UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA
SISTEMA DE ESTUDIOS DE POSGRADO
EL CONCEPTO DE JUEGO EN WITTGENSTEIN Y DERRIDA
Tesis sometida a la consideración de la Comisión del Programa de Estudios de Posgrado en
Filosofía para optar al grado y título de Maestría Académica en Filosofía
KEVIN ROMÁN-GAMBOA
Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio, Costa Rica
2022
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor Professor Lorenzo Boccafogli, Professor
Mario Salas Muñoz, and Professor Ralph E. Shain, for their support, comments, and sugges-
tions throughout the making of this research. I have included some of those comments and
suggestions. My advisor also shared with me suggestions to link ideas of the research with
contemporary discussions. They are usually included as footnotes. Of course, flaws in the
way those comments and suggestions have been addressed are my responsibility.
This text was developed with the help of writing tools and in some cases, especially in
the project, with the help of machine translation. Further corrections came from my advisory
committee. In particular, I appreciate the suggestions and corrections made by Professor
Ralph E. Shain concerning, for example, grammatical issues, clarity of the text, expressions,
punctuation, and spelling. Regarding the typesetting of the text, I thank the people who share
their knowledge of LATEX on the internet.
ii
iii
Contents
Acknowledgments ii
Hoja de aprobación iii
Resumen vi
Abstract vii
Abbreviations viii
Licencia de publicación xi
Introduction 1
1 Background to the concept of game in Wittgenstein and Derrida 7
1.1 Influence of Frege and Sraffa on Wittgenstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.1.1 Frege: Principle of context and anti-psychologism . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.1.2 Sraffa: Anthropological turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2 Influence of Fink and Axelos on Derrida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.2.1 Fink: Non-actuality of game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.2.2 Axelos: Game as errancy and wandering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
iv
2 Influence of the concept of game on Sprachspiel and dissémination 27
2.1 Establishing a convergence area: Spiel, jeu and the concept of game . . . . . . 27
2.2 Recognizing the first relata: The concept of game in Sprachspiel constitution . 32
2.2.1 Spiel, Beispiel, twisting method, rules, and their influence on the defini-
tion of Sprachspiel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.2.2 Recourse of Sprachspiel to the concept of game through related notions:
Familienähnlichkeit, Lebensform and Tätigkeiten . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.3 Recognizing the second relata: The concept of game in dissémination constitution 44
2.3.1 Influence of jeu and its relation to writing on dissémination definition 44
2.3.2 Recourse of dissémination to the concept of game through related no-
tions: différance and trace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3 A convergence between Sprachspiel and dissémination through the concept of game 59
3.1 Game and metaphysics: Family resemblances/paleonymy, language therapy/
metaphysical language and mythology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.2 Game and meaning: Principle of context and unsaturation of contexts . . . . 73
Conclusion 80
References 82
Index 91
v
Resumen1
Se pretende construir un vínculo entre la noción wittgensteiniana de Sprachspiel (juego de
lenguaje) y la noción derridiana de dissémination (diseminación) a través del concepto de
juego. La importancia de esta relación consiste en mostrar cómo algunas propuestas de dos
pensadores que abordan de manera distinta problemas filosóficos similares, relacionados con
el significado del lenguaje, pueden converger e incluso complementarse.
La consideración del método comparativo en filosofía por parte de Ralph Weber (2013)
es seguida parcialmente para estructurar y desarrollar esta investigación. Sin embargo, más
allá de una comparación, la investigación busca hacer converger los dos relata (Sprachspiel
y dissémination) utilizando el concepto de juego como área de intersección entre ambas
nociones.
En la introducción se ofrecen consideraciones en torno a las peculiaridades del trabajo y
precauciones para quien lo lea. El primer capítulo se dedica a los antecedentes de la noción
de juego tanto en Wittgenstein como en Derrida; el segundo se encarga de establecer el área
de intersección y reconocer los relata; mientras que el tercero es donde se anticipa el vínculo
entre las nociones que nos ocupan a través de la consideración de algunas de sus afinidades
y contraposiciones. Para concluir se toman los alcances obtenidos en la investigación para
construir el vínculo entre las nociones.
1 Resumen/abstract is influenced somehow by Pérez-Porras’ one (2020).
vi
Abstract
Building a link between Wittgenstein’s notion of Sprachspiel (language-game) and Derrida’s
notion of dissémination (dissemination) is intended through the concept of game. Its value
lies in showing how some developments of thinkers who approach similar philosophical
problems differently, related to the meaning of language, can converge and even complement
each other.
Ralph Weber’s (2013) approach to comparative method in philosophy is partially followed
as a way to structure and develop the research. However, beyond a comparison, this research
aims to establish a convergence between the two relata (Sprachspiel and dissémination) using
the concept of game as an area of intersection between them.
In the introduction are given considerations about peculiarities of this work and warnings
to the reader. The first chapter is dedicated to the background of Wittgenstein’s and Derrida’s
notion of game; the next chapter establishes the area of intersection and recognizes the two
relata; and the last chapter is devoted to address some affinities and contrapositions between
the relata as a prelude to their link. Finally, in the conclusion the outputs of the research are
taken to render the link between the notions.
vii
Abbreviations2
The following editions appear also in the references. In Derrida’s case, citations are provided
with two sets of pages. The first refers to a French edition, while the second refers to an
English translation.
Works by Derrida:
’Différance’. In Marges de la philosophie. Minuit, 1972b, pp. 1-29.
’DIF’
’Différance’. In Margins of Philosophy. Harvester, 1982, pp. 1-27.
’La dissémination’. In La dissémination. Seuil, 1972a, pp. 319-407.
’DIS’
’Dissemination’. In Dissemination. Athlone, 1981a, pp. 287-366.
’La double séance’. In La dissémination. Seuil, 1972a, pp. 199-318.
’DS’
’The Double Sesion’. In Dissemination. Athlone, 1981a, pp. 173-286.
De la grammatologie. Minuit, 1967a.
DG Of Grammatology. John Hopkins University Press, 1997.
’Envoi’. In Psyché (vol I). Galilée, 1998, pp. 109-143.
’E’
’Envoi’. In Psyche (vol I). Stanford University Press, 2007, pp. 94-128.
2 The style of citation of Derridas’ and Wittgenstein’s works is inspired in several texts. In particular: An issue
of the Oxford Literary Review entitled "A Decade After Derrida" (2014); Guía de lectura de Ser y Tiempo (2016) by
Jesús Adrián Escudero; Jacques Derrida: Opening Lines (1998) by Marian Hobson; The Cambridge Introduction to
Jacques Derrida (2007) by Leslie Hill; Derrida’s Of Grammatology (2008) by Arthur Bradley; and the second edition
of The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein (2018) edited by Hans Sluga & David G. Stern.
viii
’Hors livre’. In La dissémination. Seuil, 1972a, pp. 7-67.
’HL’
’Outwork’. In Dissemination. Athlone, 1981a, pp. 1-59.
’La mythologie blanche’. In Marges de la philosophie. Minuit, 1972b, pp. 247-324.
’MB’
’White Mythology’. In Margins of Philosophy. Harvester, 1982, pp. 207-271.
Positions. Minuit, 1972c.
P Positions. The University of Chicago Press, 1981b.
’La pharmacie de Platon’. In La dissémination. Seuil, 1972a, pp. 69-198.
’PH’
’Plato’s Pharmacy’. In Dissemination. Athlone, 1981a, pp. 61-172.
Points de suspension. Galilée, 1992.
PS Points. . . Interviews. Stanford University Press, 1995b.
’Signature événement contexte’. In Marges de la philosophie.
Minuit, 1972b, pp. 365-393.
’SEC’
’Signature Event Context’. In Margins of Philosophy.
Harvester, 1982, pp. 307-330.
’La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines’.
In L’écriture et la différence. Seuil, 1967b, pp. 409-428.
’SSJ’
’Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’.
In Writing and Difference. Routledge, 2001, pp. 351-370.
’Tympan’. In Marges de la philosophie. Minuit, 1972b, pp. i-xxv.
’T’
’Tympan’. In Margins of Philosophy. Harvester, 1982, pp. ix-xxix.
Le voix et le phénomène. PUF, 1967.
VP Speech and Phenomena. Northwestern University Press, 1973.
ix
Works by Wittgenstein:
’BB’ ’Blue Book’. In The Blue and Brown Books. Blackwell, 2007a.
Bemerkungen über Frazers "The Golden Bough." Synthese, 1967, pp. 233–253.
BUF Remarks on Frazer’s "The Golden Bough." In The Mythology in our Language.
HUA Books, 2018, pp. 29-75.
’Philosophy of Psychology’. In Philosophical Investigations (previously
’PP’
known as the second part of PU). Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 182-243.
PU Philosophical Investigations. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
TLP Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Routledge, 2001.
TS The Big Typescript. Blackwell, 2005.
UG On Certainty. Basil Blackwell/Oxford, 1969.
VB Culture and Value. Basil Blackwell, 1980.
Z Zettel. University of California Press, 2007b.
x
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1
Introduction
As it is known, the concept of game has been a fruitful one. Many and different fields of
knowledge have used it in a wide variety of forms and connotations. Nowadays it is still
relevant. Its applications can be found from formal and natural sciences to social sciences.
Of course, philosophy is not an exception, although it seems to have not had a relevant role
across the history of Western philosophy. At least until the last century, where it became little
by little more relevant. For example, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Fink, and Derrida
are some thinkers related to the concept of game in the philosophy of the twentieth century.
Probably the first thing that comes to mind when the concept of game is addressed is its
ludic side, related to pastime and amusement. However, we are not dealing here with this
side of the notion of game. Besides, we are not evaluating and comparing particular games.
Wittgenstein’s and Derrida’s addressing of game is for us more related to the searching for an
alternative approach to consider traditional philosophical problems associated with meaning.
In Derrida’s case, through the concept of game he is dialoging with the history of Western
philosophy, while Wittgenstein does it mainly with his own positions stated in the Tractatus.3
Nonetheless, he also refers to philosophers close to him like Moore, Russell, or Frege, and
other thinkers like Plato or Augustine. Therefore, their developments around game should be
seen as taking part of a wider picture.
3 In fact, in the preface of the Investigations, he states: "I had occasion to reread my first book (Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus) and to explain its ideas. Then it suddenly seemed to me that I should publish those old ideas
and the new ones together: that the latter could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against the
background of my older way of thinking."
2
On the use of the concept of game, it should be noted that Wittgenstein uses the term
"Spiel" in his German texts, commonly translated as "game" in English; and Derrida uses the
term "jeu," translated in English mainly as "play," but sometimes also as "game." In fact, "play"
and "game" are not strictly synonyms, at least in Derrida’s and Wittgenstein’s texts, as David
B. Allison stated:
One striking difference, of course, consists in: Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the
manner in which we come to acquire our use of language. Thus, one "learns" to
play language "games" in the same way one learns any other game. (...) In this
respect, Derrida devotes scant attention to the individual’s acquisition of language
skills, or to linguistic competence in general. (1978, p. 100n17)
Wittgenstein mainly uses game to describe human activities, more or less defined, as the source
of meaning.4 Meanwhile, Derrida focuses his attention on game to explain the provisional
situation (of an ongoing process) which brings meaning to words.
It should be noted that our text uses the English words "play" and "game" as expressions
accounting for the same process/phenomenon. "Play" is often taken as a verb and "game"
as a noun. Game/play is a curious concept and in English it is more evident how it tends
to withdraw itself from a definite word, enabling a play in turn between "game" and "play."
The reader will find that our treatment of game/play imply inconsistencies when we are
addressing excerpts from translations which use "play" as a noun accounting for either "Spiel"
or "jeu."5 More on the relation among Spiel/jeu/game/play will be covered in the second
chapter.
4 In postanalytic discussions (Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, Paul Boghossian, Katarzyna Jaszczolt, Robert
Brandom, and others), Wittgenstein’s second period is recognized as the transition from a standpoint focused
on the relation between syntax and semantics to a viewpoint focused on the relation between semantics and
pragmatics. Indeed, a complex relationship where logic, linguistics, and psychology are involved.
5 For an English speaker, it could sound weird when "play" is addressed as "game." We are just trying to maintain
the consistency between "Spiel" and "jeu" found at least between Derrida’s and Wittgenstein’s thought, that
which seems to be partially lost in English editions when Wittgenstein’s "Spiel" is translated as "game" and
Derrida’s "jeu" as "play."
3
About the structure of the research there are also some things to say. It was intended to use
the approach of comparative philosophy proposed by Ralph Weber both for structuring the
research as well as the method to be followed. For him, a comparison in philosophy should
have, at least, the following components:
(i) A comparison is always done by someone; (ii) at least two relata (comparata)
are compared; (iii) the comparata are compared in some common respect (tertium
comparationis); and (iv) the result of a comparison is a relation between the
comparata based on the chosen respect. To this, a fifth aspect might be added,
what I call the "pre-comparative tertium", which refers to a point of commonality
that is posited or asserted in the determination of the comparata as that which is
to be compared. (2013, pp. 595-596)
In this research the two relata are Sprachspiel and dissémination, the tertium comparationis
is the concept of game, and the pre-comparative tertium (the reason why Sprachspiel and di-
ssémination are chosen as comparatas) could be the shared aim of these notions of addressing
meaning in language without appealing to an essence. For us, the first component should
make evident that:
Each [comparison] is motivated by some specific reason(s) and pursued to reach
some specific goal(s) that may well point beyond the "comparison itself" to ques-
tions of personal taste, personal or collective identity, institutional pressures,
religious, moral, political or other agendas, continuations of earlier debates or
conversations, and so on. (Weber, 2013, p. 596)
Looking for a convergence between Sprachspiel and dissémination, which is the goal of
this research, could also imply an alteration on the status of the tertium comparationis.
For that reason, it must be noted that the notion of game here addressed is not completely
independent from Derrida’s and Wittgenstein’s texts, or even independent from language-
4
game and dissemination. Game as the area of intersection,6 rather than a traditional and/or
legitimate tertium comparationis, is also built from explicit and tacit elaborations from the
texts of these authors dealing with the comparatas, but also with other related notions.
The reason for taking the notion of game from Derrida’s and Wittgenstein’s texts likely
sought to not use a notion which could result unrelated to Wittgenstein’s and Derrida’s
addressing of game. Maybe it was grounded in the intention to build something although
strictly belonging neither to Derrida’s nor Wittgenstein’s approach to game, it could be a point
of view able enough to focus properly on notions surrounding Derrida’s and Wittgenstein’s
account of game, such as Sprachspiel or dissémination. All of this seeking the aimed link
between these notions.
From our point of view the concept of game here accounted tends to resist being taken
as an independent tertium comparationis without mixing with the relatas. Even in the
approach to the relatas we have appealed to other terms. They, like game, are not sharp
notions. For language-game we have recourse to family resemblance, forms of life, praxis,
and twisted method, for instance. In the case of dissemination are taken into account, for
example, différance, writing, trace, and paleonymy.
The strategy followed could result in a reading of Wittgenstein’s approach to game through
Derrida’s account of game, or the other way around. In fact, approaching dissemination
through language-game and vice versa is what leads us to say that they are complementary
notions. This way of proceeding could not be compatible with a comparison in a strict sense.
As Chakrabarti and Weber state, it could result in a "one-sided" comparison: “A rather crude
version of the criticism holds that "one-sided" comparisons unduly take one comparandum
as a tertium comparationis and thereby distort the results of the comparison with the other
comparandum”(2016, p. 9).
Another issue that could affect the results of the research, whether it is taken as a compari-
6 Thanks to Professor Mario Solis Umaña, who suggested shifting from tertium comparationis to something more
appropriate according to my research.
5
son or not, is the knowledge about the relata. Wittgenstein’s notion of language-game is for
us more familiar than Derrida’s dissemination. There could be also a distortion because:
A comparer who is more "familiar" with one comparandum than with the other
which is often said to fundamentally distort the results of the comparison, as when,
say, a specialist of Plato or John Rawls dares casting a comparative glance at the
Confucian Analects or Kautilya’s Artha Śāstra. (Chakrabarti & Weber, 2016, p. 9)7
Those deficiencies of the research at some point lead us to leave aside the intentions of
developing a comparison in the strict sense, albeit they could also be related to the already
mentioned fact that: "A comparison is always done by someone." In the end, the research
keeps Weber’s aforementioned structure. Game, rather than being a tertium comparationis, it
is changed to be an intersection area.
On Wittgenstein’s texts published posthumously without his explicit consent,8 we are
just assuming them as being part of Wittgenstein’s thought. Ralph Shain, for example,
considers the Blue Book and the Investigations as having plausible inconsistencies related to
other texts published without Wittgenstein’s direct approval like On Certainty or Culture and
Value (cf. 2018a, p. 198n12; 2018b, p. 457). Even on whether there is a continuity between
The Blue and Brown Books and the Investigations, Hans Sluga advises caution (cf. 2006, p. 7n1).
Inconsistencies among cited texts of Wittgenstein’s second period or even among Derrida’s
addressed works are not taken into account.
One more warning. Initially it was aimed to relate Sprachspiel and différance.9 This
fact has plausible repercussions in the way of developing the research, such as reading
dissemination through différance. However, both notions are interrelated. Depending on the
point of view assumed, one could say that dissemination takes part of différance or vice versa.
7 See Weber (2014; 2021) for more on his approach to comparative philosophy.
8 Wittgenstein “let his literary executors know that he wanted them to publish the Investigations, but left it to their
discretion to publish anything else from his writings. Similarly, the Blue Book was dictated to students and thus
deliberately distributed to others” (Shain, 2018b, p. 457).
9 Following a recommendation made by my advisor, différance was replaced with dissemination.
6
Following Derrida, they could even be just different nominal names trying to account (but
failing) for the same process (cf. ´DIF’, p. 13/12; 28/26-27).
A possible approach to dissemination from the point of view of différance, and adopted in
this research, is the following. The notion of différance accounts for 1) otherness/differentness
enabling meaning (the legacy of structural linguistics) 2) A temporal and spatial deferring
which allows meaningful expressions to take place in different contexts. For us, the notion of
dissemination could be identified with that second feature of différance. Of course, through
this temporal and spatial gap accounted by dissemination, it is also possible to reach a
dissimilarity among things, enabling a plurality of things happening either in different
moments or/and places.
Finally, the way in which the text is presented does not necessarily match the order of
its building. For instance, it is maybe evident in section 1.2. At least its main ideas were
developed when the major part of the draft of chapter two and three was already written.
7
1. Background to the concept of game in
Wittgenstein and Derrida
1.1 Influence of Frege and Sraffa on Wittgenstein
Frege’s influence on Wittgenstein’s philosophy is well known. Wittgenstein himself acknow-
ledges it in the preface of Tractatus alongside Russell’s influence: “I will only mention that I
am indebted to Frege’s great works and of the writings of my friend Mr. Bertrand Russell for
much of the stimulation of my thoughts.” The relevance of Wittgenstein’s thought related to
Frege’s works is enough for an author like Michael Dummett to suggest that the only true way
to extend some Fregean notions is through their development made by Wittgenstein (1985,
p. 29). Thus, in the first part of this section two Fregean related principles will be taken into
account concerning the concept of game: 1) Principle of context and 2) Anti-psychologism.
The other well-known significant influence in the development of Wittgenstein’s thought,
since his return to Cambridge in 1929, was the Italian economist Piero Sraffa. Already in the
Investigations’ preface, it is stated: “I am indebted to that which a teacher of this university,
Mr P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly applied to my thoughts. It is to this stimulus that I
owe the most fruitful ideas of this book.” Following the relevance attributed by Wittgenstein
to his relation with Sraffa in the previous quote, the second part of this section is devoted to
Sraffa’s (and through him, Gramsci’s) contributions to the pragmatic side of the notion of
language-game (and to the notion of game through it).
8
1.1.1 Frege: Principle of context and anti-psychologism
Frege uses the principle of context in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884) to define the concept
of number, but its scope is broader. There he writes: “It is only in the context of a proposition
that words have any meaning” (1960, § 62, p. 73). So it is idle to ask for the meaning of a word
without an environment bringing it sense. That is clear in the introduction of the Grundlagen,
where Frege states as a principle for his inquiry: “Never to ask for the meaning of a word in
isolation, but only in the context of a proposition” (1960, p. xxii).
The influence of the principle of context on Wittgenstein is evident at least in some of his
texts. Already in Tractatus 3.3, there is a direct reference to this principle. Wittgenstein states:
“Only propositions have sense; only in the nexus of a proposition does a name have meaning.”
The principle of context is not only accepted in the semantic theory of the Tractatus, also it is
used in the ontological side of this text. Names are proxies of objects, they do not have value
by themselves, rather their sense comes from the objects as the world’s substance (TLP, 2.021).
Therefore, the relation between names and statements must be likewise the relation between
objects and states of affairs. In fact, the resemblance of the principle of context can also be
found in other propositions too, such as: “It is essential to things that they should be possible
constituents of states of affairs”; “if things can occur in states of affairs this possibility must be
in them from the beginning”; and “things are independent in so far as they can occur in all
possible situations, but this form of independence is a form of connection with states of affairs,
a form of dependence” (TLP, 2.011, 2.0121, 2.0122).
The use of the principle of context in the Investigations becomes more important due to
the notion of language-game. Just as objects must be part of a state of affairs according
to the Tractatus, words of everyday language must be lexicalized into human practices to
become meaningful (cf. PU, § 23). Nonetheless, the principle of context does not apply only
to indicative sentences, rather all kinds of language uses are considered. Even the truth value
of propositions is not something fixed, as proposed by Frege and followed in the Tractatus;
instead, it is determined by mutable language-games.
9
As is noted by commenters, this principle also allows Frege to avoid any kind of psycholo-
gism in his research. If we ask a word for its meaning in isolation, it is easier to generate a
mental representation as its meaning (Dummett, 1973, p. 495; Valdés-Villanueva, 1998, p. 21).
Frege’s anti-psychologism, transversal to all his academic career, can be summarized in
another principle of the Grundlagen: “Always to separate sharply the psychological from
the logical, the subjective from the objective” (1960, p. xxii). In his most famous work, Über
Sinn und Bedeutung (1892), we can find the distinction between sense (mode of designation)
and reference (objective) of any proposition as an extension of his rejection of something
psychological as the ground of logic and thought. For Frege, the latter is not subjective, rather
it is identified with the sense of the statement, even though thinking as its correlative process
constitutes a psychological event. Frege uses an easy example to show this distinction:
Somebody observes the Moon through a telescope. I compare the Moon itself to the
reference; it is the object of the observation, mediated by the real image projected
by the object glass in the interior of the telescope, and by the retinal image of
the observer. The former I compare to the sense, the latter to the conception or
experience. The optical image in the telescope is indeed one-sided and dependent
upon the standpoint of observation; but it is still objective, inasmuch as it can be
used by several observers. At any rate it could be arranged for several to use it
simultaneously. But each one would have his own retinal image. (1948, p. 213)
Here the image projected inside the telescope illustrates the sense, which is accompanied by
the subjective sensation of who looks through it. Related, in a late text entitled Der Gedanke
(1918), Frege writes: “The thought, in itself immaterial, clothes itself in the material garment
of a sentence and thereby becomes comprehensible to us. We say a sentence expresses a
thought” (1956, p. 292).
The orientation given by the anti-psychologism reveals the influence of the Riemannian
conceptualist tradition on Frege’s work. Alongside mathematicians of Göttingen of the
nineteenth century, Frege distances himself from the prevailing way of doing mathematics
10
in Berlin influenced by Weierstraß and his "arithmetization of analysis" (Tappenden, 2006,
pp. 99–100, 105–112). Instead, Frege follows Riemann, refusing to consider mathematical
objects as mental.
The well-known (and frequently misunderstood) affirmation of the meaning as use (which
implies mastering a technique [cf. PU, § 199]) reveals the Fregean anti-psychologism in the
Investigations. Wittgenstein states:
Don’t think of understanding as a "mental process" at all! — For that is the way of
talking which confuses you. Instead, ask yourself: in what sort of case, in what
kind of circumstances, do we say "Now I know how to go on"? (...) | In the sense
in which there are processes (including mental processes) which are characteristic
of understanding, understanding is not a mental process. (PU, § 154)
Like thought for Frege, for whom it is entirely objective, Wittgenstein avoids linking un-
derstanding to mental representations. The latter, rather, associates understanding with
an intersubjective realm. Both accept the psychological side involved either in thought or
understanding, but only as a mediator to reach something else.
The use of the concept of game in Wittgenstein’s philosophy takes these two Fregean
principles and explores new possibilities with them. Notions such as language-game or
family resemblance and even his rejection of the possibility of private languages are hard to
understand correctly without Frege.
1.1.2 Sraffa: Anthropological turn
The passage related by Monk in his biography of Wittgenstein shows us an astonished
Wittgenstein after being asked by Sraffa for the logical form of the Neapolitan skeptic gesture
of brushing the chin with the fingertips (1991, pp. 260–261).10 Of course, with this gesture,
Sraffa would not just ask for the logical form of his gesture itself, he would also show the
10 According to Sen, Sraffa approaches this event as “if not entirely apocryphal (’I can’t remember such a specific
occasion’), was more of a tale with a moral than an actual event” (2003, p. 1242).
11
relevance of social conventions in the meaning of language (Sen, 2003, pp. 1242–1243). Doing
so, somehow, could be seen also as rejecting the representational foundation of meaning as
the presence of something in the mind.
Wittgenstein, as noted by Sen (2003, p. 1242), also said to Georg Henrik von Wright that the
conversations with Sraffa made him feel “like a tree from which all branches have been cut”
(2001, p. 15). Nevertheless, Sraffa’s critique was not only destructive, it was also constructive
(Sen, 2004, p. 28). This becomes evident if we consider that Wittgenstein and Sraffa maintained
weekly meetings for years.
Sraffa plays a crucial role in the anthropological turn in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Wittgen-
stein’s treatment of meaning as use implies the consideration of praxis (Tätigkeit) as a context
that brings meaning to the words and every human activity overall. If we look at the preface
of Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, as it is suggested by Sen (2003, p.
1253n24), there Sraffa seems to query the theory of prices where demand and supply generate
an equilibrium. This equilibrium is probably allowed by the consideration of constant returns
in all industries11 (cf. Sraffa, 1960, p. v). A approach of Sraffa to deal with the problems
carried by assumptions was to consider also observational facts, as Sen states:
Sraffa’s demonstration that a snapshot picture of just the production conditions of
the economy can tell us so much about possible prices is not only a remarkable
analytical diagnosis, it is also a finding of considerable intellectual interest to
people who want to think about the correspondence between quantities produced
and prices charged. (2003, p. 1248)
We can read Sraffa’s approach (according to Sen) in Fregean terms, which is to ask for prices
only related to production and social circumstances, and never do it in isolation from the
factual. It is easy (although reductionist?) to see how with Sraffa the Fregean principle of
context adds the mutable nature of social conditions to Wittgenstein’s philosophy. In this way,
11 More on Sraffa’s economic views and his interpretation of Marshall’s theory could be found in Davis (2002, sec.
2).
12
Wittgenstein’s second period is not a complete break with the philosophy of the Tractatus. His
turn can be also seen as a readaptation of some earlier notions.12
Wittgenstein’s new approach comes back even to Gramsci, called by Sen "The Gramsci
connection," whom Sraffa knew well because they worked together in the leftist journal
L’Ordine Nuovo (Sen, 2003, p. 1244).13 Traces of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis and his
considerations on language’s nature can be found in Wittgenstein’s anthropological approach.
Let us consider the following excerpts from Gramsci’s Quaderni del carcere:
It seems that one can say that language is essentially a collective term which does
not presuppose any single thing existing in time and space. Language also means
culture and philosophy (if only at the level of common sense) and therefore the
fact of language is in reality a multiplicity of facts more or less organically coherent
and co-ordinated. (Forgacs, 2000, p. 347)
Also, Amartya Sen (2003, p. 1245) focuses his attention on the next fragment:
In acquiring one’s conception of the world one always belongs to a particular
grouping which is that of all the social elements which share the same mode of
thinking and acting. We are all conformists of some conformism or other always
man-in-the-mass or collective man. (Forgacs, 2000, p. 325)
The first excerpt is explicit about the social and decentralized nature of language. The consid-
eration of language as a combination of a multiplicity of facts is related to how Wittgenstein
explains the nature of concepts in the Investigations (cf. PU, § 67). The second quotation shows
the relevance of conventions regarding meaning. Its last sentence about conformism also
leads us to Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, where he claims that doubt is only possible assuming
certainty: “The game of doubting already presupposes certainty” (UG, § 115). Therefore, our
12 See note 3.
13 Davis (2002) also attempts to draw a relation among Gramsci, Sraffa, and Wittgenstein, as the title of this journal
article suggests.
13
starting approach to life and world (worldview) already departs from conventional norms
stated by the "collective man."
Considering only these two quotes of Gramsci, it is easy to see why Sraffa dismissed his
influence on Wittgenstein when he was approached by Sen with related questions. For him,
maybe all the objections to Wittgenstein’s early philosophy came from Marxist everyday
discussions (Sen, 2003, pp. 1243, 1245).
The value of Sraffa, and Gramsci through him, concerning the concept of game in Wittgen-
stein’s philosophy lies in realizing that inside the elaboration of this notion itself, a game
always is played by someone who in turn is placed in a specific social context. Thus, the
players’ relevance is such that they (as a whole, having intersubjective power) can modify
over the time those games in which they are involved.
14
1.2 Influence of Fink and Axelos on Derrida
Derrida in a note found in Of Grammatology14 gives some explicit references about people and
their works related to game (of the world?) for him: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Fink, and Axelos
are the names mentioned (DG, pp. 73-74n14/326n14). The immediate sentence before the
note says: "It is therefore the game of the world that must be first thought; before attempting to
understand all the forms of play in the world" (DG, p. 73/50). Although the whole paragraph
preceding the note takes also into account the issue of game itself, probably the works given
in Derrida’s note involve more like an addressing of such problematic of the game of the
world. At least that seems to be the case of Fink’s Play as Symbol of the World (however, Fink’s
path to establish game as symbol of the world includes different approaches to the concept of
game like its relation to the being, human existence and particular games) and Kostas Axelos
account of game. Beyond that, Derrida’s note could be a valuable tool. It offers some places
to look at, if one is interested in the background of his concept of game.
In this section, we are leaving aside the plausible influence of thinkers or theories that
could have played a role in Derrida’s account of the concept of game, such as Hegel, Nietzsche,
Freud, and the psychoanalytic theory, for example. The section does not aim to be exhaustive,
rather just intends to offer a historical sketch that helps to understand Derrida’s approach to
game.
The first part of the section is devoted to Fink’s approach to game, in particular the non-
actuality as its fundamental feature, while the second part deals with Axelos’ account of game
stressing at the end errancy and wandering as its features. Those approaches are oriented to
account for the deferred and unsaturated side of game and dissemination in Derrida.
14 Suggested also by Ian Alexander Moore and Christopher Turner, and Stuart Elden (2015, p. 331n54; 2016, p.
11n9).
15
1.2.1 Fink: Non-actuality of game
Derrida’s criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology is well known. Nevertheless, Derrida himself
acknowledges phenomenology as a fundamental prior stage of his own philosophy. In
particular, about his notion of game, he states the following:
To think play radically the ontological and transcendental problematics must first
be seriously exhausted; the question of the meaning of being, the being of the entity
and of the transcendental origin of the world —of the world-ness of the world—
must be patiently and rigorously worked through, the critical movement of the
Husserlian and Heideggerian questions must be effectively followed to the very
end, and their effectiveness and legibility must be conserved. Even if it were
crossed out. (DG, p. 73/50)
Derrida also says that: “One could call play the absence of the transcendental signified as
limitlessness of play, that is to say as the destruction [ébranlement] of onto-theology and the
metaphysics of presence” (DG, p. 73/50). However, as it was already mentioned, he thinks
that addressing the game of the world is a necessary step in order to look at other kinds of
games, including that radical approach to game (cf. DG, p. 73/50). Indeed, phenomenology
is a significant path to think about the game of the world, at least under erasure as Derrida
suggests.
The issue of the game of the world in Derrida seems to be related to Fink’s approach as
state Moore and Turner: “Derrida’s various remarks on play, especially on the play of the
world and the play of différance, may be fruitfully read alongside Fink’s Play as Symbol of
the World, which Derrida himself cites in Of Grammatology.” It would not be a random fact
since Moore and Turner also mention “Fink’s particular importance for the French reception
of phenomenology,” but “it was not just Fink’s work on Husserl and phenomenology that
influenced twentieth-century French thinkers, however. His writings on play were also crucial
for figures such as Derrida, Kostas Axelos, and Henri Lefebvre” (2016, pp. 8–9). In turn, Elden,
16
on Spiel als Weltsymbol says that it “is important (...) for acting as a bridge between the German
and French intellectual traditions” (2008, p. 51).
Fink’s Play as Symbol of the World15 is a philosophical approach to game (Spiel) trying to
account for the ontological side of game, in particular between human play and, something
called by Fink, the game of the world. Those familiar with Heidegger’s phenomenological
work will find Fink’s starting point known.16
The question of game is a relevant issue in philosophy according to Fink, rather than being
relegated to a secondary position. He claims that: “For us, play is not an arbitrary theme of
philosophy, which can occupy itself with anything and everything. Play has an extraordinary
status in its being an existential basic phenomenon, just as primordial as mortality, love, work,
and struggle” (2016, p. 204). Even game could teach us what philosophy is about:
A play can suggestively portray, in an essential sense, what philosophy is and in
what way it is. We thereby have a peculiar reversal. Instead of philosophically
saying what play is, what philosophy itself is can be said in the play of an ancient
tragedy. The philosophical statement concerning play can even be encompassed
by a play’s interpretation of philosophizing. These are noteworthy connections
which we do not easily see through and which are full of questions. (2016, p. 46)17
As the above quote shows, Fink’s account of game is an enterprise where the (philosophical)
standpoint or approach itself is involved in the addressing of game. As we will see later with
Derrida and Wittgenstein, addressing game in a philosophical way seems to also imply taking
part in it. That seems to be clear to Fink when he writes that:
Our task is to find an approach for our thinking about play. For if we are not
15 Moore and Turner translate the title of the book as Play as Symbol of the World, but according to Elden the title of
the book means “play, or the game, as symbol of the world” (2015, p. 13).
16 For a relation between Fink’s concept of world and Husserl’s and Heidegger’s thought, see Elden (2008).
17 Here Fink is using "play" in two different senses. A philosophical questioning around play turned into a
theatrical play accounting for philosophy. About the English connotation of play related to a performance, see
note 25.
17
simply and cheerfully to describe and depict the phenomenon of play, but rather
wish to direct a thoughtful question to it, we must seek to understand what is
understood in it on its own terms. (2016, p. 78)
Fink does not deal with taxonomies or particular games (at least in Play as Symbol of the World),
rather he tries to provide an account for game itself, but to accomplish his task he has to be
part of the game, his theoretical intentions have to take place at least in the same level as
game does. Nonetheless, it does not mean that particular games and the experience of game
in everyday life are not worthy. Precisely, such pre-theoretical experiences show the intimate
relation between human beings and game making even possible the raising of Fink’s issues
around game, because it is an "existential basic phenomenon."
A feature attributed to game by Fink and easily found in Derrida’s developments around
game and related notions is its non-actuality. Throughout Play as Symbol of the World Fink
insists on this feature as something which does not mean non-existence. In the first stages
of the development of this feature in the book, Fink compares this non-actuality with the
actuality of (mental?) representations, as could be stated in the next quotation:
But what is merely imagined and therefore nugatory is nevertheless not simply
nothing. It exists as imagined, as a phantasm, as a representational content. What
is merely represented is not something actual, but it is nevertheless itself actual
as an intentional moment of an act of representing. An actual act of representing
contains a sense of "non-actuality." We thereby see how the statement "either some-
thing is actual or non-actual" contradicts itself in its operative presuppositions; for
the "something which is not actual" is nevertheless, for all that, itself actual as the
act of representing something non-actual. (2016, p. 84)18
18 Related, see Derrida’s addressing of Husserl’s ideality in Speech and Phenomena: “Ideality (...) does not exist, is not
real or is irreal—not in the sense of being a fiction, but in another sense which may have several names, whose
possibility will permit us to speak of nonreality and essential necessity, the noema, the intelligible object, and in
general the nonworldly. This nonworldliness is not another worldliness, this ideality is not an existent that has
fallen from the sky; its origin will always be the possible repetition of a productive act” (VP, p. 4/6).
18
Already in the quote, it is possible to find some topics developed by Derrida some years later
like the question about phantasms, his approach to binary oppositions, or his developments
around metaphysics of presence. Fink’s non-actuality of game and his exemplification with
a representation is the way to introduce game as a symbol rather than being just an idle
reproduction of what happens in serious (productive) life. Non-actuality is not a feature
among others to Fink. Addressing human play, he writes that:
"Non-actuality" is thus an essential, fundamental feature of human play. And it
is not merely a fundamental feature; it is the decisive fundamental feature. The
actuality of play activity is a perpetual, continual, productive comportment to
the "non-actuality" of the playworld. Wherever there are philosophical questions
about play that are connected to the general problem of Being, it is precisely
the moment of actual "non-actuality," the strange entwinement of Being and
appearance, that requires conceptual mastery. (2016, p. 92)
Fink’s remark about the non-actuality of game as an essential and the decisive feature of
game seems to imply the mixture between game and non-actuality. Where non-actuality
appears also game does, at least partially. There are several terms developed by Derrida
including this actual non-actuality. In the deferred side of différance as dissemination that
is clear. The unsaturation of contexts, addressed in the chapter three, is possible due to
the non-actuality of dissemination inasmuch as there is something always left out when a
closure or a fulfillment of a context is pursued. Here deferring works as a gap impeding a full
presence which could make a context become closed, saturated, and actual. Overall, all the
issue of quasi-transcendentals and the trembling of binary oppositions in Derrida seems to
imply this kind of non-actuality mentioned by Fink.
Game’s non-actuality works like a representation. However, it is not a representation
in the sense of a mirror. There seems to be a kind of independence from the phenomenon
referred to, which in turn does not mean absolute subjectivity. Game’s non-actuality remains
enigmatic:
19
"Non-actuality" here does not mean "non-being," as probably everyone will ac-
knowledge, does not mean a sheer nothing, but rather an enigmatic something,
which does not exist like customary existing things but is also not nugatory like a
hallucination or a merely subjective delusion. The "non-actuality" of the playworld
is an appearance of its own kind. (2016, p. 126)
As already mentioned, it seems that Fink’s uses non-actuality to be able to introduce game
as a symbol. Nonetheless, there are some middle steps trying to make this path more
understandable. As already seen, representation is an example of game’s non-actuality.
We also have mimesis as a way to explain what kind of reproduction has a representation
according to Fink. He dedicates several paragraphs to distance his approach to game and
mimesis from Plato’s interpretation. For example, the following:
If play is a mimēsis, it is nevertheless not mirrorlike in the strict sense. The poet,
the poiētēs, does not at all relate to the lawgivers, generals, and statesmen like
a slavishly, faithfully reproducing mirror that would, moreover, be reliant on
legislators, generals, and statesmen acting as seriously during the poetic mirror-
ing—as the poet does toward appearance. If the poet reproduces such forms of
life, then this still happens freely—at the very least he is not dependent on the
simultaneous presence of his model. He can reproduce from his memory, from
his imagination, without the reproduced thing being actual at precisely the same
time. (2016, p. 109)
Fink is trying to get away from Plato’s degradation of game. However, to accomplish his task
he embraces the tradition of metaphysics going back to Plato (and even back to Heraclitus
as we will see below) to rework the concept of game (a kind of paleonymy in Derridean
terms). He says that “the philosophical question concerning play cannot be explicated without
explicit reference to the Platonic critique of the poets” (2016, p. 126). Something similar is
done by Derrida regarding Plato when he approaches mimesis and game in the last section of
Plato’s Pharmacy or in the first part of The Double Session, for example.
20
Fink states that “the less ’reproductive’, the more strongly ’symbolic’ an image is” (2016,
p. 119). That is the movement made by Fink approaching game as more than merely repro-
duction. Immediately after he adds an important remark:
We certainly ought not thereby to misunderstand the symbol as a sign and to
replace the graphic function of the image by the abstract function of the sign. A
sign need not be similar in appearance to the thing signified. (2016, p. 119)
Here it seems like Fink is trying to go beyond something like the Saussurean linguistic sign.
He continues:
"Symbols" themselves can appear in various things, in simple things, but also in
images and even in signs as well. It is wrong, however, to want to elucidate the
symbolic character of the symbol by what pertains to the image or the sign. (2016,
p. 119)
However, Fink accepts that the symbol was initially a sign where “both features were signifi-
cant for the symbol: The ’fragmentation’ and the ’completion.’” In fact, from the etymology
of the word “Symbolon comes from symballein, ’coinciding,’ and signifies a coinciding of the
fragment with what completes it” (2016, p. 120). The relation symbol/sign seems confusing
so far. Fink adds the following regarding symbol:
We have already begun to do so by briefly discussing and formally indicating
the concept of the symbol. We do not understand by this any sort of sign that
indicates, depicts, represents, stands in for something, and so forth. A symbolon is
a fragment that has been determined for completion. But the philosophical concept
of the symbol does not pertain to inner-worldly completions of fragmentary forms
of life. Rather, it is precisely each innerworldly being that is conceived as a
fragment of Being, as finite individuality split off from the one, all-encompassing
Being. Each finite thing as such is a fragment, is exposed in its individuation,
21
is torn away from all others, is enclosed within its limits, is only this —and not
everything else. (...) And yet it is never alone as this self-standing thing. (2016,
p. 127)
Symbol as a fragment which lacks from its completion. Derridean unsaturation as a feature of
dissemination is reverberating here again. The inability to reach the whole and the tranquility
brought with it. Derrida’s overcoming of the Saussurean sign could be also recalled. A
signifier completed by a signified (or vice versa) in turn composed by signifiers. Fink’s
fragments, although cannot reach a completion, establish a play in relation to the whole
(world and/or Being) through the symbolic function:
The symbolic likening must be able to be "reversed." What happens vicariously
in the part must recur in the greater whole. It is not only that the whole shines
back in partial things, which are capable of a symbolic representation of the whole,
but the parts thus distinguished are also able to influence the whole: pars pro toto.
(2016, p. 159)
Symbol likening is a game itself, it seems to account for the lack of a complete subordination
of the parts by the whole. Indeed, there is a play between them. A play where game is a
symbol of the world, and the world is a symbol of game. The latter will be more clear in the
following section, when Heraclitus’ fragment 52 is addressed.
Fink’s approach to game helps us to understand the way in which Derrida uses the term.
The non-actuality attributed by Fink to the game has implications beyond Derrida’s explicit
addressing of game. Non-actuality goes along other Derrida’s terms such as différance, dis-
semination, and trace. The deferred or delayed side of them understood also as displacement
carry this kind of non-actuality accounted by Fink.
Finally, just as Fink tries to go beyond actuality/non-actuality, it seems like he also wants
to break down the distinction amusement/seriousness regarding game being just a ludic
activity opposed to productive and serious activities. He says the following about the relation
between non-actuality and game:
22
"Non-actuality" is no objection, no degradation. In play they feel closer to what is
essential and genuine. Their play has an entirely peculiar and strange seriousness.
We lack the proper concepts for it, although we still commonly enough go about
with the difference between play and work, play and seriousness. But these
schemata break down when it becomes necessary to actually grasp the magical
cult-play of the primitive and the play of the child. (2016, p. 122)
Here the overcoming of the opposition amusement/seriousness, although related to cult-play
and child play, could be seen as the beginning of the trembling of this distinction. In chapter
two, where Derrida’s approach to the Greek distinction παιδιά (paidia)/σπουδή (spoudē)19 is
tackled, Fink’s first steps to overcome their opposition could be playing around.
1.2.2 Axelos: Game as errancy and wandering
Axelos’ approach to game could be seen as the next stage of Fink’s addressing of game. He
“develops Fink’s ideas concerning play and the world in such works as Vers la pensée planétaire
(Toward a planetary thinking), Le jeu du monde (The play of the world), and Horizons du monde
(Horizons of the world)” (Moore & Turner, 2016, p. 9). Derrida’s note in turn includes two of
his texts: Vers la pensée planétaire (1964) and Einführung in ein künftiges Denken: Über Marx und
Heidegger (1966). Only part is available in English from the former book, Planetary Interlude
(1968), which includes excerpts from the introduction and the concluding chapter as is noted
in the translation itself. The other text was translated as Introduction to a Future Way of Thought:
On Marx and Heidegger (2015), and it is not directly addressed here.
In Axelos as well as in Fink, there is an attempt to think being/world as a game. This
enterprise takes us back to Heraclitus and his already mentioned fragment 52:20 “Lifetime is
19 For some Greek terms, their transliteration and meanings, see the electronic version of Liddell, Scott, & Jones’
lexicon mentioned in the references (n.d.).
20 According to Diels and Kranz, as stated in the English edition of Spiel als Weltsymbol (Fink, 2016, p. 334n9). The
ancient Greek fragment states: αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεσσεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη (Kahn, 1979, p. 70). About
αἰὼν (aiōn) translation, see Elden (2008, p. 49).
23
a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs to the child” (Kahn, 1979, p. 71).
This fragment is translated in the English version of Spiel als Weltsymbol, probably in Fink’s
German translation from ancient Greek, as: “’The course of the world is a child playing, who
moves the pieces on the board here and there, is a child’s kingdom’” (2016, p. 51). Here is the
reason why we claimed that the world is in turn a symbol of the game.
Planetary Interlude gives an English translation of what seems to be Axelos’ French transla-
tion of the fragment:21 “’Time is a child at play, moving pawns; the royalty of a child’” (1968,
p. 7). In fact, Fink’s work, “principally on the world, was profoundly important to Axelos,
especially regarding their shared project of elaborating Heraclitus’s famous fragment that
declared time, the world, or the universe was ’like a child playing a game’” (Elden, 2015,
p. 13).
Axelos’ approach to the relation game/world could be summarized as his following claim
does:
The world deploys itself as a game. That means that it refuses any sense, any
rule that is exterior to itself. The play of the world itself is different from all the
particular games that are played in the world. Almost two-and-a-half thousand
years after Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Fink and I have insisted on this
approach to the world as game. (2005, p. 28)
Fink and Axelos seem to approach world as the "being" being embedded in time. The course
of the world, as Fink’s translation of Heraclitus’ fragment says, is that which deploys as a
game. Although the game of the world is different from games taking place in the world,
those games are sets of the game of the world: the "Set of sets," as Axelos calls it (1979b):22
21 Axelos was Greek, fluent also in French and German. One of his doctoral dissertations was about Heraclitus,
Héraclite et la philosophie: La première saisie de l’être en devenir de la totalité. It was published as a book in 1962
(Elden, 2015, pp. 9–10).
22 There are two English translations of this work. The other translation (1979a) says the following, as a note made
by the translator about the title of the text, which includes the terms involved here: “The original title is ’Le jeu
de l’ensemble des ensembles.’ The term ’ensemble’ carries with it several precise meanings, and Axelos plays
with them all. At times ’system,’ at others ’a mathematical set,’ and yet again ’whole’ or ’totality’” (p. 24).
24
It [game, the Set of sets, game of the world] pervades them all [particular games,
sets], it incorporates them: all "are in" the game and all "make" the game which is
not the game of someone or something. Behind the masks no one and nothing is
hidden, other than the game of the world (Axelos, 1968, p. 6).
The world being deployed as a game has similarities with Derrrida’s treatment of Mallarmé’s
"éventail," as we will see in the next chapter. In a text, translated as The World: Being Becoming
Totality taken from Systëmatique ouverte (1984), Axelos says that “like dawn and sunset, the
World rises to the horizon as it fades and fades as it rises, with this unveiling-and-veiling
constituting errancy” (2006, p. 647) The folding and unfolding of Mallarme’s hand fan accoun-
ted by Derrida is like this veiling/unveiling of the world. Those unveilings of the world as
openings constitute what Axelos’ calls epochs:
The "history of the World" is not simply a universal or world history, as the
unfolding of the opening or errancy —and not just of factual or abstract errors,
misguided ways, and vagabond adventures —marks the epochs of our openings
to the world and our transformational operations. (2006, p. 643)
Openings mark epochs (fragments) as the trace of the attempts made by us to approach the
world seem to carry the historical side that also belongs to world. The world "itself unfolds
as god, as nature, it beckons man, knows a (hi)story, gives birth to art and poetry which
attempt to express it (Axelos, 2006, p. 643). Those openings although risen from errancy are
not meaningless.
Errancy and wandering are terms related to game in Axelos’ approach. When he was asked
about "planetary technology,"23 he answered the following on the relation game/errancy:
23 It seems to be an important notion in Axelos’ thought. In the back cover of the English edition of Einführung in
ein künftiges Denken we found: “Anticipating the age of planetary technology Kostas Axelos, a Greek-French
philosopher, approaches the technological question in this book, first published in 1966, by connecting the
thought of Karl Marx and Martin Heidegger. Following from his study of Marx as a thinker of technology,
and foreseeing debates about globalization, Axelos recognizes that technology now determines the world.
Providing an introduction to some of his major themes, including the play of the world, Axelos asks if planetary
technology requires a new, a future way of thought.”
25
In Greek, planet means wandering star [astre errant].24 All planetary movement is
therefore errant, it takes place in the play of errancy. Errancy is not the converse
of truth, it does not mean error or vagrancy. Everything that we name as truth
– empirical or transcendental – is precipitated into errancy; the truth does not
illuminate what it is, it is done, it demolishes itself. (2005, p. 28)
Game as an activity without external motivations, goals or targets —and indeed without
ground— is what for us means errancy. Wandering is the result of being(s) as inscrusted in
the course of time. Truth, as something outside of the play between time and beings, in the
context of the previous excerpt seems to try to stop the fluxed nature of the relation between
beings and time. However, it cannot escape from the errancy which it comes from, that is why
it is precipitated back into errancy. In Axelos’ words: “There are, however, neither definitive
words nor actions. Everyone is simultaneously right (and wrong) on levels which struggle
with each other, and comes into contact with a small particle of the wandering (errant) truth”
(1968, p. 10).
Wandering, as we will see, is a related connotation in French to "jeu." But Derrida’s
approach to game and its condition of wandering is probably influenced by Axelos because
he cites him. Already in Axelos, it is possible to find the following excerpt which resembles
Derrida’s style of doing philosophy, and even somehow could be a statement claimed by
Derrida about game as a strategy without finality:
The Game is not the last masterword, that is, it should not be understood as a new
and convenient masterword, password and watchword for action. It remains the
unthought - if not the unthinkable -, the undivulged, the impracticable. It plays
with us, impels us toward action and upsets all the games, all the actualizations.
As if it were unplayable. The wandering (errantes) truths of the world and the true
wanderings (errances) of man confront each other and compose this game. The
24 Square brackets included in the quoted text.
26
Game of the World is the question. It is for men to play the game of questions and
answers. (1968, p. 68)
27
2. Influence of the concept of game on
Sprachspiel and dissémination
2.1 Establishing a convergence area: Spiel, jeu and the concept of
game
Let us start this section by taking a look at the translations of "Spiel" and "jeu" in Wittgenstein’s
and Derrida’s texts. "Spiel" and "Sprachspiel" are translated in the French edition of the
Investigations respectively as "jeu" and "jeu de langage." In context, for instance, a quote from
section seven: “Ich werde auch das Ganze: der Sprache und der Tätigkeiten, mit denen
sie verwoben ist, das ’Sprachspiel’ nennen.” In French: “J’appellerai aussi ’jeu de langage’
l’ensemble formé par le langage et les activités avec lesquelles il est entrelacé.” In the English
edition, this quote is translated as: “I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the
activities into which it is woven, a ’language-game’.”
"Jeu" seems to be translated in the German edition of Derrida’s texts as "Spiel." In context,
for example, the following quote from Outwork: “Le jeu de la dissémination, s’en serait-on
douté, le cite [Paul Claudel] souvent à comparaître” (p. 53). The German edition translates
this passage as: “Das Spiel der Dissemination zitiert ihn [Paul Claudel], man hätte es sich
denken können, häufig, mitzuerscheinen” (p. 54). The English edition does it as follows: “The
play of dissemination, as one might have suspected, often has occasion to call upon him [Paul
28
Claudel]” (p. 46).
As one can verify, the distinction between "Spiel" and "jeu" is more evident in English.25
Actually, there is a semantic nuance on the distinction between "game" and "play" in English,
and that is important because Wittgenstein himself uses the expression "language game" in
The Blue and Brown Books, which were written in English.
In the first instance, "play" does not seek a definitive completion, while most games have
a set outcome, although there are games that do not. Also, those connotations arise because
"play" is mainly taken as a verb while "game" stands as a noun. Nonetheless, "Spiel" and "jeu"
seem to be equivalents between German and French in Derrida’s and Wittgenstein’s texts.
Even in Spanish, both "Spiel" and "jeu" are translated, in Wittgenstein’s and Derrida’s texts, as
"juego." Besides, for Allison’s paper, the similarities between them (Spiel and jeu) are more
important than their distinctions (1978, p. 100).
Through the notion of game, both Wittgenstein’s and Derrida’s accounts of meaning avoid
mental representations. Wittgenstein dedicates paragraphs of the Investigations to analyze and
disprove the name-object approach to language (and also the possibility of private languages).
On the other hand, Derrida devotes some parts of his most famous book, Of Grammatology,
to overcome Saussurean linguistic sign and its residuals of representationalism found in the
signifier considered as a sound pattern.26
Furthermore, both Derrida and Wittgenstein use the notion of game to bypass higher
orders of predication. All the elements of a context are interrelated in the same predication
level, and contexts too are related to each other in the same manner. Their approaches avoid
25 Moore and Turner in the introduction to their translation of Fink’s Play as a Symbol of the World (2016) write that
“Spiel in German means both ’play’ and ’game.’ We have rendered it both ways depending on context” (p. 10).
In turn, J. Hillis Miller on Derrida’s "jeu" points: “As Gayatri Spivak’s perfectly legitimate translations of ’jeu’ in
my key citation indicates [It is therefore the game of the world {le jeu du monde} that must be first thought;
before attempting to understand all the forms of play {jeu} in the world], the word can mean both ’game’ and
’play’ in the same sentence. In English, ’play’ can name a drama enacted on the stage, as ’Spiel’ can in German,
as in Wagner’s ’Singspielen’, though ’drame’ is the normal French word for a stage play” (2011, p. 44).
26 Following Roy Harris’ introduction (in the Bloomsbury Revelations Edition) to his translation of the Course in
General Linguistics, here "sound pattern" stands for "image acoustique," instead of other English expressions like
"acoustic image" or "sound-image" (2013, p. xxi).
29
privileged viewpoints able to refer to other elements without taking part of the game played
by the last ones. For that, even the notion of element as something unitary and simple is not a
priori taken for granted.
In Wittgenstein’s case, the latter could be understood by contrasting his approach to
Frege’s theory of meaning. For Frege, the core of a theory of meaning is the concept of truth.
When Wittgenstein states that language does not consist just in assertions, rather that there
are countless different kinds of sentences, he is moving away from truth-functional semantics
(focused on the truth or falsehood of statements), removing the concept of truth from the
center (cf. PU, § 23). This is no longer an essentialist theory of meaning, rather different uses
of the term "meaning" in several contexts.27
Derrida, in relation to Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,
for Benoît Peeters "sought to replace the old hermeneutics that dreamed of ’deciphering a
truth’ with a mode of interpretation that ’affirms play and tries to pass beyond man and
humanism’ [’SSJ’, p. 427/369-370]" (2013, p. 167). Asserting that Derrida tried to replace
hermeneutics sounds bold if we have in mind that Peeters does not clarify what he refers to
by "old hermeneutics." However, we share with him the intentions of Derrida´s thought of
highlighting game rather than truth. A game that humans have not mastered, not for lack of
skill, instead, because we are implied in its incessant development.
The notion of game is a way for Wittgenstein and Derrida to assume the consequences of
their own analyses involving their viewpoints regarding themselves.28 Otherwise, they will
result in the naive return to what they are trying to elude: Standpoints with transcendental
or fixed components, such as metaphysics of presence in Derrida’s case and logical atomism
in Wittgenstein’s. They do not want only to reject classical philosophical affirmations about
language and related issues just to contradict those affirmations. Instead, they are coherent
27 About the relation between assertions and other kinds of sentences as well as Wittgenstein’s approach to Frege’s
theory of meaning, see the chapter called "Assertion" in Dummett’s Frege: Philosophy of Language (1973).
28 One way because in Wittgenstein’s case, at the end of the Tractatus (where the notion of game is not explicitly
mentioned), he states that through the propositions themselves developed in the book, those become senseless
(6.54). They constitute a false exit in Derridean terms.
30
with their own approaches trying to carry them into their last outcomes. In that way, they are
more consistent (which is not good taken on its own) than other philosophical approaches with
offside zones (i.e., without taking part of the game). Wittgenstein and Derrida apply, following
Shain’s (2005) terms, "philosophical" or "performative consistency" being philosophers "whose
theory has implications for the use of language, and who uses language in line with —or
claims to express his theories in line with— the implications of the theory" (p. 81). Actually,
in the preface of the Investigations, Wittgenstein writes:
Originally it was my intention to bring all this [his thoughts] together in a book.
(...) But it seemed to me essential that in the book the thoughts should proceed
from one subject to another in a natural, smooth sequence. |29 After several
unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into such a whole, I realized
that I should never succeed. (...) my thoughts soon grew feeble if I tried to force
them along a single track against their natural inclination. — And this was, of
course, connected with the very nature of the investigation. For it compels us to
travel criss-cross in every direction over a wide field of thought.
Derrida, on his own, in Différance states:
What I will propose here will not be elaborated simply as a philosophical dis-
course, operating according to principles, postulates, axioms or definitions, and
proceeding along the discursive lines of a linear order of reasons. In the delineation
of différance everything is strategic and adventurous. (’DIF’, pp. 6-7/6-7)
Through these paragraphs, one can suspect that the concept of game —and other related
notions— also is implied in the way of its exposition. They do not address it from a privileged
standpoint. Instead, the nature of their approaches —as Wittgenstein said— is involved
itself. The approach to the concept of game, either of Derrida or Wittgenstein, requires being
29 “|” is used for paragraph or line breaks.
31
included in the game because the starting point of their approaches is already part of the
game. Both authors acknowledge their viewpoints as arisen from it.
Following Timothy Williamson, game here could be approached as a vague notion, where
“the limits of vagueness are themselves vague,” “the meta-language in which we describe the
vagueness of a vague language will itself be vague” (and therefore not useful to get rid from
first order vagueness), “vague terms are meaningful,” and “vagueness can be understood
only from within” (1996, pp. 2–3, 7).
Summarizing, Derrida and Wittgenstein use the concept of game as a means, not as an end.
It is not possible to close or master that which is represented through it. A strategy without
finality, as Jolán Orbán (cf. 1998, § 12) states following the Derridean account of strategy:30
“[It] is not a simple strategy in the sense that strategy orients tactics according to a final goal,
a telos or theme of domination, a mastery and ultimate reappropriation of the development
of the field” (’DIF’, p. 7/ 7). They are not interested in polishing and delimiting absolutely
their respective notions of game. Because the notion itself takes part of a process addressed,
making it impossible to foresee an aimed further state (as the classic notion of strategy does)
by using the notion game.
30 Orbán (1998, § 12) cites, instead, the following quote in French: “Finally, a strategy without finality, what might
be called blind tactics, or empirical wandering if the value of empiricism did not itself acquire its entire meaning
in its opposition to philosophical responsibility. If there is a certain wandering in the tracing of différance, it
no more follows the lines of philosophical-logical discourse than that of its symmetrical and integral inverse,
empirical-logical discourse. The concept of play keeps itself beyond this opposition, announcing, on the eve of
philosophy and beyond it, the unity of chance and necessity in calculations without end” (’DIF’, p. 7/7).
32
2.2 Recognizing the first relata: The concept of game in Sprachspiel
constitution
Here it is explained how the notion of language-game is related to game through the relation
between Spiel and Beispiel, and via the twisting method. Then the use of examples concerning
the notion of game is taken in relation to the question of rule following. Finally, how language-
game through related notions (family resemblance and form of life) also appeals to the notion
of game. Here game is an access point to this relationship, but not the only one available.
2.2.1 Spiel, Beispiel, twisting method, rules, and their influence on the definition
of Sprachspiel
When Wittgenstein uses the term language-game in his texts, the importance of the notion of
game in his philosophy is obvious. The wording of language-game (Sprachspiel) shows it.
But there is as well a nominal continuity between these two words (game and language-game)
coming from "Beispiel" as is noted by Henry Staten: “They are the examples (Beispiele) which
make up this series of language games (Sprachspiele), a language game consisting of and
taught by examples” (1986, p. 104). However, examples are not limited to the components
of specific language-games or the way to teach them as Staten wrote. Instead, it is through
examples that Wittgenstein is able to introduce his notion of language-game. Therefore, the
general side of the notion of language-game is built appealing to examples.
If we look at "Beispiel" (example) in brothers Grimm’s dictionary we find that "spiel,"
in this case, is not related to "ludus." Rather, it comes from "spell" and "beispell" which are
linked to narrative. In this way, also related to παροιμία (paroimia) and παραβολή (parabolē),
and related to a narration of what lies in the path (cf. 2021).31 Hence, Beispiel could be related
31 Related, Johan Huizinga states: “Old English or Anglo-Saxon also knew the word spelian, but exclusively in the
specific sense of "to represent somebody else" or "to take another’s place", vicem gerere. It is used for instance of
the ram which was offered up in the place of Isaac. This connotation, though proper also to "play" in the sense
of "playing a part", is not the primary one. We must leave aside the question of how far spelian is grammatically
33
to everyday life experiences and our approach to those events.
Let us understand "bei Spiele" as elements brought into action and guided by certain rules
that mediate the relationship with their environment. Therefore, the function of examples is
to show how general statements are contextualized into —more or less— specific frameworks,
and in this way, also regulating the relation between concepts and our understanding of them.
The relation between examples and that which those stand for is maybe an old issue in
philosophy. In this regard, Kant devotes attention to examples in his first Critique. There he
writes:
For as far as the correctness and precision of the insight of the understanding
is concerned, examples [Beispiele] more usually do it some damage, since they
only seldom adequately fulfill the condition of the rule (as casus in terminis) and
beyond this often weaken the effort of the understanding to gain sufficient insight
into rules in the universal and independently of the particular circumstances of
experience, and thus in the end accustom us to use those rules more like formulas
than like principles. Thus examples are the leading-strings [Gängelwagen] of
the power of judgment [Urteilskraft], which he who lacks the natural talent for
judgment can never do without. (KrV, B173-174)32
Kant rejects from examples their empiric nature, linking our understanding to specific situa-
tions, preventing us from reaching the generality of concepts. Thus, taking certain examples
as the reference of a concept. Nevertheless, when he tries to explain the function of examples
regarding judgment, he also uses a suitable example: "Gängelwagen."33 Examples help to
develop discernment (Urteilskraft), and this is not a minor task: “They sharpen the power of
connected with the German "spielen", and abstain from discussing the relationship between "Spiel" and the
English "spell", "gospel". The ending -spiel as in the German "Beispiel" or "Kirchspiel" and the Dutch kerspel,
dingspel (an old judiciary district) is usually derived from the same root as the above English words [spell,
gospel?], and not from "Spiel" (spel)” (1955, p. 38).
32 Quotes from the first Critique refer to Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood’s translation (1998b).
33 Guyer and Wood (1998b) translate it as "leading-strings," but maybe a more appropriate translation would be
"walker," as does Werner S. Pluhar (1996).
34
judgment” (KrV, B173).
Indeed, Wittgenstein himself is concerned with this issue in a section of the so-called Big
Typescript titled: "Explanation of Generality by Examples." There Wittgenstein addresses the
relation between concepts and examples, showing the necessity of the latter to understand
concepts. There he writes: “An example is the point of departure for further calculation” (cf.
TS, § 74, p. 333).34 When we explain a concept, the examples employed do not stand for their
own sake, they must serve as a guide to act in a specific way. But this way of acting is not a
priori entirely determined. To use a concept is not necessary to have a mental representation
of it, but this kind of determination could come after acting through reflection (cf. TS, § 74, p.
333). Already in the Blue Book is to be found the relevance of examples for understanding:
The idea that in order to get clear about the meaning of a general term one had
to find the common element in all its applications has shackled philosophical
investigation; for it has not only led to no result, but also made the philosopher
dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone could have helped him to
understand the usage of the general term.35 (’BB’, pp. 19-20)36
Wittgenstein, as well as Kant, considers examples as the walkers of discernment. Nonetheless,
examples are the paradigmatic way of understanding concepts because they are related to
our primitive acquisition of language, widely related to their application insofar as they
constitute ostensive definitions. Reaching the intensionality (meaning) of a concept is an
impromptu action that accompanies the usage of examples. We do not reach a concept just
with its extension (the elements which a concept designates).37
In a paragraph of the Investigations, Wittgenstein is concerned with the relation between
34 For The Big Typescript the pagination of the original Wittgenstein’s text is used, as noted in the edition referenced.
35 Sraffa’s attention towards observational facts could be related here. See section 1.1.2.
36 Pagination of the Blue Book refers to the edition mentioned in references as The Blue and Brown Books.
37 See also a related issue about analogies addressed in the Blue Book. For instance, Wittgenstein states that: “No
sharp boundary can be drawn round the cases in which we should say that a man was misled by an analogy”
(’BB’, p. 28).
35
examples and the concept of game:
One can say that the concept of a game [der Begriff "Spiel"] is a concept with
blurred edges. — "But is a blurred concept a concept at all?" — Is a photograph
that is not sharp a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to
replace a picture that is not sharp by one that is? Isn’t one that isn’t sharp often
just what we need? | Frege compares a concept to a region, and says that a region
without clear boundaries can’t be called a region at all. This presumably means
that we can’t do anything with it. — But is it senseless to say "Stay roughly here"?
Imagine that I were standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I
say it, I do not bother drawing any boundary, but just make a pointing gesture —
as if I were indicating a particular spot. And this is just how one might explain
what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular
way. — I do not mean by this expression, however, that he is supposed to see in
those examples that common feature which I — for some reason — was unable to
formulate, but that he is now to employ those examples in a particular way. Here
giving examples is not an indirect way of explaining — in default of a better one.
For any general explanation may be misunderstood too. (PU, § 71)
Wittgenstein uses examples as a way to explain concepts, but examples are not a guarantee to
understand a concept. Examples are tools as valuable as general explanations regarding the
grasp of concepts. Besides, an accurate framework where examples are used is not always
preferable to an inaccurate one. It depends on which concept we are trying to explain.
Game is not the only concept that has blurred edges according to Wittgenstein. Rather, it
is a common feature of concepts to be defined by different uses. About, he writes:
I use the name "N" without a fixed meaning. (But that impairs its use as little as
the use of a table is impaired by the fact that it stands on four legs instead of three
36
and so sometimes wobbles). (PU, § 79)38
There is not something like a fixed essence of a concept that regulates a priori its use, but
instead several related uses enable the possibility of referring to something as a concept. To
complement this perspective of the Investigations, in Zettel Wittgenstein writes:
Nothing is commoner than for the meaning of an expression to oscillate, for a
phenomenon to be regarded sometimes as a symptom, sometimes as a criterion,
of a state of affairs. And mostly in such a case the shift of meaning is not noted.
(Z, § 438)39
Here it is important to explain the distinction between criterion and symptom which Wittgen-
stein tries to raise. Criterion stands for the possibility of affirming or negating something
about a given state of affairs, while a symptom only lets me elaborate hypotheses concerning
a state of affairs. In the first instance, through a criterion I can examine a symptom, the reverse
is not possible. In Wittgenstein’s words: “I call ’symptom’ a phenomenon of which experience
has taught us that it coincided, in some way or other, with the phenomenon which is our
defining criterion” (’BB’, p. 25). For example, measuring the temperature of someone with a
thermometer is a criterion to determine if she has a fever, while a symptom could be touching
her forehead and feeling that it is warm. Only through the measure of this warmth one is able
to determine if it is high enough to be considered a fever (the phenomenon coinciding with
the criterion).
What is important from the above quotation from Zettel is that Wittgenstein is not rejecting
the use of a particular element as the provisional essence of something. We can approach
an element as the substance in a particular state of affairs, but that does not mean that this
approach cannot change in a further consideration. For instance, if we look at this element
38 The table example is related to the distinction between "knowing how" and "knowing that" stated by Gilbert
Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind published in 1949.
39 Regarding oscillation between "fluxed" and "hardened" propositions, see On Certainty §§ 95-99. Some of those
sections will be addressed in the next chapter.
37
from an alternative standpoint. Touching the forehead of someone could be a criterion to
decide if one measures his temperature with a thermometer or not depending on how warm
it feels. Our former symptom has turned into a criterion. In the end, as Wittgenstein says:
“In practice, if you were asked which phenomenon is the defining criterion and which is a
symptom, you would in most cases be unable to answer this question except by making an
arbitrary decision ad hoc” (’BB’, p. 25).
A particular approach depends on what one wants to account for. Usually, we are not
aware of these oscillations among approaches because we commonly take our own outlook
as given, without anticipating alternative viewpoints.
In relation to the concept of understanding, Wittgenstein also attributes it to different uses:
“— I would rather say that these kinds of use of ’understanding’ make up its meaning, make
up my concept of understanding” (PU, § 532). He does something similar on the concept of
number:
We extend our concept of number, as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre.
And the strength of the thread resides not in the fact that some one fibre runs
through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres. (PU, § 67)
In Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle (1979), edited by Brian McGuinness, this approach of the
concept of number is also found:
What looks like a concept is the title of a chapter in grammar. In speaking of
different kinds of number, for example, you are not dealing with different concepts.
We do not have one concept of number that splits up into different sub-concepts.
Numbers do not fall into sub-classes: instead we have different kinds of word
before us in a sense similar to that in which grammar distinguishes between nouns,
adjectives, verbs, etc. There are certain similarities between the syntax of different
kinds of number, and this is why we call them all numbers. (p. 102)
In this quotation, we can note (the beginning of?) the decreasing relevance of the term logic
38
in favor of the term grammar in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, where all the elements started to
have the "same" value. These kinds of considerations bring Wittgenstein to establish in the
Investigations that the consistency of concepts does not lie in a specific use, rather in multiple
connections between them. Here Wittgenstein applies the "twisting method"40 to understand
arguments and concepts.
When fixed elements are avoided, at the first sight one is naively tempted to believe that
a system tends only to chaos. Wittgenstein proposes an alternative through the twisting
method, establishing a collective strength made possible by a network of different elements.
Thus, attention is placed in relations rather than in particular elements. The concept of game
is related to the twisting method insofar as all elements have equal value and are interrelated
with each other.
The influence of twisting method on language-games could be seen in the section 23 of
the Investigations through their interwoven condition. There Wittgenstein lists diverse kinds
of language-games, from “solving a problem in applied arithmetic” to “cracking a joke.” The
notion of language-game itself is woven of multiple kinds of human activities (cf. PU, § 7).
Furthermore, by the notion of language-game Wittgenstein does not address just a special use
of language, rather the "game condition" is implicit in language and its twisted relation with
human practices. This cross-linked condition is transmitted from Wittgenstein’s approach,
through his notion of language-game, to the different human practices accounted for by this
notion. Concepts are boundless due to their threading fiber by fiber. Each fiber accounts for a
use. The last point will be addressed in the next section.
Going back to the issue of examples, this time related to the question of rule following, one
can understand game as a concept with blurred edges via the relation of examples concerning
a concept. Wittgenstein gives the following hypothetical situation: “So it’s possible to say
’Now I no longer see this as a rose, but only as a plant’! | Or: ’Now I see it only as a rose, but
no longer as this rose’” (TS, § 74, p. 330). There is an oscillation between the approach of the
40 "Método de ’trenzado’" according to Jesús Padilla-Gálvez (2017, p. 14).
39
individuality of an example and the approach of the features that made it an example of a
particular concept. There is not such a sharp distinction between them. The context of use is
what determines the relation between these approaches.
One understands an example as such because one is able to follow its rule of application,
and this rule is taught by exemplification. That does not mean that it is possible to state
a meta-rule which establishes how to use first-order rules. If a meta-rule is allowed, the
possibility of stating a further meta-rule (a meta-meta-rule) is opened, and so on. Following
the Tractarian spirit, a rule cannot be said because one could state another rule for the former.
Instead, the rule shows itself through its applications as exemplification. Therefore, “the rule
which has been taught and is subsequently applied interests us only so far as it is involved in
the application. A rule, so far as it interests us, does not act at a distance” (’BB’, p. 14).
In the end, “once I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock, and my
spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: ’This is simply what I do’” (PU, § 217). Rules do
not force us to act in a particular way, they just work as a guide to act, because “is there not
also the case where we play, and make up the rules as we go along? And even where we
alter them — as we go along” (PU, § 83). Rules are not the basis of language-games. They
just provide us with some orientation to be integrated into a particular language-game. By
explanations it is not possible to saturate the link between a rule and its applications. The
bedrock is the activities that also form part of language-games.
When Wittgenstein states his definition of language-games in the Blue Book, it is also
possible to verify the intersection between examples and language-games. He defines them as:
“The forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words” (’BB’, p. 17). These
forms are full of ostensive definitions, showing the intentions of Wittgenstein in establishing
the meaning as use. In fact, in the Investigations this aim is explicit: “One could say: an
ostensive definition explains the use — the meaning — of a word if the role the word is
supposed to play in the language is already clear” (PU, § 30). The role of the word must be
clear when we use examples because “it is the rules that are valid for the example that make
40
it into an example” (TS, § 74, p. 332). There are preconditions that make ostensive definitions
intelligible, “one has already to know (or be able to do) something before one can ask [or
understand] what something is called” (PU, § 30). For instance, knowing if something is
an example of simplicity —or compositeness— depends on the language-game where an
example is such (cf. PU, § 47).
The concept of game used in Wittgenstein’s notion of language-game thus could be
understood as an endless oscillation between generality and factuality mediated by examples,
like the fibers of this relation. Examples which, as shown in the section 71 of the Investigations,
are intended to be taken in a particular way, although “they don’t pressure us” (TS, § 74, p.
333). That is, they do not force us to act in a determined way, just suggest a way to proceed
like street signs (cf. PU, § 85). As stated above, it is through examples that Wittgenstein
becomes able to introduce his notion of language-game.
2.2.2 Recourse of Sprachspiel to the concept of game through related notions:
Familienähnlichkeit, Lebensform and Tätigkeiten
Language-games show their recourse to the notion of game through other related terms
developed simultaneously by Wittgenstein. These other notions help to understand more
widely what Wittgenstein wanted to account for by language-game. In fact, following what
has been achieved in the last section, it is not possible to draw a definitive border between
those notions and language-game. In this section, the focus will remain on language-game
and their relation to the concept of game, but the outlook changes.
Among the use of examples, the notion of family resemblance (Familienähnlichkeit)41 is
in turn an example used by Wittgenstein to explain how language-games are related in “a
complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: similarities in the large
and in the small” (PU, § 66).42 There are not incommensurable language-games, and distinct
41 "Family likeness" in the Blue Book, as reminds Sluga (2006, p. 7).
42 According to Sluga, even the notion of language-game itself is a family resemblance notion: “There is no such
thing as the general form of the proposition, he insists [Wittgenstein], there is no fixed essence to language,
41
signs can be part of multiple language-games. One could say that language-games play with
each other both synchronically and diachronically through the notion of family resemblance
(cf. Shain, 2007, p. 145). New language-games could be created through analogy with old
ones. Wittgenstein uses an example to illustrate the woven and transtemporal constitution of
language:
Our language can be regarded as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and
squares, of old and new houses, of houses with extensions from various periods,
and all this surrounded by a multitude of new suburbs with straight and regular
streets and uniform houses. (PU, § 18)
Thus, family resemblance works as vestiges showing the mutability and history of language-
games. Different places of Wittgenstein’s ancient city contrast with each other, but there
are also connections between them. One can walk from the maze of little streets to the new
suburbs with regular streets, and thus attending not only to the game between the elements of
a determined state of affairs, but at the same time visiting the game settled by states of affairs
of different periods. Concerning particular family resemblance terms, this mutability over
time is called by Willliamson "dynamic quality" where “the extent of its legitimate application
[of a family resemblance term] can grow over time” (1996, p. 85).
Language-games share family resemblances between them, although it is not possible
to foresee the rise of new ones (cf. UG, § 559). These resemblances do not follow default
patterns, that is why it is impossible to anticipate the formation of new language-games. Even
the variety of language-games is not just given: “This diversity [of language-games] is not
something fixed, given once for all. New language-games, as we may say, come into existence,
and others become obsolete and get forgotten” (PU, § 23). This multiplicity is implied in the
mutation of language-games and does not determine further mutations.
Another notion related to language-game is form of life (Lebensform). Frequently the
and thus the concept of language-game cannot be formally defined, and all this is so because ’proposition,’
’language,’ and ’language-game’ are, in fact, family resemblance terms” (2006, p. 3).
42
term form of life has been overused by commenters as the ground of language-games.43
Nonetheless, they are not based on grounds (cf. UG, § 559). Form of life should not be
understood as an essential feature of language-games, instead, it should be comprehended
concerning praxis (Tätigkeit). Through forms of life, Wittgenstein is not worried about
building a concept which underpins language-games, rather forms of life should show that
language-games form part of activities. They do not stand by themselves, they are related to
human practices, as well as these practices are related to language-games. As Wittgenstein
wrote: “—– (...) to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life” (PU, § 19). Imagining
a form of life also means to imagine a language as a code through which the members of this
form of life communicate with each other. That is why they are interrelated.
This reciprocal conditioning between language-games and activities is also a language-
game, as Wittgenstein notes: “I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the
activities into which it is woven, a ’language-game’” (PU, § 7). The notion of language-
game does not only stand for describing different uses of language raised from ordinary life
situations, it also accounts for the relation among activities and those uses of language.
A language-game always occurs related to a form of life. Therefore, when we use a
language-game, it is necessary to consider as given a determined state of affairs concerning a
form of life, but that does not mean that forms of life are changeless. Just like language-games
mutate, forms of life also do it. They are also part of language-games.
There are three quotes in the Investigations which can elucidate the relation between
language-games and forms of life. The first one: “— Giving orders, asking questions, telling
stories, having a chat, are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking,
playing” (PU, § 25). The different uses of language do not emerge from more primitive activi-
ties. Talking as well as eating emerge from the same conditions. According to Wittgenstein,
there is no absolute distinction between language-games and the activities linked to them.
43 Wittgenstein himself explicitly uses the term "Lebensform" in the Investigations on just three occasions (PU, §§
19, 23, 241).
43
There are no higher-order languages-games, all of them lie in the same plane.
Wittgenstein usually avoids using such second or higher-order levels of predication, as
we can verify in the next quote:
One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word "philosophy", there
must be a second-order philosophy. But that’s not the way it is; it is, rather, like
the case of orthography, which deals with the word "orthography" among others
without then being second-order. (PU, § 121)
Even when he addresses self-referential terms, where one easily tends to suppose at least
one more level of predication, he avoids them. To resolve those cases Wittgentein chooses
recursivity of language-games. So it is easy to suppose that through human activities or form
of life, he does not pursue a deeper ground to language-games.
The next quote refers to the interrelation between languages-games and activities from
the viewpoint of the constitution of concepts: “If a concept points to [abzielt] a characteristic
of human handwriting, it has no application [Anwendung] to beings that do not write” (’PP’,
§ 1). Concepts emerge from specific language-games, they carry certain particularities of
the context where they were raised, so it is idle to consider concepts without taking into
account the particularities of their language-games. One could say that concepts maintain
some of these particularities even if their language-game mutates or they are used in other
language-games.
Making an analytical distinction, forms of life and family resemblance allow the intentions
of linking elements standing in distinct contexts. Through them, the play of language-games is
not subjective, but rather intersubjective, going beyond the particularities of specific language-
games.
44
2.3 Recognizing the second relata: The concept of game in dissémi-
nation constitution
As we were following the links of a chain, here we go from the notion of game to dissemination,
and from it to différance and trace. Finally, we will return to game. The first step shows how
game is related to dissemination; the second and third show how dissemination through
différance and trace return to the notion of game. Obviously, the chain can be followed in
different ways. Another one could go, for example, from trace and différance to dissemination
and game.
2.3.1 Influence of jeu and its relation to writing on dissémination definition
Derrida does not address the issue of game (jeu) as a concept. If we follow him, a concept fixes
an unequivocal relation between signifier and signified, something which Derrida tends to
avoid. He writes on play as act, in the first part of The Double Session44 about mimesis related
to Mallarmé’s Mimique, that: “The act [jeu]45 always plays [joue] out a difference without
reference, or rather without a referent, without any absolute exteriority, and hence, without
any inside” (’DS’, p. 248/219).46 So, the notion of game present in his texts is usually related
to indeterminacy (which does not necessarily mean unintelligibility) and oscillation. Like
wandering, without a specific closed end, like the already seen Axelos’ approach.
In fact, Derrida is following the wager, risk, and gambling connotations that "jeu" has in
French. If we look at Le Robert dictionary, connotations of "jeu" are “mouvement aisé, régulier
d’un objet, d’un organe, d’un mécanisme” and “espace ménagé pour le mouvement aisé d’un
objet”; the latter includes “défaut de serrage entre deux pièces d’un mécanisme” (n.d.).47
44 Derrida deals in this text, at least in the first part, with Mallarmé’s Mimique, stating that μίμησις (mimēsis) does
not stand just for a copy or imitation of something else. Rather, μίμησις stands for his own, as imitation itself,
even beyond the idea of "imitation." See also Johnson (1981, pp. xxvi–xxix).
45 The English edition of La double séance seems to suggest that "jeu" stands for game, play, and act (cf. p. 216).
46 Fink’s account of μίμησις beyond a representation, in the sense of a mirror, reverberates here.
47 Related, see also the entry of "jeu" in Littré (1873–1874), in particular, connotations 26 and 27.
45
Meanings closely related to oscillation and provisionality. About, J. Hillis Miller (2011) writes
that:
"Jeu" can also mean a looseness in connections or articulations as when one says,
"There is play in this steering wheel", or even "There is play in this word, leading
to word play". Certainly such play exists in ordinary usages of "jeu", as well as in
Derrida’s play with those usages. (p. 44)
Game plays for its own sake and does not follow a further target, there is not a teleological
pursuit. Nothing escapes from the game. That is why it has neither exteriority nor inside,
although there are non-saturated contexts playing the game.
Game is a notion used by Derrida in close relation to his approach to writing. They are
different sides of the same issue of deferral relations. For instance, in in the last section of
Plato’s Pharmacy, Derrida also compares game with his notion of writing:
Having no essence, introducing difference as the condition for the presence of
essence, opening up the possibility of the double, the copy, the imitation, the
simulacrum the game [jeu] and the graphē are constantly disappearing as they go
along. They cannot, in classical affirmation, be affirmed without being negated.
(’PH’, p. 181/157)
The play among different contexts is a key issue in Derrida’s account of language. For him, it
is only possible through "writing," allowing the drawing of a word or statement from their
original context and inserting it in other contexts without becoming unintelligible. According
to Derrida, this play between contexts is inherent to the language itself, it is not accidental. In
Signature Event Context, he notes:
A written sign carries with it a force of breaking with its context, that is, the set
of presences which organize the moment of its inscription. This force of breaking
is not an accidental predicate, but the very structure of the written. (’SEC’, p.
377/317)
46
Writing as well as game share the feature of being delayed, non-actual in Fink’s terms. It does
not stand for an actual state of affairs. It always refers to something present turned absent
through the addressing itself. This structural absence implied in the affirmation of writing
enables the possibility of using a word in different contexts.48 This game begins with writing
and influences the entire language as is stated in Of Grammatology:
The secondarity that it seemed possible to ascribe to writing alone affects all
signifieds in general, affects them always already, the moment they enter the
game. There is not a single signified that escapes, even if recaptured, the play of
signifying [signifiants] references that constitute language. The advent of writing
is the advent of this play. (DG, p. 16/7)
The overcoming of the Saussurean sign is playing here. This displacement affects the whole
of language and is not an accident. Instead, it is the possibility of its unfolding. Also, the
Derridean notions are implied in the game of writing. There is not a higher-order level which
safeguards Derrida’s own analyses from the game of signifiers. Even the notion of game is
involved in the process described by itself. In that way, game (understood as a masterword
following Axelos) is negated while it is affirmed. It also enters into the process of mutation
and iteration that it tries to describe. As will be seen in the next section, Derrida addresses
différance as a false exit (or entry) of the system of language. That is a shared condition of
many of his neologisms related to language. Derrida does not want to remove metaphysics.
He aims to print on it a new orientation from the tradition itself and thus inhabiting it, playing
with its terms to show how they cannot reach what they try to. Namely, having a saturated
and atemporal meaning.
Returning to in the last section of Plato’s Pharmacy, it is possible to find in the ancient Greek
word παιδιά (paidia) an antecedent of Derrida’s use of game. For him, this word should not
be translated only as pastime (divertissement), opposed to σπουδή (spoudē; serious). In that
48 This issue is also addressed in the next section concerning the deferred side of différance approached as
dissemination.
47
way, game would be part of a binary relation as any other mentioned by Derrida (good/bad,
form/matter, and others). These intentions are clear in the next quotation:
The opposition spoudē/paidia will never be one of simple symmetry. Either play
is nothing (and that is its only chance); either it can give place to no activity, to no
discourse worthy of the name —that is, one charged with truth or at least with
meaning— and then it is alogos or atopos. Or else play begins to be something and
its very presence lays it open to some sort of dialectical confiscation. It takes on
meaning and works in the service of seriousness, truth, and ontology. (...) As soon
as it comes into being and into language, play erases itself as such. As soon as it
comes into being and into language, play erases itself as such. Just as writing must
erase itself as such before truth. (’PH’, pp. 180-181/156)
Game for Derrida is not an entity, its existence is deferred, non-actual. That is why its only
chance is to be no-thing. As a nominal expression, game tries to account for the process of an
endless iteration and replacement among the elements that constitute language. Thus, the
translation of παιδιά should show the disruptive nature of that which game accounts for, a
play of elements without a further monitoring than themselves, making tremble its (intended)
opposition to σπουδή.
In the last sentence of the above quote, Heidegger’s influence is evident on Derrida. There
are similarities with the following excerpt taken from Heidegger’s essay of 1930, entitled On
the Essence of Truth:
Concealment deprives ἀλήθεια of disclosure yet does not render it στέρησις (pri-
vation); rather, concealment preserves what is most proper to ἀλήθεια as its
own. Considered with respect to truth as disclosedness, concealment is then
un-disclosedness and accordingly the un-truth that is most proper to the essence
of truth. (GA 9, p. 89)
Game as something that erases itself recalls to ἀλήθεια (alētheia) as an unveiling that also veils
48
(as world does for Axelos). In turn, this treatment of ἀλήθεια by Heidegger departs from his
ontological difference between being (Sein) and entity (Seiend). All that lies in language does
it as an entity, but game though is not an entity, through its nominal expression becomes one
and thus erases itself, just as the "being" becomes an entity erasing its condition of no-thing
through language.
About this relation with Heidegger, Derrida stresses a distinction between différance and
Heidegger’s ontological difference that could be extended to his notion of game: “Différance
is not a ’species’ of the genus ontological difference (...) différance is not a process of propiation
in any sense whatever. It is neither position (appropriation) nor negation (expropriation),
but rather other” (’DIF’, p. 27n1/26n26). Here Derrida avoids the metaphysics of presence
implicated in Heidegger’s term "being." Unlike Heidegger, Derrida is not appealing to the
return of a mythical and remote origin. Game as a différance-related notion shares these
features because it ostensibly takes place beyond the tension between presence and absence,
just oscillation on its own.
The notion of game is also addressed by Derrida in an earlier essay entitled Structure, Sign
and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, after quoting Lévi-Strauss replying to critics
about his non-exhaustive inventory of South American myths (1969, pp. 7–8). In this regard,
Derrida notes:
Totalization can be judged impossible in the classical style: one then refers to
the empirical endeavor of either a subject or a finite richness which it can never
master. There is too much, more than one can say. But nontotalization can also
be determined in another way: no longer from the standpoint of a concept of
finitude as relegation to the empirical, but from the standpoint of the concept of
play. If totalization no longer has any meaning, it is not because the infiniteness of
a field cannot be covered by a finite glance or a finite discourse, but because the
nature of the field —that is, language and a finite language— excludes totalization.
This field is in effect that of play, that is to say, a field of infinite substitutions only
49
because it is finite, that is to say, because instead of being an inexhaustible field, as
in the classical hypothesis, instead of being too large, there is something missing
from it: a center which arrests and grounds the play of substitutions. (’SSJ’, p.
423/365)
This quotation constitutes one of the best explanations on the notion of game that Derrida
provides in his early texts. Through it, one can understand the place of this notion in his
approach to language. It is used to explain its non-totalizing nature. Game not only describes
the substitutions and relations among the components of language, it also shows the non-
existence of a fixed element regulating these substitutions. In that way, as Derrida states,
game establishes a tension with presence:
Play is the disruption of presence. The presence of an element is always a sig-
nifying and substitutive reference inscribed in a system of differences and the
movement of a chain. Play is always play of absence and presence, but if it is to
be thought radically, play must be conceived of before the alternative of presence
and absence. Being must be conceived as presence or absence on the basis of the
possibility of play and not the other way around. (’SSJ’, p. 426/369)
Game does not stand for chaos and nonsense, it describes the provisional and changing status
of meaning always subject to mutation. These changes leave traces in the meaning of elements,
that is why along with the mutation goes a chain carrying the history of changes. This chain
enables the possibility of drawing a history of concepts.
The notion of game would be ontologically prior to the relation between presence and
absence, and not presence and absence as the condition for game. As stated before, game
would not be the cause of the oscillation between presence and absence. Rather, the sole
possibility of game would be what allows the relation presence/absence. Nonetheless, as
noted in the last quote, game as a subtracted phenomenon always takes place as the play
between absence and presence.
50
Game, therefore, seems to be a transcendental condition but is not. Instead, game is a
quasi-transcendental notion, a term attempting to go beyond binary thinking. It intends to be
neither immanent nor transcendent, neither affirms nor denies the conditions of possibility of
something.49 Game is a strategy without finality, as Derrida shows in the next quote: “The
concept of play keeps itself beyond this opposition [between philosophical-logical discourse
and empirical-logical discourse], announcing, on the eve of philosophy and beyond it, the
unity of chance and necessity in calculations without end” (’DIF’, p. 7/7). The last sentence
enables us to go from game to dissemination as a strategy also without targets or goals.
Broadly speaking, dissemination states that meaning begins intrinsically scattered instead
of having a progressive development. This further unfolding of meaning is just a consequence
of the disseminated status of language. Just as the concept of game is supposed to describe the
movement between presence and absence, dissemination describes the segregated condition
of language since always. As Derrida writes: “Far from presupposing that a virgin substance
thus precedes or oversees it, dispersing or withholding itself in a negative second moment,
dissemination affirms the always divided generation of meaning. Dissemination—spills it in
advance” (’DS’, pp. 299-300/268). This divided generation of meaning takes place in multiple
folds like Axelos’ openings of the world as epochs. In turn, Derrida takes the notion of fold
from Mallarmé’s "éventail" (hand fan). One can think of dissemination as a hand fan where
its slats are folds of meaning. These slats differ from each other but also are interconnected.
However, dissemination is not only polysemy, a determined and fixed variety of signifieds
for a signifier with a foreseeable horizon of unfolding.
Polysemy puts meaning offside —of game—, establishing “the horizon of the final parou-
sia of a meaning at last deciphered, revealed, made present in the rich collection of its
determinations” (’DIS’, p. 389/350). Polysemy organizes a priori a settled number of mean-
ings for a word, making present all possible development. On the other hand, dissemination
plays on polysemy as a succession of meanings through game, because, as Derrida writes in
49 On quasi-transcendentals in Derrida see, for instance, Hurst (2004) and Rorty (1995).
51
Tympan, “what is then woven does not play the game of tight succession. Rather, it plays on
succession. Do not forget that to weave (tramer, trameare) is first to make holes, to traverse, to
work one-side-and-the-other of the warp [chaîne]” (’T’, p. xxv/xxviii). Besides, dissemination
is embedded in time since its deferred constitution, not just in its deployment, impeding to
foresee future folds of meaning.50 Derrida, regarding Mallarmé’s hand fan, writes:
To read Mallarme’s éventail {fan} (...) involves not only the description of a
phenomenological structure whose complexity is also a challenge; it is also to
remark that the fan re-marks itself: no doubt it designates the empirical object
one thinks one knows under that name, but then, through a tropic twist (analogy,
metaphor, metonymy), it turns toward all the semic units that have been identified
(wing, fold, plume, page, rustling, flight, dancer, veil, etc., each one finding itself
folding and unfolding, opening/closing with the movement of a fan, etc.); it opens
and closes each one, but it also inscribes above and beyond that movement the
very movement and structure of the fan-as-text, the deployment and retraction of
all its valences. (’DIS’, p. 283/251)
The openings and closings movements of the hand fan, which make possible the unfolding
and folding of its distinct parts, is implied in its own movement. The hand fan remarks
itself says Derrida. These supplementary marks affects further deployment: “It marks the
structurally necessary position of a supplementary inscription that could always be added
to or subtracted from the series [of valences]” (’DIS’, p. 283/252). Dissemination, through
its supplementary condition, shows the impossibility of the saturation of contexts. Besides
this divided and delayed generation of meaning, dissemination also accounts for risking,
gambling, and wagering related to meaning. Dissemination:
50 The difference between dissemination and polysemy could be easily understood through the distinction
stated by Derrida, in the introduction to the documentary Derrida, between future (polysemy) and l’avenir
(dissemination). The first one refers to foreseeable events, while l’avenir accounts for unexpected ones (Dick &
Ziering, 2002).
52
Endlessly opens up a snag in writing that can no longer be mended, a spot where
neither meaning, however plural, nor any form of presence can pin/pen down
{agrapher} the trace. Dissemination treats —doctors— that point where the move-
ment of signification would regularly come to tie down the play of the trace, thus
producing (a) history. The security of each point arrested in the name of the law is
hence blown up. (’HL’, p. 33/26)
The provisionality and oscillation features of game can be noted in the above quotation.
Dissemination also accounts for the impossibility of stopping the play of differences. There
where a meaning seems to be fixed, dissemination reminds one of the play of the trace.
2.3.2 Recourse of dissémination to the concept of game through related notions:
différance and trace
Just as occurs with language-game, dissemination only achieves its purpose in regard to other
Derridean terms. This necessity of using dissemination-related notions rests in Derrida’s own
exposition of dissemination (probably because of its own disseminated condition). Essays
related to dissemination, such as Différance, where Derrida accounts related concerns give
some evidence on this. For us, Derrida, between roughly 1967-1972, addresses similar topics
in different texts. Thus, all of those texts are in some way interrelated. If one wants to have a
representative approach of a particular notion developed in this period, dissemination in our
case, it is a good idea to appeal to other notions.
Derrida himself explicitly addresses other of his notions as marks (not effects) of dissemi-
nation in Outwork. These marks are not guided by dual oppositions, nor account for a third
term that reconciles these binary opposition: “They are the marks of dissemination (and not
of polysemy) in that they cannot be pinned down at any one point by the concept or the tenor
of a signified”, and thus, “they can never be enclosed within any finite taxonomy, not to speak
of any lexicon as such” (’HL’, p. 32/25).
Barbara Johnson, the translator of the English edition of Dissemination, stresses in a footnote
53
the relevance of the above quotations. These terms (différance, gramme, trace, supplement,
hymen, and others) are not traditional concepts. Concerning this point, she states: “Derrida is
here both inviting and warning against such a procedure [make a lexicon], which, while it
points up Derrida’s neologistic innovations, reinscribes the effects of those innovations within
a finite, pointillistic topology” (1981, p. 25n24). Strictly speaking, and following Derrida’s
suggested treatment, it is not possible to elaborate a sort (in a full sense) with them because
they do not refer to something pre-established and contained. That is why they are marks
of dissemination and not of polysemy. Doing a taxonomy with these terms deceives the
intentions that have inspired their creation (which of course is not bad in itself). Indeed,
Derrida seems to suggest that these terms are a false exit of language, something that classical
metaphysics is not aware of concerning its foundational concepts. For Derrida, the value of
foundational notions resides in showing their impossibility. On différance, he states:
This unnameable [différance] is the play which makes possible nominal effects,
the relatively unitary and atomic structures that are called names, the chains of
substitutions of names in which, for example, the nominal effect différance is itself
enmeshed, carried off, reinscribed, just as a false entry or a false exit is still part of
the game, a function of the system. (’DIF’, p. 28/26-27)
By calling différance unnamable, Derrida is questioning the relation between atomic elements
such as names and objects. Here attempting to omit a name is not just a whim, he is placing
in the same level unnameableness, différance, and game. These terms do not account for a
relation like name/object or signifier/signified.
There are no "outsides" in Derrida’s approach because he acknowledges that doing so
would imply the restoring of that which is avoided. That is to say, something fixed where the
game does not take place, as it was already seen in the beginning of the chapter. Différance is
a deliberately failed attempt to refer to something nameless. Through this attempt, he shows
the impossibility of such reference. In fact, “différance remains a metaphysical name, and all
the names that it receives in our language are still, as names, metaphysical” (’DIF’, p. 28/26).
54
It is a false exit because it still having the form of a sign, alluding to a fixed relation between
signifier and signified.
The relation among Derridean terms is shown by the fact that one could substitute
différance by other related notions, depending on the context where it occurs, which also
entail différance:
If we consider the chain in which différance lends itself to a certain number of
nonsynonymous substitutions, according to the necessity of the context, why
have recourse to the "reserve," to "archi-writing," to the "archi-trace," to "spacing,"
that is, to the "supplement," or to the pharmakon, and soon to the hymen, to the
margin-mark-march, etc. (’DIF’, p. 13/12)
Derrida is highlighting the relevance of context regarding the manner in which différance
could occur. What différance tries to account is dispensable from its nominal expression. On
this issue, in Spivak’s preface to her translation of Of Grammatology, she writes:
The movement of "difference-itself," precariously saved by its resident "contradic-
tion," has many nicknames: trace, differance, reserve, supplement, dissemination,
hymen, greffe, pharmakon, parergon, and so on. They form a chain where each
may be substituted for the other. But not exactly (of course, even two uses of the
same word would not be exactly the same. (1997, p. lxx)
Différance is not excluded from the game described by it. All the terms aforementioned are
several attempts to account for the same (which in turn does not remain the same).
As is well-known, différance is a neologism created by Derrida which establishes a play
between the term différance and the already existent French word "différence" (difference).
Both are homophones but not homographs. In French, their pronunciation does not allow
one to notice this spelling distinction. Concerning this unnoticed graphic change in their
utterance, Derrida says that his “discourse will be less a justification of, and even less an
apology for, this silent lapse in spelling, than a kind of insistent intensification of its play”
55
(’DIF’, p. 3/3). Derrida appeals to oscillation in the nominal construction of différance. Being
unable to recognize whether différence or différance is pronounced puts oneself into the game.
This game includes the wording of the term itself implying a swing between "e" and "a" (cf.
Orbán, 1998, § 14).
Dissemination could be approached as the deferred or delayed side of différance since:
Différer in this sense is to temporize, to take recourse, consciously or unconsciously,
in the temporal and temporizing mediation of a detour that suspends the accom-
plishment or fulfillment of "desire" or "will," and equally effects this suspension in
a mode that annuls or tempers its own effect. (’DIF’, p. 8/8)
The non-saturation of contexts explained through dissemination could be understood by this
temporization of différance. Always something is left out when the fulfillment of a context
is pursued. This delayed condition establishes a diachronic —and even synchronic— game
among contexts and signs.
This temporization of différance as dissemination is also spacing, a scattering. The play
of differences is just possible with an interval or distance, a strip of distance and movement
that allows the interaction among the elements of the game. Concurrently, this possibility
of movement allows iteration (cf. ’DIF’, p. 8/8). The performance of repetition takes place
only where the possibility of a seesaw between presence and absence is enabled. Otherwise,
absence and presence could not swap each other, and iteration would not take place. That
seems to be the reason why Derrida says that game is prior to the shifting between presence
and absence.
Temporization returns us to the writing issue. Writing, understood in the general sense as
a proxy of something absence, plays an important role in the delayed and spaced condition
that makes non-saturation possible. Writing takes place:
When we cannot grasp or show the thing, state the present, the being-present,
when the present cannot be presented, we signify, we go through the detour of the
56
sign. We take or give signs. We signal. The sign, in this sense, is deferred presence.
(’DIF’, p. 9/9)
The process of signifying consists in the game between presence and absence, a deferred
presence that goes beyond this dichotomy. Because signs work bypassing an absolute presence,
Derrida claims that written signs structurally have the possibility of transcending their context
of production, as already mentioned in the previous section. He states:
It belongs to the [written] sign to be legible, even if the moment of its production
is irremediably lost, and even if I do not know what its alleged author-scriptor
meant consciously and intentionally at the moment he wrote it. (’SEC’, p. 377/317)
There is a differential play in terms of meaning between the signs taking part in a new context
(i.e., other than their primitive context), allowing those signs to have a particular meaning,
and their original context of production (i.e., paleonymy as we will see below). Derrida is not
denying that fact in the last quote, but he claims that primitive lexicalization does not exclude
the use of a sign in other contexts. Because a sign is intrinsically able to work without a full
presence, even going beyond its own context, due to the temporal spacing of différance as
dissemination:
This force of rupture [with its context] is due to the spacing that constitutes the
written sign: the spacing which separates it from other elements of the internal
contextual chain (the always open possibility of its extraction and grafting), but
also from all the forms of a present referent (past or to come in the modified form
of the present past or to come) that is objective or subjective. This spacing is
not the simple negativity of a lack, but the emergence of the mark. (’SEC’, pp.
377-378/317)
Extraction, grafting, and iteration, are possible because of the side of différance which implies
temporal spacing. Here it is important to note that a sign cannot be intelligible without
57
a context. Derrida rejects the privilege of the primitive context as the ultimate code of
interpretation. Nonetheless, that does mean that a sign can stand by itself. One could say that
the chain of differences inscribed on it does not allow a sign to stand by its own. “Essentially
and lawfully, every concept is inscribed in a chain or in a system within which it refers to
the other, to other concepts, by means of the systematic play of differences” (’DIF’, p. 11/11).
Thus, a sign must take place in a context.
Alongside this chain of différance there is the trace or mark above already mentioned. A
trace could be understood as a negative effect, it does not reveal the existence of something
that was fully present in another time. Instead, it reveals the lack of such presence. Just as
temporal spacing makes possible the rupture of signs with their native —or any— context,
spacing (and temporization) left marks of these gaps among signs. Hence, trace accounts for
the marks of iteration (token) of a sign (type).
What we want to stress concerning the trace in relation to dissemination is the historic
nature of language, which does not mean that it was created by any society. Language in
everyday life always is considered as given. Obviously, a word can be extracted from its
original context and be grafted in another, but it does not mean that the word lost all the
connections with its former contexts where it took place, “it would be an affirmation of the
autonomy of meaning, of the ideal purity of an abstract, theoretical history of the concept”
(’HL’, p. 11/5).51
Derrida addresses this side of the trace when he approaches the issue of paleonymy (the
use of old names with new orientations) in the preface of Dissemination, and he does it in
White Mythology. In particular, with the metaphysical vestiges of concepts. As Shain suggests,
the question of paleonymy is a challenge to Wittgenstein’s attempt to dissolve philosophical
problems (2007, p. 145). However, we should have in mind that for Derrida “there is no such
51 Derrida and Wittgenstein avoid metaphysics of meaning. They tend to delete the meaning as a semantic
autonomous content. They stand for contextuality of meaning through the notion of game, rather than
compositionality of meaning (atemporal elements that have their own meaning outside of contexts). We will
face this issue in the next chapter.
58
thing as a ’metaphysical-concept.’ There is no such thing as a ’metaphysical-name.’ The
’metaphysical’ is a certain determination or direction taken by a sequence or ’chain’” (’HL’,
p. 12/6). The metaphysical side of concepts is not removable (as paleonymy tries to show),
but it is neither the ground of them. For instance, the ancient Greek word ὕλη (hylē) stood for
the ordinary use as "wood" or "forest," and at the same time, it was used metaphysically by
Aristotle accounting for "matter."
Concepts are like chains with open links that engage with other chains with open links,
and those engagements always leave marks on the links of chains. A particular engagement
(context) of the chain of ὕληwith other chains (concepts) constitutes its meaning as wood, mat-
ter, or something else. Dissemination accounts for the endless possibility of such engagements
since concepts are constituted by open links, opening the game.
59
3. A convergence between Sprachspiel
and dissémination through the con-
cept of game
As a result of the explicit and implicit developments made by Derrida and Wittgenstein
approached so far on dissémination and Sprachspiel, the notion of game as the intersection
area between them could be built through the following general features: 1) All the partici-
pants addressed are at the same level, even the notion of game and participant themselves
(reflexivity/recursivity)52 2) Those participants are not completely fixed (flux) 3) There are pat-
terns of interaction among participants, but also patterns are subject to change (trace/family
resemblance) 4) Further patterns among participants are unforeseeable (dissemination going
beyond polysemy/mutation and raising of new language-games). Following these features
of game as an outlook, this chapter provides the first attempts to establish a convergence
between language-game and dissémination (and related notions).53
52 Here reflexivity and recursivity go along with each other. Making an analytical distinction, reflexivity refers to
the feedback between the notion of game itself and that which is addressed through it (mutability) because of
the mentioned lack of higher predication levels. Recursivity, on the other hand, stands for the implication of
the game itself in the description of what the notion of game is (even when examples of particular games are
addressed), therefore, following Derrida, being a false exit or entry.
53 The notion of game here addressed could share some commonalities with what James P. Carse calls "infinite
game." He described it as played for the sake of the game itself, just “for the purpose of continuing the play.”
This kind of game has no spatial frontiers: “There are no spatial or numerical boundaries to an infinite game.
No world is marked with the barriers of infinite play,” and also without temporal limits: “The time of an infinite
60
3.1 Game and metaphysics: Family resemblances/paleonymy, lan-
guage therapy/metaphysical language and mythology
Dissémination and Sprachspiel as notions related to metaphysical issues (metaphysics, un-
derstood as autonomous meaning of words, i.e., outside of any context) through the notion
of game, lead us to some issues that a link between those notions should face. Here we will
address two of them: 1) The contraposition between family resemblance and paleonymy; 2)
The relation between language therapy and metaphysics/mythology. Those issues help us, as
an access point, to begin establishing the convergence between Sprachspiel and Dissémination
from the standpoint of the notion of game.
As stated in the previous chapter, Derrida and Wittgenstein avoid metaphysics of meaning.
They tend to get away from approaches of meaning as a semantic autonomous content,
that is to say, as something isolated from every context. The notions of language-game
and dissemination are implied in this rejection. Family resemblance as a related notion to
language-game and paleonymy as a related notion to dissemination also take part in this
issue.
The relation between language-game and family resemblance was established in the
previous chapter. However, the relation between dissemination and paleonymy was not
directly addressed. It was just hinted at in the last paragraphs dedicated to the trace. Indeed,
it is through the notion of trace, accounting for the historic nature of language, that paleonymy
becomes an important notion. Also, some features of dissemination could be explicitly seen
through paleonymy: unsaturated condition of contexts, trade of words between contexts, and
the rising of new connotations of words.
game is not world time, but time created within the play itself. Since each play of an infinite game eliminates
boundaries, it opens to players a new horizon of time.” An infinite game has those features because “while
finite games are externally defined, infinite games are internally defined.” And of course, since an infinite game
has no boundaries, “there is but one infinite game,” However, about the issue of boundaries, “finite games
can be played within an infinite game, but an infinite game cannot be played within a finite game” (1986, §§
1, 6, 7, 101). Carse’s notion of infinite game is important because he approaches it without making a complex
taxonomy of particular games.
61
Paleonymy is approached by Derrida in Positions asking: “What, then, is the ’strategic’
necessity that requires the occasional maintenance of an old name in order to launch a new
concept?” (P, p. 96/71). Just as with the notion of game, paleonymy is a strategy without
finality. Derrida continues questioning: “Why does strategy refer to the play of the strategem
[jeu du stratagème] rather than to the hierarchical organization of the means and the end?” (P,
p. 96/71). Derrida does not stand for the univocal relation between a name and a concept.
Here maintaining an old name does not necessarily imply carrying on old concepts without
being modified. In this way, “a name does not name the punctual simplicity of a concept,
but rather a system of predicates defining a concept, a conceptual structure centered on a
given predicate” (P, p. 96/71). Moreover, this quotation reminds us of the already mentioned
quote of the preface of Outwork: “There is no such thing as a ’metaphysical-name.’ The
’metaphysical’ is a certain determination or direction taken by a sequence or ’chain’” (’HL’, p.
12/6). This idea also appears in Signature Event Context: “Each concept, moreover, belongs
to a systematic chain, and itself constitutes a system of predicates. There is no metaphysical
concept in and of itself. There is a work —metaphysical or not— on conceptual systems”
(’SEC’, pp. 392-393/329). Thus, one could say that a name, as a system of predicates, is a
determination —among others— of the chain (of meaning) defining a particular concept.
Derrida explains the process of paleonymy through two steps:
(1) to the extraction of a reduced predicative trait that is held in reserve, limited in
a given conceptual structure (limited for motivations and relations of force to be
analyzed), named X; (2) to the delimitation, the grafting and regulated extension
of the extracted predicate, the name X being maintained as a kind of lever of
intervention, in order to maintain a grasp on the previous organization, which is
to be transformed effectively. Therefore, extraction, graft, extension: you know
that this is what I call, according to the process I have just described, writing. (P, p.
96/71)
As we can verify in this quote, a name is just a tool to lexicalize a system of predicates. In fact,
62
a tool that could be used with different systems of predicates because there is not a univocal
relation between names and concepts/signifieds. Here names are only meaningful in relation
to their predicates (which in turn could also be names). The latter are not just accessories
to names. Thus, the extraction of a name, rather, is the extraction of a set of predicates, and
paleonymy is just the change of the predicates that are focused regarding a name.54
According to Ed Pluth, paleonymy: “Proceeds by continuing to use an old, traditional
name while making the name different from what it always was, because one or more of the
predicates associated with that name is being rethought and reworked” (2007, p. 19). However,
paleonymy also could be understood as a name allowing the communication among different
contexts, among different systems of predicates (the former systems and the new one pursuit
be established), because paleonymy as a process always takes place in an already existent
name.
An example (related to the previous one about ὕλη) could be helpful to understand
paleonomy. In the history of Western philosophy there are words that have changed their
meaning. A well known example is Plato’s adoption of the term εἶδος (eidos) in his so-called
theory of forms, which also attached new connotations to the term. In ordinary life the term
referred to something seen, but Plato used to refer to something only intelligible. With this
extraction and grafting of the term εἶδος, from the point of view of paleonomy, Plato is not just
taking the name εἶδος isolated from all its previous predicates. Rather, although he attributed
other predicates to εἶδος in his theory, former predicates of εἶδος related to ordinary life could
arise. Thus, it is possible to say, at least metaphorically, that one sees a form when one has
understood it, and a form could be ugly or beautiful.55 The latter, predicatives related to sight
54 Translation could be raised as a paleonymy related process. On representation, Derrida writes: “I think we
must begin with the hypothesis that the word ’representation’ translates no Greek word in any transparent
way, without remainder, without reinterpretation and deep historical reinscription. This is not a problem of
translation, it is the problem of translation” (’E’, p. 116/101).
55 It could be interesting to verify the scope of the overlap between predicates of different fields in Plato’s texts.
For example, aesthetics (including theory of perception) and ethics concerning forms. Nicholas Riegel (2014) in
his text Goodness and Beauty in Plato explores the link between τὸ ἀγαθόν (to agathon) and τὸ καλὸν (to kalon)
concluding that goodness and beauty are coextensive although not identical.
63
(and other senses).
There are at least two positions regarding the relation between paleonymy and meta-
physics. On one hand, Shain writes that: “For Derrida the use of old terms in new ways—at
least when used by philosophers to attempt to escape metaphysics, possibly in all other cases
as well —raises the ’question of paleonymy’” (2007, p. 145). Here the question of paleonymy
refers to the inability of old terms to escape from old metaphysical uses. On the other hand,
Pluth thinks that paleonymy “can, in principle, involve using a strong or dominant concept
from the philosophical, metaphysical tradition, changing its attributes with an eye to aban-
doning the concept altogether someday” (2007, p. 19). Pluth’s reading of paleonymy seems
to open the possibility of reaching a complete new lexicalization of names, leaving aside
older metaphysical uses. In particular, the final words in the citation of Pluth above, after the
last comma, suggest that it is possible to foresee a future where the former concept loses its
relation to a name. In this way, the actual predicates related to that name do not resemble or
refer to the previous predicates linked to its former concept.
Pluth’s reading could easily be read as teleological, ignoring the risky side of paleonymy.
This risky side is addressed by Derrida in the following quote:
To put the old names to work, or even just to leave them in circulation, will always,
of course, involve some risk: the risk of settling down or of regressing into the
system that has been, or is in the process of being, deconstructed. To deny this risk
would be to confirm it: it would be to see the signifier —in this case the name— as
a merely circumstantial, conventional occurrence of the concept or as a concession
without any specific effect. It would be an affirmation of the autonomy of meaning.
(’HL’, p. 11/5)
Nonetheless, Pluth’s account of paleonymy somehow also includes its risky side, when he
states immediately after his above last mentioned quote that “the concept in question would
always be in scare quotes” (2007, p. 19). The concept which is supposed to leave its former
connotations still carrying the same name and because of that needs to be inside quotation
64
marks. The risk of returning to the old system keeps being latent. Here the issue of sous
rature (under erasure) arises. In fact, any name subjected to the process of paleonymy is a
name to be written under erasure, and therefore becoming an endless erasure hoping to leave
aside what makes it possible. That is to say, former signified(s) implicated in the signifier in
question.
Pluth’s text (2007) is about Lacan. For this reason his treatment of paleonymy is oriented
to address Lacan’s developments. In that text can be found an example where the risky side
of paleonymy arises related to Lacan’s use of an old name:
Lacan’s theory of the subject is taking a central philosophical and metaphysical
concept and trying to understand it differently, without hoping for a better, more
appropriate name for it. As a result, from Derrida’s perspective, Lacan runs the
risk of simply repeating what was metaphysical about the subject. (p. 19)
If we follow this quotation, Lacan is applying somehow the approach of paleonymy to
preserve the name "subject" but trying to rework it. The last sentence from the above quote
shows the risky side of paleonymy addressed by Derrida. Using an old name opens the
possibility of falling into its former connotations.
Paleonymy, understood as an ongoing process, as an infinite game (following Carse’s
notion), enables the gambling between the old uses of names resisting being reworked and
the new connotations trying to dock into old names. Through paleonymy it is possible to
verify how trace works, linking old uses to new ones.
In the end, it seems that Shain’s account of paleonymy follows more closely what Derrida
writes about it in the preface of Dissemination, while Pluth focuses his attention only on the
explanation stated in Positions. These two interpretations of paleonymy given by Shain and
Pluth are also introduced because they allow us to account for the relation between family
resemblance and paleonymy. In the previous chapter, we have mentioned the question of
paleonymy as a challenge to Wittgenstein’s intentions to dissolve philosophical problems.
This challenge arises, according to Shain, through the contrapositions between the notion of
65
family resemblance and paleonymy (2007, p. 145).
Shain understands family resemblance as a synchronic and diachronic idea, where:
Words may have different referents from earlier uses of the same words, and
words may be used currently with different referents —and all of these uses may
be legitimate. None need be the "essential" or "true" meaning. Hence, it need not
raise any metaphysical issues when words are used in different ways as long as
these new uses are related to previous or current uses. (2007, p. 145)
In this quote can be confirmed the woven and transtemporal features of language accounted
for the notion of family resemblance in the last chapter. Both paleonymy and family resem-
blance play with multiple but related connotations of words. The contraposition between
them could be partially overcome, if we think both as processes of extracting and grafting
words and their uses among different contexts or language-games without promoting any
of those earlier uses. Both of these notions stand for the trading that builds up language. A
game played between different uses of words. Different patterns related to one another. The
above so-called features 1 and 3 of the notion of game are present here if we take contexts too
as first order participants of the game: Contexts are on the same level and play each other.
A play that could establish a pattern, although as feature 4 states: Subject to unforeseeable
changes.
Nonetheless, there is an important distinction. The work or re-orientation printed on
the old names through paleonymy is a task made by someone,56 although made possible
by the disseminated condition of language. On the other hand, the extraction and grafting
process of family resemblance is an intersubjective phenomenon taking place in the language
understood also as a language-game.
56 The necessity of someone to execute paleonymy seems to print a finality on it, leaving aside its aforementioned
lack of goals. In fact, there is local or contextual finality, but applying paleonomy to a name does not imply
closing the possibility of raising further connotations related to that name and fixing its scope. Paleonymy
cannot ensure such a mastering of a name. If the possibility of the return of old connotations associated to the
name used is taken into account, even that local finality is not ensured. Paleoymy, in Derridean terms, is a blind
tactic, without a further strategy guiding it (cf. ’DIF’, p. 7/7).
66
As stated before, for Derrida the metaphysical connotations of words are not privileged
above other applications. The metaphysical is just a direction among others. Paleonymy as
well as family resemblance reminds us that words have a non-movable history behind them.
Wittgenstein wrote something related to these new orientations of words:
You interpret a grammatical movement that you have made as a quasi-physical
phenomenon which you are observing. (...) | Above all, you have found a new
conception. As if you had invented a new way of painting; or, again, a new metre,
or a new kind of song. — (PU, § 401)
Following the line of this quote, the metaphysical use of words (and any new use) consists
of grammatical movements always translatable to our ordinary language (cf. ’BB’, p. 23).
These movements give way to new uses of words, new conceptions. A new language-
game consists of multiple grammatical movements, nonetheless, a language-game cannot
be made subjectively. It has to be embedded into human practices and needs to be played
intersubjectively. Taking Shain’s approach to family resemblance as both a diachronic and
a synchronic notion, it accounts for the history of those movements, not only a diachronic
history, but also a synchronic history of those movements.
This history of words, allowed by paleonymy and family resemblance, could apply to
both philosophical and ordinary life uses of words since there is not a clear delimitation
between them, at least for Derrida. As he said in an interview in 1988, and Shain (2005,
p. 88) reminds: “Philosophy finds its element in so-called natural language. (...) This means
that philosophical language or languages are more or less well defined and coherent subsets
within natural languages or rather the uses of natural languages” (PS, p. 238/225). Although
the metaphysical use of words is not privileged, it could not be completely removed from
ordinary use of languages as well as the connotations of ordinary use are implied in the
constitution of metaphysics. Besides, natural languages are modified by the metaphysical use
of their words. According to this, philosophical problems (as something dealing with a more
deeper and fundamental reality) cannot be completely dissolved because the metaphysical
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use of words also constitutes our ordinary languages. In White Mythology that is clear, the
"original" palimpsest is still accessible even when names are reworked. Nonetheless, this
access is available only through other names that are also reworked, via (philosophical)
metaphors (cf. ’MB’, pp. 251-252/211-212).
Philosophical or metaphysical languages, understood as subsets inside natural languages
follow the approach stated before, where those uses are not privileged above others. Under-
standing ordinary languages as a set and its uses as subsets supports the rejection of higher
levels of predication. In Axelos’ terms, the set (Set of sets) which contains the other sets also
takes part of the game.
Sets constitute subsets just as subsets constitute sets. Here "sub" does not mean subor-
dination or being secondary. Deleting a subset from a set, also implies deleting a part of
the set itself. Even subsets of different sets are mutually translatable because “one may find
equivalents and regulated translations between these subsets from one natural language to
another” (PS, p. 238/225).
Here we face the question about family resemblances between ordinary and metaphysical
use of language in Wittgenstein’s texts. As it will be seen, for us his rejection of metaphysics
is not univocal. In his texts at least a strong explicit rejection and a soft implicit approval of
metaphysics could be found. This relation between philosophical and ordinary language is
one question raised by Shain (2005) as a way, among three, to organize Derrida’s references to
Wittgenstein (p. 72).
Language therapy 57 departs from a strong rejection of metaphysics either because the
latter is unaware of its meta (higher order) intentions (i.e., approaching its second order
statements as first order claims referring directly to facts) or approaches those meta intentions
as legitimate (i.e., making statements from a higher position because it brings a better and/or
a deeper understanding about facts). Both alternatives would depart from misunderstandings
57 Language therapy is an expression that Wittgenstein himself does not use, although he uses the term "therapies"
in the Investigations, § 133. See also the following section: "The philosopher treats a question; like an illness"
(PU, § 255).
68
about how language works.
We find this strong rejection in the Investigations, especially in the section 116: "What
we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use." This is how
philosophical problems should be dissolved according to Wittgenstein.58
The context, where this claim is stated, is also important. The first part of the section
states:
When philosophers use a word — "knowledge", "being", "object", "I", "proposi-
tion/sentence", "name" — and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must
always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language in
which it is at home? — (PU, § 116)
Wittgenstein’s texts are clear about the necessity of getting away from the intentions of new or
alternative uses which aim to improve or replace ordinary language, as the metaphysical use
does. He rejects the metaphysical use of words inasmuch as it intends to be a second order of
predication, the (explicit or implicit) "meta" pretensions of metaphysics. Bringing words back
to their ordinary use is to remove the meta pretension intending to constitute a higher order
of predication in relation to their ordinary usage.
The last quote shows a good example of how metaphysics is approached by Wittgenstein.
However, if we consider metaphysics as another language-game, as grammatical movements,
it is possible to soften Wittgenstein’s rejection against metaphysics. Recalling Dummett, even
when Wittgenstein denies the possibility of asserting theses in philosophy, his developments
around the impossibility of private languages (among others) could be rendered as philosoph-
ical propositions, although for Wittgenstein those statements were just "grammatical remarks"
(2010, p. 13). In a similar line, Williamson states that Wittgenstein’s work “was always driven
by theoretical concerns” (1996, p. 72).
58 On the other hand, for Derrida: “It is at bottom with philosophy that one would correct philosophy, I mean, the
bad effects of philosophy” (’E’, p. 114/100).
69
Just as Derrida sees the mythology inside language as something still accessible, Wittgen-
stein approaches mythology as something latent in language related either to its anthropolog-
ical side or to hardened propositions. Probably Wittgenstein’s approach to mythology could
help to understand his soft or implicit acceptance of metaphysics.
There is a quote concerning Wittgenstein’s acceptance of metaphysics (being just another
language-game, like any other) that could be related in his Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough: “A
whole mythology is deposited in our language”59 (BUF, p. 242/#24).60 Like other aphorisms
of Wittgenstein, this remark is obscure, even if we look at the previous and the next remark.
What he means by "mythology" in that quote is the question to be tackled.
There are different interpretations of the quotation.61 Heonik Kwon writes: “If ’a whole
mythology is deposited in our language’ (#24), the philosopher’s work is then to discover
the great treasure deposited deep down the tree of language, the richness and diversity
of language and life” (2018, p. 95). Kwon’s interpretation seems to approach language as
something with hidden zones or levels, and philosophers having the task of discovering
something deeper, unreachable at first glance. Immediately after the above quote, Kwon
cites the next Wittgenstein’s remark: “We must plow [durchpflugen] over language in its
entirety,” which could support his affirmation (BUF, p. 240/#17). Nonetheless, Kwon adds an
illustrative example related to the task of plowing: “Wittgenstein briefly worked as a gardener
and often compared philosophy to gardening, especially in his Culture and Value” (2018, p. 95).
Knut Christian Myhre writes the following in relation to Wittgenstein’s plowing:
In methodological terms, it means that the description can trace relationships from
anywhere, as the language-game can be unfurled from the words, practices, or
59 In Nietzsche can be found the following related statement: “A philosophical mythology lies concealed in
language which breaks out again every moment, however careful one may be otherwise” (WS, § 11). For
Nietzsche’s relation to Wittgenstein, see Alvarez and Ridley (2005).
60 We are using for the pagination of Bemerkungen über Frazers "The Golden Bough," the numeration of pages
included in the version of Synthese (1967), edited by Rush Rhees, followed by the numeration of the remarks
proposed by Giovanni da Col and Stephen Palmié in their edition of 2018.
61 da Col and Palmié’s edition includes a new translation of Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s The Golden Bough.
The book also contains chapters written by different authors on Wittggensten’s remarks.
70
objects it contains or entails, or folded out of any of the other language-games
with which it interlinks. Since neither things nor practices or words ground or
anchor each other, the description can and must proceed pragmatically from one
to the other. (2018, p. 105)
The idea of gardening, contrary to our first approach to Kwon’s interpretation, reinforces the
non-existence of levels of predication above already mentioned. The task of gardening itself
does not imply that there are (in the garden) hidden zones. Then, to plow over language in its
entirety implies, as Myhre stated, to trace relationships among different zones without taking
any of these zones as the central starting point, as Wittgenstein suggests in the previously
mentioned preface of the Investigations: “For it [his investigation] compels us to travel criss-
cross in every direction over a wide field of thought.” The richness and diversity of language
and life is not to be found deep down the tree of language rather in the tracing of relationships
among different parts of the tree.62
Returning to the issue of mythology/metaphysics, Michael Puett, states that Wittgenstein’s
mythology:
Is present not as historical remnants from a previous period of human evolution
but a mythology that is with us still, as it is in the Beltane ritual.63 That is with us
still in all the complexities of being human, including our unsettledness and our
sinister sides. (2018, p. 142)
Puett seems to understand mythology as something intrinsic to humankind and rituals like
62 Here we find related Carse’s account of garden and gardening: “’Garden’ does not refer to the bounded plot
at the edge of the house or the margin of the city. This is not a garden one lives beside, but a garden one
lives within. It is a place of growth, of maximized spontaneity. To garden is not to engage in a hobby or an
amusement; it is to design a culture capable of adjusting to the widest possible range of surprise in nature.
Gardeners are acutely attentive to the deep patterns of natural order, but are also aware that there will always
be much lying beyond their vision. Gardening is a horizonal activity” (1986, § 80).
63 According to Palmié (2018), Wittgenstein addressed “Frazer’s account of the eighteenth-century Beltane Fire
Festival, in which a cake in which a button had been baked was ceremonially consumed by the celebrants, and
the person who got the piece with the button was mockingly threatened with being thrown into the fire. Frazer
sees this as an attenuated ’survival’ of past rituals of human sacrifice” (p. 16).
71
the Beltane festival as expressing that mythology. Then, language carries a mythology because
humans are ritualistic. However, Wittgenstein also states that: “Magic64 always rests on the
idea of symbolism and of language” (BUF, p. 237/#11). Therefore rituals, and the magic
involved in them, also lie in the capabilities provided by language.
Rituals are expressions of mythology which intend to account for reality without care
directly about describing facts. Those expressions, like in metaphysical approaches, rather
try to develop (although tending to fail) approaches to facts beyond the facts themselves
(a higher order of predication?). Rituals as well as metaphysics are language-games where
its (implicit or explicit) meta pretension does not succeed. However, even considering that
failure, rituals as well as metaphysics have a meaningful and pragmatic role in human lives.
From a Kantian perspective, they explain much more about us as humans than the reality
addressed. Hence, the soft acceptance of metaphysics by Wittgenstein, beyond taking it as
grammatical movements, could be also approached appealing to the anthropological side of
his notion of language-game.65
The other approach to mythology in Wittgenstein’s texts is to be found in On Certainty:
It might be imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical propositions,
were hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical propositions as
were not hardened but fluid; and that this relation altered with time, in that fluid
propositions hardened, and hard ones became fluid. (UG, § 96)
If one looks at the previous section (§ 95), hardened propositions are related to a world-
picture, propositions which are temporarily fixed to give, let us say, a context where empirical
propositions make sense or reach a meaning. Such hardened propositions is what Wittgentein
calls here "mythology":
64 About magic there are some remarks in the Bemerkungen über Frazers dealing with it. For example: “Magic gives
representation to a wish; it expresses a wish," where the representation of a wish implies its fulfillment; and
magic, contrary to science, does not progress because it "possesses no direction of development internal to itself”
(BUF, p. 237/#11; p. 246/#37).
65 The so-called Wittgentein’s epistemic relativism could rise here. See Kusch (2016).
72
The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts
may shift. But I distinguish between movement of the waters on the river-bed and
the shift of the bed itself; though there is not a sharp division of the one from the
other. (UG, § 97)
As it was already seen, a symptom could turn into a criterion and vice versa. Metaphysical
propositions aim to be hardened propositions to which the rest of propositions were attached,
although forgetting that fixed propositions could become flux again. In Derridean terms, the
original palimpsest could be alive again.
If we follow our development of the notion of game in Wittgenstein’s texts through
language-game and other related notions, where concepts are built upon different uses
through family resemblance rather than via clear delimitations, metaphysics is at least a
language-game constituted by multiple grammatical movements. Besides, it has effects upon
other languages-games, including ordinary language, as well as other language-games have
effects upon it. Therefore, here we have a soft and implicit acceptance of metaphysics. Even if
we look at the anthropological side of the notion of language-game, we found a soft acceptance
of metaphysics via human practices like rituals and magic when the latter are consider as
language-games. Those share with metaphysics the feature of aiming to be self-sufficient.
On the philosophical use of language, both Derrida and Wittgenstein agree with the
fact that it occurs inside natural languages. However, in Derrida’s texts there seems to be
a feedback between the philosophical and the ordinary use of words, making it impossible
to establish a clear distinction between them. In the end, a philosophical use of a word
could become the ordinary use of this word. On the other hand, Wittgenstein’s language
therapy could carry some naivety (from a Derridean point of view) if we take together his
intended distinction between ordinary/philosophical use of words and his intentions to
reduce the latter to the former (since a philosophical use, following Wittgenstein, tends to
be just a misuse of ordinary language inasmuch as its grammar is not understood by the
73
metaphysical/philosophical approaches).66
3.2 Game and meaning: Principle of context and unsaturation of
contexts
Analytically, in the first instance, dissemination stands for unsaturation of contexts (feature 2
and 4 of game), while language-game stands for the principle of context (feature 3 of game:
Context as a pattern of interaction among participants). However, one could find in a more
detailed approach to dissemination that it also stands for contextuality and language-game
does the same for unsaturation of contexts, although those features are less evident. Besides,
the notions are also implied in that which they address.
One could understand unsaturation accounting for the disseminated condition of language
(and its meaning) and contextuality accounting for specific threads (language-games) of the
(criss-crossing) game in which language (and life) is woven. Furthermore, as stated before,
the approach of dissemination depends on the context where it appears, it is just a (failed)
nominal expression trying to account for something which does not need that expression,
and language-game is a notion with blurred edges, making it impossible to specify a clear
definition of the notion itself and thus saturating it. There is a feedback, a game in terms of
meaning, between the generality (unsaturation) of those notions and what is addressed with
them (context).
Trying to take into account the particularities of the concepts that we are dealing with, the
task in this section is to do a criss-cross work. Namely, relating dissemination and language-
game to each other through their contextual and unsaturated conditions with the help of
the notion of game as the area of intersection. Is language-game a disseminated notion
and dissemination (beyond its nominal expression) a notion which depends on particular
66 Related to language and its ordinary and metaphysical uses in Derrida and Wittgenstein see, for instance,
Truong-Rootham (1996).
74
contexts? If we say no to the last part of the question, are we returning to the metaphysical
and autonomous account of meaning? We are engaged in this section with those questions.
The issue of contextuality in dissemination returns us to Signature Event Context, where
Derrida addresses the displacement inherent to words in relation to contexts. Signs are signs
because of their availability to appear outside of their native context, as we saw above in
our discussion of writing. However, “this does not imply that the mark is valid outside of
a context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center or absolute
anchoring [ancrage]” (’SEC’, p. 381/320). This lack of anchoring is what dissemination tries to
represent beyond particular contexts, that is to say, the impossibility of stopping the already
mentioned play of the trace and its divided generation of meaning. Dissemination itself
needs a context of utterance to become intelligible, but at the same time it points beyond
the context toward that which is left out of its actual context. There is a tension between
the contextuality of dissemination (which could carry another nominal expression) and its
overwhelming nature.67
Contextuality is also part of Derrida’s Envoi. Addressing how philosophy also corrects its
bad effects, he mentions the following about the concept of representation:
A gesture that is very common and apparently profoundly philosophical: to think
what a concept means in itself, to think what representation is, the essence of
representation in general. This philosophical gesture first transports the word to
its greatest obscurity, in a highly artificial way, by abstracting it from every context
and every use value, as if a word were regulated by a concept independently
of any contextualized function, and even independently of any sentence. (’E’, p.
114/100)
Therefore, contexts, although unsaturated, need some determination to bring meaning to
67 Contextuality and unsaturation in dissemination could be approached as a quasi-transcendental relation. There
its condition of possibility, the context where it takes place, becomes its condition of impossibility inasmuch as
it tends to constrain the implications of dissemination. See Hurst (2004), in particular the section called "An
Analogy Between the Giving of a Gift and Différance."
75
words. In that text, about representation in ordinary life, Derrida writes:
In ordinary situations of ordinary language (if there are such things, as we ordinar-
ily believe) the question of knowing what we intend by the name of representation
is very unlikely to arise, and if it arises, it does not last a second. It is enough that
there be a context that, while not saturated, is reasonably well determined, just as
it is in what we call ordinary experience. (’E’, p. 133/119)
A context "reasonably well determined" resembles Wittgenstein’s above mentioned hypo-
thetical “’Stay roughly here’” (PU, § 71). Both, although express the necessity of giving an
environment where the statement makes sense, at the same time suggest how a statement in
ordinary life could be understandable without a sharp context. Here could be verified too
the play between contextuality and unsaturation as a reciprocal feedback taking place at the
same level (feature 1 of game).
Following the Wittgensteinian "stay roughly here," let us approach language-game ac-
counts for contextuality. As stated in the first chapter, it comes from Frege’s principle of
context, which declares the necessity of an environment to allow words to reach a meaning.
In turn, to ask for the meaning of something only within an environment which brings it a
meaning implies, at least partially, the acceptance of the divided generation of meaning. Thus,
denying a simple generation where a meaning could be reached by something in isolation.
Wittgenstein’s "stay roughly here" seems to accept the Fregean principle of context, but
also includes a rejection of Frege’s approach (according to Wittgenstein) to concepts. He
writes in the following and already addressed section:
Frege compares a concept to a region, and says that a region without clear bound-
aries can’t be called a region at all. This presumably means that we can’t do
anything with it. But is it senseless to say "Stay roughly here"? Imagine that I were
standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I say it, I do not bother
drawing any boundary but just make a pointing gesture — as if I were indicating
a particular spot. (PU, § 71)
76
Indicating a particular spot (context), although is needed to make the message inteligible,
works as the also above addressed street signs. It lets open the interpretation of the gesture.
This unsaturation applies also to every statement of language: “If I tell someone ’Stay roughly
here’ — may this explanation not work perfectly? And may not any other one fail too?”
(PU, § 88). The risk of being misunderstood is still always latent (unsaturation enables this
possibility). "Stay roughly here" is not a worse explanation compared to a more detailed one.
It just underlines the impossibility of closing the game of meaning. It is a good example in
showing how contextuality and unsaturation are related to each other.
There is an unsaturation of the expressions (in a general sense, not limited to words)
used among language-games. The same expression or gesture could be used in several
language-games with a different meaning and sharing just its signifier. Above we said that
"family resemblance works as vestiges that shows mutability and history of language-games"
(p. 41). Nonetheless, one could raise some issues about unsaturation in language-games
if one abstracts the notion from every context, bypassing the tension between context and
unsaturation. For example, 1) in terms of reaching a meaning, which kind of unsaturation
is present both in the notion of language-game itself and in the phenomena which it stands
for?; 2) if a language-game is non-saturable, or if there are just several saturated language-
games using the same nominal expressions (via family resemblances) unrelatedly to each
other (synchronic issue). Therefore, changes happening over time in the meaning of their
expressions imply the transformation of the whole of language-games, making the language-
game in question independent from its former stages (diachronic issue).68 Even if, beyond
their particular context, there is a synchronic and diachronic interaction affecting the meaning
of expressions of language-games, one could ask 3) if there is a saturation of those synchronic
and diachronic relations, making illegitimate the use of an expression in a new and unrelated
way in relation to its previous or other contemporary uses. As could be evident, those
68 Kusch (2016) mentions that Anthony Grayling and Rudolf Haller cite the following related passage as an
evidence for epistemic relativism in On Certainty: “When language-games change, then there is a change in
concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change” (UG, § 65).
77
issues could be dissolved when one approaches language-game as a notion without clear
delimitations. It is a disseminated notion since its wired constitution is built upon examples
and the woven relations among them.
Language-game stands for specific practices and also for the relation between those
practices and the human and pragmatic context where they are embedded.69 The so-called
forms of life insofar as they are activities do not ground language-games; rather, they are part
of a language-game, as was seen in the previous chapter. There is not something lying outside
of language-games that could be pointed out with them. The unsaturation of the notion of
language-game comes from the fact that it is not clearly defined, not on account of the lack of
some kind of correspondence with something like facts.
The second issue implies that one were able to distinguish when inside a specific language-
game two states of it were different enough to be considered as independent from each other,
and thus, as two different language-games because they use the same nominal expressions
in a considerably different way. One could also think of a specific language-game in which
changes in the use of the same expressions are considered as a part of such language-game (cf.
PU, § 83). Following Wittgenstein’s approach to the meaning of simplicity, which depends
on the language-game where the term is used, to determine when a specific language-game
changes into another, because the same nominal expression is used differently, also depends
on the language-game that we are playing (cf. PU, § 47).
The third issue is related to the introduction of new gestures in language-games. In
Culture and Value, one finds the following statement: “And the [musical] theme, moreover,
is a new part of our language; it becomes incorporated into it; we learn a new gesture” (VB,
p. 52).70 For Oliva (2015) this introduction of a new gesture neither comes from a previous
69 See note 4. Wittgenstein’s contribution to contemporary pragmatics is well-known: “The ’pragmatic turn’ (Mey
2001: 4) is now definable not only as a manifesto that proclaims a shift from the focus on sentence structure
to the uses we make of sentences in communication as initiated by Peirce, Morris or Carnap, and nowadays
generally associated with Wittgenstein’s Investigations (1953). Instead, it is implemented as powerful pragmatic
theories” (Jaszczolt & Allan, 2012, pp 1-2).
70 Pagination is taken from the Culture and Value edition mentioned in the references.
78
expression nor translates another already existent expression; rather, as Wittgenstein mentions,
it constitutes a new part of our language (p. 112). Following those remarks, there could be
new and legitimate expressions in a current language-game.
The issue of unsaturation of contexts is also related to skepticism. As Graham Priest
(1995) relates, following Kripke’s (1982) approach to Wittgenstein, the question of whether
it is possible to grasp an absolute meaning, according to Wittgenstein, implies taking in
consideration that a rule and its application is learned by a social convention. Nonetheless,
as we already saw, a rule alongside its social convention just points a way to act and does
not have the ability of pressuring us in order to act in a specific way. From this fact, Kripke
derives skepticism. As Priest wrote, “there is nothing to determine that words mean anything
at all,” although, “one of the language games we play is about meaning” (1995, pp. 232, 234).
The position of Henry Pickford (2016) is the contrary on this issue. He writes that for
Kripke (and also for Derrida) “understanding an expression involves interpreting the expres-
sion” without taking into account the normative relevance that has, in terms of establishing
its meaning, the activity (context?) in which an expression is encrusted. For Wittgenstein,
according to Pickford, “it is only in the context of that very practice, custom, institution,
that one can speak of normative significance.” The mistake is then seeing that “just as a
dispositional account fails to capture normativity for an individual’s understanding of an
expression [and therefore leading to skepticism], so too does the dispositional account fail to
capture normativity for a community’s understanding of an expression” (pp. 24-25). That
is to say, that normative significance of an expression (i.e., the way in which an expression
should be understood according to the established convention of the community where the
expression is taking place) is an intersubjective phenomenon going beyond the ability to grasp
that normative significance by particular members of the community. If there are no definitive
reasons to understand an expression in a particular way from a subjective perspective, it does
not mean that from the intersubjective standpoint of the community and its conventions such
a particular way does not exist or is illegitimate.
79
Thus, one could say that a context should include the way in which members of the com-
munity usually act in particular circumstances. Somehow, at the same time that a particular
member of a community approaches a context aiming to state a new interpretation, sentence
or gesture, the context also approaches her with the normativity established by its members
(functioning as the way in which she was taught to act by those members, for instance). We
face here again a play between the interpretation of particular members (where unsaturation
and subjectivity plays a role) and the already established convention (being part of the context
in question where intersubjectivity takes part) regarding the legitimacy of a new or unknown
movement taking place in a language-game or in a set of the language.71
Problems seem to arise when a rule, and even a language-game or context, is addressed
as a meta notion, outside of the game, as a closure of the play of meaning in Derridean
terms. Both language-game and dissemination stand for a reciprocal relation between the
unsaturated status of words/expressions and the particular context (including social conven-
tions) where the former need to take place to reach a meaning. In between this relation of
unsaturation/contextuality is where game shows itself.
71 Robert Brandom’s approach to Hegel’s Phenomenology could be considered here. According to Brandom (2019),
"recollective rationality" is the way in which Hegel accounts for the interdependence between attitudes and
statuses which bring a determined conceptual content and its legitimate applications (cf. pp. 17, 19, 25-26, 30).
80
Conclusion
Now it is time to render the convergence between language-game and dissemination explicitly.
The resources found throughout the previous pages are like fragments (Fink reverberates here)
of the intended relation. The first two parts of the link refers to features of the convergence
enabled by game working as the area of intersection, while the third part it is a complement
between the notions as an extension of the convergence, which in turn could be read as a
specific way of how the convergence between language-game and dissemination works.
First, in their generality both notions carry reflexivity and recursivity.72 Game as a blurred
notion, which tends to oscillate in part due to its blurred condition, makes it impossible to
abstract itself from which it accounts. It is not completely defined and therefore has to play
along with the game described by it.
Those features (reflexivity and recursivity) in language-game and dissemination are
conditions inherited from being built upon the style of game (just as family resemblance
notions, as shown before). Dissemination as something dispensable even from its own
nominal expression and language-game as a notion made upon examples (as its ostensive
definitions) are implications of being "game-wired" notions. Likewise does their —many times
noted throughout the text— inability to assert statements from a second level of predication.
The mutability of language-games imply the mutability of the general notion of language-
game, and even when the contribution of dissemination lies in pointing outside of its context
72 About reflexivity and recursivity, see note 52.
81
of utterance, it still depending on such context.
Second, since both notions embrace feedback among contexts and their mutability over
time, they address synchronic and diachronic relations of meaning. Dissemination does this
through paleonymy and trace and language-game through its family resemblance condition.
Those relations allow them to grasp intersubjectivity rather than account only for subjective
phenomena.
Third, dissemination stresses the unsaturated side of game, while language-game high-
lights the contextuality of game. Here taking part of the convergence between the notions,
they complement each other. Through dissemination, it is possible to make more evident the
unsaturation of language-game (language-game[s] change over time) and through language-
game the contextuality of dissemination could be focused (dissemination and its nominal
expression depends on the language-game where it takes place).
Finally, it is at least curious how two thinkers with quite different backgrounds (Niet-
zsche’s influence could be shared, for instance), taking part of different traditions, and having
their particular style of doing philosophy, approach game to account for similar philosophical
problems related to meaning. It is as if one, to be consistent with the approach given by the
concept of game, had to follow its "rules." Game, therefore, enables the possibility of doing a
criss-crossing work not only among concepts, but also among those who think them and their
traditions, as I tried to show here.
82
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Index
A comparative philosophy errancy 14, 24, 25
Allan, K. 77n69 3, 5n7 example 9, 19, 32, 33n33,
Allison, D. B. 2, 28 contextuality 57n51, 73, 33–35, 38–41,
Alvarez, M. 69n59 74n67, 74–76, 79 62n55, 62, 64, 68,
anti-psychologism 7, 9, 10 criterion 36, 37, 72 69, 76, 77, 80
Aristotle 58
Augustine 1 D
F
Axelos, K. 14, 22, 23n21, Davidson, D. 2n4
23, 24n23, 24, 25, Davis, J. B. 11, 12 false exit 29, 46, 53, 54, 59
44, 46, 48, 50, 67 diachronic 55, 65, 66, 76 family resemblance 4, 10,
Dick, K. 51n50 32, 40n42, 40, 41,
B différance 4, 5n9, 5, 6, 18, 43, 59, 60, 64–67,
Beispiel 32 21, 44, 46n48, 46, 72, 76, 81
Boghossian, P. 2n4 48, 53–57 Fink, E. 1, 14, 15, 16n16,
Brandom, R. 2n4, 79n71 Dummett, M. 7, 9, 29n27, 16–23, 28n25,
68 44n46, 46
C form of life 20, 32, 41–43,
Carse J. P. 59, 60n53, 64, E 77
70n62 Elden, S. 14, 15, 16n15, Frege, G. 1, 7–10, 29, 75
Chakrabarti, A. 4 16n16, 22n20 Freud, S. 14
92
G Kwon, H. 69, 70 N
Gadamer, H. G. 1 Nietzsche, F. 14, 69n59, 81
Gramsci, A. 7, 12, 13 L non-actuality 14, 17–19, 21
Grimm, A. 32 language therapy 60,
Grimm, J. 32 O
67n57, 67, 72
Oliva, S. 77
Lévi-Strauss, C. 48
H Orbán, J. 31, 55
Harris, R. 28n26 oscillation 36n39, 37, 38,
M
Hegel, G. W. F. 14 40, 44, 45, 48, 49,
magic 71n64, 71, 72
Heidegger, M. 1, 14, 52, 55
Mallarmé, S. 24, 44n44, 44,
16n16, 16, 47, 48 ostensive definition 34, 39,
50, 51
Heraclitus 19, 21, 22, 80
mark 51–53, 57, 58
23n21, 23
Marshall, A. 11
Huizinga, J. 32n31 P
metaphysical 57, 58, 60,
Hurst, A. 50n49, 74n67 Padilla-Gálvez, J. 38n40
63, 66–68, 71,
Husserl, E. 15, 16n16, paidia 22, 46, 47
73n66, 73, 74
17n18 paleonymy 4, 19, 57, 58,
metaphysics 18, 19, 29, 46, 60, 61, 62n54,
J 48, 53, 57n51, 60, 62–64, 65n56, 65,
Jaszczolt, K. 2n4, 77n69 63, 66–72 66, 81
jeu 2n5, 2, 25, 27, 28n25, Miller, J. H. 28n25, 45 Peeters, B. 29
28, 44n47, 44 mimesis 19, 44n46, 44 phenomena 76
Jonhson, B. 52 Monk, R. 10 phenomenon 18, 36, 49,
Moore, G. E. 1 65, 78
K Moore, I. A. 14, 15, 16n15, Pickford, H. W. 78
Kant, I. 33, 34 28n25 Plato 1, 19, 62n55, 62
Kripke, S. A. 78 Myhre, K. C. 69, 70 Pluth, E. 62–64
Kusch, M. 71n65, 76n68 mythology 69–71 polysemy 50, 51n50, 52,
93
53, 59 Rorty, R. 2n4, 50n49 T
praxis 11, 12, 42 rule following 32, 33, 38, Tappenden, J. 10
Priest, G. 78 39, 78, 79, 81 trace 4, 21, 44, 52, 53, 57,
principle of context 7, 8, Russell, B. 1, 7 59, 60, 64, 74, 81
11, 73, 75 Ryle, G. 36n38 Truong-Rootham, M. M.
provisionality 45, 52 73n66
Puett, M. 70 S Turner, C. 14, 15, 16n15,
Saussurean sign 20, 21, 28, 28n25
Q 46
quasi-transcendental 18, Sen, A. 10–13 U
50n49, 50, 74n67 Shain, R. 5, 30, 57, 63, 64, unsaturation 18, 21, 73,
66, 67 74n67, 75–79, 81
R sign 20, 56, 57
V
recursivity 43, 59n52, 59, signified 21, 44, 50, 53, 54,
Valdés-Villanueva, L. M. 9
80n72, 80 62, 64
von Wright, G. H. 11
reflexivity 59n52, 59, signifier 21, 28, 44, 46, 50,
80n72, 80 53, 54 W
representation 9, 10, Sluga, H. 5, 40n41, 40n42 wandering 14, 24, 25, 44
17–19, 28, 34, Spiel 2n5, 2, 16, 27, 28, 32 Weber, R. 3, 4, 5n7, 5
44n46, 74, 75 Spivak, G. C. 54 Weierstraß, K. 10
representational 11 spoudē 22, 46, 47 Williamson, T. 31, 68
representationalism 28 Sraffa, P. 7, 10–13, 34n35 world 16n16, 16, 21–24, 48,
Ridley, A. 69n59 Staten, H. 32 50
Riegel, N. 62n55 symbol 14, 18, 20, 21, 23 writing 4, 45–47, 55, 74
Riemann, B. 10 symptom 36, 37, 72
ritual 70–72 synchronic 55, 65, 66, 76, Z
Robert, P. 44 81 Ziering, A. 51n50