«Aesthetically, the miracle is that the world exists»

Wittgenstein on the experience of existence and aesthetic experience

Abstract

This paper offers an interpretation of the reflections Wittgenstein wrote up to 1930 on aesthetics and the experience of wonder at the existence of the world. I argue that, for the early Wittgenstein, the fundamental source of aesthetic experience lies in a sense of wonder at the inexplicable existence of the world. Drawing on his scattered remarks on this issue, I reconstruct a sketch of a phenomenology that connects the experience of existence with aesthetic experience. From an exegetical perspective, the main contributions of this paper are threefold: first, it provides an explanation of the otherwise puzzling nexus Wittgenstein draws between the view sub specie aeternitatis, aesthetics, and the experience of wonder at the existence of the world; second, it relies on this explanation in order to shed light on his so-called ‘Engelmann remark’; and third, it offers reasons to consider Wittgenstein’s early view on aesthetics as plausible, by showing how it can illuminate a range of aesthetic experiences, both in Wittgenstein’s own writings (e.g., the experience of the stove) and in those of other authors (e.g., Murdoch’s experience of the hovering kestrel).