Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Roberto Rojo
Agade, founder of Babylonia, Moses, Romulus, Oedipus, Paris, Gilgamesh) and some
more examined by Rank, and after pointing out the common elements in all these
mythical representations, Freud highlights the essential features in all these versions by
following Rank´s methods, and applying a galtonian technique. He works out in this way
the elaboration of the family resemblances in the figure of the hero. Some of the points,
among others, are: the hero is the offspring of illustrious parents; there are many
difficulties facing his conception; the child is condemned by his father or by a father
figure.
I took time to consider the use of Galton´s procedure because the striking similarity
with Wittgenstein´s analysis of the concept of games looks more than simply casual .
As far as I know the only time that Wittgenstein deliberately refers to Galton´s method is
in his Lecture on Ethics (p.4), the text in which, pointing the difficulties in reaching a clear
delimitation of the object of ethics he enumerates different definitions, and while doing
this expresses that "I want to produce the same effect which Galton produced when he
took a number of photos of different faces on the same photographic plate in order to
get the picture of the typical features they all had in common."
I will insist on this idea of the family resemblances because it constitutes, in
Wittgenstein´s case, one of the key ideas that opened new channels in the way of doing
philosophy in contemporary thought. It is no longer the question of being the victims of
the traditional metaphysical obsession which went out inquisitively into the essence of
things. The essence is an illusion and the justified abandonment by this liberating
search, ends in the philosophical outcome of finding the family resemblances idea.
There is, accordingly, no such thing as the essence of language, but family
resemblances between the different clases of language; there is no such thing as the
essence of game but the family air between the different types of games. Seldom was
Wittgenstein so clear at characterizing games by appealing to the concept of family
resemblance as in the following text §§ 66,67): "And the result of this examination is:
we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing, sometimes
overall similarities, sometimes similarities of details. I can thing of no better expressions
to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances" (Familienähnlichkeiten)
…And I shall say "games" form a family."(Wittgenstein b,§§ 66.67)
There is no doubt that Wittgenstein´s idea about family resemblances is clearly
copied from Galton´s composite photography procedure which Freud employed
methodologically several times. And no less striking is the fact that Wittgenstein would
use the same expression that Freud utilizes, Familienählichkeiten, in order to designate
the same procedure, as well as similar extensions in the application of such method.
Just as Freud not only applied it to the oniric phenomenon but to the hero figure, so
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