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Download Article (PDF) Semiotica 2016; 208: 49–77 Dinda L. Gorlée* Wittgenstein’s persuasive rhetoric DOI 10.1515/sem-2015-0121 Abstract: Wittgenstein surprised with the rhetorical inversion of his style of writing, often at the expense of thought. In his works, he skillfully constructed the fragmentary paragraphs to solve the “confusions” of language. The result of Wittgenstein’s conscious endeavor is the persuasive effect of new reasoning in the “ornamental” type of the philosophical writings about language. Wittgenstein’s verbal genres are the interplay of deduction, induction, and abduction, formed consciously and subconsciously, following the three categories of Peirce’s semio-logical reasoning. Wittgenstein’s rhetoric changed the first certainty of philosophy into the abductive uncertainty of his later works, keeping the story of Wittgenstein’s reasoning in suspense. Keywords: Wittgenstein, stylistics, linguïculture, Peirce, speculative rhetoric, deduction-induction-abduction, Barthes If I do not quite know how to begin a book that is because something is still unclear. For I should like to begin with the original data of philosophy, written & spoken sentences, with books as it were. And here we encounter the difficulty of “Everything is in flux.” And perhaps that is the very point at which to begin. (Wittgenstein 1930, CV 1998: 11) 1 Persuasive and ornamental speech Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (1889–1951) “new” philosophy, as he envisaged it, was to be the idea of writing books and writings in conflicting rhetoric to question the readers. Wittgenstein’s philosophy has become so diversified and specialized in the secondary literature, that we would need a number of examples to show that the first form of systematic knowledge developed into Wittgenstein’s creative philosophy of language. Perhaps he could derive his twentieth-century moder- nity from the difference between his present knowledge and the knowledge of our ancestors. Instead of talking in monologue for himself, Wittgenstein’s life also decided to feature the dialogue as didactic tool of persuasion. Regardless of *Corresponding author: Dinda L. Gorlée, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway, E-mail: [email protected] 50 Dinda L. Gorlée fame or adversity, Wittgenstein in his later years kept true to his first vocation of finding the social dialogue with the readers. Perhaps Wittgenstein’s personal development could make sense of the world in which he lived by following the footsteps of the orator of Athens, Demosthenes (c. 384–322, BCE). So the legendary story goes that the lawyer Demosthenes was a stutterer (Ostwald 1973: 356–366; Gray 2012: 34). After years of practicing law in the courts of Athens, Demosthenes wanted to overcome his weak voice to become a famous orator with passionate orations to persuade the Greek audience. Standing on the beach of Athens, Demosthenes put a mouthful of pebbles in his mouth to improve the tone of his voice. This handicap practiced his vocal appropriateness or political adequacy to train the acoustics of his eloquent voice against the noise of the sea. The Greek statesman won his own battles, composing and delivering his series of political speeches, and reaching his success in public policy as the great orator of the golden age of Greek oratory. Demosthenes and young Wittgenstein stuttered for words in the articulation in public, inhibiting their power to speak straightforwardly (McGuinness 1988: 52). When writing the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein’s first speech dis- fluency was clearly observed by his friend Paul Engelmann, when he listened to his explanation of the work. Nervously, Wittgenstein stammered the paragraphs of the incomprehensible and controversial manuscript, while Engelmann, as he said, with a “sensitive understanding for what he wanted to say” helped him find the “right words by stating myself the proposition he had in mind” (qtd. in CPE: 94). Perhaps the blocking of sounds and articulation of words remained after the disappearance of the stammer as the desire of Wittgenstein’s fragmentariness in narrative speech. Wittgenstein also seemed to fulfill the biblical story of Ezekiel’s prophetic vision (c. 600 BCE). During the hard times of the Jewish exile in Babylon, the prophet Ezekiel pronounced divine speeches promising to the banished Israelite people the “garden of Eden” (Ezek. 36: 35 Authorized King James Version). The vision of the future fixed on the future in the Promised Land. Following the exile, the Jews would restore the ruins of the Temple at Jerusalem (Ezek. 40–48). Ezekiel’s spiritual images explained the process of restoration in the volumes of the outer wall, the dimensions of the inner courtyard and the sanctuary of the Hebrew Temple. The complex dimensionality of Jerusalem’s sacred temple was measured exactly by Ezekiel. His gift of prediction was full of detailed information about the numerical and algebraic dimensions of the breadth and length, the height and depth of the parts of the Temple. Metaphorically, the deduction of the outer wall, the induction of the inner courtyard, and the abduction of the sanctuary gave the three dimensions of Ezekiel’s building tools to draw an analogy between the shape or form of the architectural framework and Wittgenstein’s narrative style and genre. Wittgenstein’s persuasive rhetoric 51 The domain of Wittgenstein’s life started with the philosophical “oratory” of his early work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The basic thoughts of this book were about solving the questions of grammar and logic. The effectiveness of this academic volume was in the paragraphs measured in the numbered and subnumbered items. Tractatus is the only work of Wittgenstein that was published during Wittgenstein’s lifetime. The other writings, from the 1930s onwards, The Blue and Brown Book and his masterwork Philosophical Investigations right up to his last pages in On Certainty (OC) feature his mature philosophy. These and other “new” works (articles, lectures, andnotebooks)werewrittenandrewrittenbyWittgensteintoachievethefinal formulation of his world view. However, Wittgenstein’sworksandwritingswere circulated in the provisional form of stencils produced to be read by interested colleagues and students suitable for early dialogue in academia. The dimensionality of the contemporary scientific rules shaped Wittgenstein’s early linguistics of the Tractatus. Wittgenstein focused on true or false proposi- tions, which he judged not only by appearances but from the facts of logic and mathematics. In the series of propositions, he revealed the list of free vari- ables used in the “confusions” of language in order to clear up the doubtful points. According to Lunsford, the “subversive” difficulties indicate the relativism of the “vitality, the sense of excitement and playful purpose” (1992: 77) regarding the production of words with a new meaning. As a creative philosopher, Wittgenstein’s new ideas solved the “good” and “false” meaning of linguistic problems through the cultural background of the community. The novelty of Wittgenstein’s language philosophy animates and inspires the fact that language is not a fixed collection of words and sentences, but a shared instrument for all speakers and readers. Language shows the linguistic-and-cultural mannerisms of linguïculture (Anderson and Gorlée 2011: 222–226). Wittgenstein did not write only logical “books” but composed his “albums” written in daily language (PI 2009 [1953]: 4; see Pichler 2002, 2004, 2009; Gorlée 2012: 68–69, 187, 228). Like Barthes, Wittgenstein transformed the ordinary state- ments of language into literature, creating for the author “akindofsocial,theolo- gical, mythic, aesthetic, moral end” (Barthes 1983 [1979]: 492). The literary speeches and conversations signify that the traditional type of the “architectural and preme- ditated” book existed to “reproduce an order of the world” as opposed to chaos; but the relative order led Wittgenstein to transfigure it into “a kind of written word according to a special code” (Barthes 1983 [1979]: 491–492). After publishing the coded form of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein wrote that he was, as Barthes, not able to: … achieve the status of the Book (of the Work); it is only an Album … The Album is a collection of leaflets not only interchangeable (even this would be nothing), but above all infinitely suppressible … to the complete annihilation of the Album, with 52 Dinda L. Gorlée theexcusethat“Idon’t like this one”: this is the method of Groucho and Chico Marx, reading aloud and tearing up each clause of the contract which is meant to bind them. (Barthes 1983 [1979]: 492) Wittgenstein’s fragmentary albums unite the unbroken and broken signs in his stream of discourse (Gorlée 2007). In the theory of logic in the literary frame- work, Wittgenstein attempted to operate the simple and complex signs of language to create a permanent fixture between the official form of published book and the intimacy of the album. One could argue that Wittgenstein followed the Peircean categories of sense, meaning, and significance (NEM 3: 844), expressing in his reasoning the three stages of thought. Wittgenstein created the pragmatic stages formulated in words, paraphrases, and arguments. Although the three stages of thought would suggest Wittgenstein’s reading of Peirce’s work, the inescapable truth is that Wittgenstein did not read Peirce, although he could have discussed the semiotic themes, and particularly Peirce’s semiotics, with his English friend, mathematician Frank Ramsey (Gorlée 2012: 27–30). This
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