Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Wittgenstein and the Scene of Contemporary Political Theory
- 1 Theorizing as a Lived Experience: A Wittgensteinian Investigation
- 2 Wittgenstein's Philosophy after the Disaster
- 3 Wittgenstein and Citizenship: Reading Socrates in Tehran
- 4 Why Wittgenstein is Not Conservative: Conventions and Critique
- 5 Aspect-Blindness in Religion, Philosophy, and Law: The Force of Wittgensteinian Reading
- 6 Seeing as it Happens: Theorizing Politics through the Eyes of Wittgenstein
- 7 Bare Life: Comedy, Trust, and Language in Wittgenstein and Beckett
- Conclusion: The Personal is the Theoretical
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Aspect-Blindness in Religion, Philosophy, and Law: The Force of Wittgensteinian Reading
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Wittgenstein and the Scene of Contemporary Political Theory
- 1 Theorizing as a Lived Experience: A Wittgensteinian Investigation
- 2 Wittgenstein's Philosophy after the Disaster
- 3 Wittgenstein and Citizenship: Reading Socrates in Tehran
- 4 Why Wittgenstein is Not Conservative: Conventions and Critique
- 5 Aspect-Blindness in Religion, Philosophy, and Law: The Force of Wittgensteinian Reading
- 6 Seeing as it Happens: Theorizing Politics through the Eyes of Wittgenstein
- 7 Bare Life: Comedy, Trust, and Language in Wittgenstein and Beckett
- Conclusion: The Personal is the Theoretical
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.
Michel Foucault (1985: 8)Introduction
Aspect-blindness is a condition that Wittgenstein posits in order to create a contrast to the experience of changes in aspect. We cannot be sure if Wittgenstein is describing an actual condition – as tone deafness, or lacking a sense of humor are actual conditions likened to aspect-blindness – or if he is merely presenting the conceptual negation of seeing something as something else, a painting of a cube as a cube, for example. If it is the latter, then the matter of aspect-blindness could be settled by speculating that an aspect blind person can, when observing the Jastrow drawing of a duck/rabbit, see a duck or a rabbit, but not both; nor, and more importantly, could the person experience the paradox that comes with the expression of changing aspects, “Now I see it as …” This is not, in Wittgenstein's rather short series of elucidations, a fatal condition. But in comparing aspect-blindness to tone deafness and humorlessness, Wittgenstein wants us to see that the enjoyment of life is impaired by this deficiency. Literally, aspect-blindness robs the afflicted of an ability to perceive the uncanniness of the ordinary, to use Cavell's phrase, or respond to the world playfully.
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- Information
- Wittgenstein and Political TheoryThe View from Somewhere, pp. 115 - 133Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2009