On Wallace's Jest: Introduction to Language-Games

I have decided to commence on a pseudo-project involving the deconstruction of a few themes in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The novel is not just a work-of-genius in the most sincere sense of the term, but it happens to be my favorite work of fiction, and is an important piece of literature in its own right: it attempts to redefine what the novel and author can and should do in the wake of postmodernism’s moral decadence.

Wallace admitted to being heavily influenced by Wittgenstein, and Wittgenstein’s influential concept of language-games. The classic example (here, of "builder’s language") can be found in his Philosophical Investigations:

"The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words "block", "pillar", "slab", "beam". A calls them out; — B brings the stone which he has learned to bring at such-and-such a call."

The builder can use the word "block" because his language-game allows for the possibility of the other words. A language instantiates the logical combinations of all its elements according to a specific set of grammatical rules. These combinations are the boundary of the builder’s understanding (hence the famous quotation, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world"). If the language does not permit the expression of a thought because there is no grammar for it, then we cannot, as participators in that language-game, possibly conceive of that thought.

Thus, there is no metaphysics. For Wittgenstein, language is the world, and the language-games we participate in are constructed in such a way that cannot penetrate the world through accurate description. Interestingly, we must look to language in order to find the structures of our worlds (Wittgenstein always thought philosophy was a descriptive task, not a cutting-away of layers to find meaning in things that were not in front of the philosopher the entire time), but we can never know it as a result. Wittgenstein could show us how language produced metaphysical contours, but not actual things themselves. Value and meaning are evident in language, but not described by it; thus, we act and speak ethically (through the language-game), forever failing to systematize ethics (or metaphysics).

This is why, in his Investigations, he made his most profound move: Wittgenstein threw his early methodology out the window. The language-game contoured all individual meaning. What language could not describe, the philosopher could not know. Then, to come into dialogue with the traditional philosophical questions (even if to reject them), we must forget the analytic method:

"Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and to answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads philosophers into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is 'purely descriptive.’"

Next time I will discuss Infinite Jest’s treatment of the notion of freedom in America as a way of critically considering libertarianism as philosophy in light of its adoption of a particular language-game.

The Other PT

Here's a neat little article on a good friend of The Ennobler. Read through and you'll find out that Peter Toshev, an Essex High School graduate, biker gang member, and downright plain person, will be working this summer at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. While astrophysics and advanced mathematics are not The Ennobler's area of expertise, there is no denying the unequivocal search for truth by Mr. Toshev and all the scientists at CERN.

Congratulations Peter! I'll see you in Geneva this summer.

The Daily Heideggerian

“He’s baaaack!” No, I’m not referring to PT; we’re as in the dark about his return as you are (all two of you, as a result of yet another unacceptable hiatus on our part). But be sure to welcome, again, Martin Heidegger. As a result of February’s rapid-fire account of fundamentally ontological applications of his work, Jeremiah suggested that we change our name to The Daily Heideggerian. For now we’ll continue slowly on that path, though if Congress forces us to relinquish our naming rights, we at least have a backup plan.

The G-20 is winding things down in London after a couple days of annoying, though at this point common, announcements of pressing agendas. Mostly, it was a series of derivations on the same question: how does the free world respond to the failures of capitalism? Despite conservatives’ (real conservatives, Mr. Sarkozy) all-too-easy repudiation of the general question as misleading and factually wrong (I, for one, find it conceptually confusing that “housing market” and “capitalism” mean the same thing now), there were more institutional proposals offered yesterday than post-less Wednesdays the past two months (we need you, PT).

Heidegger is, of course, concerned with Dasein (like a human being, but stripped of everything save his ontological status), as well as Dasein’s concern (we are always entangled with the world, taking care of and concerning ourselves with “things”). Part of the fundamental ontology involves the concept of “being-with,” or Dasein’s relationship with and visibility of the “they” (das Man):

By “Others” we do not mean everyone else but me – those over against whom the “I” stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself – those among whom one is too (Heidegger, Being and Time).

There is a sense that we are ontologically intimate with others, and “being-with” is the action that describes it. There is a lot that Heidegger says about authenticity (there is a lot that any existentialist says about authenticity; see Sartre, Jean-Paul), and this is a big one: how is it that we behave authentically toward other Dasein?

There are, in fact, two kinds of concern: leaping in and leaping ahead. To leap in is to take the other’s “care” away from him – one can find another hammering on a shoe and take both the hammer and the shoe away from him, cobbling until completion and handing him back a finished shoe. Leaping in is concerning oneself with removing the concern from others, disburdening them of their own projects (whether in totality or in measure). There is a creation of dependence in this relation, which is inauthentic. It is the most prevalent form of concern there is.

To leap ahead gives care back to the other: Mit-dasein are allowed to do things for themselves. In a sense, we can help make this so by freeing the other for his care in transparency. This opens up their possibilities of being, allows them to exist in a more authentic manner, and represents an authentic form of concern for Dasein himself.

What does this have to do with G-20? I think you can figure that out on your own.