Wittgenstein's world-picture

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the position and meaning of Wittgenstein’s notion of “world-picture” in comparison with the central doctrines of Tractatus—the “picture-theory of meaning”—and Philosophical Investigations—“language-game” and “form of life.” This notion appears in his book On Certainty, which he wrote in the last couple years of his life; it prompts a few questions concerning the degree to which Wittgenstein distances himself from his previous philosophical stands, leading to the very interpretation of the “third-Wittgenstein.” Early Wittgenstein is mostly engaged in picturing the logical structure of language and its relation to the world. Later Wittgenstein, with a revolutionary step, criticizes his old thoughts and proposes new ideas. The crucial question here is whether Wittgenstein’s attention to the epistemological debates in the last few years of his life is a new approach to his way of doing philosophy. We can study the notion of the world-picture concerning both strands. On the one hand, what we can find in Tractatus is sort of a metaphysical subject who is a limit of the world, whereas the world-picture discusses the beliefs of an empirical subject about the world—a subject who lives in the world. On the other hand, the world-picture preconditions the language-game presented in Philosophical Investigations. Before participating in any language-games or forms of life, a language user needs to have a worldview constituted of beliefs without reason. How I intend to develop this topic is by looking at Wittgenstein’s early and later philosophy to tackle this possible question: Does the notion of a world-picture necessitate the recognition of a “third Wittgenstein” in philosophy?