The task of this paper is to give a new, catholic interpretation of Leibniz’s concept of characteristica universalis. In § 2 we shall see that in different periods of his development, Leibniz defined this concept differently. He introduced it as “philosophical characteristic” in 1675, elaborated it further as characteristica universalis in 1679, and worked on it at least until 1690. Secondly, we shall see (in § 3) that in the last 130 years or so, different philosophers have advanced projects similar (...) to that of Leibniz, not always referring to him, at that. These very projects, we claim, threw some light on what Leibniz idea of characteristica universalis could be; or, in more positive sense, on how could it be reconstructed in a more workable way. Unfortunately, they failed to answer the question what exactly Leibniz’s philosophy was. Finally, despite the fact that Leibniz’s concept of characteristica universalis impressed generations of philosophers who tried to make sense of it, the result is that in the more than 300 years after it was introduced, it was never used in the scale its author dreamed of. This fact sets out the next objective which we are going to pursue in this paper: we shall try to find out (in §§ 4 and 5) how this concept can be interpreted in more practical form. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege’s conception of works of art has received scant notice in the literature. This is a pity since, as this paper undertakes to reveal, his innovative philosophy of language motivated a theoretically and historically consequential, yet unaccountably marginalized Wittgenstinian line of inquiry in the domain of aesthetics. The element of Frege’s approach that most clearly inspired this development is the idea that only complete sentences articulate thoughts and that what sentences in works of drama and literary art express are (...) ‘mock thoughts’. The early Wittgenstein closely followed Frege’s lead on this theme. One sees this, for example, in the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein announces that only sentential propositions model states of affairs whereas works of art are objects we perceive sub specie aeternitatis. By the early 1930s, however, Wittgenstein began to revise his view beyond his initial Frege-inspired standpoint. He came to insist that works of art can convey thoughts as well, but that thoughts do not model the world of facts and hence do not convey information about measurable objects and events. Rather, his contention was that aesthetically configured thoughts that artworks communicate impart information about our perspective on reality and reconfigure our view of life. To be more explicit, successful or ‘good’ works of art, in Wittgenstein’s view, can supply aesthetically instructive ‘gestures’ that open to living experience promising new ways of being. It is in this respect, he held, that artists ‘have something to teach’. (shrink)