The Language-Game of Language-Games

Wittgenstein's later project is generally recognized to be a radical departure from and repudiation of his earlier work. In the latter, he presents Language as an isomorphic representation of the world, whereas, in the latter, Language is a context-bound 'game', meaningful only relative to a given context. On the basis of the later theory, therefore, both projects are examples of a 'Language-Game', and perhaps the best characterization of the later project is Witttgenstein's own image: 'showing the fly the way out of the bottle'. As new as the notion 'Language-Game' might be, 'showing the fly the way out of the bottle' is a game that is arguably as old as Philosophy itself, i. e. Socrates and Plato can be interpreted as using Language to transcend the strictures of Language. Furthermore, the cryptic closing comment of the Tractatus, "whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent" suggests a detachment from Language that could indicate that even there, the fly is aware of an outside of the bottle. If so, then, Wittgenstein's later project is an explicit continuation of the implicit Language-Game that he plays in his earlier work. Hence, the systematic improvement over the span of his career is that his project becomes self-exemplifying, i. e. his mature concept of Language as a Game is itself a Language-Game.