Wittgenstein's Account of Music and its Comparison to Language: Understanding, Experience and Rules

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, I discuss Wittgenstein’s conception of music, musical understanding and the sense of comparing music to language. I argue that for Wittgenstein, musical understanding is describable as a specific kind of experience that is public and sharable. I then reject any formalist view, which asserts that musical understanding is exclusively an ability to follow a set of established rules. Second, I illustrate the scope of Wittgenstein’s comparison between languages and posit that music is useful for clarifying the concept of linguistic understanding in the case of certain specific language‐games, such as making jokes or puns. I will finally show that no thesis on the nature of language parallels and follows such a comparison.