Meaning as Use, Application, Employment, Purpose, Usefulness
Ruy J. G. B. de Queiroz

TL;DR
This paper explores Wittgenstein's view that meaning is fundamentally linked to use, application, and purpose of language, analyzing his writings to understand his evolving perspective on language as a tool for understanding reality.
Contribution
It provides an open, searchable analysis of Wittgenstein's Nachlass, highlighting the consistent association of meaning with use and purpose across his entire body of work.
Findings
Meaning is consistently linked to use and application in Wittgenstein's writings.
Wittgenstein's perspective on language evolves but maintains focus on language as a tool for understanding reality.
The analysis traces the use of key terms like Gebrauch and Verwendung from early to late writings.
Abstract
Arising from the whole body of Wittgenstein's writings is a picture of a (not necessarily straight, linear, but admittedly tireless) journey to come to terms with the mechanics of language as an instrument to conceive `reality' and to communicate an acquired conception of the `world'. The journey passes through mathematics, psychology, color perception, certainty, aesthetic, but, looking at it from a sort of birdview, it seems reasonable to say that these are all used as `test beds' for his reflections and `experimentations' towards an all encompassing perspective of such a fundamental gateway to human reasoning and life-revealing as language. Whatever labelling of Wittgenstein as a mystic, a logicist, a conventionalist, a skeptic, an anti-metaphysics, an anti-realist, a verificationist, a pragmatist, a behaviorist, and many others, does not seem to do justice to his absolute obsession…
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Taxonomy
TopicsWittgensteinian philosophy and applications · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Literature and Cultural Memory
