On the Subject of Chance Remarks

In this discussion, I wish to explore a landscape of thinking with the example of Wittgenstein’s sense of “investigations” (as distinct, say, from theses); that is, of investigations in the plural rather than “Wittgenstein’s sense of investigation” as if it were a method. To engage with the work, or the trouble, of reading is to eschew an attempt to extract “a reading of Wittgenstein” that would be singular in any synoptic, rather than comparative, sense. The prevailing academic culture that privileges “outcomes” – whether in the name of learning or of research – attempts to pre-empt or forestall what might chance from reading, as if this would be simply random. If to begin reading need not necessarily mean “at the beginning”, is reading then “without end”? And what might it mean to read, as it were, “by numbers”? Together with Wittgenstein, my exploration will also include as another interlocutor, Hans-Thies Lehmann.