VERY LATE WITTGENSTEIN ON EMOTION

Carolyn BLACK San Jose State University

These eyes smile only in this face ... Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, 2.501.

Three publications in the early 1980s of Wittgenstein's late writings on philosophical psychology give us a fuller picture of Wittgenstein's view of emotion. 1 But as this material on emotion is scattered throughout some 450 tightly written pages, and as it should be studied together with what Wittgenstein says about emotion elsewhere, notably in the Philosophical Investigations and Zettel, Wittgenstein's view still is not as accessible as one might wish.2 In this paper I shall sketch Wittgenstein's view of emotion paying particular attention to what he says in these publications of the 1980s. I shall also make two suggestions. First, to understand Wittgenstein's view of emotion it is important to notice how for him

1. Last Writings on the Philosophy ofPsychology, Vol. I, trans. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue, eds., G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman (Oxford, 1982); Remarks on the Philosophy ofPsychology, Vol. I, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, eds. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright; Vol. II, trans. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue, eds., G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman (Oxford, 1980). Hereafter cited as L W, RPP 1 and RPP 2 respectively followed by remark number. I shall refer to these writings as the 1980s publications. A fourth book, Last Writings on the Philosophy ofPsychology, Vol. II (Inner and Outer), may be forthcoming. 2. References to Wittgenstein's writing will be given as follows: the Blue and Brown Books, BB and the page number; Culture and Value, CV and the page number; the Philosophical/nvestigations, PI and the part number followed by the remark number in part 1 and the page number in part 2; Zettel, Z and the remark number. Here I do not address unpublished material Wittgenstein wrote in 1947 -48 from which many of his remarks on emotion are drawn. 100 emotion is, characteristically, linked to its surroundings and to the occasion of its occurrence. I discuss this in section 2. The second suggestion bears on the fIrst one, but is perhaps more controversial. I should like to suggest that the 1980s publications include some modifIcation of a central theme in Wittgenstein's later writing, the theme that "An 'inner process' stands in need of outward criteria" (PI 1.580). In the third section of this paper I discuss some passages which, I believe, countenance what is inner as capable of more independence.

1. The Psyche, Psychology and the Philosophy of Psychology Nothing is more difficult than to look at concepts without preju• dice. For prejudice is a kind of understanding. And to forgo it, when it is so full of consequences for us, -. LW 12 Emotion is one feature of the psyche. What, according to Witt• genstein, is the nature of the psyche and the discipline of psychol• ogy? What can a philosopher do to illuminate these subjects and how does a philosopher go about doing it? In the very last section of the Investigations Wittgenstein remarks on the conceptual con• fusion and barrenness of the discipline of psychology (as it appeared in the 1940s). This is not due to the fact that psychology is a young science, Wittgenstein says. Rather, in psychology the problems and the experimental method "pass one another by". Wittgenstein sug• gests that problems of psychology are un treatable and theories of psychology, for example, some suggested by Freud, untestable by experimental methods. While psychological concepts are everyday concepts, the use of all psychological verbs is unclear (RPP 2.20 cf. Z 113; RPP 2.62). For example, consider the concept of thinking and the word 'thinking', the use of which is tangled. That, Wittgen• stein says, is true of all psychological verbs (RPP 2.20 cf. Z 113). Much of Wittgenstein's work in philosophical psychology may be seen as directed towards untangling the tangles and allaying con• ceptual confusion.3

3. "Philosophy tidies a room ..... , Lee notes Wittgenstein as saying as early