A Study Of Wittgenstein’s Linguistic Philosophy In Iris Murdoch’s Novels

Iris Murdoch(1919-1999)is a famous contemporary British writer and philosopher.She had written 26 novels,six philosophical works,several plays and poems in her 40-year-career.Murdoch who claimed to be "wittgenstein type new Plato",Wittgenstein’s language philosophy and the philosophy of language analysis method of profound influenced the construction of Murdoch’s literature and philosophy,the current domestic researches on the influence of concentrated in the early and middle works,and on the influence of the philosophical content,the lack of the influence of the narrative strategy.Therefore,in this article,we based on the four stages of Murdoch’s novels,select a representative text of the six Under the Net,An Accidental Man,The Black Prince,The sea,The sea,A Word Child,The Philosopher’s of Pupil.To explore the Wittgenstein’s language philosophy embodied in Murdoch’s novels,and Murdoch’s responding to critical Wittgenstein’s linguistic philosophy.This paper is divided into four chapters: The first chapter mainly traces the background of Murdoch’s absorption of Wittgenstein’s linguistic philosophy.From the three aspects of philosophical crisis,literary crisis and personal learning experience,this paper analyzes the similarities between Murdoch and Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language in the process of seeking to cure the disease of philosophy and literature.The second chapter mainly explains the language boundary thought and language game thought in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language and Murdoch’s critical response to it.In his early period,Wittgenstein defined the limits of philosophy by logical positivism,and put forward the views of logical image theory,linguistic solipsism and ethics as ineffable.In his later years,Wittgenstein called for philosophy to get rid of metaphysical theoretical shackles and return to daily life with the method of everyday language analysis.He believed that the meaning of language is generated in language games,language is rooted in life forms,and the diversity of life forms determines the family similarity of language games and the uncertainty of meaning.On this basis,he proved that there is no private language.Murdoch agrees with Wittgenstein’s logical image theory in the sense that language refers to the world,but criticizes Wittgenstein’s private language argumentation and silent ethical thought from the ambiguity of language itself.While praising the revolutionary significance of Wittgenstein’s thought of language games to the development of philosophy,she also points out the deficiency of ambiguity in the concept of Wittgenstein’s language games.The third chapter mainly analyzes the concrete presentation of Wittgenstein’s language boundary thought and language game thought in Murdoch’s novels at the image level,the theme level and the narrative level.Murdoch critically inherits the metaphorical images of "net" and "box" in Wittgenstein’s works,uses Wittgenstein’s ladder to make the ineffable things self-manifest,and makes the ineffable "good" self-manifest through the reverse writing of evil,death and chance,critically inherits Wittgenstein’s language boundary thought.Where Wittgenstein’s logical positivism stopped,she continued his literary discourse.The uncertainty of meaning and the language game thought of meaning also influence the narrative strategy of Murdoch’s novels and open up the space of multiple interpretation of Murdoch’s novels.Vague narration,polyphonic narration and family similar genre narration reflect the language games of Murdoch’s novels,which is also an important embodiment of her novels’ postmodernist features.The fourth chapter summarizes the important value of Wittgenstein’s linguistic philosophy in Murdoch’s novels.From the perspective of disciplinary research,Murdoch’s reference to Wittgenstein’s philosophical method shows the cross-border integration of Western literature and philosophy in methodology after the war.Murdoch’s unutterable speech beyond the bounds of Wittgenstein’s language,in the sense of literary ontology,reflects her novels’ philosophical speculation on how literary works speak to exist.In the sense of poetics development,Wittgenstein’s thought of language games not only affects Murdoch’s fictional aesthetics,but also shows dialectical interaction between language games and fictional poetics from the perspective of speech act through the paradoxical conflict between speech intention and fact in confessional narration,which expands the depth and breadth of exploring the world limits of the possibility of language and speech.From the perspective of humanistic concern,since the purport of literature and philosophy is to pay attention to "people",Murdoch’s novels’ critical absorption of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language provides a new perspective of "language" for literature to regain the moral teaching function of "good" and to explore the existence of people in the post-modern context.To sum up,Murdoch’s critical absorption of Wittgenstein’s linguistic philosophy in her novels not only lays the foundation for him to construct her own linguistic philosophy view and moral philosophy view with "good" as the core,but also provides philosophical basis for her novels which only show but do not explain the mystic poetics thought and the aesthetic characteristics of postmodernist literature.Therefore,clarifying the influence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language in Murdoch’s novels is of great significance to understand Murdoch’s poetics and philosophical thoughts in her novels,and also of great value to think about literary noumenon and human existence from the perspective of language.