Anxiety : A Grammatical Investigation

The aim of this thesis is to investigate our experience of anxiety from a Wittgensteinian perspective. I start this investigation by offering a general conception of emotions following Wittgenstein’s conception of language and his remarks in both volumes of his Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. I argue that our terms of emotion are syntheses of three elements that converge in our lives: manifestations, circumstances and contents of our consciousness. The way these syntheses are configured is culture-dependent, and they determine how we experience our emotions. Having this framework in mind, I explore our language-games of ‘anxiety’ and some of the cultural elements of our society that shape them: capitalism, democracy, media, art and science. Finally, I argue that existential anxiety towards one’s own death belongs to a wider family of emotional experiences, a family characterized by the experience of detachment and meaninglessness. I show that existential anxiety towards one’s own death is an emotional experience bodily felt that pervades our world and lives with meaninglessness. As it consists in the experience of a pervasive meaninglessness, it cannot be fully captured by any of our language-games; therefore, it shows the limits of our forms of life.