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Husserlian Aspects of Wittgensteins Middle Period

Matthew R. Morgan, Pittsburgh

It is not immediately obvious that there was anythingconnecting Husserl or phenomenology with Wittgensteinswork, but with an examination of the evidence, this attitudecan be changed. I will establish the modest probability thatWittgenstein had contact with the ideas of Husserl, andthat the ideas of Husserl were either directly or indirectlyinfluential in Wittgensteins work. Wittgensteins concernwith phenomenology is most explicitly expressed in hisPhilosophical Remarks (hereafter Remarks), howeverthere is tacit concern throughout most of his writing.

The first section of the Remarks begins with a discus-sion of phenomenology. It serves to introduce the idea thatWittgenstein believed himself to be working on phenome-

nological problems. The issue is with what he calls aphenomenological language. A phenomenologicallanguage is an attempt to construct an ideal, pure,language of thought, that stresses the grammar over thecontent, form over the particular facts expressed by thatform. He says:

I do not now have phenomenological language, orprimary language as I used to call it, in mind as mygoal. I no longer hold it to be necessary. All that ispossible and necessary is to separate what is essentialfrom what is inessential in ourlanguage.That is, if we so to speak describe the class of lan-guages which serve their purpose, then in so doing wehave shown what is essential to them and given animmediate representation of immediate experience

A recognition of what is essential and what inessential inour language if it is to represent, a recognition of whichparts of our language are wheels turning idly, amountsto the construction of a phenomenological language(Wittgenstein 1975).

Before this point, Wittgenstein had a phenomenological,primary language as a goal. Where? The Tractatus, withits pictorial presentations, draws a limit to the expression ofthoughts, and clarifies the logic of our language byelucidating the possibility inherent in any statement thathas sense (Sinn). This pure grammar, or essentialistdefinition of language, was sought there. WittgensteinsTractatus tries to saywhat can be said about the form ofthought and language, and to attempts to show whatcannot be said about the formal structures of our thought.

The early Wittgenstein had said, Language disguisesthought. So much so, that from the outward form of theclothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thoughtbeneath it(Wittgenstein 1961). Thus, clarity about theform of a proposition, its pictorial form, or grammar,would clearly display the possibilities of language. Indefining any possible language as a language only interms of what is required for representation to occur(through establishing the elements essential to anypicture), the Tractatus presents a purely formal language.Husserl did notdevelop a special language to convey theuniversal structures, though their description was a primaryconcern of his. How much, perhaps, did Husserlsmanagement of language influence Wittgensteins laterphilosophy in its analysis of ordinary language?

After 1929 Wittgensteins stated goal was to examinethe form of ordinary language. It was not to construct alogical, meta-language, like Freges language of thought,but to clarify the ordinary one by uncovering the necessaryrequisites for representation. This is one basic differencebetween Wittgensteins early and later periods: the shiftfrom pure to ordinary language analysis. In place of alanguage that disguised thought, the picture-language ofthe Tractatus was to have a clinical cleanliness. Wittgen-steins attitude in the Philosophical Investigations isdifferent: instead of a primary language of thought, whichwould communicate nothing in the end, a more roughhewn language grips the world better (see Wittgenstein1968). The hope for a transparent medium through which

to transmit our thoughts is now seen to be itself aprejudice. We can see this shift in terms of his stance onphenomenology, on the cusp of his change from theTractatus to the Philosophical Investigations.

Wittgensteins goal is comparable with Husserls, asHusserl states it in the introduction to Volume II of theLogical Investigations. Husserl begins with a discussion oflinguistic expression, of our attempts to communicatemeaningfully. He says:

Linguistic discussions are certainly among the philoso-phically indispensable preparations for the building ofpure logic: only by their aid can the true objects of logicalresearch, be refined to a clarity that excludes allmisunderstanding. We are not concerned with gram-matical discussions, empirically conceived and related to

some historically given language: we are concerned withdiscussions of a most general sort which cover the widersphere of an objective theory of knowledge and, closelylinked with this last, the pure phenomenology of theexperiences of thinking and knowing This phenome-nology must bring to pure expression, must describe interms of their essential concepts and their governingformulae of essence, the essences which directly makethemselves known in intuition(Husserl 1976)

Husserl did not promote a radical revision of language, buthe cannot be said to have left language alone, as heproceeded to stipulate the phenomenological meaning ofa glossary of terms. This is precisely what Wittgensteinaccuses Husserl of, in his conversations with Schlick(Waismann 1979). Nevertheless, Husserl claims, Rough

reflection on our thoughts and their verbal expression,conducted by us without special schooling, suffice toindicate a certain parallelism between thinking andspeaking. (Husserl 1976) The goal for Husserls phe-nomenology was to express, within ordinary language, theessential grammar of thought, a descriptive, eidetic (notempirical), science. For Husserl, it was the case from thebeginning that the structures of thought could be ex-pressed directly through an ordinary (though modified)language.

We can define Husserlian phenomenology as funda-mentally characterized by the following aspects:

1. Concern with the faithful description of the structure ofimmediate experience; that all knowledge begins inexperience. Phenomenology provides the grammar of

experience.

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2. Phenomenological truths are intuited from immediateexperience, insofar as the syntax of immediate experi-ence can be repeatedly confirmed by any consciousentity through reflection that is free from prejudice, thusallowing a pure description. This constitutes phenome-

nological objectivity.

3. Empirical sciences, such as psychology and physics,are founded on the grammar of immediate experienceand the rules of logical justification. Consequently,phenomenology cannot be generated by the sciences,but serves as the grounds for the sciences.

4. Husserls phenomenological method is based on theepoch, the suspension of the natural attitude. Thenatural attitude is the underlying prejudice of anobjective world existing independently of experience.The epoch is why phenomenology is unencumbered bythe metaphysical mind-body question, allowing for apure description of experience. This allows phenome-nology to uncover essential characteristics of an imper-sonal abstract Ego via a kind ofWesenschau.

5. Like Franz Brentano, Husserl identifies the intention-ality of consciousness as paramount among thesestructures. This is the relationship between conscious-ness and the world.

In examining how many of the above phenomenologicalaspects are presented in Wittgenstein, we first find aunited stance against psychologism. Though this anti-psychologism is shared with Frege, Frege was uncon-cerned with the given, immediate experience, which hebelieved to be inherently subjective Vorstellungen, and inprinciple not objective. Attending the phenomena is notenough. It is the recognition that phenomenology is a firstphilosophy which demands the establishment a descrip-tive grammar of immediate experience, a language ofthought. Once one rejects the sciences as the source of

this grammar, as a field that already presumes logic, thereis nowhere else to turn but to a type of phenomenology.

It is clear that Wittgenstein, like Husserl, also rejectedthe notion that philosophy could ever become one fieldamongst others in the sciences, physical or psychological.In the Tractatus Wittgenstein claims, The totality of truepropositions is the whole of natural science, Philoso-phy is not one of the natural sciences, and Psychology isno more closely related to philosophy than any othernatural science.(Wittgenstein 1961) In the Remarks,Wittgensteins most substantial analysis of phenomenol-ogy, we also find:

Physics differs from phenomenology in that it is con-cerned to establish laws. Phenomenology only estab-lishes the possibilities. Thus, phenomenology would bethe grammar of the description of those facts on whichphysics builds its theories. To explain is more than todescribe; but every explanation contains a description.(Wittgenstein 1975)

Wittgenstein echoes a conceptual relationship betweenphenomenology and science that one sees both in theTractatus and in Husserl. Both Husserl and Wittgensteinattempt to grasp the essential rules which allow for thedesignation of a space of possible states of affairs orexperiences; and since this phenomenological logic setsup the scaffold upon which the true facts, or particulariza-tions, of physics hang, we see how physics depends uponphenomenology. Husserl thus claims:

All natural science is nave in regard to its point ofdepartureAs a result, the following is clear: should

there be decisive arguments to prove that physicalnatural science cannot be philosophy in the specificsense of the word, can never in any way serve as afoundation for philosophy, and can achieve a philosophi-cal value for the purposes of metaphysics only on the

basis of a prior philosophy, then all such argumentsmust be equally applicable to psychology. Now, there isby no means a lack of such arguments (Husserl 1965).

Both Husserl and Wittgenstein then concur that philoso-phy, qua phenomenology, is non-reducible to neitherpsychology nor physics.

In that phenomenology establishes the possibility ofphysics, and thus the physical sciences, which extrapolatetheir general laws from particular instances, both Husserland Wittgenstein concur that phenomenology must itselfbe outside of the arena of physics. How they delineate anarea of study that is outside physics is somewhat distinct.Husserl, after the developments set forward in his Ideas I,believed that one could achieve a phenomenologicalattitude, allowing for a sort of phenomenological percep-

tion to occur, by invoking the epoch. Wittgenstein,however, in attempting to extrapolate thoughts fromlanguage use, believes that:

All our forms of speech are taken from ordinary, physicallanguage and cannot be used in epistemology or phe-nomenology without casting a distorting light on theirobjects.The very expression I can perceive x is itself taken fromthe idioms of physics, and x ought to be a physicalobject e.g. a body here. Things have already gonewrong if this expression is used in phenomenology,where x must refer to a datum. For then I and perceivealso cannot have their previous senses. (Wittgenstein1975)

What is Wittgenstein describing other than the requirement

that investigations pursued under theepoch be describedin a unique, phenomenological language? In other words,if phenomenology is not scientific, and if our naturallanguage, like the natural attitude, is embedded inphysicalistic grammar, then when Husserl uses terms thatseem ordinary, like I, perception, and object, thesewords mean something quite different than what wednormally mean by them. Husserl neededa phenomenol-ogical language, a primary language, for ordinarylanguage is ill equipped to reflect the fine-graineddistinctions Husserl asks of it.

What Wittgenstein is responding to are attempts todescribe immediate experience in its purity, withoutconsidering the fact that to describe requires some kind ofmedium. Wittgenstein recognizes that medium to be

language. Nevertheless, it cannot be ordinary language(which remains in the natural attitude), but a primarylanguage, one that can transcend the effects physics hashad. In the following, Wittgenstein describes a moving,mechanical reproduction of a visual experience, in order toproduce an identical experience in someone else (you willnow see exactly what I saw, as I saw it), and thenresponds:

Isnt it clear that this would be the most immediatedescription? Anything which tried to be moreimmediate still would inevitably cease to be a descrip-tion. Instead of a description, what would then come outwould be that inarticulate sound with which many writerswould like to begin philosophy. (I have, knowing of myknowledge, consciousness of something.) (Wittgenstein1975)

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Throughout the Remarks, Wittgenstein discusses visualspace and color, toothaches and pain, the experience ofmemorial-time and harmony from a phenomenologicalperspective. He recognizes repeatedly that physics cannotgive an account of subjective or qualitative experience,

and also recognizes that phenomenology remains within adescriptive domain of possibilities as a description of thestructure, or grammar, of experience. Wittgenstein furtherclaims, The worst philosophical errors always arise whenwe try to apply our ordinary physical language in thearea of the immediately given (Wittgenstein 1975). IsWittgenstein calling for a language that can express whatis left after a Husserlian style reduction?

Wittgensteins phenomenological language must alsoinclude intentionality, for, If you exclude the element ofintentionality from language, its whole function thencollapses (Wittgenstein 1975). The directedness ofintentionality, therefore, cannot be found in consciousness,nor is it found in objects, but is to be found in the meaningsof language. Language doesnt then have a derivativeintentionality, but is the primary source of referencethrough its meanings. He says, later in the PhilosophicalGrammar that, The German word for meaning [Bedeu-tung] is derived from the German word for pointing[deuten] (Wittgenstein 1974). If Wittgenstein remainsfaithful to Frege, Bedeutung names the relationshipbetween words and objects, between a Thought and itstruth-value. He rejects the idea that a proposition acts as aproper name, whose object is its truth-value, in theTractatus. Rather a proposition becomes thoughtonly as itis written or spoken, whose Sinn is its possibility (deter-mined by its grammar) and whose Bedeutungis the actualstate of affairs. Bedeutung is referential, for Wittgenstein,but, as Bedeutung, has its existence only in language.Much of his later philosophy is dedicated to dispelling themyth that there is anything particularly mental, or mysteri-ous, about Bedeutung, and thus, nothing particularly

mentalabout intentionality. So intentionality, the possibilityof directedness, is a function of language mapping ontothe world; intentionality becomes not the Husserlian markof the mental but the mark of the linguistic.

Wittgensteins prominent use of phenomenologyoccurred near the zenith of Husserls phenomenologicalmovement. Consequently, his use of the term would haveHusserlian connotations, and would require explicitdistinctions for it not to have this connotation. His use is

similar in a broad sense to the Husserlian program,including his anti-psychologism, his emphasis on a formaldescription of immediate experience, his insistence thatsuch a primary description is not found through materialistphysics, and the insistence on the intentionality inlanguage. The simplest explanation is that, directly orindirectly, Husserl influenced Wittgenstein in a significantfashion.

Literature

Wittgenstein, L. 1961 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, D. Pearsand B. McGuinness (trans.), New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Wittgenstein, L. 1975 Philosophical Remarks, Raymond Har-

greaves and Roger White (trans.), Chicago: University of ChicagoPress

Wittgenstein, L. 1974 Philosophical Grammar, part II, R. Rhees,(ed.), A. Kenny (trans.), Berkely: University of California Press.

Husserl, E. 1976 Logical Investigations, J. N. Findlay (trans.), NewYork: Routledge.

Husserl, E. 1965 Philosophy as a Rigorous Science in Phenome-nology and the Crisis of Philosophy, Quentin Lauer (trans.), NewYork: Harper & Row, 71-147.

Spiegelberg, H. 1968 The Puzzle of Ludwig WittgensteinsPhnomenologie (1929-?),American Philosopical QuarterlyVol. 5,No. 4, 244-256.