Jean-Pierre Cometti: A Wittgensteinian Philosopher

The purpose of this text is to clarify and explain the sense in which Jean-Pierre Cometti can be defined as a Wittgensteinian philosopher. In particular, it emphasises how Cometti’s interest in Wittgenstein’s thought was never purely exegetical. On the contrary, Cometti sought in Wittgenstein stimuli for a philosophy that he always understood, following in Wittgenstein’s footsteps, as a work of clarification. However, it also emphasises how, thanks above all to the Wittgensteinian spirit that animates it, Cometti’s philosophy was, on the one hand, capable of critically engaging, without dogmatism, with the philosophy of his time, from the thought of Heidegger and his followers to Derrida’s deconstructionism, and from analytical philosophy to the hermeneutic tradition; on the other hand, to incorporate into his thinking suggestions and attitudes from American pragmatism.