Wittgenstein on Being (and Nothingness)

Luca Zanetti

doi:10.4396/2023120V03

Luca Zanetti

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4396/2023120V03

Parole chiave: Wittgenstein, Existence, Nothingness, Mystical, Ineffability, Coleridge, Heidegger, Phenomenology of Existence

Abstract

In this paper, I present an interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on the experience of wonder at the existence of the world. According to this interpretation, Wittgenstein's feeling of wonder stems from perceiving the existence of the world as an absolute miracle, that is, as a fact that is in principle beyond explanation. Based on this analysis, I will suggest that Wittgenstein's experience is akin to what has been described by other authors such as Coleridge, Pessoa, Heidegger, Scheler, Sartre, and Hadot, among many others. Through a comparison between Wittgenstein and Coleridge on the experience of existence, I shall highlight some core features of this experience, chief among them the use of the notion of nothingness in clarifying what is understood in the experience, the role of intuition, and the presence of a specific pathos. As a whole, this paper aims to provide a contribution to the project of a phenomenology of the experience of existence and intends to create a bridge for a dialogue between Wittgenstein and the phenomenological tradition on the enigma of existence.

Riferimenti bibliografici

Barrett, Ciryl (1991), Wittgenstein on ethics and religious belief, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.

Berto, Francesco (2012), Existence as a Real Property: The Ontology of Meinongianism, Synthèse Library, Springer, Dordrecht.

Borutti, Silvana (2023), «World and Form. Hermeneutic Notes on Wittgenstein’s So-Called Realism», in Paradigmi, Rivista di critica filosofica, 1/2023, pp. 29-40.

Camerlingo, Francesco (2011), La questione del senso. Con Heidegger e Wittgenstein sull’enigma dell’esistenza, Il Nuovo Melangolo, Genova.

Churchill, John (1994), «Wonder and the End of Explanation: Wittgenstein and Religious Sensibility», Philosophical Investigations 17 (2):388-416.

Cooper, David (1997), «Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Humility», Philosophy, 72, 279, pp. 105-23.

Egan, David., Reynolds, Stephan., Wendland, Aaron (2013), eds., Wittgenstein and Heidegger, Routledge, New York.

Fay, Thomas (1989), «Early Heidegger and Wittgenstein: The Necessity of a Comprehension of Being», Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 20:3, pp. 248-256.

Fay, Thomas (1991), «The Ontological Difference in Early Heidegger and Wittgenstein», Kant Studien, 82 (3), pp. 319-328.

Hadot, Pierre (2008), The Present Alone is Our Happiness: Conversations With Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson, Stanford University Press.

Heidegger, Martin (1929). Was Ist Metaphysik, Frederich Cohen, Bonn (What is Metaphysics?, tr. by D. F. Krell, in D. F. Krell (ed.) Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, revised and expanded edition, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 93–110).

Heidegger, Martin (1935). Einführung in die Metaphysik (An Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. by R. Manheim, New York: Doubleday, 1961).

Heidegger, Martin, (1983). Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main. (The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, transl. by W. McNeill, N. Walker, Indiana University Press, 1995).

Philipse, Herman (1992), «Heidegger's Question of Being and the Augustinian Picture of Language», in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52 (2), pp. 251-287.

Horgby, Ingvar (1959), «The double awareness in Heidegger and Wittgenstein», in Inquiry, 2:1-4, pp. 235-264.

Kidd, Ian James (2018), Reawakening to Wonder: Wittgenstein, Feyerabend, and Scientism, in Jonathan Beale, Ian James Kidd (eds.), Wittgenstein and Scientism, Routledge, London, pp. 101-115.

Kevin, Cahill (1996), Tractarian Ethics, in Hans Sluga, David Stern (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 96-125.

McDaniel, Kris (2009), Ways of being, in David Chalmers, David Manley, Ryan Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 290-319.

McGuinness, Brian (1966), «The Mysticism of the Tractatus», in The Philosophical Review, 75(3), pp. 305-328.

McGuinness, Brian (1979), ed., Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann, Oxford: Blackwell.

Meinong, Alexius (1904), Über Gegenstandstheorie, in A. Meinong, (1904), ed., Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie. Leipzig: J. A. Barth, pp. 1–51.

Mulhall, Stephen (2016), Wittgenstein and Continental Philosophy, in Hans‐Johann Glock, John Hyman (eds.), A Companion to Wittgenstein, Wiley, Chichester, pp. 757–770.

Murray, Michael (1974), «A note on Wittgenstein and Heidegger», in Philosophical Review 83 (4), pp. 501-503.

Oliva, Stefano (2021), Il mistico, Mimesis, Milano.

Perissinotto, Luigi (1994), «Heidegger e Wittgenstein. Quarant’anni di studi», in Bollettino della Società Filosofica Italiana, 151, pp. 3-20.

Perissinotto, Luigi (2009), «Sui miracoli e il miracoloso. Qualche considerazione tra Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume e Wittgenstein», in Filosofia e Teologia, vol. 3, pp. 589-605.

Pareyson, Luigi (1979), Stupore della ragione e angoscia di fronte all’essere, in Luigi Pareyson, Ontologia della libertà, Einaudi, Torino, 1995, pp. 385-437.

Pareyson, Luigi (1992), La «domanda fondamentale»: «Perché l’essere piuttosto che il nulla»?, in Luigi Pareyson, Ontologia della libertà, Einaudi, Torino, 1995, pp. 353-384.

Quine, Willard Van Orman (1948), «On What There Is», Review of Metaphysics 2 (5):21-38.

Rump, Jacob (2019), Not How the World is, but That It Exists: Wittgenstein on the Mystical and the Meaningful, in Alex Kohav (ed.), Mysticism and Meaning: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Three Pines Press, pp. 177-198.

Sartre, Jean-Paul (1938), La Nausée, Gallimard, Paris.

Scheler, Max (1954), Vom Ewigen im Menschen, Fourth edition, vol. 5 of Collected Edition, A. Francke AG, Berne (On the Eternal in Man, ed. B. Noble, SCM Press LTD, London, 1960).

Schulte, J. 2020, «Engelmann told me . . . ’ On the Aesthetic Significance of a Certain Remark by Wittgenstein», Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 57 (1), 15–27.

Simmons, Byron (2022), «Ontological Pluralism and the Generic Conception of Being», Erkenntnis, 87 (3):1275-1293.

Tilghman, Benjamin (1991), Wittgenstein, Ethics and Aesthetics: The View from Eternity, London: MacMillan.

Turner, Jason (2010), «Ontological Pluralism», Journal of Philosophy, 107 (1):5-34.

Van Inwagen, Peter (1998), «Meta-ontology», Erkenntnis 48 (2-3): 233-50.

Volpi, Franco (2001), Nota introduttiva, in M. Heidegger, Che cos’è metafisica?, Adelphi, Milano, pp. 11-34.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1921). «Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung», Annalen der Naturphilosophie (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, transl. by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness, London: Routledge, 1961).

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1961), Notebooks 1914-1916, Oxford: Blackwell.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1965), «A Lecture on Ethics», in Philosophical Review, 74, 3-26

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1977), Vermischte Bemerkungen, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main (Culture and Value, edited by G. H. von Wright, H. Nyman, and A. Pichler, translated by P. Winch, Blackwell, Oxford, 1998).

Zanetti, Luca (2023), «L’esperienza dell’esistenza in John Cage», in L’inconscio. Rivista Italiana di Filosofia e Psicoanalisi, N. 14, dicembre 2022, 157-188.