Indirect Communication as a Language-Game: Kierkegaard Through a Late-Wittgensteinian Lens

Authors

  • Bojan Blagojević

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i9.113

Keywords:

Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, indirect communication, language-game, life forms

Abstract

Kierkegaard’s influence on Wittgenstein is widely recognized, but is most commonly treated in terms of (shared or opposed) views on religion, philosophy, ethics or nonsense. This paper will attempt to interpret Kierkegaard’s writing strategy known as ‘indirect communication’ in terms not of the Tractatus, but of Philosophical Investigations, namely as a language-game of sorts. We will attempt to show the deficiencies of Cavell’s and Conant’s interpretations and, by placing the concept of such communication in context, referring it to similar concepts, such as Socratic irony, we will aim to sketch its grammar and its relation to the ‘ordinary’ direct communication. Further, we will argue that indirect communication, pertaining to Kierkegaard’s concept of subjective truth, avoids the charge of being a private language.

Author Biography

Bojan Blagojević

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš
Serbia

Department of Philosophy, assistant professor

References

Cavell, Stanley. Must We Mean What We Say? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

Fleming, Richard and Michael Payne ed. The Senses of Stanley Cavell. London, Toronto: Associated Universities Presses, 1989.

Kierkegaard, Søren. The Book on Adler. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to ‘Philosophical Fragments’ vol. I. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400846993

Nehamas, Alexander. The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Wiley, Blackwell, 2009.

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Published

15.04.2016

How to Cite

Blagojević, B. (2016). Indirect Communication as a Language-Game: Kierkegaard Through a Late-Wittgensteinian Lens. AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (9), 23–32. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i9.113