Hegel und Wittgenstein über den Sinn der Sprache

Abstract

The key objectives of this dissertation are to justify the use of dialectic methodology in the realm of the philosophy of language and to conduct a systematic processing of a limited part of this field. In order to explain and determine this approach, which is found rarely, if ever, in contemporary research, I will begin by referring to two philosophical authors: Hegel and Wittgenstein. Although Hegel and Wittgenstein are, prima facie, two authors who have very little in common, the primary supposition of this dissertation regarding the history of ideas is that Hegel’s concept of “Spirit” and Wittgenstein’s concept of “Form of life” are nevertheless both approaches and the results of philosophical effort that imply the necessity of solving a sceptical challenge. Wittgenstein actually developed an argument in his Philosophical Investigations that has been described as the “rule-following paradox” and has been considered in secondary literature (especially Kripke) as the main tenet of a sceptical argument. Consequently, Wittgenstein’s theory of language as developed in Philosophical Investigations has been interpreted by various authors either as a solution to this scepticism or as a sceptical, or “aporetic”, text in itself (Brandom). The first section of my dissertation aims to demonstrate that dealing with this paradox does not constitute a full sceptical argument and can be considered as the first moment of a higher form of sceptical challenge, an antinomy. A full sceptical challenge implies both the possibility that the theory corresponding to the unique solution of the paradox, the negation of any explicit normativity (“dispositionalism”), and the negation of the principle of this solution, can be proved. I’ll therefore attempt to establish an antinomy of the concept of normativity with respect to the rule of language, similar to Kant’s exposure of his cosmological antinomy (thesis cum antithesis). The second aim of my dissertation is to show: that Kant’s approach to solving his antinomy is ineffective concerning the antinomy of normativity; that this antinomy implies a confrontation with radical scepticism in a sense that we are committed not to simply challenging or reconsidering some theories, but to engaging in a deep revision of our methodology (This in turn entails a deep revision of the current norms of rationality); that the Hegelian dialectic emerges as the solution to such a radical sceptical challenge, as the true solution to antinomy. A further goal of this dissertation is to use this methodological result to gain a new knowledge of language, consisting of two contradictory moments of cognition that are constructively combined: normativity by means of disposition, and normativity by means of an explicit rule-following. The tangible benefit of such a methodological approach is the possibility of building a systematic philosophy of language that enables the establishment of a dialectical deduction of the moments of the concept of language as moments of the concept of the spirit, in other words, to establish the sense of language. Nonetheless, I must limit myself to exposure to the doctrine of imagination, which encompasses general semiotics and the system of grammar.