"Language Games" and " individuation": Late Wittgenstein and Simondon against classical dualisms

This article explores the methodological and ontological parallels between two key thinkers of the 20th century, whose works offer a radical alternative to the Cartesian tradition. Despite differing subjects of analysis (language philosophy in Wittgenstein and process ontology in Simondon), both philosophers converge in their critique of classical dualisms – subject and object, language and reality, individual and society. The author demonstrates that Wittgenstein’s concepts of "language games" and "forms of life," which emphasize the social and practical nature of meaning, find an ontological complement in Simondon's theory of "individuation" and the "transindividual," which describes the processes of becoming any relatively stable phenomenon. Together, they form a solid philosophical foundation for a non-reductionist analysis of social practices, technologies, and communication, overcoming the limitations of both naïve realism and radical constructivism. The methodological approach of the research is based on the consistent application of complementary methods: comparative analysis to identify structural analogies between the concepts of "language games" and "individuation," as well as conceptual synthesis, which allows for the integration of Wittgenstein's and Simondon's ideas into a single analytical framework. To address specific research tasks, contextual-hermeneutic analysis of the texts is employed, aimed at reconstructing the implicit ontological assumptions of both authors. The relevance of the study is determined by the growing interest in the social and humanities sciences in networked processual and material-corporeal aspects of human activity, which do not fit into outdated subject-object philosophical models. The novelty of the work lies in the systematic comparison of Wittgenstein's and Simondon's ideas, which has so far remained on the periphery of academic discourse. The article contributes to contemporary debates by showing that the synthesis of Wittgenstein's "practical turn" and Simondon's "process ontology" offers a more nuanced toolkit for analyzing modern phenomena – from digital communicative practices and the development of artificial neural networks to ecological and techno-scientific ethics. In this case, action, materiality, and meaning are inextricably intertwined. This approach allows for overcoming the methodological gap between the analysis of symbolic systems and the study of material-technical infrastructures, which is particularly productive for interdisciplinary research.

Wittgenstein, Simondon, individuation, pre-individual, metastability, transduction, process ontology, transindividual, language game, forms of life