The Meaning of Aspects

Abstract

According to many critics, there is not only a lack of coherence between the fragments of part II of the Philosophical Investigations, but also between part I and part II themselves. In the previous chapter, however, I showed that Wittgenstein’s remarks on the ‘hidden inner’ of other people in Philosophical Investigations II xi are systematically connected with the problem of psychological statements in the first person which he analyses in Philosophical Investigations I. The fragments about the ‘hidden inner’ are the least-known part of section xi and the piece de resistance is formed by the richly variegated logic of ‘aspect’ and ‘seeing-as’. Hardly anybody has known how to relate this logic to Philosophical Investigations I. Not surprisingly, therefore, none of the well-known monographs1 on Wittgenstein devotes a chapter to ‘seeing-as’. Those who have written about ‘seeing-as’ have been less concerned with its place in the Investigations and more interested in applying Wittgenstein’s insights to philosophy of science and aesthetics.2 In brief, those who have written about Wittgenstein have said little or nothing about ‘seeing-as’, and those who have written about ‘seeing-as’ have said little or nothing about Wittgenstein.