“Comprendersi con fatica”. Parole, giochi linguistici, ideologie locali e cosmopolitismo

“The struggle for understanding”. Words, language games, local ideologies and cosmopolitism by Vincenzo Matera The philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein, although often held to be such, was not a relativist. His thought – concerning forms of live and language games – was misunderstood and reduced to the formula “The limits of my world determine the limits of my language”, that is, the limits of the language games I can play, of my intersubjective system of references, of my areas of social interaction are the limits of my com- prehension: what I can understand, judge, my values etc., is embedded into the space I live in, sharply sep- arated from other spaces and other worlds and other languages. Wittgenstein, in my opinion, does not state this; the misunderstanding can be resumed in the statement: “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him”. In this article I argue for a wide and universalist comprehension of wittgensteinian thought, based on a deepening of the link between words, practices, experience, ideology.