Wittgenstein on the Meaning of Life: From Theory to Therapy

In the philosophical Å’vre of Ludwig Wittgenstein explicitly ethical remarks appear as scattered islands within the ocean of logical and linguistic investigations. The fact that precisely these remarks motivate Wittgenstein's Denkbewegungen was articulated by the author himself several times.1 In the following article we attempt to provide hints for the ethical dimension of Wittgenstein's "authorial strategy" (Conant, 2000, 175) by reflecting on the importance of the question of the meaning of life for the development of Wittgenstein's philosophical style of thinking. When refering to the "close relationship between his life problems and his philosophical way of thinking" (DB, 8, my translation), we are not following the impulse of reductionist psychologization, but are offering an invitation to a reading of Wittgenstein"s philososophy that emphasizes the 'tone of voice" (Monk, 2001, 4) of his language.