Mozhgan Khalili: How Can We Re-establish Our Relationship with the World? (Part One)

How Can We Re-establish Our Relationship with the World?

Mozhgan Khalili[1]

Part One:

An Introduction to Contemporary Iranian “Philosophy” and “Form of Life”

1- Introduction:

We have been in urgent need, especially since the beginning of the twentieth century, of an independent philosophy that is “a conscious ‘form of life’[2] and a way of looking at the world” (VH: p. 16)[3] to serve as a guide and narrator for our perpetually modernity-stricken condition, and now, two decades into the twenty-first century, we still do not have it. Its roots go back several centuries, when numerous factors conspired to prevent its emergence; therefore, contemporary Iranian philosophy has had no existence to have a past, to now be lost somewhere and for us to want to search for it. Our pre-modern philosophy, too, has lost its threads somewhere far away, and we must first find its clues, then, after this long separation, weave a new garment, row by row, for its ancient concepts in a contemporary application, so that it fits the “form of life” of today. This prolonged absence of a philosophy suited to the form of life of the “Iranian human” has, for centuries, profoundly affected various dimensions of their behavior, and by creating tangled knots of confusion in the path of their intellectual and semantic concerns, has thrown their life out of the necessary balance.

Of course, what is meant here is a “philosophy” that has distanced itself from its common academic definition[4] and undergone a fundamental transformation in its concept. Philosophy in this new sense, borrowing from Wittgenstein,[5] the creative and influential German philosopher, is a kind of activity for acquiring a way of “thinking” about the relationship of the “human” with the complexities of their world. A kind of philosophizing that is not meant to arrive at new knowledge but rather to critique knowledge and scrutinize the understanding of all that we already have and know, and not only makes us self-aware of the contradictions and muddled nature of our knowledge but also shows how we suffer from a kind of chronic rational fever and conceptual confusion that is completely intertwined with our identity, the important historical events of the day, and the manner and living current of our life, and is inseparable from it.[6] Therefore, this philosophy is not a theoretical and abstract structure; it is, in fact, a method for human cultivation, aimed at a new way of life, a fresh understanding of the world, and an effort to change ourselves. (VH: p. 15)

Ever since the world has been categorized by the standard of development, we have constantly oscillated like a pendulum between being developing and not, and particularly in the last four decades, what has accelerated has been crisis rather than development. If there has been progress for a stratum or an individual, it has not been widespread and, subject to constant external and internal political tensions, has not brought us a balanced society. It is on this basis that one might dare say the primary and essential responsibility of the researcher in the field of philosophy in today’s Iran is research into the ways and methods of bringing “philosophy” into “life”—a philosophy derived from the past tradition, brought from heaven to earth, and its new narrative in a contemporary form.

Therefore, if for years our “language” and “life,” in relation to the undeveloped or developing world, have remained stuck in the back alleys of the conflicts of “transition” from the fever of modernity, in fragmentation or an undigested and unabsorbed amalgam, it is because the shape and form of the path of human “self-consciousness,” specific to its own era, and its mode and manner of experience also differ from previous and future eras. If, previously in the tradition of Iranian philosophy, the ancient pain of losing felicity was interpreted as falling into the well of Qirwan, for the “contemporary Iranian” the developed city is the virtuous city and development means attaining happiness; yet today, in longing for it, he lies captive in the bottomless depths of the well of the stranger’s woe, whose passivity pushes him further backward every day. The absence of a path for philosophizing and explaining the contemporary situation has, for centuries, kept the lives of us Iranians in a prolonged unconsciousness and behavior built upon it, and has sent our “language” and thinking, detached from the “form of life,” on holiday.

Reflection on the very fact that Iran entered the twentieth century with ox and plow but within a century emerged from it with steel factories, the highest rates of car accidents, and a nuclear program (Abrahamian, 1389, p. 15) is itself indicative of the rapid turns and transformations requiring contemplation in our lives over the past two centuries. And these astonishing impacts, which have occurred in every dimension of Iranian life since the beginning of the twentieth century, were proceeding in their course to reach their ultimate state of disequilibrium in the second half of 1398, on the threshold of entering the final year of the fourteenth solar century and welcoming the year 1400, when it unexpectedly became linked to a shocking historical disequilibrium due to the global Corona crisis.

Therefore, if previously seizing the one-year opportunity ahead, as a prelude to the new solar century, for philosophical reflection on the “Iranian self” was a hope for a new beginning in the custom of a new century, now it has perhaps become a doubly important necessity. A philosophical description and analysis of the “form of life of Iranian language and thought” over the past two centuries can lead to the reconstruction of what we have had and been so far, and after centuries of separation from philosophy, guide us in conscious thinking and choosing the best possible path to reconnect with the world and achieve a better life in the new century.

Philosophy, at critical junctures, can assume its important and vital task for our existence and, through the path it lays before us, help us live a better life and, through tangible effort, recognize our place so that we can become better human beings through self-critique and self-mastery. (Wah, p. 19) All that we can do, as Wittgenstein says, to make our world better,[7] for the world of the happy individual is a happy world. (Ibid., p. 214) But with which intellectual style should we philosophize about the form of life and the situation we have, so that it suits our current conditions and, with the aim of achieving a new way of life and a fresh understanding of the world, becomes a critique and scrutiny of what we have “from before” and “now”?

Regarding what we have “from before,” it is necessary to note that we seek to gain an integrated understanding of the past while having undergone a very significant historical-political “rupture and decline of thought,” and we are now the product of that very history. Javad Tabatabai narrates that with the entry of modernity into Iran, the ancient order in the country’s relations with other nations, with the globalization of these relations, was undergoing a fundamental transformation, but awareness of this transformation in the realm of thought did not become possible. And if, from the beginning of Safavid rule to the end of the Abbasid era, there existed in practice a somewhat logical understanding and perception of national interests, and Iran’s foreign relations were managed by it, later, gradually with the decline of thought, that mode of action for the sake of national interests also gave way to the fragmentation of the social, economic, and political system, and Iran came under the influence of the logic of new global relations. And since that time, we have been faced in all fields with a rupture between thought and action: in practice, with fundamentally transformed equations, but in the domain of thinking, alien to the thought that transforms these relations. (1389, pp. 12-17) And this situation, from that very time, has always been in constant and internal connection with our everyday “form of life,” “language,” and “way of thinking.”

And regarding the “now”, we are living in an era where the incoming awarenesses of our mind are not limited only to our own “form of life” but, simultaneously, in the words of Dariush Shayegan, we are caught in a patchwork, kaleidoscopic world of various awarenesses resulting from the electronic revolution. (Shayegan, 2014, pp. 8–9) These various new awarenesses arrive every day and accumulate upon the previous ones, so that in tension with other fragments, they cause our thought and language to fall into contradiction and conflict more than before. The fluid patchwork space, which is not peculiar to us but has generally created a deep rift in various domains of scientific knowledge and between nature and the supernatural for “contemporary man.” These diverse fragments of awareness, as vast as the world, have different climates and atmospheres; they constantly collide, sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory and conflicting, and have bewitched and multi-identified “contemporary man,” bringing him a kind of planetary awareness so that from within it, his prior relations continually disintegrate and re-form in changing proportions, constantly vanishing and then glazing over again. The cultural, philosophical, social, and technological levels of this colorful world have simultaneously connected us within virtual space at the same time, so that we can instantly communicate with any point of it without mediation (ibid., pp. 8–16) and constantly suffer an information explosion that enters our mind every second. Thus, this “Iranian human,” in addition to the rupture and severance of intellectual and cultural continuity in his own history, is now, on a global scale, also bewildered among the wandering and disconnected islands of information.

In the domain of science as well, the fragments of the specialized sciences of his time grow further and further apart each day, so that they become less and less illuminating for him and have entirely turned into knowledge that can be fragmented and completely distances itself from becoming whole. Incidentally, the interesting discoveries and results that arrive every day are attractive and fascinating, but because in the end he cannot connect these findings, apply them, and become a better human being, they have become completely detached from his form of life. (Adapted from Weh, 12–14) And instead of being constructive, they become a cause of ambiguity and bewilderment for him, constantly creating a deep gap between his “thought” and “action,” so that his current position is no less than grasping a piece of wood on a turbulent surface of high waves of rapid events and floating islands of awareness as vast as the world in all fields, and in a situation that denies him the opportunity to see the boundaries.

The imported and ready-made thoughts of many philosophers that have come from the West in recent decades to explain our situation have turned into intellectual systems that are not only abundant in our academic literature, but even the names of their philosophers are on the lips of people in the streets and bazaars; yet each is a predetermined thought, and even if we understand the totality of these intellectual systems and overlook the affliction of their method due to its limiting our view to its own principles, we still cannot, with this kind of alien cognition and method, approach what is happening in the depths of the complex layers of our present-day form of life, because not only do they fail to analyze the conditions emerging from our “now,” but such systems, due to their cognitive limitations, are generally incapable of analyzing the dimensions of a living life. And moreover, we will see that it is these very cognitive systems that, since the advent of modernity, have ruptured contemporary man’s relationship with the world.

Thus, we are faced with a special situation: in addition to having lost our connection with our philosophical past and suffering a rupture between action and thought, as contemporary humans we are also confronted with an accumulation of global, kaleidoscopic awarenesses and the crisis of its present days. There is no doubt that such specific conditions also demand a specific method, insight, and perspective that can describe and analyze our position within the current complex and fluid circumstances; we need a free and guiding style with which to obtain a way of philosophizing appropriate to our own particular situation.

2- On Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy:

It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that Wittgenstein’s philosophical project stands apart from that of all other contemporary philosophers. He embarked on a reckless adventure in philosophy, and there is no one quite like the enigmatic figure of this German philosopher. In the view of many thinkers, his courage on the path of contemporary thought enabled him, in a rare occurrence in the history of philosophy, to bring forth two fundamentally different perspectives and thereby inscribe two rich and grand philosophical styles of the twentieth century under his own name. It seems to me that what sets him apart in every respect is the “free-thinking” nature of his second philosophical style. With an innovative method, he invites and guides his audience—whoever they are and wherever they may be—to find a way to bring philosophy into their lives and to learn “thinking” in a manner suited to their own present day.

Volumes have been written about Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and everyone, from their own standpoint, considers their interpretation to be the closest to his intent. I do not aim to defend my own understanding, for I agree with those of his interpreters who say that Wittgenstein’s goal was not for the audience to discover his original meaning or to hold a single, specific interpretation of his philosophy. A philosopher with such a meticulous gaze, who in his early philosophy undertakes the engineering and precise, clean demarcation of the boundaries of language and the world, but in his second philosophy, instead, for the sake of deep philosophical engagement with the various angles of human language and thought, turns to the observation of concrete phenomena and their instances and advances the discussion in such a way that it becomes susceptible to different and contradictory interpretations, clearly has another aim.

He likens his famous book Philosophical Investigations[8] to a photo album, and this very characteristic constantly poses the danger to the researcher who is his audience: first, by relying on a single perspective, they may be deprived of attaining an overall view of the narrative of the images in the album of his thoughts, in line with his philosophical storytelling. And second, by extracting a phrase or image from his text and examining it, they may be prevented from a practical understanding of his original purpose, which is to teach his audience how to think and to help them find their own particular style and method.

Wittgenstein says that philosophy ought to be written like poetry; this very sentence shows his stance toward philosophy. His thoughts do not have a Sisyphean theme that ends in an awareness of the torture and absurdity of human life, nor do they emerge from Kafkaesque bewilderments that seek a “form” of “life” in “non-being.” Rather, it is the picture of the contradictions of a form of life, and it shows how far one can speak of sealed mysteries and magnificent human contradictions, and to what extent one can resist the heavy weight they possess for gaining power, and yet still arrive at a profound contentment with “life.”

Wittgenstein places the axis of his philosophy on the most fundamental pillar of human existence, namely “language,” and makes us aware of how our language shows “our way of being” and “our way of thinking,” playing a central role in the living experience of our “form of life,” and why and how it is precisely through this path of “language” that our thoughts and beliefs, our deep contradictions and paradoxes in relation to the world, are constructed. For a precise observation of the flow of “life” within “language,” he deems something akin to composing poetry fitting, so that through it he can address the complex dimensions and the existential condition of the human being. He himself, contrary to the traditional methods common in academic philosophical texts, through a defamiliarization and an original innovation, wrote his applied philosophical thoughts in numbered paragraphs, something akin to poetry and music but with interconnected, profound philosophical content, “something so poetic and affecting, a kind of wisdom-laden philosophy that, despite its new form, links us to the traditions of wisdom.” (Wah, p. 21)

Reflecting on Wittgenstein's method and character, which presents us with a comprehensive picture of a free and discerning philosopher, creates the appropriate intellectual readiness to accompany him—to sit beside him each time, at every turn, and from the angle of the chair and the place he changes each time, to watch a theatrical scene set in motion by the artistic and rhythmic play of the elegant fragments of his aphorisms. The fastidiousness he displays in arranging these selections is nothing other than an effort to polish and reveal the diverse dimensions of what he wishes to "show" in "saying." He presents each picture in his album for viewing from the important possible angles of that picture's life, so that, time and again, through various paths, he can offer a different expression of the same meaning and content he has in mind. He has a clear aim in this: everywhere, in a Socratic manner, to invite the audience to philosophical questioning and the practice and repetition of thinking, so that they may finally arrive at a philosophical solution suited to their own situation.

Wittgenstein's particular view of the nature of the relationship between "language" and the "world" leads to a transformed understanding of "the human situation in the world"—a relationship that, for us, has been severely disrupted by the rupture between our "thought" and "action," and which constitutes the central and pivotal problem of the present inquiry, albeit based on new concepts from Wittgenstein's philosophy, which I will interpret as a specific kind of rupture between "language-game"[9] and "form of life." Grasping the nature of the relation between language and life, which is achieved through a descriptive process and precise seeing, is the attainment of a kind of "self-awareness" that can provide a way to understand our deepest human concerns about "reality," "existence," "meaning," "knowledge," and "ethical and artistic values" in relation to our situation in everyday life. Wittgenstein's method on this path is a reminder and another form of that original Socratic "I do not know," his style, and a clear instance of scrutinizing the content of the message "know thyself" in a new language. In fact, the exploration of the various facets of the content of Socrates' "I know that I do not know"[10] has, thanks to the emergence of Wittgenstein, been transformed into the important concern of finding the limits of meaningfulness for human "language" in relation to its everyday "form of life"—a concern without which contemporary self-awareness may perhaps be inaccessible.

Attention to the basis of the later Wittgenstein's philosophy, namely "the nature of doing philosophy as an inquiry or investigation," is essential along this path. Wittgenstein's innovative style is a kind of tenacious exploration of every problem, individually and from different perspectives; he brings the audience along with him so they can see precisely the conditions that made that problem human and meaningful for them. He says, in a sense: "Wash your eyes and words and see differently"[11] so that you realize that for philosophizing about certain deep intellectual problems, not only do you need nothing beyond the role they play in the conditions of our present life, but if you seek an essence separate from the use they have in our world, you have strayed from the path of philosophical work and gone astray. Hanfling[12], to convey Wittgenstein's point on this matter, gives an example from Socrates and writes that Socrates, in order to show what "courage" is, seeks to find the conditions in which "courage" counts as a courageous act, or the human situation in which an individual is called "courageous." The goal is to search for the conditions under which we can see what act or what person we can call courageous or brave. There is nothing separate from this application of the meaning of courage and the role it plays in the particular conditions of our life that we would want to discover beyond this application. So our task is solely to address the conditions in which words like "knowledge," "thinking," "courage," and so on have meaningful application—that is, to address important and profound questions which, if Wittgenstein is right, is the only way to address them. (Hanfling, 1989, p: 53-54)

و نیز آن چه درکنارِ سبک فلسفه‏ورزی ویتگنشتاین باید به آن دقت کرد اصطلاحات ابداعیِ اوست که فقط در متنِ اندیشه و نگرش خاص‏اش، معنای خودشان را دارند و عمق‏شان در مثال‏‌های عامی که با شگرد ویژه‌ی خودش، از جریان زندگی روزمره گزینش‌کرده، قابل درک و ملموس می‌شود، و همین پرداخت ویتگنشتاین به مسائل مهم فلسفیِ «وجود»، «واقعیت»، « معنای زندگی»، «شناخت» و «ارزش‌ها» را، هم از نظر روش و هم به لحاظ هدفی که دارد به کلی با فیلسوفان قبل از خودش، متفاوت می‌کند. درباره‏ی امتیازهای خاص این سبک که نبوغ وسواس‌آلود ویتگنشتاین، آن‏ را متناسب با  هدفِ فلسفه‌ورزی‏اش انتخاب کرده، می‌توان صفحه‌ها نوشت. این بینش، پایه‏ی فلسفه‏ی او و لازمه‌ی فهم رابطه‏ی «شکل ِ‏زندگی» و « بازی ‏زبانی» با هدف درک نسبت «فلسفه» و نوعی «حکمت مدرن» (وح، ص 37) در تفکر اوست. اگر ویتگنشتاین با شجاعت در فلسفه دوم‌اش بنیانِ‌ فلسفه  اول خودش را زیر سوال می‌برد، به این خاطرست که، به جای ارائه یک اندیشه‌ی آماده و فرمول یکسان برای فلسفه‌ورزی، با خلاقیتی زیبا فلسفه‌ی اصیل سقراطی را در کالبدی‌ امروزی قالب می‌گیرد که انگار در انتظارِ روح فلسفه‌ی اصیل یعنی حکمت وزین شرقی نشسته تا بیاید در آن بدمد.[13]

گرِی‌لینگ[14] می‌گوید؛ هدف ویتگنشتاین دو جنبه دارد یکی این که، «مسائل فلسفه را حل کند»،^[15] دوم این که نشان دهد این کار با « نشان دادنِ این که زبان چه طور کار می‌کند»^[16] ممکن می‌شود و این که چرا «فهم زبان»^[17] مسائل فلسفه را حل می‌کند. Grayling, 1988, p: 16-17)) [18]

اما منظورِ ویتگنشتاین از «مسائل فلسفه»^[19] چیست؟ گری‌لینگ می‌نویسد می‌توان فلسفه را تلاشی برای شفاف‌سازی و در صورت امکان، پاسخ‌گویی به پرسش‌های اساسی و معماگونه‌ای دانست که وقتی سعی می‌کنیم به روشی "فراگیر، جامع و کلی،" ^[20] خودمان و جهانی را که درون آن ساکن هستیم بفهمیم، مطرح می‌شوند. پرسش‌هایی از «وجود»^[21] و «واقعیت»،^[22] «شناخت»^[23] و «باور»،^[24]  «دلیل»^[25] و «استدلال»،^[26]  «درست بودن»،^[27] «معنا»^[28] و «ارزش»؛^[29] اعم از «اخلاقی»^[30] و «هنری»^[31] که به این شکل مطرح می‌شوند که واقعیت چیست و بالاخره چه چیزهایی واقعا وجود دارند؟ چه‌طور به شناخت می‌رسیم و ماهیت خودِ شناختن چیست؟ با کدام معیار می‌توانیم مطمئن شویم ادعاهای نظام‌های شناختی ما اشتباه نیستند؟ معیارِ استدلال درست چیست؟ شیوه‌ی درستِ اخلاقی زندگی کردن و رفتارکردن چیست و چرا؟ ( Ibid, p:17)

Grayling writes that, in Wittgenstein’s view, these philosophical problems cannot be taken to the laboratory and solved like problems concerning empirical phenomena; they are conceptual and logical problems that must be examined and resolved in a logical and conceptual manner, in accordance with their nature. Problems concerning “existence, knowledge, truth, and value” have incurred enormous and immense costs over the long, millennia-spanning history of philosophical thought from classical antiquity to the present day—from the dedication of thinkers’ genius to answering these questions, to the vast time and exorbitant expenses other thinkers have spent analyzing and critiquing their answers. This is while Wittgenstein, contrary to this current of philosophical thought, believes that these problems are not the subject matter of philosophy and are merely illusions arising from a failure to understand the logic of language, manifesting as linguistic misunderstandings. Therefore, the task of philosophy is to clarify and represent the nature of language and human thought in such a way as to eliminate the problems of traditional philosophy by demonstrating their spuriousness. Grayling says that this work constitutes the essence of Wittgenstein’s philosophical activity in both his early philosophy in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his later philosophy in the Philosophical Investigations. However, the fundamental idea of the early philosophy was that understanding the underlying logical structure of language reveals the limits of what can be expressed clearly and meaningfully—that is, we can say what we can think—and this presupposed that language possesses a single, unique essence, and that the logical structure underlying this essence could be discovered and explicated by analyzing the structures of language and the world and describing their relationship. This idea that language, possessing a single essence, can be expressed in the form of a formula—a formula whose understanding in a single moment answers all philosophical problems concerning thought, the world, the value of religion, truth, and falsehood—is precisely what Wittgenstein rejects in his later philosophy, considering it a vague idea and an oversimplification of problems that has fallen into the error of simplistic thinking by ignoring the immense diversity of language. (Ibid, p:17-18 & 59-60 )

On this basis, philosophy, according to the later Wittgenstein as recounted by Hacker[32], his renowned interpreter, has two aspects:

1) The negative aspect: which is a kind of therapy for the diseases and murmurs of reason that arise from the entanglement of similar concepts within the network of language and have generated the major philosophical problems—problems intertwined with our lives. Thus, if we untangle the knots of this bewildering skein, our problems are solved, and the success we achieve from this disentanglement is like the success in treating an illness and restoring the patient’s health:

“The results of philosophy ... are the discovery of some piece of plain nonsense and the bumps that the understanding has got by running its head up against the limits of language. It is these bumps that make us see the value of the discovery, and lead us to show them and cure them.” ( PI:119, qtd in Hacker 1998. P: 10)

And one should not imagine that this negative aspect is destructive, now that it rejects the grandeur and glory of a philosophy that issued theories and judgments about the necessary structure of the human mind and reality. In Wittgenstein’s words, this destruction of houses of cards and towering edifices, from which nothing remains but rubble and clods of earth, is nothing but clearing and leveling the linguistic ground upon which they were built.^[33] (Hacker, 1396, pp. 12-13)

2) The positive aspect: which is the perspicuous representation of the origin and those parts of language that create linguistic confusions. For example, when we say “I have a thousand tomans” or “I have a toothache,” in both sentences we have used the verb “to have” in the sense of possessing an object, whereas this is not the case. The concept of the perspicuous representation of language here is like a map of the territory of concepts and is of fundamental importance because it determines the form of our expression and our insight into being.^[34] (Ibid)

With this therapeutic-philosophical outlook and Wittgenstein’s wisdom-laden insight, we can seek a way to work on ourselves, to recognize our “form of life” and discover how we should search for the lost experiences of our distant ancestors, and by what path we should rummage among the fragments of our shattered consciousness, finding the best and most principled selection for assembling them so that we can revise, emend, correct, and re-present them. Through this juxtaposition, we can observe the use of our language and our way of thinking, and gain a synoptic view of the boundaries that encompass us. For us as “Iranian human beings,” who have left behind a vast and magnificent culture and still sometimes lift our heads, astonished by the reflection of its flourishing grandeur in our literary and mystical heritage, it is difficult to recognize our own tangled, multiple personality amidst the mixture of the information explosion and today’s islands of fragmented beliefs and awarenesses.

Wittgenstein says: “Language is an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses… a labyrinth of paths… you approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.” (PI, §18) Inspired by Wittgenstein and relying on a kind of free philosophizing, we can free ourselves from the scourge of theoretical and abstract structures cut off from the “form of life,” and in the enchanting city of “language,” freely shade our eyes with our hands to gain a “synoptic view” of the labyrinths overflowing with the explosion of information and communication. Then, after becoming aware of the totality of this vast spectrum and the empty spaces between them, we can choose from which path to begin in this patchwork city and its disorienting labyrinths, and how to search for the place where we lost our dreams, and from where to reach the point where we have constantly deferred our desires and goals to a future that, if they remain there, we are destined never to attain.

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References:

Abrahamian, Ervand. (2010). A History of Modern Iran. Translated by Mohammad Ebrahim Fathi. Tehran: Ney Publishing

Hosseini, Malek. (2010). Wittgenstein and Wisdom. Tehran: Hermes: PI

Tabatabai, Seyyed Javad. (2010). A Prolegomenon to the Theory of Iran’s Decline. Tehran: Negah-e Moaser Publishing

Shayegan, Dariush. (2014). The New Enchantment. Translated by Fatemeh Valiani. Tehran: Farzan Rooz

Hacker, Peter. (2017). Human Nature from Wittgenstein’s Perspective. Translated by Sohrab Alavinia. Tehran: Hermes.

Hacker, P. M. S. (1998). Wittgenstein: on human nature. Publisher: Phoenix

Grayling, A. C. (1988). Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press

Wallgren, Thomas. (2006). Transformative Philosophy: Socrates, Wittgenstein, and the Democratic Spirit of Philosophy. Lexington Books.

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[1] PhD in Philosophy from Allameh Tabataba’i University

[2] Form of Life

[3] The book Wittgenstein and Wisdom (WH) is a valuable research work in Persian by Dr. Malek Hosseini, the foremost current translator of Wittgenstein's works from the original German into Persian. His rich book makes available the essence of thought and reflection on Wittgenstein's works concerning the subject of wisdom, which greatly helped me find a path and understand the key axes of what I was seeking to reconnect with our philosophical past, as well as the possibility of understanding how to link the framework of Wittgensteinian philosophy to the spirit of Iranian wisdom. This inspiring book, with one of the best possible narratives, allows us to feel the depth of Wittgenstein's words and understand them better.

[4] In this research, "conventional," "common," "traditional," and "academic" philosophy are used synonymously.

[5] Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

[6] Inspired by: (Wallgren, 2006, p: 78-9)

[7] Improve yourself—that is all you can do to improve the world. (WH, p. 216)

[8] Philosophical Investigations

[9] Language game

[10] See:

Wallgren, Thomas. (2016). Transfonnative philosophy: Socrates, Wittgenstein, and the democratic spirit of philosophy. The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. Inc. Lexington Books. Lanham. Oxford

The author of this book, Wallgren, has in some respects compared Wittgenstein and Socrates; for example, see p. 41 or p. 78 and the title "Wittgenstein; Heir to Socrates." Also, regarding the comparison of Socrates and Wittgenstein in the field of epistemology, see:

Burnyeat, M. F. (1977). Examples in Epistemology: Socrates, Theaetetus and G. E. Moore. Philosophy, 52(202)

Stern, D. G. (1991). Heraclitus’ and Wittgenstein’s River Images. Monist,74(4)-579-604

[11] "...One must wash one's eyes, see in a different way... One must wash the words, the word must be the wind itself, the word must be the rain itself...": Sohrab Sepehri

[12] Hanfling

[13] Inspired by: (WH, p. 37)

[14] Anthony Clifford Grayling (1949)

[15] "to solve the problems of philosophy"

[16] "showing how language works"

[17] "an understanding of language"

[18]The Persian translation of this book is available in a fluent translation by Mr. Abolfazl Haghiri; in some places I have compared my own translation with his:

Grayling, A. C. (1394). Wittgenstein. Translated by Abolfazl Haghiri. Tehran: Basirat

[19] "the problems of philosophy."

[20] a general and inclusive way

[21] existence

[22] reality

[23] knowledge

[24] belief

[25] reason

[26] reasoning

[27] truth

[28] meaning

[29] value

[30] ethical

[31] aesthetic

[32] Peter Hacker:1939

[33] PI:118

[34] See: PI:122 (as cited in Hacker, 2017, pp. 13-14)

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