Wittgenstein on grammatical investigations (original) (raw)

chapter 6 of Landmarks in Linguistic Thought II: The Western Tradition in the Twentieth Century (Routledge, 2001)

People are deeply imbedded in philosophical, i.e., grammatical confusions. And to free them from these presupposes pulling them out of the immensely manifold connections they are caught up in. One must so to speak regroup their entire language. (Wittgenstein 1993: 185) We are under the illusion that what is peculiar, profound, essential, in [philosophical] investigation, resides in its trying to grasp the incomparable essence of language. That is, the order existing between the concepts of proposition, word, proof, truth, experience, and so on. This order is a super-order between-so to speak-super-concepts. Whereas, of course, if the words "language", "experience", "word", have a use, it must be as humble a one as that of the words "table", "lamp", "door". (...)