(Wittgenstein was perhaps the
greatest philosophical genius of the post-Nietzschean era, and therefore it is
only fitting that, having the entries in this section in chronological order,
his entries should be the concluding ones in the Magnificent Shadows.)
Die
Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist. The world is everything that is the case. Thus
starts, arguably, one of the most important philosophical works ever written, Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
One of the brightest eruptions of
human genius in the twentieth century was the Wittgenstein phenomenon,
the life and work of the Austrian-born wonder Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
(1889-1951). He was, in fact, a textbook case of unbounded prodigy, the epitome
of genius, as we have come to understand genius. His contemporary and
admirer Bertrand Russell never mentioned him in his History of Western
Philosophy, but he wrote a glowing Introduction to the Tractatus,
and in his Autobiography was so effusive in his praise for
Wittgenstein’s genius that his omission of him in the History starts
making good sense: What we cannot speak about we
must pass over in silence. (I am alluding to one of Wittgenstein’s
most celebrated sentences saturated with a most exquisite mystique.) It is
indeed virtually impossible to discuss a bona fide genius in a dispassionate
scholarly discourse, which any History of Philosophy has to be, by
definition.
Thus, it is only outside his History
of Philosophy that Russell gives Wittgenstein his due. He describes him as “the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as
traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating.” Progressing
rapidly at Cambridge, where Russell was his teacher, Wittgenstein “soon knew all that I had to teach.” Wittgenstein
had “fire and penetration and intellectual purity
to a quite extraordinary degree.” Getting to know Wittgenstein was
to become “one of the most exciting intellectual
adventures” of Russell’s life, according to him.
Wittgenstein’s life can be
rightfully studied, purposely quoting Hegel, as eine Phänomenologie des
Geistes. There is no sense to engage in a retelling of his biography here
as it is enormously intricate and complicated and does not yield itself to
adequate abbreviation. The only way to deal with this situation is to recommend
to my reader in strongest terms to read Wittgenstein’s biography in proper
reference sources, and for me to assume that the reader has done just that, and
that this remarkable life has now become known to both of us. In such a case,
we can move on to Wittgenstein’s philosophy.
His two masterpieces, the Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, and the posthumously published Philosophical
Investigations have been both cited among the top five most important books
of philosophy of the twentieth century, by a consensus of professional philosophers.
The point of the Tractatus is
expressed in this single sentence in the author’s Preface: “The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the
following words: What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we
cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.”
(The parts in greenish font below
represent my extractions from a number of reference sources. The parts in blue
font throughout this entry are quotations from Wittgenstein and Russell.)
The
central question of the Tractatus is: How is language possible? How can
a man, by uttering a sequence of words, say something? And how can
another person understand him? Wittgenstein was struck by the fact that a
person can understand sentences that he has never encountered before. The
solution that came to him was that a sentence that says something (a
proposition) must be “a picture of
reality.” “A proposition shows its sense; (it shows) the connection between the
signs on paper and a situation outside in the world.”
One of
the most striking features of the Tractatus is its conception of the
limits of language.--- Propositions can
represent the whole of reality, but they cannot represent what they must have
in common with reality, in order to be able to represent it-- logical form…
What can be said can only be said by means of a proposition and so nothing that
is necessary for the understanding of all propositions can be said. There are other things that cannot be said: the necessary
existence of simple elements of reality; the existence of a thinking, willing
self; and the existence of absolute value. These things are also unthinkable,
since the limits of language are the limits of thought. Thus
Wittgenstein’s tremendous insight: “Unsayable things
do indeed exist” is also an astonishing
paradox, as it is itself something that cannot be said or thought and, in this
sense, is nonsensical. The final sentence of the book
(“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must
be silent”) is no truism. It is a highly
metaphysical remark, attempting to convey the unsayable, unthinkable doctrine
that there is a realm about which one can say nothing.
I admire the Tractatus both
as a linguist and as a lover of philosophy. Representing propositions as pictures
of reality has become the amazingly fertile ground for theories like
Permyakov’s paroemiological theory, or my own unique incursion into political
linguistics, to become possible. One may rightly say that out of this Tractatus
a whole constellation of future sciences may well grow, if sciences are to
make further qualitative progress at all. Philosophically, the Tractatus is
a consummate mystical experience, embodying everything which is quintessential
to the heights of philosophical thinking.
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