Language Games and Philosophy

Abstract

In this article, Pierre Hadot examines the late philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the so-called “linguistic turn” in philosophy and the social sciences. Although certain interpreters of Wittgenstein have thought that Philosophical Investigations shows philosophy to be predicated on a series of confusions based on the misuse of language, Hadot argues contrarily that an understanding of Wittgenstein’s idea of “language games”—far from ending philosophy—allows us to see it anew and to discern the source of some of its deepest perplexities. Of particular concern is the notion of the ancient idea of philosophical discourse as intrinsically connected to various forms of apprenticeship or spiritual formation. It is in this context that the supposed inconsistencies and unusual repetitions of ancient philosophy can be understood. Only from the Middle Ages do philosophical language games begin slowly to become detached from certain kinds of training, of pedagogies connected to forms of life, and become texts—and “systems”—in the sense of being written for the purposes of merely conventional reading.