What is the role of the child in Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations'?

What is it about?

Philosophers have thought little about the role of the child in the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' because most philosophers regard childhood as simple and obvious. If they do study children or childhood it is overwhelmingly in the Romantic sense of assuming children are 'natural philosophers'. This article continues my previous work on the construction of childhood in this late work of Wittgenstein's as key to Wittgenstein's interest in perspective and its consequences in the overall 'Philosophical Investigations'. I also engage with the few other philosophers who have written in this area and discuss their and my different approaches.

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Why is it important?

Thinking about the way childhood is discussed in philosophy has far-reaching effects, I argue, on how the philosophical ideas and works are themselves interpreted more widely. This is fundamental in the case of understandings of the 'Philosophical Investigations', where many philosophers argue that Wittgenstein defines 'language games' as taking place within a wider reality, whilst my readings of childhood lead to a view that language-games are all-encompassing for Wittgenstein, not just one aspect of, or a reflection of, a prior or larger 'reality'.