Wittgenstein face to face with the russellian search of a logically perfect language

Abstract

Bertrand Russell devoted part of his work to the discussion about the problem of reference and description. Together with Whitehead, Russell developed a treaty on mathematical logic titled Principia Mathematica in which he retakes Frege´s project and tries to prove that mathematics is a branch of logic. This is not Russell´s only aim concerning logic. He also harbours the hope of working out a logically perfect language, that´s to say, a precise language in which there is no room for ambiguity and vagueness. To sum it up: the language of science in which every noun refers to its corresponding object. In his Philosophical investigations Wittgenstein will have to face this project and the idea of a cartographical language to describe reality. The author of this paper, on the contrary, proposes a simple, austere, daily and varied language far away from any “hidden structure”, eventually, a language that does not trespass
or go beyond the common practice and which at the same time is a less complicated and a less dogmatic philosophical language. With this paper we are trying to highlight that the searching of a perfect language allows language and philosophy itself to be conceived in a wider, daily and varied way. In Wittgenstein´s own words a philosophical loose “that does not anymore get harassed by questions that actually question philosophy itself”.