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The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning
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The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning

A Special Issue of Philosophies (ISSN 2409-9287).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 5901

Editors

Prof. Dr. Victor J. Krebs

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Guest Editor
Humanities Department, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Lima 15073, Peru
Interests: philosophy; philosophy of language; aesthetics; philosophy of technology; film studies; Wittgenstein; Stanley Cavell
Prof. Dr. Gordon Bearn

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Guest Editor
Department of Philosophy, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA
Interests: metaphysics; philosophy of language; aesthetics; 20th century philosophy; African/Africana philosophy; continental philosophy
Dr. Niklas Toivakainen

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Guest Editor
Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
Interests: philosophy; philosophy of mind; history and philosophy of psychology; philosophy of language; moral philosophy

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue, The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning, explores the ethical and aesthetic dimensions that run throughout Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophical work—dimensions that have often been overlooked or treated in isolation from the broader arc of his thought. Our goal is to recover the underlying deeper continuity in Wittgenstein’s reflections on how we see, respond to, and dwell in the world, and to consider what this legacy might offer in response to the challenges of our time.

Far from engaging in abstract theorizing, Wittgenstein’s thought opens a space for rethinking philosophical practice as a form of attentiveness to how meaning is lived—emerging not as a fixed structure but as something enacted, negotiated, and renewed in our everyday practices, relationships, and forms of life. His later work, especially on aspect-seeing, gestures toward a kind of ethical–aesthetic responsiveness that speaks directly to contemporary conditions marked by moral uncertainty, perceptual disorientation, and the erosion of shared sensibilities. Rather than approaching Wittgenstein merely as a philosopher of language, this Issue invites contributions that draw on his work to explore the transformation of perception, the expressive dimension of feeling, and the cultivation of ways of inhabiting the world—where meaning is inseparable from how we see, feel, and respond. We welcome essays that engage Wittgenstein in dialogue with aesthetics, ethics, psychoanalysis, education, and the care of the self, and that consider philosophy as a practice of orientation in a fractured world.

Prof. Dr. Victor J. Krebs
Prof. Dr. Gordon Bearn
Dr. Niklas Toivakainen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Philosophies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Wittgenstein
  • aspect-seeing
  • ethics and aesthetics
  • ordinary language
  • perception and experience
  • care of the self
  • form of life
  • responsiveness
  • feeling and expression
  • philosophical practice

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 275 KB  
Article
Criticism as Perspicuous Representation: Wittgenstein, Critical Reasons, and the Cognitive Value of Literature
by Giovanni Galli
Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 158; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050158 - 6 Sep 2026
Viewed by 342
Abstract
Two debates in the analytic philosophy of literature have run in parallel: one asks how literary criticism can be rational when critical reasons neither entail nor inductively support the readings they back (Isenberg, Sibley); the other asks whether literature has cognitive value, and [...] Read more.
Two debates in the analytic philosophy of literature have run in parallel: one asks how literary criticism can be rational when critical reasons neither entail nor inductively support the readings they back (Isenberg, Sibley); the other asks whether literature has cognitive value, and is stalled on a dilemma, since extractable truths are banal and non-trivial ones unevidenced (Stolnitz, Lamarque and Olsen, Currie). This paper argues that Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect-seeing dissolve both problems jointly, and that each dissolution is incomplete without the other. Criticism, I argue, is not proto-theory but the production of perspicuous representations: arrangements of what already lies open to view, assembled reminders whose characteristic success is the dawning of an aspect rather than assent to a conclusion. Correspondingly, the literature’s cognitive yield is aspectual rather than propositional: a transformation of perception and an enriched responsiveness to situations, motives, and words, in which meaning is not extracted from the text but lived in the reader’s altered practice. Criticism is the institutionalized practice by which such dawning is occasioned, disciplined, and transmitted (the care of a shared sensibility), and the aspectual character of literary understanding explains why critical reasoning must take the reminder-assembling form it does. The two debates are two descriptions of one practice, sustained by public criteria within forms of life. The account is developed through the critical history of Dickinson’s “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun” and defended against the objections of quietism, interpretive relativism, and empirical skepticism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning)
14 pages, 270 KB  
Article
The Adventures of Seeing-as in Cinema: A Philosophical Investigation Between Phenomenology and Grammar
by Raphaël Pierrès
Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 152; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050152 - 27 Aug 2026
Viewed by 402
Abstract
This article offers a philosophical investigation into the phenomenon of seeing-as within the experience of cinema, through a dialogue between phenomenology and Wittgenstein’s grammatical method. It seeks to question the myth of direct access to an experience independent of language and technical apparatuses, [...] Read more.
This article offers a philosophical investigation into the phenomenon of seeing-as within the experience of cinema, through a dialogue between phenomenology and Wittgenstein’s grammatical method. It seeks to question the myth of direct access to an experience independent of language and technical apparatuses, and instead proposes an analysis of the complex relations between language, perception, and human practices. The study first examines the relationship between seeing-as and intentionality, questioning the possibility of a phenomenological account of aspect perception. Although seeing-as appears close to certain analyses of form (Gestalt), particularly because of its interpretative character, cinema reveals the limits of an approach grounded solely in natural perception. The cinematic image introduces a technical, symbolic, and temporal dimension that transforms our way of seeing. Through an analysis of Rear Window, the article argues that film does not merely reproduce a perceptual experience: the apparatuses of recording and editing produce meanings of their own. Cinema thus becomes a privileged field for examining how our ways of perceiving are shaped by techniques, signs, and forms of life. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning)
14 pages, 229 KB  
Article
“Stifling Her Cries”: Doing Justice to Sexual Violence with Coetzee’s Disgrace and Wittgenstein’s Voice of Pain
by Emma Williams
Philosophies 2026, 11(4), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11040149 - 20 Aug 2026
Viewed by 323
Abstract
The failures of securing justice for survivors of sexual violence remain a central concern in contemporary feminist thought. Much recent work has addressed these failures through the frameworks of epistemic and hermeneutical injustice, foregrounding the role of voice in shaping recognition and response. [...] Read more.
The failures of securing justice for survivors of sexual violence remain a central concern in contemporary feminist thought. Much recent work has addressed these failures through the frameworks of epistemic and hermeneutical injustice, foregrounding the role of voice in shaping recognition and response. This paper shares that focus on voice but seeks to identify a difficulty that such debates do not fully capture. Drawing on J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace alongside the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, it explores how literature and philosophy together can illuminate this problem. Focusing on the university tribunal scene in Disgrace, which appears to function effectively and deliver justice, the paper argues that something nonetheless remains inadequate. Through a Wittgensteinian account of pain and its expression, the paper comes to show how the tribunal exemplifies a deeper failure—not one of discrediting or disbelieving, but an inability to respond to the human voice of pain as such. Literature and philosophy hereby open a different way of understanding the limits of approaches that prioritise legibility, evidence, and procedural resolution as a way of responding to sexual violence. Rather than securing justice, such approaches risk leaving something essential untouched: what it would mean to answer to another’s suffering. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning)
21 pages, 302 KB  
Article
Aspect–Seeing, Facts of Nature, and Jazz Improvisation
by William Day
Philosophies 2026, 11(4), 148; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11040148 - 19 Aug 2026
Viewed by 658
Abstract
The contribution of this essay to two rather distinct academic literatures is two-fold. First, it reconceives the significance of Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect–seeing, which are generally taken to be revelatory of language narrowly conceived, and instead explores the connection between aspect–seeing—what Wittgenstein identifies [...] Read more.
The contribution of this essay to two rather distinct academic literatures is two-fold. First, it reconceives the significance of Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect–seeing, which are generally taken to be revelatory of language narrowly conceived, and instead explores the connection between aspect–seeing—what Wittgenstein identifies as one “among the concepts of experience”—and the nature of experience itself. It does so by noting the importance to Wittgenstein of inventing “fictitious natural history” to reveal the connection between what we say and the kind of creature we are. It then examines other fictitious natural histories involving aspect–seeing (or its absence) that illustrate some “very general facts of nature”—facts that, the essay contends, help form the fundamental conditions for our finding one another intelligible. Second, the essay reconceives what constitutes the significance of jazz improvisation (and possibly other forms of spontaneous activity, though those are not explored here) by grounding this significance in these same very general facts of nature. It develops this thought by considering the implications of a different fictitious natural history involving musical performance, and through a remarkable if complex instance of an exemplary improvised jazz solo by Charlie Parker. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning)
17 pages, 253 KB  
Article
On Wittgenstein and on Genocide
by Gilad Nir
Philosophies 2026, 11(4), 146; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11040146 - 14 Aug 2026
Viewed by 811
Abstract
My essay draws attention to several little-known texts by Wittgenstein in which he addresses the processes which may precede a genocide. I seek to demonstrate that Wittgenstein’s thought contains resources that may be drawn on in confronting such ethical and political problems, and [...] Read more.
My essay draws attention to several little-known texts by Wittgenstein in which he addresses the processes which may precede a genocide. I seek to demonstrate that Wittgenstein’s thought contains resources that may be drawn on in confronting such ethical and political problems, and more specifically, in addressing issues that arise in relation to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The resources I locate in Wittgenstein’s work include techniques for shifting attitudes and for redirecting attention, for unsettling interlocutors from their complacency and for leading them to transform their ways of seeing the problems they confront. In this connection, I reflect on the ethical and political efficacy of experiences of the uncanny. I also find in Wittgenstein the suggestion that moral philosophy calls for a mode of engagement which is essentially first-personal, and refuses to separate the biographical from the philosophical. In order to put this suggestion to the test, the essay is written in the idiom of autotheory. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning)
20 pages, 252 KB  
Article
“As If I Could Read the Darkness”: Some Stakes of Reading in Philosophical Investigations
by Steven G. Affeldt
Philosophies 2026, 11(2), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11020064 - 20 Apr 2026
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1301
Abstract
The number and variety of images of reading in the Investigations suggest that, for Wittgenstein, reading is an essential part of our natural history and of the human form of life. Further, his treatments of reading show that different forms of reading express [...] Read more.
The number and variety of images of reading in the Investigations suggest that, for Wittgenstein, reading is an essential part of our natural history and of the human form of life. Further, his treatments of reading show that different forms of reading express and sustain different forms of life. This essay explores what the Investigations reveals as the existential stakes of different modes of reading. Beginning with Wittgenstein’s opening engagement with Augustine, it argues that in the Investigations, as in the Confessions, different modes of reading both bespeak, and open us to, blessed or cursed forms of life. It then develops extended interpretations of individual passages in order to detail some specific shapes of, and conditions governing, modes of reading tied to these blessed or cursed forms of life. Finally, given these existential stakes of reading, it examines how the Investigations itself asks to be read and outlines specific ways in which its notorious difficulty and obscurity are essential to achieving its philosophical aims and, in particular, to promoting an ongoing practice of reading through which we are able to awaken to the wonder of our lives in language. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning)
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