Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Modern Analysis of Concepts in Literary Works

Abstract

The article investigates the origins of the notion of ‘concept’ in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and represents an attempt to combine the results of his theoretical work with literary and linguistic techniques and methods of analysis to consider concepts and their elements in literary works. The results of the study show that L. Wittgenstein first tried to reduce natural language to the communication of facts using atomic and molecular sentences, which he called the ‘ideal language of science’ and described the model of its functioning in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”. But that did not allow to convey the whole polysemy of the word. The scientist gave a clear understanding of the notion ‘concept’ in his work “Philosophical Investigations”. According to L. Wittgenstein, first the concept represents a symbiosis of sensory experience and key human characteristics of the object, which is transformed into a basic idea of the object of subjective reality, that is the core of the concept. Then, new meanings are layered on the basic idea in the process of generational change, with different social and cultural interactions. ‘Language-games’ and ‘behaviour-games’ are special ways of representing paradigmatic changes in a word meaning and revealing the polysemy of concept meanings. Models of the concept in the works of modern scholars – linguists, culturologists, literary critics, are also considered. In this paper, the model proposed by O. Selivanova is seen as the most accurate, because it, like L. Wittgenstein’s model, has a core and peripheral layers of values, which suggests that the concept is a mental structure / formation in the dynamics of development and change. Given the model of the concept proposed by L. Wittgenstein, as well as his definition of social interaction as a driving force in the formation of the concept, an attempt was made to apply the theoretical work of L. Wittgenstein in combination with literary and linguistic techniques and methods of analysis to consider concepts and their elements in literary works. Based on the classification of Zh. Klymenko, the concept is viewed as an implicit element of inoculture which is illustrated on J. Kawabata’s novel “Thousand Cranes”. The article also traces the connection between the concept of ‘language-game’ of L. Wittgenstein and the concepts of ‘background knowledge’ of S. Safaryan and ‘cultural literacy’ of E. Hirsch Jr.: ‘background knowledge’ and ‘cultural literacy’ help to orient in the cultural-historical space and create ‘hooks’ in the human consciousness, which will contain ideas about a culture or historical and cultural epoch, allowing to trace the dynamics of the development of concepts in particular and culture in general. Using the model of analysis of changes in the image of the country / events / epoch of Yu. Zaporozhchenko, we managed to draw a parallel between the image and the concept, because in this paper the image is understood as an element of the conceptual sphere. Thus, we trace the multidimensional variants of interaction between the author and the reader, the possibility of the author's change of the picture of reality in a literary work, which can sometimes even change the worldview of readers. Based on the novel “Vampire Lestat” by Ann Rice, the transformation of the established common concept of IMMORTALITY into the author’s concept was investigated. As a result, the model of the concept proposed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in “Philosophical Investigations” is considered perfect, opening the possibility of its application in the study of the embodiment of concepts in literary works.