Gargani and Wittgenstein’s Aesthetic Constructivism

Within the framework of Aldo Gargani’s anti-foundationalist thought, a central focus is cast on what he coined the “aesthetic paradigm” in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philoso-phy (Gargani 2003). Firstly, this essay aims to illuminate the significance of Gargani’s contributions to the aesthetic issue in Wittgenstein. A contribution that does not deal with Wittgenstein’s stances on artistic matters, but rather examines the prominence in his thinking of the aesthetic dimension in human expressive and linguistic practices. These include the role of expressive gestures, the harmony and familiarity in musical and linguistic understanding, the constitutive function of a sense of coherence in fol-lowing a rule, along with the idea of a “perspicuous view” able to reveal meaningful connections. Furthermore, the essay illustrates how Gargani, while incorporating Wittgenstein’s reflections on these points and anticipating some developments in subsequent debates, distanced himself from a superficial postmodern aestheticism. His thoughts were in fact profoundly tied to specific issues in the epistemological discourse and incorporated contributions from the Anglo-Saxon tradition.In this context, Gargani accentuates the concept of a “pre-cognitive order” of lan-guage emerging from all linguistic practices associated with a form of life. Aesthetics becomes the medium through which “the hidden forms in which parts of life are connected to each other are unveiled” (Gargani 2008, 42). Notably, Gargani un-derscores how the aesthetic paradigm is already present in Wittgenstein’s analyses surrounding the logical form of the proposition and, later, in his investigations on the construction of mathematical entities and proofs, culminating in a specific aes-thetic constructivism. In this view, constitutive role is given to how the structure of a logical proposition or of a mathematical proof is harmonious and compelling, and to the concordance in our use of symbolic expressions in creating similarities, regularities, and connections.In light of these insights, the essay ultimately proposes a reevaluation of some aspects of the relationship between aesthetics and linguistic, cognitive, or epistemological phenomena that are the object of contemporary research. While many studies focus on exploring the cognitive factors underlying aesthetic experience, the “aesthetic paradigm” outlined here prompts a consideration of the reverse relationship as well – namely the role of aesthetic phenomena in thinking and sense-making, a connection that warrants systematic investigation (Arielli 2019) and where Gargani’s interpretive venture into Wittgenstein’s thought stands as an authoritative and fruitful guide.