Wittgenstein, learning and the expressive formation of emotions
pp. 419-435
in: Michael A. Peters, Jeff Stickney (eds), A companion to Wittgenstein on education, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
The topic of this chapter is Wittgenstein's view on the learning of emotional concepts. The concept of learning, however, covers a motley of processes, and we should resist the impulse to force them all into a single mold or two. Hence, the modest aim here is to explore only some of the characteristic ways in which we learn emotions . It is not meant to be complete, nor to provide much depth or detail, but seeks to introduce at least some of the elements in a perspicuous representation of the logical grammar of emotion learning. On many readings of Wittgenstein , his philosophy has most to teach us about practical learning, since he is centrally concerned with knowing-how, tacit knowledge, and practical mastery. Here, however, we emphasize Wittgenstein's comparison between learning how to recognize emotional patterns and learning how to distinguish styles of music . The leading idea will be that the education of the self is constituted by an interplay between taking a first person perspective and a third person perspective on oneself.
