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Wittgenstein on Persons and Human Beings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Jenny Teichman
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Extract

The last part of Wittgenstein's Blue Book consists of a discussion of Solipsism. In the course of that discussion there occur several remarks (extending over about a page-and-a-half) which are explicitly concerned with the concept of a person and with the criteria of personal identity. This section is replaced in the Philosophical Investigations by half a sentence which reads: ‘… there is a great variety of criteria for personal “identity”’. Wittgenstein has italicised the word ‘identity’, and has placed it in inverted commas: I don't quite know why he does this, but it might be a hint to the effect that there is something slightly suspect about the notion of personal identity.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 7: Understanding Wittgenstein , March 1973 , pp. 133 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1973

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References

page 133 note 1 BB, pp. 58–74.Google Scholar

page 133 note 2 PI, I, 404.Google Scholar

page 134 note 1 BB, pp. 61–2.Google Scholar

page 136 note 1 I feel that Pucctti should be partially exempted from any criticism implied in this paragraph. The first chapter of his book Persons is in fact called ‘Human Persons’: and the first sentence of the book is: ‘Any discussion of persons should begin with human persons’. For all that, the first chapter is not actually about human beings. The chief topics of this chapter are (a) the concept of God, and (b) P. F. Strawson's account of the concept of a person.

page 137 note 1 It is not possible to describe the whole use in two pages.

page 140 note 1 The human embryo is a special case. Its status (as a possible person) is sui generis, chiefly, I think, because of the fact that during its existence qua embryo it changes a great deal, and very rapidly. Compare here the Blue Book observations on persons cited on pp. 134–5, above.