We do not typically think of Wittgenstein as an aesthetic philosopher, but he was. So much of his writing, regardless of the perceived topic, was not strictly about the topic we attribute to it. It was most fundamentally about intuition.
“Does this look right to you?” (Lectures on Aesthetics, 1.)
Things of an aesthetic nature (art, music, wine, etc.) are things whose objective critiques — insofar as those can be made — are founded in intuition. Sometimes that intuition is shared among a group, and sometimes it is not. Nevertheless, we often criticize the validity of the critique itself as often as we criticize the aesthetic object.
Funnily, we seem to reserve “critique of critique” for the greatest thinkers and artists, at least before they’re dead and gone. Wittgenstein himself is no exception. Ironically, it is establishment critique that is most worthy of such criticism but least often receives it, e.g. mainstream journalism that simply parrots whatever cherry-picked information will most easily push along their political agenda.
Critique of what is good and true, however, is an endeavor that is too far removed from the very art, music, or idea in question. This is an act of ego, fueled by preconditioned hate, based on a willful misunderstanding of the object. That ego encompasses one’s identity. That which one hates, one in fact cares about deeply, and that about which one deeply cares, one is.
Wittgenstein wrote on every topic of philosophy, but when you read him closely, it is clear that he was always writing with one intention: to conceptualize ‘the person’. What we are cannot be sufficiently described on material grounds. Our perception sets us apart from other beings as as it does from one another.
What it looks like to me — taking ourselves as aesthetic objects worthy of critique — is that we are things that care about things. Ironically, the less you care about something, the more clearly you will be able to conceptualize it. This is the job of the philosopher. This is why Wittgenstein, not limiting his work to one topic or another but focusing on how to conceptualize each part as an aspect of the grander reality of the human condition, should be regarded as a pure philosopher — one who is indifferent to the outcome as long as that outcome is true.
Overthought Consulting 