Abstract

In this chapter, the author provides a detailed commentary on the first two sections of Philosophical Investigations. The first section gives a banal description that the author is tempted to regiment with a philosophical theory of the essence of language, the philosophical conception. But that philosophical conception is not at play in the simple example of a primitive language. In second section, Wittgenstein is providing a simpler example than Augustine's to see if the philosophical conception applies. He provides a primitive idea of names. The author then presents the basic structure most commentators ascribe to the text and sketch out the main points on which he disagrees. He takes the text to be providing a description of language learning and tentatively exploring it and doing so in a way that is wary of and resistant to the urge to theorize meaning in the manner of the philosophical conception.