Episode 11: Martin Gustafsson discusses philosophical pictures
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What is Wittgenstein’s “Augustinian picture” of language and why does it matter?
Hello, and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Teichman. And I'm Mark Hopwood. With us today is Martin Gustafsson, professor of philosophy at Stockholm University. He is here to talk with us about philosophical pictures. Martin Gustafsson, welcome.
Thank you.
Wittgenstein famously opens his book, The Philosophical Investigations, with a long quotation from the philosopher Augustine about what language is and how we come to learn it. What's the idea, roughly, that's broached in that passage?
Well, it's actually like a common sense description of what he thought happened when he learned language. It's not clear that this is a passage where Augustine is doing philosophy at all. And that's one thing that is puzzling about it, that Wittgenstein uses this seemingly everyday description as a starting point for a deep philosophical criticism of certain views of language. So Wittgenstein thinks there is a picture in Augustine's description of But the picture is very, very simple, very primitive. It is simply that the words in language name objects, sentences are combinations of such names. Then Wittgenstein goes on to say that in this picture of language, we find the roots of a certain idea. And the idea is that every word has a meaning.
This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands. And already there, I think, we have something like philosophy going on. But in the very first description of the picture, this very bare description, It's not clear that this is philosophy either, that the words in language name objects, sentences are combinations of such names. It may be a useful starting point for thinking about language. But it's not clear that it's really a philosophical thesis or anything.
So there's a standard way of reading the opening of the investigations where readers of Wittgenstein will refer to the Augustinian picture of language that is broached right at the beginning. And this then becomes the object of criticism in the rest of the book. So the book begins with this picture of language that we're supposed to find fairly intuitive. It's supposed to be appealing to us. But then Wittgenstein is going to go on to present all kinds of arguments to show why it's mistaken. And by the end of the book, we'll have realized we have to let go of it.
How do Martin Gustafsson and the hosts critique the standard reading of the opening picture?
Now, you've raised some worries about this standard way of reading the opening of the book. So maybe you could tell us about those.
Yeah, I think those kind of standard readings makes the so-called Augustinian picture of language much too rich, much too elaborate, right? So let me give you an example, a list of things that people have said are parts of this picture. So words are names, sentences are combinations of names, every significant word has a meaning. Meaning correlated with a word is the object for which the word stands. There is primary concern with nouns, and property words are secondary. The human subject is an interface between its own private essence and the world. The private essence has internal articulations that cannot yet be expressed, thus making it somehow already communicatively human. Ostention is fundamental in establishing the connection between word and object, and so on and so forth.
I think it's true that all these things are things that Wittgenstein criticizes, but it's very doubtful that he would regard them as parts of this initial primitive picture that Augustine gives us in this passage he's quoting. And if you start talking about the Augustinian picture of language in these terms, it also becomes very problematic to say that the historical Augustine actually would have subscribed to such a picture. In fact, if you consider the wider context of the passage from the Confessions, Augustine's Confessions, it's clear already from that that some of these points are things that Augustine himself has problems with. And if you consider his more sophisticated philosophical writings, it's very clear that Augustine is problematizing some of these things, is struggling with these ideas, and is not at all unequivocally subscribing to these ideas.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Wittgenstein’s “Augustinian picture” of language and why does it matter?
0:01–2:40
2
How do Martin Gustafsson and the hosts critique the standard reading of the opening picture?
2:40–6:05
3
Why does Wittgenstein distinguish between a “picture” and a full‑blown philosophical theory?
6:05–9:09
4
When does the simple picture of words as names lead to philosophical trouble?
9:09–11:43
5
How do Augustine’s and Plato’s passages illustrate different uses of philosophical pictures?
11:43–14:53
6
In what ways can a primitive picture become harmful, and how does Wittgenstein propose we handle it?
14:53–17:32
7
Is Wittgenstein’s method more like a spiritual exercise than a theory‑building project?
17:32–20:23
8
What are the broader implications of treating philosophical pictures as tools rather than doctrines?
20:23–23:03
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