O conceito de jogos de linguagem nas investigações filosóficas

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to reflect about concept of language games , developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in the book Philosophical Investigations , and, based on this reflection, to shed light on the way of looking at 'philosophical doing', which sees it as an activity therapeutic treatment of philosophical dogmatism, capable of making any of us ill, such perplexity that it assumes in the face of the things of life. With a view to our purpose, the division of the research, into chapters, is as follows: i) in the first chapter we deal with the question “Where do language games point to?”. First, we are going to see that language games point to a context that involves, on the one hand, an essentialist image of language, not as a philosophical theory of meaning, but as a framework of thought that underlies numerous philosophical theories. On the other hand, the context pointed out involves the concept that grounds this essentialist image of language, namely, the concept of 'ostension'. Against this, we expose Wittgenstein's argument that the meaning of words comes from the use we make of them, which are learned through training and teaching; ii) once this context is pointed out, in the second chapter we examine Wittgenstein's concept based on the question: “What are language games?”, in order to understand under what conditions we could request a definitive definition for the concept of language games. At this point in the discussion we show that the definition of language games, provided by Wittgenstein, does not work in the same way as the definition, when given under the guidance of the essentialist image of language. This step is necessary to demonstrate that the concept of language games is presented from a set of examples. In defense of this point, the notion of rules is introduced and Wittgenstein's analogy of language and games is detailed; iii) in the third chapter, we approach the theme from the question: “What are language games for?”, which allows us to better develop the study about rules, according to Wittgenstein's view. To that end, our focus is on the idea of “following the rules” contained in sections 185 to 242 of the Investigations ; iv) in the fourth and last chapter, the discussion on philosophy as a grammatical therapeutic activity, is a way of presenting the results achieved by the development of the research, understanding that if these results, if this research, has any value, this value can be associated to the proposed change to the way of seeing and doing philosophy, transformed as the therapeutic method of Wittgenstein's philosophy is applied. The conclusion we reached out with this work is that the concept of language games, in addition to playing a central role in the changes in Wittgenstein’s philosophical perspective, opened the route for other ways to look and relating ourselves with language and with the philosophical activity.