Wittgenstein

 

One of the 20th centuries great philosophers. 

A pretty intense looking guy, and there are stories of him wielding a poker when in argument with another philosopher with whom he disagreed. Possibly untrue, but looking at the snap above I certainly wouldn't pick an argument with him.

Born in Austria in 1889, to VERY wealthy parents, but gave all his inheritance away to other family members and lived frugally. Fought in WW2 in the Austrian army and knew some fairly tough times in the front line, POW and such. Ended up in Cambridge at the University, a protege of Bertrand Russell who bowed to his more powerful intellect.

It was during his war service that Ludwig wrote his first book (in fact his only book published in his lifetime) which has the eyecatching title "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus". Reading up on this there are various ways of understanding this text, with many disagreeing as to what Ludwig actually meant. But then, apparently he disagreed with it himself later in life and his "Philosophical Investigations" were published posthumously, in part retracting some of the views expressed in the Tracticus.

Anyway, my interest follows from another Philosopher, Emmanuel Kant saying that the human being was one who could ask questions that cannot in fact be answered in any definitive way. Wittgenstein developed this, in as much as he claimed that all the great questions of philosophy in effect could only be answered in ways that strict logic could show were nonsensical, or as merely tautologies. Such questions of "meaning" were not rejected as pointless, but he asserted that no definitive answer could ever be given.

Yet although "answers" cannot be expressed in words (logically) they can be shown, and here we arrive at the very first line of the Tao te Ching:- ‘The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao’ and the subsequent insight that the Tao (the source, Reality) can only be shared, but not divided/dissected/known logically.

Anyway, Bertrand Russell was compelled to say, of the Tracticus, that "Mr Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said", which says it all!

I would love to know what Ludwig would have made of the Madhyamika and of the writings of Dogen, but as far as I know he never knew of them. But they seem to revolve around the very same thing. IE. That truth can be lived but not thought; shown, but not expressed (in words)

Anyway, that's it for now. Sighs of relief! A bit disjointed, tapping away in McDonalds then stopping, then more at home. Grandchildren swirling about. Buses late!

Related Quotes:-

Wittgenstein’s philosophical psychology undermined the Cartesian, empiricist and behaviourist traditions. In place of the Cartesian res cogitans – a spiritual substance which is the bearer of psychological properties, Wittgenstein put the human being – a psychophysical unity, not an embodied anima – a living creature in the stream of life. For it is human beings, not minds, who perceive and think, have desires and act, feel joy and sorrow. By contrast with the Cartesian and empiricist conception of the mental as an inner realm of subjective experience contingently connected with bodily behaviour, Wittgenstein conceived of the mental as essentially manifest in the forms of human behaviour which give expression to ‘the inner’. While the Cartesians and empiricists alike thought of the inner as ‘private’ and truly known only to its introspecting subject, Wittgenstein denied that introspection is a faculty of ‘inner sense’ or a source of knowledge of private experience at all.

(From "Wittgenstein" by Peter Hacker)

I know that queer things happen in this world. It’s one of the few things I’ve really learned in my life

 (Wittgenstein)

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

(Wittgenstein)

Firewood becomes ash. Ash cannot become firewood again. However, we should not view ash as after and firewood as before. We should know that firewood dwells in the dharma position of firewood and has its own before and after. Although before and after exist, past and future are cut off. Ash stays in the position of ash, with its own before and after. As firewood never becomes firewood again after it has burned to ash, there is no return to living after a person dies. However, in Buddha Dharma it is an unchanged tradition not to say that life becomes death. Therefore we call it no-arising. It is the established way of buddhas’ turning the Dharma wheel not to say that death becomes life. Therefore, we call it no-perishing. Life is a position in time; death is also a position in time. This is like winter and spring. We don’t think that winter becomes spring, and we don’t say that spring becomes summer.

(Dogen, lines from "Genjokoan")