Jafar Mazhabi; Mohammad Meshkat
Abstract
This article is an attempt to address a main question: is there any connection between Wittgenstein’s way and Descartes’ one in overcoming the problem of dualism? The discussion of the position of Wittgenstein on Descartes’ dualism here begins with the private language argument. For ...
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This article is an attempt to address a main question: is there any connection between Wittgenstein’s way and Descartes’ one in overcoming the problem of dualism? The discussion of the position of Wittgenstein on Descartes’ dualism here begins with the private language argument. For understanding Descartes’ position on the issue, one of his correspondences with Princess Elisabeth, and also the concept of the nature in his book the Meditation are examined so as to be shown this connection, regardless of many central differences between them. Moreover, it is shown here that the relatively similar ways of these two philosophers for facing the problem of dualism are in fact the ways for dissolving the matter, rather than solving it. It means that there seems to be no way to solve the problem of Descartes’s dualism on the basis of his own works, and this problem can only be overcome by getting out of his philosophy- the thing that both Wittgenstein and Descartes actually did. This article, therefore, takes this reading as its main idea that the Wittgenstein’s attack on Descartes’s dualism in particular, and on Descartes’s philosophy in general, is a fundamental criticism that comes from his critical point of view about the nature of philosophy itself; and the Descartes’s way which was mentioned above can be justified only in such a this context.
