TY - JOUR AU - Robert Stolorow AU - George Atwood PY - 2021/03/14 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Bewitching Oxymorons and Illusions of Harmony JF - Language and Psychoanalysis JA - LANDP VL - 10 IS - 1 SE - Critical Opinion on Current Trends DO - 10.7565/landp.v10i1.5486 UR - http://www.language-and-psychoanalysis.com//article/view/5486 AB - Wittgenstein’s account of how language bewitches one’s intelligence is a singular achievement in the phenomenology of language. In section 426 of Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein famously claims that the meaning of a word is to be found in the “actual use” of it, and he contrasts this understanding with the projection of a picture:A picture is conjured up which seems to fix the sense unambiguously. The actual use, compared with that suggested by the picture, seems like something muddied. ... [T]he form of expression we use seems to have been designed for a god, who knows what we cannot know; he sees the whole of each of those infinite series and he sees into human consciousness. (Wittgenstein, 1953, section 426) ER -