Language Games
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People, as Wittgenstein theorizes, "cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behaviour, for I cannot be said to learn of them- I have them" (Wittgenstein, 1953, p. 89). On the other hand, this sort of "investigation" of sensations makes Wittgenstein ask whether "sensations are private" (p. 90). And, if they are not -- if somehow, other people are attuned to how we feel pain (not feel ABOUT pain) -- then it seems that there is also the possibility that sensations like pain can be faked, simulated, as an actor in a medical TV show might. These language games are really semantics. We invent a word for something, Art, let's suppose, and then expect people to understand what it means. There is Art (Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock), and there is Art (Grandma Moses, Norman Rockwell) and there is Art (Michelangelo, Leonardo DaVinci) and there is Art (PLAYBOY centerfolds, Graffiti). Wittgenstein, in commenting on an illustration said, "We can also see the illustration now as one thing now as another - So, we interpret it, and see it as we interpret it" (Wittgenstein 193). Who is to argue that one is Art and the other is not? It may be merely Wittgenstein's idea of envisioning and interpreting. Perhaps one of the worst excuses for a higher education class is entitled "Art Appreciation" because this implies a definition for "appreciation" that the negativism in Wittgenstein would surely detest. After all, why must there be a commonality to "Appreciation"? Does it mean
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ifferent to everyone. As Wittgenstein seems to point out there may be a relation but also a vast difference between a "vision" and an "idea".
What does all have to do with Aesthetics? My Unabridged Dictionary (Funk & Wagnall's) defines Aesthetics as "the science of beauty and taste". "Beauty", at least, implies seeing something and acknowledging it as a thing of beauty. But, Wittgenstein has stated that "we do not see everything as something" (Monk 508). In a sense, this implies that when someone says "I see!" they are referring to understanding something rather than having a specific "visual" experience. One might as easily say "I get it!" "Or I understand it!".
One has to reflect back on Wittgenstein's theory about no two people being able to experience the same senses. "I feel your pain" is meaningless in language games. Just as "I see a knife and fork (p. 508) is. Wittgenstein turns to judgments, rather than language. "We are taught judgments and their connection with other judgments" (Wittgenstein 167). So, in an aesthetical sense, everything we see, whether we merely SEE it or comment on it, we are making a judgment. My father makes a judgment about Toni Braxton, and I, about Mozart. That does not take away fr
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Approximate Word count = 1697
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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