Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

The Aesthetic Turn: Wittgenstein, Cavell
and “Therapy”
Thomas Meyer
Recent publication of The New Wittgenstein signals the arrival of what has been called
the distinctively "therapeutic" (Crary 1ff.) reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical
project. This reading, or family of readings, controversially claims that throughout both
his early and later writing Wittgenstein consistently struggles against the tenability of an
"external" (Crary 5) perspective on language and meaning. It is to such a standpoint that
we appeal when seeking to explain what determines the meaning of words, and to
account for that in virtue of which one word means what it does. Without attempting to
challenge the exegetical basis of this claim, and without intending to question the
importance of this reading in the recent history of Wittgenstein interpretation, this essay
rather examines the relationship between the therapeutic reading propounded at the
turn of the new century and the "aesthetic" (Cavell 86-96) conception of Wittgenstein's
work first proposed by Stanley Cavell nearly four decades ago. As I suggest, the
compatibility between these two characterizations of Wittgenstein's specifically later
work has not been explored in the literature. A rich presentation of Cavell's early view
reveals, I maintain here, that the therapeutic dialectic now being imagined contains at its
very heart a distinctively aesthetic moment. The place of the aesthetic in Wittgenstein's
therapy, if it exists, provides a renewed and perhaps even uncontemplated means for
describing the therapeutic project to which he is committed.
In order to develop a background from which to approach the therapeutic
interpretation, I begin with a treatment of the aesthetic character of Wittgensteinian
philosophy advanced by Cavell. In his influential essay "Aesthetic Problems of Modern
Philosophy", Cavell presents a reading of Wittgenstein's later work that defends the
existence of a close analogy between Wittgenstein and Immanuel Kant. According to
Cavell, both Wittgenstein and Kant have an interest in disagreements that erupt when
we lack rules to settle the correctness of a judgment. While Wittgenstein attends to
judgments concerning games, or knowledge, for instance, Kant directs himself in this
connection to aesthetic judgments of the beautiful.
Upon examining the text of Cavell's discussion, we find both the announcement of
an interpretive proposal in the analysis of Wittgenstein and something of a defense of
the position attributed to Wittgenstein thereby. The interpretation itself is based in a
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