language Paradigms Solipsism II Wittgenstein's Phenomenology of Time Rules, Language-games, and Phenomenology Sensations and the Language of Sensations 122 CHAPTER IV. Wittgenstein on Color Concepts Wittgenstein on Color Concepts: the Early View The Language-game of Color Wittgenstein on Color Concepts: the Later View 152 CHAPTER V. Wittgenstein on Aspects Wittgenstein's Use of the word 'Aspect' Language-games of Aspect 170

6 VI TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER VI. Is Phenomenology Possible for Wittgenstein? Other Phenomenological Interpretations Interpretations against Phenomenological Interpretation Is Phenomenology Possible for Wittgenstein? 205 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 215 NOTES 217 BIBLIOGRAPHY 236 INDEX 245

7 In his writings around 1930, Wittgenstein relates his philosophy in different ways to the idea of phenomenology. He indicates that his main philosophical project had earlier been the construction of a purely phenomenological language, and even after having given up this project he believed that "the world we live in is the world of sense-data,,,l that is, of phenomenological objects. However, a problem is posed by the fact that he does not appear ever to have given a full, explicit account of what he means by his 'phenomenology', 'phenomenological language', or 'phenomenological problems'. In this book, I have tried to unravel the nature of Wittgenstein's phenomenology and to examine its importance for his entire work in philosophy. Phenomenology can be characterized as philosophy whose primary concern is what is immediately given in one's experience. This 'immediately given' is not merely impressions inside one's mind, but includes also the part of objective reality that impinges upon one's consciousness. Thus, an aim of phenomenological enterprise is to grasp this objective reality by attending to immediate experience. Husserl's phenomenology is in fact a case in point. Similarly, Wittgenstein's main attention throughout his entire philosophical career is directed to one's immediate experience. What makes Wittgenstein's phenomenology unusual, however, is the way he views immediate experience. For Wittgenstein, especially the early Wittgenstein, the nature of the immediately given is unique in the sense that the possibility of logic is also based on it. Indeed, the fact that Wittgenstein sees the foundation of logic in immediate experience is what makes his philosophy a kind of phenomenology. In the Tractatus, all logical forms are combinations of logical forms of immediately given objects of experience. Also, immediate experience can only be grasped and understood by means of language, because Wittgenstein views language as the ultimate medium through which we understand the world. Therefore, the important problem for him is

8 Vlll the way we use language to describe immediate experience. In my study, I examine Wittgenstein's concern with immediate experience and the way we describe it, a concern which guides his philosophical journey through the phenomenological problems that pervade his work. Chapter one discusses the general problems with regard to Wittgenstein's phenomenology. I widely examine and discuss the philosophical background of Wittgenstein's phenomenology, which should be clearly distinguished from any form of phenomenalism. In order to clarify what Wittgenstein means by his phenomenology, I not only examine the way Wittgenstein uses the words 'phenomenology' and 'phenomenological' in his own writings and other related materials but try to trace the possible influence from which Wittgenstein might have received the usage and the idea of phenomenology. Among many possible influences are those of theoretical physicist Ludwig Boltzmann as well as Heinrich Hertz and Ernst Mach. Chapter two consists of a detailed discussion of Wittgenstein's phenomenology in the Tractatus, the focus being on how Wittgenstein develops his phenomenological ideas, which consist of the Tractarian logic and logical analysis, and on how he comes to modify his earlier view toward the middle period. Most importantly, I discuss Russell's influence on the development ofwittgenstein's early philosophy, and I carefully examine the philosophical interactions between Russell and Wittgenstein with regard to Russell's theory of acquaintance, for Wittgenstein's reaction to Russell's theory results in Wittgenstein's phenomenology. In addition, I discuss the problem of solipsism in relation to the general characteristic of phenomenology, bringing the ideas of Husserl, Russell, and Wittgenstein into interesting comparison, as solipsism occurs in each of these philosophers' epistemological concerns. Wittgenstein's middle-period writings show that Wittgenstein is in transition. Chapter three discusses how he not only rejects some of the most important doctrines of the Tractatus but adopts new logic that eventually grows into the notion of grammar, and how he shifts language paradigms, namely from the phenomenological language of

9 IX the Tractatus to the physicalistic language of ordinary use. In light of this shift, I examine his middle-period treatment of solipsism and the problem of phenomenology of time. The change in the language paradigms apparently makes it impossible for Wittgenstein to conduct phenomenological enterprise. In fact, the abandonment of earlier logic, which is phenomenological in nature, waters down the phenomenological aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophy from the middle period on to the extent that he declares "there is no such thing as phenomenology, but there are indeed phenomenological problems.,,2 I examine how Wittgenstein continues to wrestle with these phenomenological problems as he develops the language-game idea. In chapter four I discuss Wittgenstein's treatment of color concepts. The problem of color is very phenomenological for Wittgenstein in the sense that the color he examines is color we immediately experience. I show that Wittgenstein tackles this phenomenological problem of color from the early period through the very last. In the early period colors are the example of Tractarian objects, so that from the beginning, Wittgenstein has no interest in the theory of physical color, a point well presented and supported in his Philosophical Remarks, where he repeatedly says of the theory of color that contains no hypothetical elements. As the language-game idea develops, Wittgenstein directs his concern toward how we can express and describe the color of immediate experience in our language-game, and so I conclude the color chapter with a discussion of the language-game of color. In chapter five I develop the idea that Wittgenstein's use of the word 'aspect' means a phenomenological object. The main purpose of Wittgenstein's frequent use of the word 'aspect' along with 'aspect-seeing' and 'aspect-change' in his late writings is not to entertain Gestalt psychology or philosophy of psychology per se, but deeply related to his earlier ideas of phenomenology. Examining his use of the word in middle and late period writings, I show that Wittgenstein's 'aspect' does not have its familiar meaning of 'side' or 'facet'. For Wittgenstein, the word 'aspect' means a way of

10 x appearing, a phenomenological object picked out by logically proper names like 'this' and 'that'. I conclude my study of Wittgenstein's phenomenology with criticism of other phenomenological interpretations presented since the 1950s. Some intend to identify Wittgenstein's phenomenology with Husserlian phenomenology, while others dismiss any claims that Wittgenstein was a phenomenologist. Also, some interpret that Wittgenstein's early and early middle-period works are prone to phenomenalism. As I show in chapter one, Wittgenstein's philosophy cannot be identified with phenomenalism in any sense, as Russell's philosophy in the early 1910s cannot be. I also criticize the claim that Wittgenstein was never a phenomenologist as we have reasonable ground to assert that Wittgenstein indeed put forward what can be characterized as the main concerns of phenomenology. We have to be cautious in this regard of simplification of the phenomenological aspects appearing in Wittgenstein's philosophy. Ignoring the context and background of the problems out of which Wittgenstein's phenomenology grew, some philosophers attempt to identify Wittgenstein's phenomenology as belonging to the so-called phenomenological movement. But in my evaluation of this attempt I propose that Wittgenstein's phenomenology is a different kind from Husserlian phenomenology. This book is a revision of my doctoral dissertation, which I completed in 1995 at Boston University under the supervision of Professor Jaakko Hintikka. One of the purposes in my study is to continue and develop in further details what Professor Hintikka set out in his phenomenological interpretation, 3 and to present the phenomenological aspects in different stages of Wittgenstein's philosophy in a systematic manner. I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Hintikka for his philosophical stimulation from the conception of the topic to the completion of this book. I also wish to thank Professors Judson Webb and Juliet Floyd of Boston University who read drafts of manuscript and provided penetrating comments for feedback. While I was writing chapter 5, I have benefited from the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen. I thank Claus Huitfeldt and

11 Xl Maria Sollohub of the Wittgenstein Archives for kindly providing me with very helpful data from computer search. I would like to gratefully acknowledge HK. Choi for sacrificing his time to make my incomplete English more tolerable. Finally, I would like to thank my parents. Without their encouragement and support, the completion of this book would not have been possible.