Garry L. Hagberg

In 1931, in the remarks collected as Culture and Value, Wittgenstein writes: ‘A thinker is very much like a draughtsman whose aim it is to represent all the interrelations between things.’ At a glance it is clear that this analogy might contribute significantly to a full description of the autobiographical thinker as well. And this conjunction of relations between things and the work of the draughtsman immediately and strongly suggests that the grasping of relations is in a sense visual, or that networks or constellations of relations are the kinds of things brought into focus by seeing in the right way.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Leporello's QuestionGarry L. HagbergOne finds in the later philosophical writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein an articulation of the distinctive attitude we bring to the perception of human beings. This attitude, called by Wittgenstein "Eine Einstellung zur Seele," an attitude towards a soul, is irreducible—it cannot be analyzed into any more basic constituent parts—and it is the precondition for our sympathetic and imaginative understanding of others. It serves at the same time as the precondition for human selfhood. Stated succinctly, this unique attitude, marking the contrast between our perception of a human being and our perception of anything else animate or inanimate, is constitutive of who and what we are. And while this irreducible facet of the human situation is expressly articulated in philosophy—that is, it is therein said—it is shown in myriad places and ways. Viewed through the lens of Wittgenstein's fundamental concern with this ineliminable human attitude, Mozart and da Ponte's Don Giovanni reveals considerable insight into the content of humane acknowledgment, and the very concept of selfhood upon which that acknowledgment is based.IIt is just after voicing his aspirations to become a gentleman himself that Leporello, outside the palace of the Commendatore, provides the [End Page 180] interpretive clue to the philosophical significance of the entire opera. Thinking that he hears someone coming, he puts into play within the opening line of Don Giovanni the intertwined themes of concealment, of person-perception, and of the underlying desire for human avoidance that motivates the particular act of concealment in question: "I don't want to be seen, ah, I don't want to be seen, I don't want to be seen, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to be seen" (p. 86).1 However, the deepest clue to the philosophical significance—and the one that resonates most clearly throughout the opera—is given by Don Giovanni himself and comes in his very first line: "You shall not know who I am" (p. 86). He repeats this morally significant epistemic limit a moment later to secure this limitation on person-perception with an emphatic denial (to Donna Anna): "You scream in vain, you shall not know who I am, no" (p. 86).If we are then to see Don Giovanni as an opera that houses considerable insight—and an instructive object-lesson—about what Wittgenstein and others have discussed as the preconditions of selfhood, of inner human content, that make the distinctive—and as I have discussed elsewhere, instructively irreducible—attitude or stance we take towards other persons so much as possible, we must investigate how the opera serves to frame Giovanni.2 That is, we must comparatively situate him in relation to the other characters, as a person lacking precisely that human content, that interiority, which makes the distinctive and remarkable attitude, the essence of person-perception, possible. But before I proceed with the attempt to sketch the philosophical content to which both Leporello's and Giovanni's first words provide clues, let us consider some preliminary details in the libretto that point out the interpretive direction we will take.As early as the fatal wounding of the Commendatore, a telling contrast emerges. With the Commendatore dying, Leporello exclaims "What a tragedy! What a crime!" and then, having made these morally-engaged judgments, he describes his inner state with "I feel my heart pounding with fear in my breast." Then, in humanly-engaged reaction to the scene, he exclaims with increasing urgency (owing to his moral perception of the magnitude of the profound human loss presently occurring at Giovanni's hand) that he does not know what to say or to do. Showing in his words, his actions, and his felt urgency, his attitude towards the person of the Commendatore, Leporello stands in striking contrast to the humanly disengaged language and posture of Giovanni—a posture or stance that displays only a refusal to acknowledge the [End Page 181] humane loss he is presently causing. Giovanni provides the cold description of a detached eyewitness—one without a trace of imaginative sympathy for the victim—that approximates the outwardly descriptive language of a dehumanized behaviorist: "already...

Literature is a complex and multifaceted expression of our humanity, one dimension of which is ethical content. This striking collection of new essays pursues a fuller and richer understanding of five of the central aspects of this ethical content. These aspects are: the question of character, its formation, and its role in moral discernment; poetic vision in the context of ethical understanding; literature's distinctive role in self-identity and self-understanding; patterns of moral growth and change that emerge from the philosophical reading of literature; and the historical sources and genealogies of some of our most central contemporary conceptions of the ethical dimension of literature. The volume engages with literary work from Homer to J. M. Coetzee, Shakespeare to David Foster Wallace, and explores the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Levinas, and others. This rich collection presents some of the best new thinking about the ethical content that lies within literature, and it shows why our reflective absorption in literature is the humane--and humanizing--experience many of us have long taken it to be.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) iii-iv [Access article in PDF] Editorial War of the Worldviews With this issue, PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE enters its second quarter century. For many of the past twenty-five years it has enjoyed the sponsorship of Whitman College and the extraordinarily capable coeditorship of Patrick Henry. Bard College now assumes sponsorship, and the journal will be edited jointly by us, with Pat Henry ascending to the empyrean to look down upon us as Editor Emeritus.From its first issue (a mere 124-page wisp of a journal, but with robust essays by Hazel Barnes, Monroe Beardsley, and a smart young thinker named Martha Nussbaum), PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE has provided a home for anyone convinced by the initially counterintuitive notion that a close study of fiction can play an irreplaceable role in epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language, and even metaphysics. Philosophy is about life from the broadest possible human perspective, and so is literature. But how different the perspectives! Plato saw fiction, poetry, drama, and passion dug in on one side of the battle lines, with science, philosophy, and reason on the other. Not for the first time, nor the last, he was right. At this journal, we're on no peace mission, and we don't relish vapid compromises. Both sides in Plato's War of the Worldviews will be discomfited and annoyed to learn that they have features in common. Would-be peacemakers will be disappointed to see fresh hostilities breaking out just when they thought differences were being at last reconciled. We're interested more in the facts, arguments, and the healthy entertainment of battle than we are in making anybody comfortable. And let's admit it: the kinds of scholarly disputes we encourage in this journal can be exciting and fun.Watch these pages, therefore, not only for fresh news of ancient disputes, but also for exciting studies that break old boundaries, exploring the myriad linkages between traditional aesthetics and such empirical disciplines as psychology, anthropology, and biology. The [End Page iii] symposium on jazz in this issue marks as well our intention to publish engaging work on the arts and culture in general, not limiting ourselves to the areas named in our title. All the articles in PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE are, as always, offered in the spirit of expanding the reach and depth of humanistic scholarship. But one thing will stay the same around here: our constant concern to offer prose that is characterized by exactitude, insight, refinement, rigor, and above all, clarity.Heartfelt thanks to the many individual readers and writers who have brought PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE to this stage of its evolution. We welcome your suggestions about future directions. And so we roll up our sleeves and plunge into the next twenty-five years. Denis Dutton University of Canterbury Garry Hagberg Bard College...

This book investigates the significance of Wittgenstein’s philosophy for aesthetic understanding. Focusing on the aesthetic elements of Wittgenstein’s philosophical work, the authors explore connections to contemporary currents in aesthetic thinking and the illuminating power of Wittgenstein’s philosophy when considered in connection with the interpretation of specific works of literature, music, and the arts. Taken together, the chapters presented here show what aesthetic understanding consists of and the ways we achieve it, how it might be articulated, and why it is important. At a time of strong renewal of interest in Wittgenstein’s contributions to the philosophy of mind and language, this book offers insight into the connections between philosophical-psychological and linguistic issues and the understanding of the arts.

When we inquire into the nature of works of art we can see at a glance that there is a good deal of evidence against aesthetic idealism, the view that artworks are, in the final analysis, imaginary objects in the minds of their creators. We believe, for instance, that the National Gallery not only contingently but in some sense necessarily weighs more than merely the sum of the empty building, the people in it, and the assorted fixtures. This sum must also include the weight of canvases, the oils on them, carved stone and marble, and so on, all of which add up to substantially more than nothing, which is at least the approximate weight of imaginary things. We know that it takes considerably more than a verbal utterance or acoustical blast to transport an artwork, and we also know that a visit to the gallery is not going to amount to an afternoon spent with wax figures of unicorns, flying horses, present and bald kings of France or, for that matter, talking teapots. In short, intuition protests against the idealist theory that if works of art are imaginary objects, they cannot be the things we go to see in the gallery; and if they are imaginary objects then, like a waxen Peter Pan, they are surely not art. Mellon and Meinong simply have different kinds of collections