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Augustine and Wittgenstein on Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Patrick Bearsley
Patrick Bearsley
Affiliation:
Mount St. Mary's, Taradale, New Zealand
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Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 58 , Issue 224 , April 1983 , pp. 229 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1983

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References

1 A. Kenny, ‘The Ghost of the Tractatus’, Understanding Wittgenstein, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures, 7, 1972/73, G. Vesey (ed.) (London: Macmillan, 1974).

2 ‘When Augustine talks about the learning of language he talks about how we attach names to things or understand the names of things. Naming here appears as the foundation, the be all and end all of language’ (Philosophical Grammar, 56).

3 Cf. ‘When someone whom I am afraid of orders me to continue the series, I act quickly, with perfect certainty, and the lack of reasons does not trouble me’(PI I, 212—my emphasis).

4 See J. F. M. Hunter, ‘ “Forms of Life” in Wittgenstein's “Philosophical Investigations” ’, Essays on Wittgenstein, E. D. Klemke (ed.) (University of Illinois Press, 1971), 273-297.

5 G. E. Moore, ‘A Defence of Common Sense’, Philosophical Papers (London: George Allen &Unwin, 1959), 32-59.

6 B. Stroud, ‘Wittgenstein and Logical Necessity’, Philosophical Review 74 (1965), 514.

7 OC 162, also 415. See W. D. Hudson, ‘Language-Games and Presuppositions’, Philosophy 53 (1978), 94-99.

8 G. Hallett, SJ, A Companion to Wittgenstein's “Philosophical Investigations” (Cornell University Press, 1977), 98.

9 Wittgenstein quoted by Hallett, Companion, 108.

10 A similar point can be found in cc. 10 and 11 of the De Magistro where Augustine is arguing that the use of language by a teacher cannot convey any new information to a pupil, but can only arouse in his mind ideas and images with which he is already familiar.

11 See Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, 2, n. 5; Blue Book, 64. See also Hallett, Companion, 323-324.

12 At least this is his provisional conclusion, but he does not return to the subject later in the work.

13 Hallett, Companion, 761.

14 For example: L. Moonan, ‘Word Meaning’, Philosophy 51 (1976), 195-207; N. Kretzmann, ‘Semantics, History of’, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, VII (New York, London: Free Press, 1967), 366; see also note I in St Augustine, The Greatness of the Soul: The Teacher, trans. J. M. Colleran, Ancient Christian Writers, IX (London: Longmans, Green &Co., 1950).