A Scottish Book

Different from most of the modern philosophical works, Philosophical Investigations has a unique and distinct overall posture, which cannot be grasped by getting hold of every piece of thesis in this book. The latter(every piece of thesis) is actually not a path to the former(overall posture) at all, but will be knocked down and transported to their own larger arguments separately, which has been testified by most of the Wittgensteinian study. I will clarify that if we omit the overall posture of Philosophical Investigations, we will turn a blind eye to those questions which are extremely pressing to Wittgenstein and ourselves. I chose a position like viewing deck, different from the typical attention on thesis of Philosophical Investigations, which means referring to the spirit of the whole ancient philosophy especially represented by Socrates way of philosophy and grasping those can be only grasped in a broader view-what kind of work Philosophical Investigations is, including the philosophical aim and way to realize it in Philosophical Investigations.The first question is about the spirit of ancient philosophy, which reveals typically in the philosophical activities of Socrates. He cultivates the self-community by involving in dialogues, in other words, the participation into public thing, which means that ancient philosophy is not naturally the meditation on essence, but cultivation of self-living. In Pierre Hadot’s words, ancient philosophy is a way of life.The second question is how could Philosophical Investigations be taken as dialogue, which will be backed up by evidence from rhetoric and philosophy of language. The rhetorical analysis will back up such point: there exist two different voices in PI, even though that both of them are made by the same person—Wittgenstein, we can still take PI as dialogue because of the obvious and critical responsive relation between them. In the field of philosophy of language, analysis about the real daily dialogue indicates that “responsiveness” is a substantial feature, which can never be put into insight of the “idealized view of language”, of daily dialogue that we involved in everyday. Therefore, the typical anti-theoretical way of PI will be supported in both of those two sides.The final questions is how does Philosophical Investigations has spiritual intimacy with Socrate dialogues. We will figure out through the discussion about all kinds of philosophical illusions in it, that thoughts of Wittgenstein always connects with disease and the inducement of a way of life. Obviously, Wittgenstein kept the same tension between the attitude of philosophical problems and ways of life, or those two things were radically the same thing. His work revealed the deepest difficulty, which belongs to both philosophy and life, in this world that neither can be discarded nor can be taken in: in that sense, Philosophical Investigations is a Socrates work.