Abstract

This chapter looks for a new understanding of the picture of a “projection”; and indeed the example of river names suggests a new way of speaking of projections. The considerations Wittgenstein discusses here indicate that the imagination (projection) is intertwined with calculation and that this should be considered a characteristic feature of natural languages: agreement about the success of the ongoing shared activities demands at every step the ability to project, to transfer – it demands creative imagination. Theoretically, an insight into the workings of our language is all too often denied us because it is blocked by traditional pictures and prejudices. That is why philosophy plays such a decisive, critical role in its apparently quite conservative “mere description”: because it must point out how to distinguish those cases in which language “works properly” from those in which it leads us astray by “going on holiday”.