While I am tempted to consign myself to silence, I suppose I should make some attempt at elucidation. My main struggle with the Tractatus is the tension between its form and ideology. It seems to promote a philosophical vision of the world that is in line with our quotidian life, but it does so in a way that almost resists natural thought patterns. He refers to his own propositions as "steps," but my mind does not function in such a way that each thought is processed and refined by proceeding thoughts. I will admit that this text is easily navigable if one is moving backward, but certainly not if one is moving forward. I recognize the caveat of 6.54 ("...anyone who understands me eventually recognizes [my propositions] as nonsensical, when he has used them...")-- the problem, then, is using them.
I haven't "climb[ed] up beyond" Wittgenstein's argument. I have moments of clarity that are ill-served by their following decimals, and I am left feeling as though, perhaps, everything might as well be consigned to silence. Is that the point? I certainly hope not. I certainly hope the fault here is in me, and that my picture of Wittgenstein's philosophy simply does not align with its reality.
I am occupying the world of the unhappy man.
One cannot occupy the world, for the world is but facts and there is no rational way to occupy factual information.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes you think I am not a fact?
ReplyDeleteNoelle, I've always been baffled and fascinated by Wittgenstein's form in the Tractatus. On the one hand, it's utterly authoritative, even dogmatic, and it seems to aspire to actually delineate *everything* that it is possible for philosophy to say meaningfully. On the other hand, in some places the leaps seem wild, unaccountable, and he seems more interested in what he can't say than in what he can. I think your observation that "It seems to promote a philosophical vision of the world that is in line with our quotidian life, but it does so in a way that almost resists natural thought patterns" is a really good one, but I think this tension is deliberate and interesting: by showing the kinds of things logic can explain, Wittgenstein suggests "how little is achieved when these problems are solved," and demonstrates how much of our life is beyond rational thought, even beyond language. Interestingly, we can only feel this (according to Wittgenstein) when we have pushed logic to it's limit.
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