Book Review 3: 'Philosophical Investigations' and Wittgenstein’s Critique of Augustine

The philosophy of Wittgenstein can be classified into two major eras. Where he did a doctrinal change and also he changed the method that he used. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus represents his early philosophy and Philosophical Investigations represents his later philosophy. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus consists of the limits of language, limits of logic and he rejected religious, ethical and aesthetic statements as they are subjective statements which lead to disagreements among people.

Philosophical Investigations comes under the later philosophy of Wittgenstein. It is based on two major themes, which can be called as the philosophy of language and philosophical psychology. It can be also named as a grammatical investigation since he stated that philosophy is based on some misunderstandings of our language. This book is also hierarchically numbered remarks. Most of the remarks are composed as conversations between Wittgenstein and an interlocutor that consists with the reality and sometimes consists of imaginary examples.

The method that is used in Philosophical Investigations is a method of thought rather than a method of doctrines. First, he uses a particular style in the Philosophical Investigations. Secondly, he stated the response of the interlocutor that was imagined in order to co-op up with the situation. He uses long dashes and quotation marks to differentiate his ideas from the interlocutor’s ideas. 

In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein, describe how language is used, notion of language games, the notion of family resemblance, philosophy as a therapy, ‘meaning in use’ etc. The important thing is Wittgenstein does not merely argue on what he believes to be the truth. Nevertheless, the reader is influenced to conclude certain conclusions.

Augustine’s Confessions 

Saint Augustine was a great theologian in the medieval period and considered as the first medieval theologian and last church father. He was born to a religiously mixed family with a pagan father and a faithful Christian mother. This religious combination affected to the way that he accompanied with Catholic Church. 

He composed a collection of thirteen books after he became a church father that is named as Augustine’s Confessions. The term ‘confessions’ is generally referred to autobiographical works. Therefore, Augustine’s Confessions have composed from his autobiography that has two major turning points in his life. They are his youth, which was wasted doing sin and his turn towards Christianity. 

He was directed towards paganism. He became an auditor in Manichean religion for nine years, which was the direct opposition of the Christian church. He rejects bible as it is composed with stories. However, after sometime he broke away with Manichaeism. He attends church of St. Ambrose. He joined with Christianity and baptized as Augustine of Hippo after attending some preaches.

Moreover, Confessions in thirteen books were the original title of Augustine’s Confessions and it was his essential work. It was not only an autobiographical work, but is considered as one of the great literal works. It was written as a prayer to God. In his youth, he believed astrology. He states regrets on believing astrology and following Manichean religion. Thirteen confessions can be classifies into two. First nine confessions are based on autobiographies and other four confessions are some kind of a philosophical work. 

First book deals with Augustine’s infancy and the second one is based on his adolescence. Accordingly, the third, fourth, fifth and sixth books are based on his move to Carthage and studying Rhetoric, his relationship with an unnamed woman who gave birth to his child and the period he split with that particular woman, disillusioned with Manichean religion and moves to Rome where he was invited by the university of Milan that was given him the chance to attend church of St. Ambrose and his move towards Catholicism. In Eighth book it is mentioned that when he was in the garden he heard, a voice of a child was chanting as ‘take up and read’. He took the bible and randomly turned it. That passage was in Romans 13:13-14 is mentioned as following. “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in the strife and envy. But put on the lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts”.

Furthermore, ninth book deals with concluding the study of Rhetoric and death of his mother; St. Monica who was a faithful Christian mother. From tenth to thirteenth book, Augustine expressed some philosophical thoughts such as the trinity which is defined as the one, the divine mind and the world soul.

Wittgenstein selected a quotation from Augustine’s confessions for the opening of Philosophical Investigations. That particular quotation is written in Latin. Its’ English translation is mentioned following.“When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shown by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice, which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires” (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 2).

This is a naturalistic view. This emphasized that language acquisition can be developed by pointing. To illustrate, when a small children is taught that what a tree is by elders, we can point at a tree and show them that it is a tree. They repeat it and learn through training. Here language is taken as a collection of ostensible definitions, which can be defined as you point at something and describe it in order to make someone learn something. Wittgenstein rejects this thought although he believed that it is possible to deal with language through Augustine’s view.   

It is important to check out the reason why Wittgenstein selected above mentioned quotation. He says, “Wittgenstein brings out the universality of the temptations he is concerned with” (McGinn, 1997, p. 37). According to Wittgenstein, those temptations, which are established their roots through language need to be, investigate from the root itself in order to make it easy for the further philosophical inquires. 

This particular quotation of the Augustine’s confessions is essential since “it presents us with the first, primitive impulse to theorize about language, to try to explain or model how it functions” (McGinn, 1997, p. 37). Wittgenstein has used above mentioned quotation in order to investigate the origin of the language. Wittgenstein stated that “Augustine does not distinguish between different kinds of words, but  takes one sort of word-‘table’, ‘chair’, ‘bread’, and people’s names’- as a model, and derives his general picture of how language functions from this one sort of case’ (McGinn, 1997, p. 39).

For that Wittgenstein direct the reader to imagine a particular example that he has mentioned in order to see how people use simple language in their day-to-day life. He stated a shop keeper thought experiment. “I send someone shopping. I gave him a slip marked “five red apples”. He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked “apples”, then he looks up the word “red” in a table and finds a color sample opposite” (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 3). 

However, there arose a question that ‘what he is to do with the word ‘five’? (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 3). Wittgenstein says that ‘I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere’ (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 3). Suppose that a person is given a slip, which is stated ‘five red apples’ and the particular person hand over that slip to a shop keeper. He looks word by word. He looks at the word ‘apple’ and then see the word red that represents the colour. Shopkeeper finds ‘red apples’ and then counts up to five. Now he has given five red apples. This implies that the term ‘red’ is correlated with the red colour object and the word ‘apple’ is correlated with the object apple. However, Wittgenstein makes a question of the word ‘five’. Only its usage has explained in the quotation. It is just a way of doing something that represents from counting apples.

“Although this example presents a simple language, or a simple use of language, it does not involve the sort of oversimplification that we fin in Augustine” (McGinn, 1997, p. 39).

Nevertheless, Wittgenstein does not take the ‘five red apples’ example to make claims on the fundamental essence of language. In this quotation, language has used as a tool that makes it more practical. Wittgenstein says, “But what is the meaning of the word ‘five’? - No such thing was in question here, only how the word ‘five’ is used” (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 3). Here the shopkeeper memorizes five and then the shopkeeper act according to the memorized scenario. Wittgenstein investigates on the language through its usage and to find the essence of meaning in language. 

Wittgenstein emphasized this simple example in order to bring “how language is interwoven with non-linguistic activity” (McGinn, 1997, p. 40) and “how it is in use that the different functions of expressions become apparent” (McGinn, 1997, p. 40). Wittgenstein works against the temptations of Augustine in order to suggest about ‘language in abstraction from its use and to look for the essence of meaning” (McGinn, 1997, p. 40). 

It is clear that Wittgenstein wanted people to b aware of the techniques of language. According to him, linguistic techniques can be existed within simple languages. Wittgenstein introduces critique by stating that “let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right” (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 3) rather than directing people towards falsified description on language by Augustine. 

Wittgenstein introduced a primitive thought on the functions of language. Reader is asked to imagine that is right. Suppose that there is a set of buildings and there are two builders. One is named as person ‘A’ and other one is named as person ‘B’. Wittgenstein states that “A is building with building-stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams” (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 3). The person B had to pass them to A, when he asks it. Simply A calls a name and b brings the stones, which he has learnt to bring at such a call. To illustrate, person ‘A’ calls out a block and person ‘B’ brings out a block. 

Wittgenstein suggests that the children who are belong to the tribe of builders, must be familiar with this language. He says “the children are brought up to perform these actions, to use these words as they do so, and to react in this way to the words of others” (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 4). According to Wittgenstein, in the scenario language is used as it a game. 

He suggests language as a series of games rather than a hierarchical structure. Meaning of the language depends on the language type and the type of the language game is depended on the context. To illustrate, the term soul is used in different ways. Plato has used it philosophically and priests have used it by adding it to religious context. Words are moved in the context as a game. For instance, we can see a correlation between the things that was said by the two builders and the things they do. There arose a question that can be described as whether this is appropriate to call as a language or not. The answer is ‘yes’. However, it is appropriate in a narrow context.   

Both Wittgenstein’s and Augustine’s ideas are contrasted. According to Wittgenstein, those children are trained to make a relationship with the word and the shape of the object. An innate tendency helps them to get familiar with the teaching. Augustine mentioned that obviously children are able to grasp the sound when adults show something by pointing them. In contrast, Wittgenstein says that, “An important part of the training will consists in the teacher’s pointing to the objects, directing the children’s attention to them, and at the same time uttering a word; for instance the word ‘slab’ as he points to that shape” (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 4).

Wittgenstein expressed some examples in order to make a critical analysis of the picture of language, which was emphasized by Augustine. The critique covered ‘the whole style of thinking about language that Augustine adopts’ (McGinn, 1997, p. 70). The key issue is that ‘how we approach the problem of understanding, the structure, and functions of language’ (McGinn, 1997, p. 70). According to Augustine a particular word is a sign which has a reference to a particular object and represents its meaning. Wittgenstein emphasized that from the starting itself Augustine was misguided himself in a way that it is impossible to acquire the expected understanding on abstracting language.

It is important to identify Wittgenstein’s,“aim of resisting what he sees as the false abstraction and the mistaken explanatory ambitions of Augustine’s approach that we do not attempt to present his objections to Augustine in the form of a theory about what constitutes the essence of language” (McGinn, 1997, p. 71). 

The main idea is that philosophy neither explains nor deduces anything because ‘everything lies open to view’ (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 126). From this we are able to overcome, our fear of there might be something which is in need of explain since there is nothing to be explained. 

The whole critique of Wittgenstein on Augustine’s Confessions is based on the point that he is used several cases in order to see how language functions and to introduce that there cannot be any conjecture of concealed accompaniments. Wittgenstein says that by getting a crystal clear view of a particular case we can achieve understanding on what we seek. In order to achieve his, “aim of overcoming, not merely particular doctrines but Augustine’s whole style of thought, Wittgenstein tries to show how discernible structures of our practice of using language already reveal everything that we need to resolve the questions that puzzle us” (McGinn, 1997, p. 71).

Augustine’s quotation has taken as a base to prove Wittgenstein’s philosophical stand point. 

Conclusion

According to my point of view, Wittgenstein imagines that his ‘picture theory’ and the concept of ‘picture of language’, which was emphasized by Augustine, have a similarity. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein has taken only a small portion on Augustine’s Confessions and made it to support his own picture theory of language regardless of what the other ideas that Augustine has included in the Confessions. This method, which takes ancient texts and sees whether they are correlated with the contemporary ideas and our philosophical views or not, is a very interesting method in philosophy. 

Wittgenstein accepts that children are taught to learn things or language acquisition by pointing as it is mentioned in Augustine’s quotation. He rejects that children are taught by explaining. Wittgenstein suggests that procedure of learning their native language as ‘language games’. Pointing itself connects with not with the things in physical world but with the things that is in the ‘meaning in use’. He says that language can be seen as ostensible definitions which can be defined as the things we defined by clinging to that particular thing. 

Wittgenstein also accepts that language acquisition can be improved by training. It is a similarity with Augustine’s quotation. He also mentioned that his mouth was trained to use words after his elders show things and repeat it. Augustine’s quotation has taken as a base to prove Wittgenstein’s philosophical stand point. According to above mentioned facts it will be easy to understand the connection between Augustine’s Confessions with Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.

Works Cited

McGinn, M. (1997). Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations. London: Routledge.

Mulhall, S. (2007). Wittgenstein's Private Lanuage. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Pears, D. (1971). Wittgnstein. Great Britain: Fontana/Collins.

Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical Investigations. (G. E. Anscombe, Trans.) New York: The Macmillan Company.