Some notes on the understanding of color in Wittgenstein and in the Byzantine tradition

In his antinomic doctrine of the essence of color and its primacy over the form of objects, Wittgenstein departs, consciously or not, from the phenomenological line of Kant and Husserl and typologically approaches the views of the Byzantine church intellectuals - Procopius of Gaza (6th century) and Maximus Planud (c. 1255-1305). If for Procopius color, along with hypostasis and form, serves as one of the most important characteristics of physical objects, then for Planud the existence of color is an analogy of the essence of God and the existence of the Holy Spirit, who, as God, does not tolerate the primacy of anyone or anything else. This comes close to Wittgenstein’s doctrine of the logical structure of color and to Kripke’s position on color as a rigid designator of objects. We also try to supplement Wittgenstein’s ontology of color by considering the problem of color from a set-theoretic point of view, and also note the closeness of Wittgenstein and modern linguistics (A. D. Shmelev) in regard to their teaching about the existence of color on the border between logic and experience.