Introduction

Aspect-blindness is a condition that Wittgenstein posits in order to create a contrast to the experience of changes in aspect. We cannot be sure if Wittgenstein is describing an actual condition – as tone deafness, or lacking a sense of humor are actual conditions likened to aspect-blindness – or if he is merely presenting the conceptual negation of seeing something as something else, a painting of a cube as a cube, for example. If it is the latter, then the matter of aspect-blindness could be settled by speculating that an aspect blind person can, when observing the Jastrow drawing of a duck/rabbit, see a duck or a rabbit, but not both; nor, and more importantly, could the person experience the paradox that comes with the expression of changing aspects, “Now I see it as …” This is not, in Wittgenstein's rather short series of elucidations, a fatal condition. But in comparing aspect-blindness to tone deafness and humorlessness, Wittgenstein wants us to see that the enjoyment of life is impaired by this deficiency. Literally, aspect-blindness robs the afflicted of an ability to perceive the uncanniness of the ordinary, to use Cavell's phrase, or respond to the world playfully.