The Landscape of Meaning and the Sketches Drawn by Language: A Reflection on Wittgenstein’s Philosophy

The paper is an attempt to understand Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy in the background of language taking place in ordinary or everyday discourse of human life. Wittgenstein has shown the limitation of ostensive definition of words, and his employment of the notions such as language-games and forms of life is the key to comprehend his later view of language and meaning. Language becomes meaningful in terms of its use. Uses are to be taken as sketches on the landscape of meaning and human communication, and the philosopher has to take his job as a physician to get rid of conceptual illness by resolving to the descriptive model, instead of looking for an explanation for every sentence. Meaning is not a private entity. It would be a mistake to recognize any single essence of language, since meaning is grasped through the multitude of uses and nuances of linguistic communications in the forms of life that humans partake in. I have tried to show that through his ideas Wittgenstein, unlike Kant, has repudiated meaning to be perceived in a theoretic sense, rather the whole enterprise of language, meaning and philosophy is based on the practices that human beings perform in their conventions and customs.