What is poetic attention

Tese de doutoramento, Estudos de Literatura e de Cultura (Teoria da Literatura), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2014

As investigações filosóficas enquanto “álbum” cultural

As it is well known, the Philosophical Investigations are formally structured as a set of paragraphs numerically sequenced (Part I), and a more arbitrary group of thematic remarks (Part II). In the Prologue and in a justifying way of putting it, Wittgenstein states that: «Thus this book is really only an Album». Taking it as an exhibition of a series of sketches, we can read (or see) the book as a collection of «pictures of thought». However, as I will argue, in a wider understanding of the Philosophical Investigations, the idea of an album has deeper implications than the methodological ones. With a somewhat spenglerian inspiration, the book follows a sort of cultural-transcendental perspective in accordance to the organic model of a philosophical approach to forms of life which have a primary linguistic configuration.