Buddhist and Wittgensteinian approaches toward language

Abstract

This Dissertation explores the Buddhist and the Wittgensteinian approaches towards language and shows their confluences. The Introductory Chapter exposes the State of Art of Buddhist-Wittgenstein comparative studies in the scope of East-West cross-cultural studies. Chapter Two presents the arguments against predicaments of self and the private language of sensations in Buddhism and Wittgenstein. The idea that the language is connected with mind activity and social conventions or agreements is also recurrent in Buddhism. From this premise it deduces that language does not only names things and intervenes in the reproduction of the self-identification and the assumption of ontological self. In Buddhism the assumption of grammar self leads to the assumption of ontological self (or grammar acquisition of self). Rejecting the ontologization of the grammar self, Buddhism and Wittgenstein argue against solipsism, nominalism and private language-sensations arguments. Chapter Three is devoted to the Buddhist and Wittgenstein approaches the inexpressibility of the Mystical. It compares how both philosophies analyse the free will, the suffering and happiness. Finally, Chapter Four compares the Buddha`s parable “leaving the raft behind” and the Wittgenstein aphorism “throw away the ladder”. It can be observed affinities between the Nāgārjuna possitionlessness (the relinquishing of all views), the Zen meditation, and the Wittgenstein’s idea of philosophy as elucidation and therapy. The last two sections explain the use of language in Mindfulness and Vajrayana yoga from the perspective of the Wittgensteinian theory of language-games.