Bewitching Oxymorons and Illusions of Harmony
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7565/landp.v10i1.5486Abstract
Wittgenstein’s account of how language bewitches one’s intelligence is a singular achievement in the phenomenology of language. In section 426 of Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein famously claims that the meaning of a word is to be found in the “actual use” of it, and he contrasts this understanding with the projection of a picture:
A picture is conjured up which seems to fix the sense unambiguously. The actual use, compared with that suggested by the picture, seems like something muddied. ... [T]he form of expression we use seems to have been designed for a god, who knows what we cannot know; he sees the whole of each of those infinite series and he sees into human consciousness. (Wittgenstein, 1953, section 426)
References
American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of
mental disorders, 5th edition. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.
Atwood, G. E. (2011). The abyss of madness. New York, NY: Routledge.
Atwood, G. E., & Stolorow, R. D. (2014). Structures of subjectivity: Explorations in
psychoanalytic phenomenology and contextualism, 2nd Edition. New York, NY: Routledge.
Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology. In The question
concerning technology and other essays (pp. 3-35). Trans. W. Lovitt. New York, NY: Harper. (Original work published 1954)
Jaspers, K. (1963). General psychopathology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press. (Original work published 1913)
Kohut, H. (1977). The restoration of the self. New York, NY: International
Universities Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. C. Smith. New
York, NY: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1945)
Ratcliffe, M. (2015). Experiences of depression: A study in phenomenology.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Riker, J. (2020). Intersubjective self psychology. Psychoanalytic
Review, 107. 197-203.
Stolorow, R. D. & Atwood, G. E. (2013). The tragic and the metaphysical in
philosophy and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Review, 100, 405-421.
Stolorow, R. D., & Atwood, G. E. (2017). The phenomenology of language and the
metaphysicalizing of the real. Language and Psychoanalysis, 6, 4-9.
Stolorow, R. D., & Atwood, G. E. (2018). The Power of Phenomenology:
Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Perspectives. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This is an Open Access journal. All material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, unless otherwise stated.
Please read our Open Access, Copyright and Permissions policies for more information.
