Body and soul in unity: the wittgensteinian conception of human being

Abstract

From a conception of philosophy that breaks with the philosophical tradition, Wittgenstein presents a human being perspective that surpasses the classic dichotomy between body and soul, legacy by Modernity, when thinking of it as an integrated whole, a psychophysical unit. This understanding is possible thanks to the understanding of philosophy as an activity and not as a theory. At first, the philosopher understood that this activity was limited to the logical analysis of language; however, considering the insufficient approach to dissolve philosophical problems, he gradually adopts the grammatical analysis of ordinary language, which turns to the uses of linguistic expressions, in order to identify the rules that guide the use of words with meaning. And so, attentive to linguistic practices, he understands that the human being is not divided into parts, but, on the contrary, that body and soul constitute a single reality. What is internal to the subject (the soul) becomes visible through the external (the body) from its behavior in the world, and this is how the human being can be understood according to Wittgenstein. Considering that the Wittgensteinian conception of human being is an offshoot of his concept of philosophy, the article first presents the development of his understanding of philosophy to then detail the concept of human being that constitutes and is understood through the language itself.