Wittgenstein and Philosophy of Healing

-The Zen Buddhist Style of the thinking of Wittgenstein-

Kim, Seong-woo

The image of the philosophy of Wittgenstein is a icon of "linguistic turn" and analytic

philosopher. But the "knowing life" that he has sought is reduced to pure knowledge of

scientific langage that is separated from life, for langage is a main "form of life". In fact,

in his later writings "forms of life" and "langage game" are the most important concepts

His knowing life is to have a outlook(Übersicht) of the life-world. From a viewpoint of the

life-world, the transcendental ego or consciousness as the objectively and universally

scientific domain in the Cartesian and Kantian meaning is not outside the same scientific

world. Instead, (in the Heideggerian sense) only the Dasein(Being-there) of Being-in-the-

world exist.

His philosophical temperament or style like this has a "family resemblance" to the Zen

Buddhist one in his seeking for such a immediate simplicity that he reaching the limits of

langage, the life-world and its sense reveal themselves. He eliminates the diseases of the

philosophical problems of our times and so tries to change or reorient our life. It means a

healing of life or salvation. The philosophical diseases of our times that he wants to get

rid of are the scientism of the science, the solipsism of the ego and the essentialism of

the world that includes these two. His words is a hammer destroying these philosophical

idols. His doing philosophy is to fight the langage that bedevils us by the phantoms of

grammatical fictions.

We hear the echo of Zen Buddhist monks in the philosophical style of Wittgenstein, the

painter who let the grammatical ghosts like the essentialist theology of logic, ego, and

god disappear by clearing the limits of langage and outlooks the whole relationship of the

life-world by glimpsing(Einsehen) it immediately and simply.

Key Words : Wittgenstein, Zen Buddhism, Life Philosophy, Healing, Disease