Wittgenstein, Aspect-Seeing, And Literary Metaphor

Wittgenstein’s reflections on aspect-seeing offer literary studies a precise way to describe what happens when a familiar expression suddenly becomes vivid, strange or newly intelligible. His examples suggest that understanding is not always the recovery of a hidden meaning. It can involve noticing a possibility in language that was available all along but had not previously come into view.

This approach is especially valuable for interpreting metaphor. A metaphor may redirect attention, establish a new comparison, or make an ordinary situation appear under a different aspect. Wittgenstein’s philosophy helps critics examine these shifts without reducing literary language to a private image, a detachable symbol or a code waiting to be deciphered.

The Duck-Rabbit And The Change In View

In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein discusses the familiar duck-rabbit figure. The drawing remains materially unchanged, yet a viewer may see it first as a duck and then as a rabbit. This is not simply a matter of receiving additional visual information. The change concerns how the same arrangement is organised in perception.

He distinguishes between seeing an object and seeing it as something. The phrase “seeing-as” is useful because it avoids treating perception as a passive registration of facts. A person can look at the same figure while experiencing a new aspect, and the experience can be described as an event of recognition: “Now I see it.”

Aspect-Dawning And The Work Of Interpretation

Aspect-dawning names the moment when a new way of seeing becomes available. The expression is important for literary criticism because readers often encounter a line, image or character retrospectively. A passage may appear plain during an initial reading and acquire force later, after a recurring pattern or tonal relation has emerged.

This does not mean that interpretation is purely subjective. The new aspect is usually supported by features of the text, by shared linguistic practices and by the reader’s developing familiarity with the work. A reading of a poem changes as its words enter new relations. Interpretation is therefore responsive to public criteria, even when the experience of insight feels sudden and personal.

Metaphor Beyond Substitution

A traditional account may treat metaphor as a word substituted for another word, or as a decorative comparison that can be translated into literal prose. Wittgenstein’s later philosophy complicates this model. Meaning depends on use, context and the activities in which an expression has a role.

When a poet calls memory “a house with no doors”, the phrase does not simply conceal a literal proposition. It invites the reader to notice memory through images of enclosure, access and exposure. The metaphor may organise thought and feeling without being reducible to one paraphrase. Its significance develops through its place in the poem and through the responses it makes possible.

Language-Games And Literary Context

Wittgenstein’s concept of language-games helps explain why the same expression can operate differently in different contexts. A sentence used in a courtroom, a family conversation, a classroom or a lyric poem belongs to distinct practices. Its force is shaped by expectations about tone, authority, evidence and response.

Literary works often place several language-games in contact. A novel may make bureaucratic language sound absurd, or allow a child’s description to expose assumptions embedded in adult speech. Aspect-seeking attends to these shifts in use. It asks what becomes visible when a phrase is moved from one context into another, rather than assuming that its meaning remains fixed.

Family Resemblance And Patterns Of Recognition

Wittgenstein’s discussion of family resemblance provides another resource for interpreting literary forms and metaphors. Members of a family may share overlapping features without possessing one defining property. The same can be true of a group of images, genres or symbolic motifs across a work.

A critic might trace images of water in an Australian novel without claiming that every appearance represents one stable idea. A river, a flooded street and a dry creek bed can be connected through shifting resemblances. In a work shaped by the geography of Melbourne, Sydney or the Australian interior, such images may gather meaning through local practices and histories rather than through a universal symbolic dictionary.

Aspect-Blindness And The Limits Of Reading

Wittgenstein also raises the possibility of aspect-blindness: a difficulty in recognising a way of seeing that others find evident. In literary study, this concept can describe more than an individual failure of sensitivity. Critical habits may make certain features of a text difficult to notice.

A theory can illuminate a poem while directing attention away from its cadence, idiom or ordinary speech. Aspect-seeking therefore requires intellectual flexibility. It encourages readers to test inherited categories against the work’s actual language, including regional expressions, vernacular rhythms and forms of knowledge that may be overlooked by metropolitan or imported critical frameworks.

For Australian scholars, this has practical significance. A reading shaped entirely by British or North American literary conventions may miss the force of Australian English, the cultural weight of place, or the distinct histories attached to Country and settlement. Wittgenstein does not provide a ready-made national method, but his attention to use can sharpen sensitivity to these differences.

Stanley Cavell And The Ethics Of Attention

Stanley Cavell extended Wittgenstein’s concerns into literary criticism, film and moral philosophy. His work suggests that interpretation involves acknowledgment: recognising another person’s words, predicament or claim rather than treating them as an object to be mastered. This makes aspect-seeing an ethical matter as well as a perceptual one.

A metaphor can ask readers to attend to a form of life they have ignored. Its force may lie in the resistance it offers to familiar descriptions. Cavell’s emphasis on voice and ordinary language is particularly relevant when studying fiction, drama and poetry that represent social conflict. The critic’s task is not to impose a final explanation, but to describe what the work enables us to see and how that vision changes our responsibilities as readers.

Using Aspect-Seeking In Literary Scholarship

A practical method begins with close attention to the passage itself. Identify the expression that produces a shift, then describe the earlier and later ways of seeing it. Consider the surrounding syntax, genre, speaker, rhythm and situation. Ask what the metaphor makes possible in the scene, rather than asking immediately what it “really means”.

This method can support essays, book reviews and seminar discussion across Australian universities, from a tutorial in Brisbane to a postgraduate reading group in Perth. It also suits the local scholarly environment, where literary research circulates through university repositories, small academic presses, public lectures and events linked to writers’ festivals. A critic may compare Wittgenstein with contemporary Australian poetry, Indigenous literary scholarship or debates in the national publishing market while remaining attentive to the particular language of each work.

Readers can use the OLP & Literary Studies Online archive to follow discussions of Wittgenstein, Cavell, ordinary language philosophy and literary interpretation. Consult the curated bibliographies, trace relevant books and articles, and contribute to the conversation through a carefully argued review, event notice or call for papers.