A Complicated Form of Life

Abstract

This paper explores Wittgenstein’s remark at the beginning of the second part of
the Investigations that an animal such as a dog cannot
hope, nor feel grief. Here Wittgenstein presents a cogent argument against the
idea that these feelings are essentially ineffable, since they can only be felt
by those who can talk, by those who engage in a rather complicated form of life
that can only be set up through language.