Ludwig Wittgenstein’s views on language have equally influenced our practice. Wittgenstein is typically associated with analytic philosophy, and other philosophical movements (including ordinary language philosophy and logical positivism) claim him as a major influence. However, we view him as an activity-theorist. Contemporary philosophers divide his work into the early and later writings. The early Wittgenstein attempted to solve the problems of philosophy by showing the logical form of language in a manner consistent with what logicians and mathematicians were doing at the time. However, he soon abandoned this approach and devoted the rest of his intellectual life to the exploration/investigation of a non-essentialist philosophy, that is, philosophy without theses or premises, philosophy as method. In an unusual display of intellectual honesty, Wittgenstein pointed to the errors and dogmatism of his own early masterpiece, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; in the best known of his later writings, Philosophical Investigations, he repudiated the “old ways of thinking” and “grave mistakes” he had made in that early work (Wittgenstein, 1953, pp. v-vi).

Wittgenstein’s writings are more explicitly anti-referential and anti-cognitive than Vygotsky’s. His views on philosophy, language, philosophical scientific methodology and psychology consistently reject essences, deeper meanings, metaphysics and underlying rules and patterns. His effort was to create a new non-systematic, non-truth-based understanding of understanding (which, in effect, would do away with philosophy with a capital P). In this regard, his work can be seen not merely as critical but also as therapeutic, an observation made by several contemporary scholars. For example, according to Gordon Baker (1992), we would do well to pay attention to Wittgenstein’s “overall therapeutic conception of his philosophical investigations” (p. 129). Rather than advocating a generalized position, Wittgenstein “always sought to address specific philosophical problems of definite individuals” (p. 129).

To us, Wittgenstein’s critique took the form of a non-systematic ‘client-specific’ treatment plan for both philosophers and ordinary people. Philosophy is the disease, language the carrier, philosophical scientific methodology the hospital which science neither wants, nor needs. And psychology is the pseudoscientific, bogus cure.

Language is the carrier of the disease, for Wittgenstein, because of the overdetermining representationalist connection between language and thought we in our culture make (the view that language expresses thought which Vygotsky rejected). We presume that our thoughts, words and deeds are lawfully connected, and speak of and seek causes, correspondences, parallels and generalizations between and among things we think, say and do. Wittgenstein’s method is to show us again and again the extent to which our thinking is strongly shaped by assumptions and presuppositions about language that derive from how we have identified it as fundamentally mentalistic. His method of “therapeutic cure” is to exaggerate the normal (and normally unnoticed) process of assuming that language is rule-governed, consistent from one situation to another, denotative, representational and expressive, and thereby to show the absurdity of such assumptions. This clears up confusions, relieves what he calls our “mental cramps” and, hopefully, stops individuals from asking the kinds of questions or thinking the kinds of thoughts that get them into these confusions in the first place. His goal is to help us get on with things, to “move about around things and events in the world instead of trying to delineate their essential features” (van der Merwe and Voestermans, 1995, p. 38).

Most of Wittgenstein’s followers turn what is an activity-theoretic stance toward language into a pragmatic one – his identification of meaning with activity into an identification of meaning with use. This can be seen most clearly in Wittgenstein’s most well-known conception – the language-game. Language-games are a means of clearing away the confusing modes of thought forced upon us by our overly mentalistic understanding of language (again, the conviction that language expresses thought). We make problems (confusions, muddles) for ourselves as we struggle to reconnect the unity thinking/speaking that we have, unwittingly, separated. The language-game – as activity – prevents this muddle:

When we look at such simple forms of language the mental mist which seems to enshroud our ordinary use of language disappears. We see activities, reactions, which are clear-cut and transparent. (BBB, p. 17)

Wittgenstein never defines language-games, which is not surprising given his aversion to definition. Different language-games, like everything else, bear “family resemblances” to one another. At times, Wittgenstein speaks of language-games in a way that seems to equate meaning with use rather than with activity which strengthens the propensity for philosophers and psychologists to take Wittgenstein’s major contributions to be the identification of meaning with use and the language-game as a pragmatic tool of analysis. Yet statements like the following: “The term ‘language-game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life ” (PI, 23); and “Only in the stream of thought and life do words have meaning.” (Z 173), where Wittgenstein emphasizes the activity of language and the value of language-games in showing this, suggest an activity-theoretic, relational understanding rather than a pragmatic one. Language as activity is central to understanding the therapeutic character and developmental contribution of his work.

Philosophizing in this way (playing language-games) is a very different practice from learning Philosophy. What is therapeutic about it (that is, what gets us unstuck so that, in Wittgenstein’s words, “now we can go on”) is that it keeps us from institutionalizing our words. This kind of unsystematic philosophizing, the continuous playing of Wittgensteinian language-games, helps to challenge the tendency in our culture for language to become reified as a thing-in-itself which is “above us” and “about” us (and comes to define our experiences). It helps us see and do language as a “form of life.”

Wittgenstein has said about his own method: “What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking…You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities…thus your mental cramp is relieved…” (quoted in Monk, 1990, p. 502).

The concern in all the work of the Institute is how we can further develop from where we are to where we collectively choose to go. In this Wittgensteinian sense, our practice is therapeutically developmental and activity-based rather than cognitively and/or morally controlling and epistemologically-based. It is a practical synthesis of Vygotsky and Wittgenstein, a synthesis that is rooted in their transformation from a cognitive to a therapeutic modality. Philosophizing, a la Wittgenstein, draws our attention to the saying of what we are saying by creating a Vygotskian tool-and-result – the study of the performance of “the saying” indistinguishable from the performance itself. This activity both is and creates a zone of proximal development (zpd) – Vygotsky’sformulation – and a form of life – Wittgenstein’s formulation. A zpd is a form of life in which people collectively and relationally create developmental learning by performing beyond (and as other than) who they are individually and collectively. Our effort is to create continuously overlapping zpds which makes possible the transforming of rigidified behavior (forms of life that have become alienated and fossilized) into new forms of life.

REFERENCES

Baker, G.P. (1992). Some remarks on “language” and “grammar.” Grazer Philosophische Studien, 42.

Monk, R. (1990). Ludwig Wittgenstein: The duty of genius. New York: Penguin.

Newman, F. and Holzman, L. (1993). Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary scientist. London: Routledge.

Newman, F. and Holzman, L. (1996. ) Unscientific psychology: A cultural-performatory approach to understanding human life. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1987). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, Vol 1. New York: Plenum.

Van der Merwe, W.L. and Voestermans, P.P. (1995). Wittgenstein’s legacy and the challenge to psychology.Theory & Psychology, 5(1).

Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wittgenstein, L. (1965). The blue and brown books. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Wittgenstein, L. (1967). Zettel. Oxford: Blackwell.