Beckett after Wittgenstein: The Literature of Exhausted Justification

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Furlani
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Family Resemblance ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Cartesian Skepticism ◽  
Philosophy And Literature ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
Aesthetic Practice ◽  
Forms Of Life

Ludwig Wittgenstein's closely related critiques of language, Cartesian skepticism, inner criteria, and hermeneutics have instructive parallels in the work of Samuel Beckett, whose avowed interest in Wittgenstein's philosophy elucidates, for example, the treatment of expectation in Waiting for Godot, of solipsism in Company, and of rule following in Endgame and What Where. Wittgenstein's insistence that interpretation is not compulsory but remedial, resting on a primitive rule-following competence that permeates our “forms of life” and thus our language, endorses the antimetaphysical dramaturgy Beckett developed while directing stage and screen productions of his own writing. Adapting Wittgenstein's concept of “family resemblance” to an exemplary conjunction of philosophy and literature, this essay proposes that Beckett's works are less aporetic scenarios of deferral and undecidability than meticulous representations of the largely unarticulated convergent behaviors constituting forms of life. As a director, Beckett could draw from Wittgenstein clarifying confirmation of an aesthetic practice that, like the Philosophical Investigations, begins “where interpretation comes to an end.”

On Rule-Following

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie McGinn
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Normative Constraint

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein raises difficulties for the idea that what comes before my mind when I hear, or suddenly understand, a word can impose any normative constraint on what I go on to do. The conclusion his reflections seem to force on us gives rise to a paradox: there is no such thing as going on to apply an expression in a way that accords with what is meant by it. The paradox can be seen as one horn of a dilemma, the other horn of which is Platonism about meaning. It is generally agreed that resolving the paradox means finding a middle course between the two horns of the dilemma. This chapter looks at three attempts to find the middle course: communitarianism, naturalized Platonism, and quietism. It then considers whether Charles Travis offers a way out of the dilemma which avoids the problems of the other views discussed.

scholarly journals Wittgenstein’s language and Beckett: The limits of language and the absurd

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-376
Author(s):  
Marialena Avgerinou
Keyword(s):  
Language Games ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Problematic Use ◽  
Waiting For Godot

This paper provides a parallel linguistic and conceptual reading of Wittgenstein?s and Beckett?s works. More specifically, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations are looked at in relation to the absurd plays Not I and Waiting for Godot, respectively. The limits of language as described in the Tractatus are part of the verbally and conceptually asphyxiating world brought on stage by Beckett in the monologue Not I, while the transition to ?language games? of the Philosophical Investigations can be identified in parts of Waiting for Godot. The suggested conclusion is that Wittgenstein?s expression of the ineffable, the problematic use of language and (its) meaning can be and have been expressed in a form of art, while the meanings of Wittgenstein?s writings are in harmony with their stylistic form, his concept of ?showing? further illustrating this idea.

scholarly journals “Die Maschine als Symbol ihrer Wirkungsweise”: Wittgenstein, Reuleaux and Kinematics

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sébastien Gandon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
General Science ◽  
Machine Model ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
The Future ◽  
Machine Configuration

In Philosophical Investigations 193–94, Wittgenstein draws a notorious analogy between the working of a machine and the application of a rule. According to the view of rule-following that Wittgenstein is criticizing, the future applications of a rule are completely determined by the rule itself, as the movements of the machine components are completely determined by the machine configuration. On what conception of the machine is such an analogy based? In this paper, I intend to show that Wittgenstein relied on quite a specific scientific tradition very active at the beginning of the twentieth century: the kinematic or the general science of machines. To explain the fundamental tenets of this line of research and its links with Wittgenstein, I focus on Franz Reuleaux (1829–1905), whose works were known to Wittgenstein.       The first payoff of this investigation is to help distance the functionalist framework from which this passage is often read: Wittgenstein’s machines are not (or not primarily) computers. The second payoff is to explain why Wittgenstein talks about machines at this place in his discussion on rule-following: it is not the machine model in itself that is criticized in PI 193–94, but the “philosophical” temptation to generalize from it.

scholarly journals Register in Samuel Beckett’s Writings in English and French:

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-48
Author(s):  
Bentolhoda Nakhaei
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
English Version ◽  
French Version ◽  
Semantic Framework ◽  
Translation Analysis ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
Stylistic Changes

Abstract Samuel Beckett, the Irish author and playwright was born in 1906 in County Dublin, Ireland and died in 1989, in Paris, France. From 1929 to 1989, Beckett wrote letters through which his life is depicted. His letters were published in the form of four volumes entitled as follows: volume I: 1929-1940 (published in 2009), volume II: 1941-1956 (published in 2011), volume III: 1957-1965 (published in 2014), and lastly, volume IV: 1966-1989 (published in 2016). These letters were later translated in French by the publishing house of Gallimard between 2014 and 2018. Within a morpho-semantic framework of analysis, one may wonder to what extent there exists stylistic affinities between his letters and his famous tragicomedy entitled Waiting for Godot (published in 1952). In other terms, are there constant, and/or shared stylistic units? To what extent has the register been changed from his letters to his play? How may the vocabulary, punctuation, and grammar differ from the English version of Waiting for Godot to the French version? Do these stylistic changes from English to French affect the notions of 20th-century man in the society in France? By drawing on certain theories of theoreticians in linguistics and translation studies such as Brian T. Fitch, Anthony Uhlmann, and Saeid Rahipour, this research seeks to present a linguistic and translation analysis of Beckett’s register in his four volumes of letters and English, and French versions of his play Waiting for Godot. Hence, this study aims to investigate the extent to which the Irish writer’s register has been differentiated in the corpus under study by the passage of time to suit the stylistic norms of 20th century in France and England.

The Chinese Translation of Samuel Beckett: A Critical History

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-295
Author(s):  
Bo Cao
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Aesthetic Response ◽  
Chinese Translation ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Translation Practice ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
History Of ◽  
Harsh Criticism ◽  
Second Period

In light of the relevant merits and defects of translation practice over sixty years, this article presents a critical history of the Chinese translation of the work of Samuel Beckett. The article argues that the history may be divided into two periods: the pre-1980 period and the post-1980 period, with China's reopening to the outside world in the late 1970s as the watershed. The first period is dominated by the politically propelled translation of Waiting for Godot and harsh criticism of Beckett as a ‘decadent’ author. The second period, characterized by a more complex aesthetic response, may be further divided into three stages: the first stage is marked by the pioneering Proust as a booklet on irrationalism and the debatable Collection of Samuel Beckett translated from French; the second stage by the annotated Complete Works of Samuel Beckett; the third stage by the scholastically motivated Letters of Samuel Beckett. In retrospect, the transition between the two periods is a dramatic one from political misreading to aesthetic appreciation. Or, rather, the progress of the Chinese translation since the turn of the twentieth century mirrors both the re-evaluation of Beckett as an innovative artist and the ‘inward turn’ of Chinese intellectual circles.

How Private Must an Objectionably Private Language Be?

1998 ◽  
pp. 62-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Lillegard
Keyword(s):  
Community Correction ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Private Practices ◽  
Simon Blackburn ◽  
Mental Events

Some philosophers, taking their cue from Philosophical Investigations (PI) 243-315, suppose that a private language is objectionable only when its terms refer to Cartesian mental events. Others (notably Kripke) have focused on PI 201 and the surrounding remarks about rule following, and have explicated the notion of an objectionable private language as (roughly) that of a language used by just one isolated individual unsupported at any time by any source of external or community correction and approval. I attempt to defend Kripke's account against some objections proffered by Simon Blackburn. Blackburn supposes that individuals are no worse off than communities with respect to the difficulties raised by Kripke, and argues that the "paradox" of PI 201 can be avoided by a proper understanding of extended dispositions, and by grasping the possibility of private practices. But Blackburn misconstrues what it is to go on in the "same" way in following a rule, and ignores the place of constitutive rules in practices.

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