Langage selon wittgenstein
The theme of our philosophical essay will be the question of the language through a citation of Ludwig Witgenstein :
“Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about, you approach from another side and no longer know your way about it.”
Wittgenstein wrote this citation in his Philosophical Investigations, his most important study after the Tractatus.
To be more efficient in trying to explain what the citation of Wittgenstein could mean and after that to present my own opinion, I will divide the citation in 2 parts. The first part will be: “Language is a labyrinth of paths.” The second part will be : “You approach it from one side and know your way about, you approach from another side and no longer know your way about.”
Let’s talk now about the first citation. Language is a labyrinth of paths. I believe that to understand the meaning of this sentence, we have to clarify the definition of the language. Language is a form of communication peculiar to Humankind. If we accept this a an appropriate definition, we can say that only Humans have a “Language”, only them have the right Human Thought Process which can decode the ensemble of signs, icons and symbols we use. And it’s this HTP which makes us, humans able to find the right path in the labyrinth of language.
But is language really a labyrinth of paths? From one hand, we can say yes, forasmuch with language you can explain the same idea in many different ways, and also burr different ideas in the same sentence. From the other hand, we could say no, and that language is absolute and not relative, one sentence can contain only one idea.
The second part of the citation says: You approach from one side and know your way about, you approach from another side and no longer know your way about.
What does it mean? You here a sentence (for example about your job: you are sent to China) and it means to you something good. But then you hear it