Aspect Perception in Philosophy, Fiction, and Law

The topic of aspect perception was central to Ludwig Wittgenstein's late work. But legal commentators have not explored the topic in any depth, despite their eagerness to borrow from other parts of Wittgenstein's writing. This article first aims to introduce legally oriented readers to some of the central issues in Wittgenstein's work on aspect perception and some of the central debates in the commentary on this work. Wittgenstein described aspect perception as a complex yet fundamental human capacity underlying a variety of perceptual and interpersonal phenomena. His work on the topic hinted at its implications for our experiences of fictionality and legal practice, but Wittgenstein did not articulate those implications in any detail. This article thus also seeks to outline, in a bit more detail, a few of the implications of Wittgenstein's work on aspect perception for our understanding of fictionality, legal practice, and the relations between these two domains of activity.