On a Certain Blindness in Wittgenstein

Aaron Harrison (La Trobe University)

After 1946, Wittgenstein made a surprising number of references to blindness. He talks about blindness and colour-blindness, as well as more arcane concepts like 'aspect-blindness' and 'meaning-blindness'. The latter concepts are increasingly discussed in the literature; the former, comparatively infrequently. Despite the fact that Wittgenstein invites a comparison between these varieties of blindness, this effort has not been attempted. I will make a case for reading these remarks as instantiating a conceptual analytic technique aimed at elucidating the concepts of experience. Although the various discussions of blindness have different purposes, they share a structure and a strategy, especially in tracing the usefulness of the idea of a 'language-game'. We will also see how these remarks problematise a naive reading of Wittgenstein as equating meaning with use.