Abstract

In the preface to the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein reveals that he owed “the most fruitful ideas” of the work to the “stimulus” of the economist Piero Sraffa. Curiously, however, according to Amartya Sen (2003), Sraffa considered his point of view – which emphasizes the relationship between language and the sociocultural environment in which it is used – “rather obvious,” found it tedious to talk to Wittgenstein, and was never excited about having decisively influenced his later philosophy. To justify Sraffa’s behavior, Sen (2003) argues that his former professor considered his social approach to language trivial – which contrasts with the logical approach of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus – basically due to his Marxist background. In contrast to this explanation by Sen (2003), I argue in this article that Sraffa’s point of view is indeed “rather obvious,” having a long list of precursors that goes back to Ancient Greece. To prove this statement, I revisit here both the works of philosophers with whom Wittgenstein engages in his texts, such as Plato, Aristotle, and Saint Augustine, as well as esteemed authors he apparently did not know, among them the linguists William D. Whitney, Hermann Paul, and Ferdinand de Saussure.