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| G for Gentleman |
There are a lot of other useful books and essays available on this website, including (for the Modernists - but also for anyone else interested) Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (also available on Project Gutenberg). This is - famously - one of the most difficult books of philosophy ever written, but have a look anyway. The introduction isn't (so) difficult, and the whole book is only 70 pages long. If nothing else, look at a collection of Wittgenstein quotes - not for study, just because. Take these for starters:
One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I.'
Wittgenstein: architect
Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
and this is a great rule to remember in seminar discussions -
Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
For all his rarefied intellect, Wittgenstein knew the serious, philosophical value of silliness.
If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.
ReplyDeletehow so? what does he mean here? like different points of views? oh, i recollect we talked about how impossible it is to pass across a feeling through language, we talked about the word pain, and said that it is not possile to make the other person feel what we feel just by saying it. and i argued that it is already impossible to do so even if we tried fixing the problems of language . the discussion closed saying that it is plenty of speculation and too deep to talked about this stuff.
It's a difficult one, but I think that Wittgenstein's point is how much our use of language is determined by what phenomenologists might call our 'horizon', or our world. If we imagine a lion talking, to be really "liony" it would have to use language in a way thoroughly different from how we as humans use language. In part, our use of language is shaped by the very forms of our bodies, but also by the life-worlds we inhabit.
ReplyDeleteMaybe an example will help. Go to the engineering department and listen to them having a conversation about their work. you probably won't understand much. Although they are speaking your language, they see the world differently, at least while they are being engineers. then think of how differently a lion would see it.
For some more attempts to answer the question, have a look here:
http://wittgensteinforum.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/wittgenstein-if-a-lion-could-speak-we-could-not-understand-him-pi-p223/
well, i think i got that. like a jargon, huh? you know, we call things, we liken them to other things, even in the dialectics change among each other. this will sound interesting, a local song says :
ReplyDeletean ox made his nest on a tree branch
and a fly grabbed its [whelp / get / young ox]
well, pretty impossible, and there is even a name for such kind of poems full of impossibilities which i cannot recall now, guess poe had such poems =)
it is years later that i learned what the lyrics actually meant. It's Pınar Besen the translation teacher who told me that "on a tree branch" means "under the tree branch" namely "in the shadow of the tree branch" in the local language. And, "the fly grabbed somebody" is a local way of saying that "the fly sting somebody". =)
and the link to tractatus doesnt work! maybe its my computer but i tired it on the other computer that we have at home but still didnt work!! so, i couldnt read it before the exam. now i remembered that i should write it here so that we can find out whts wrong with the link. it says sections not available down on the next page button.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I only just saw these comments. Did you resolve the problem with the Tractatus? You should be able to find it easily emough if you google it....
ReplyDeletei just picked the easier way, and most of the time you cannot get to read the text online =(
ReplyDelete