Séminaire PRISME - Arvi Särkelä - Reflections from the Fly-Bottle : Metaphor and Captivity in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations

Arvi Särkelä, Professeur invité de l’EHESS (invitant Leopoldo Iribarren) et chercheur à l’École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich, interviendra à l’Institut Jean-Nicod dans le cadre du séminaire de l’équipe PRISME, le vendredi 16 mai à 11h, dans la salle de réunion de l’Institut Jean-Nicod (rdc Pavillon Jardin, 29 rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris).

Le titre et le résumé de son intervention figurent ci-dessous.

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Reflections from the Fly-Bottle : Metaphor and Captivity in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations

In this lecture, I will look at a particular type of philosophical gesture, a philosophical method of “showing” rather than “saying” (see TLP, 4.1212) in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (PI). This gesture is the use of metaphor. I will single out an exemplary metaphor : showing the fly the way out of the fly-bottle (§ 309). This metaphor is particularly interesting, since Wittgenstein uses it as a metaphor for his philosophical method. Metaphor is here utilized, as it were, as a method of showing the method of showing. I, on my part, will seek to show just how and what this metaphor shows. It will appear that it entertains a curiously chiasmic structure : by pointing to individual existential experience, it discloses a most general methodological feature of the author’s philosophy. – This, I believe, might, finally, point to a path of reading the PI in toto as a showing, that is disclosing, text – a text that is fundamentally misunderstood if read as assertive.

The talk excavates some of the metaphoric underground of the PI to show how Wittgenstein uses metaphorical methods as philosophically significant gestures. The metaphoric is thereby not taken as “decorative” or otherwise inferior to conceptual analysis. Instead, there is good reason, as I will attempt to show, to think that Wittgenstein regards metaphor as a method of what he precisely calls “analysis.” First, I will introduce the key metaphor that will lead my excavation, the “fly-bottle” of § 309. I will then go on to elaborate this metaphor by walking the listeners through the rich metaphoric of §§ 90-116, a rather fierce passage of the PI where Wittgenstein, I take it, describes how a picture that had held him captive lost its grip on him, i.e., how he, as it were, got out of the fly-bottle. I will then discuss how such individual existential experience and philosophical method hang together in this simile. Finally, I will point to aspects of a potential social or cultural criticism buried in this metaphoric ground.

Toute personne intéressée est la bienvenue.