Fichamento – Secular Translations – Talal Asad

Using language of form of life

Using a language, so Ludwig Wittgenstein proposed, is like play-

ing a game, not like using a calculus. Understanding a language
game is understanding a form of life. No appeal to rules guaran-
tees that a statement has been uttered correctly, if only because it is
possible to interpret and apply a rule incorrectly. To understand a
way of life presupposes that one understands how its language is
embedded in and articulates practices, that one can recognize a cor-
rect statement in a particular context, and that one can sometimes
recognize different interpretations of that statement as obvious in
a given situation. “You must bear in mind,” Wittgenstein wrote,
“that the language game is, so to speak, something unpredictable. I
mean it is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreason-
able). It is there— like our life.” 1p. 3

But there is this additional point: the sign as an object

of a knowing mind (a purely cognitive event) is not the same as the
sign translated into the sensible body through the cultivation of
sensibilities. p. 5