Doubt and Display: A Foundation for a Wittgensteinian Approach to the Arts

Abstract

I want to make the case that Wittgenstein’s limiting of knowledge claims to what we can doubt makes a significant contribution to aesthetics. We have known since Aristotle that works of art do not correlate very well with concerns for truth. Wittgenstein helps explain that fact without any idealist machinery with which to praise the distinctive value of the arts. In his framework, the arts matter simply because they focus on situations in which there need not be epistemic doubt. The relevant questions become not ‘Is this true?’ but ‘Is this an illuminating presentation of some aspect of our cultural practices?’

But is it not peculiar that there is such a thing as this reaction, this confession of intention? Is it not an extremely remarkable instrument of language? What is really remarkable about it? Well—it is difficult to imagine how a human being learns this use of words. It is so very subtle. But is it really subtler than that of the phrase ‘I imagined him’, for example? Yes, every such use of language is remarkable, peculiar, if one is adjusted only to consider the description of physical objects.

(Z, §§39–40)