error is possible, it is because the move which we might be inclined to think of as an error, a “bad move”, is no move of the game at all’ – in this unique language game, that is, in which ‘I’ is used not as object but, rather, as subject (67).
Wittgenstein does not tire of pointing out that usual speech veils the strong difference between the use as object and the use as subject, since it is primarily directed at weak – that is, ‘objective’ – differences within the world of objects. For this reason, according to Wittgenstein, we should take note: ‘The difference between the propositions “I have pain” and “he has pain” is not that of “L. W. has pain” and “Smith has pain”’ (68). The difference between ‘L. W.’ and ‘Smith’ designates an objectifiable difference (analogous to the difference between two different stones or photos), whereas the difference between ‘I’ and ‘L. W.’ marks in the medium of language the incomparably more radical difference between knowledge of oneself and knowledge of something other.
The fact – which at first glance may seem perplexing – is summarized by Wittgenstein in two sentences: ‘The word “I” does not mean the same as “L. W.” even if I am L. W.’; ‘But that doesn’t mean: that “L. W.” and “I” mean different things’ (67). The first sentence makes once again clear the strong difference between the use of ‘I’ as subject and its use as object: it emphasizes that the meaning of ‘I’ when used as subject may not be confused with the meaning of a name that refers through identification to the I in the objective sense. For this reason, the second sentence warns against misunderstanding the strong difference – between that which the enigmatic meaning of ‘I’ indicates linguistically when it is used as subject and that which can be recognized and identified as an object – as a weak difference between different things or objects of knowledge.
This is the mistake made by the widespread opinion that, for each of us, our I is our closest and most familiar object of knowledge, for it confuses a relative difference within the world of objects with the absolute difference between subject and object, between ‘I’ and ‘L. W.’ That I cannot err in the use of ‘I’ as subject should not be ascribed to a wondrous capacity to never make a wrong move in the game of objectification, but rather grasped as the enigmatic phenomenon that no wrong move can be made because the use of ‘I’ as subject does not even participate in the game of object knowledge.
The I of the individual human being as the subject of knowledge is for this reason not simply a different object of knowledge; in fact, it demands a completely different form of knowledge – namely, self-knowledge. The I cannot be known like a tree or a stone – but also not like a psychological state. Wittgenstein’s decisive place in contemporary thought rests, above all, on the fact that he has renewed for the present age the Socratic idea of philosophy as self-knowledge in an original way in the medium of language analysis. The ordinary understanding of language tends to overlook the enigmatic unique character of the I and self-knowledge, for in language countless distinctions can easily be articulated (white or black, even or odd, he or she), leading one to overlook the incomparably more difficult distinction between weak and strong distinctions, which is itself a strong distinction. At the same time, the circumstance that language threatens to blur certain distinctions can likewise – as Wittgenstein shows – be expressed in language, even if this requires a special effort to articulate and understand appropriately this critique that thinks with language against language.
In the end, Wittgenstein’s critique of language remains faithful, however, to the primarily negative character of Socratic non-knowledge: ‘The kernel of our proposition that that which has pains or sees or thinks is of a mental nature is only that the word “I” in “I have pains” does not denote a particular body, for we can’t substitute for “I” a description of a body’ (74). Yet now the question arises: how is one to recognize the truth of this negative insight, and at the same time move beyond it? While the insight into the intangibility of the I is indeed the indispensable beginning of all genuine self-knowledge, it cannot – for the reasons just alluded to – represent already the whole of a concrete self-knowledge rich in content.
Narrative Meaning
The unrest caused by the Delphic commandment of self-knowledge arises from the antinomy of a double impossibility: the impossibility of defining the I in positive terms like an object, and the impossibility of being satisfied with a purely negative definition. The second impossibility should not tempt one simply to ignore and push aside the critical insight into the fundamental ‘intangibility’ of the I from Socrates to Wittgenstein. This insight must, on the contrary, remain permanently present in human self-knowledge. More specifically, the task consists precisely in finding a form of expression and representation that is appropriate to the unrepresentable character of the I, a form of concretely addressing the self and articulating its radically non-objectifiable character.
For this purpose, one can draw on the insight recently outlined, namely, that there is a peculiar reciprocal dependence between the I and language. While it is indeed correct that the predominantly objective orientation of our everyday understanding of language leads us to conceive of the meaning of ‘I’ in analogy to the meaning of words such as ‘stone’ or ‘house’, it is nonetheless possible, by means of a critical effort of thought, to become aware that there is a double aspect to the meaning of the word ‘I’, which is overlooked in the superficial understanding of language. Language has available an alternative dimension of meaning that cannot be understood as reference to an object and that, for this very reason, may offer a means to express and represent self-knowledge concretely.
This alternative dimension of meaning of language can be clarified quite precisely – and here is the main thought of the following investigation – by attending to the overall meaning of a text, as opposed to attending to isolated words. What this means for human self-knowledge, then, is that this knowledge is accordingly not concerned with an isolated reality, but rather with the peculiar overall meaning or unity of meaning of human existence: not with isolated events, but rather with the whole of the life story. The peculiar context of meaning of a life story cannot be fixed purely as a present ‘object’, but rather can only be narrated within the epic extension of time and understood in this genuinely narrative form.
Human striving for self-knowledge is, for this reason, to be grasped concretely as a basic striving to understand oneself, the meaning of one’s individual life story in which the self articulates itself temporally, in the same way in which we understand a narrative, in which a narrative meaning unfolds. Yet the fact that we seek this self-understanding makes unmistakably clear that, in our life story, we firstly and for the most part do not understand ourselves. Thus, standing since Socrates at the beginning of all self-knowledge is the honest admission that we do not know ourselves – that is, that we do not understand the meaning of our individual life story.
If one admits, however, that one does not understand oneself in one’s individual life story, then one must at least have some idea of what it means to understand oneself. Otherwise, the non-understanding would not appear as a deficiency to the one who lacks understanding, and the unrest of self-knowledge could not be awakened. It is language that displays for human beings this important initial clue of the self-understanding that is sought, the ‘preschool’, as it were, of self-knowledge that understands: seeking to understand oneself in the entirety of one’s life story means having trained one’s desire to understand with the understanding of narrative contexts of meaning. It is just as impossible to understand narrative meaning as it is to understand the life story of a person in a simple, instantaneous grasp – indeed, narrative meaning can only be understood by patiently examining the unity of narration in its genuinely temporal organization.
What does it mean, though, to understand the narrative meaning of a narrative or a story? How is narrative understanding itself to be understood? These questions
