After reading Wittgenstein’s “Philosophical Investigation”, I was left confused. Wittgenstein has a writing style that is all his own to say the least. It is partially cryptic and laid out in a moderately hard to understand format. At first it made sense and seemed to have a point but soon turn into a almost unreadable mess of examples and definitions. I was never much into philosophy and I cannot say that this text has helped that. This text left me with way more questions than answers and I found myself trying to decipher what I had read hours after completing it. It made me think and it showed me a different view point entirely while confusing the hell out of me.
Its is extremely difficult to write even a short essay (a paragraph or two) about something that you didn't understand. The little bit I did understand talked about relationships between words and objects. To me it seemed that Wittgenstein was trying to communicate that it isn't just a relationship between a word and object but also how it maybe used. “Meaning” is not defined as a connection between objects but more so how the word is used. There are no boxed out, rigid definitions of words. Everything is relative to one another and a language is dependent on itself not objects.
Wittgenstein used an example about tools to help drive his viewpoint home. He states “all tools serve to modify something.” I agree that tools modify things however “tools” can not all be grouped together. Wittgenstein state no definition is not cut and dry. It can't be, tools can be generalized together but there are no defined commonalities. “Tools” is too broad of a term and although it can be used to vaguely describe something it has no definitive characteristics.
Overall it was a relatively good read but it was too cryptic and difficult to understand to be something I would take a second look at.
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