Expressing the Inexpressible

Culture and Value 

by Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning."  ― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

Culture and Value by Wittgenstein, translated by Peter Winch, presents a collection of his remarks on culture and value, including thoughts on art, music, religion, and other cultural areas, presented chronologically with the German text alongside the English translation and a subject index.
The book comprises Wittgenstein's notes and remarks on various aspects of culture and value, including art, music, religion, and literature. The entries are presented chronologically, with both the German and English texts side-by-side and a subject index for easy reference.

Wittgenstein discusses Christianity, stating it is not based on historical truth but offers a narrative to be believed, regardless of historical accuracy. The book includes Wittgenstein's thoughts on Shakespeare, contrasting his character depictions with those of Tolstoy. Wittgenstein lists individuals who influenced him, including Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, and others. "Culture and Value" provides valuable insights into Wittgenstein's philosophical thinking beyond his formal works. The book offers a glimpse into his personal reflections and observations on cultural phenomena. It allows for a deeper understanding of Wittgenstein's broader philosophical framework.

Remarkably, many of the statements made throughout the text can be taken at face value without any additional context. Ultimately, Culture and Value is a great addition to the Wittgenstein Corpus because these comments can also help readers better understand Wittgenstein's philosophy.

The Birth of Modern Culture

Wittgenstein's Vienna 

by Allan Janik & Stephen Toulmin

"those who are ignorant of the context of ideas are . . . destined to misunderstand them. " - p 27.

Set in the hot bed of ideas at the end of the nineteenth century this book covers the man at the center of philosophic discussions, Ludwig Wittgenstein. But more than that this is a work of cultural history defining the meaning of the changes abounding from the preoccupations of a society undergoing profound changes. 

The arc of the books narrative takes the reader from Habsburg Vienna during the last days of empire through changes to language, culture, and philosophy. Leavened by references to art, music, and literature the book attempts to make a case for the intelligibility of these changes. 

One reads about the impact of the thought of Sigmund Freud; the music of Arnold Schonberg; and the art of Klimt, Kokoschka, and others. If you are interested in the roots of Robert Musil's early work or the impact of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer you should read this book. It is a seminal work in the history of ideas.

Notes on the Philosophical Investigations

 

Selected Impressions of Wittgenstein

“Words, as is well known, are the great foe of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.” - Joseph Conrad

language games 

With Wittgenstein there is a concern with the actual use of language – what is the problem and how we can illuminate/imagine a method for going forward. It is among other things a process.  Observation precedes explanation and may yield only a description of the reality of a particular situation. (109)  That means we should try to understand that Wittgenstein's own philosophical activity is like bringing words back to regular use (out/above/below the realm of “metaphysics”).

What is the process of trying to understand what it means to know something? Is there any conflict within a language game? There may be infinite variations in our everyday experiences; if so, how can we reach a resolution or should we seek that as a useful goal? 

We should consider the use of comparison and noticing similarities. Sometimes that may bring insight. However the text often provides an invitation to enter into a dialog about the meaning of life and how one might understand the proper end of one's life. (language and dialog)

observation and imagination

I am reminded of “the search” --- “What is the nature of the search . . . The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.” - Walker Percy

That is we are not looking for philosophical statements but the reality of what is here in everyday language. One wonders if this is a method for escaping the “everydayness” of life and the seeming incongruity of such a process? (117) One key for escaping the everydayness of life is recognizing the situation of a “fish out of water” and thinking in a way that you may become just that. 

Our imagination may be a tool that allows recognition of just such a situation. (129) I personally am intrigued by the effect on my imagination of listening to music – different effects result from different types of music (Liszt or Ligeti).

Whatever the means you may choose it is important to realize that language can do many things if we only look at the way we use words. We should aim to see clearly if possible. (Observation)

Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes, p. 1.

Walker Percy, The Moviegoer, p. 13.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Revised Fourth Edition, 2009)

Games, Names, and Shadows

Part I 

Games

When we consider how to share our thoughts and ideas with those around us we turn to the abundance of language to express ourselves. If we have taken the time and made the effort to develop a command of our language, we believe we can say those things that we think and feel with the precision of expression that will leave some trail of meaning among our community.

How is it that our playing is like naming? A game of words becomes the life we live—or is it the reverse? So often our lives seem to be merely games with words—our conversations veer into debates over both the ideas represented by our words and the objects that our words seem to signify.

Is not this play a form of education? Education: from the Latin ducere, meaning to lead. Educate—out from ignorance. This is the movement from the shadows into the light (The Republic, 514a - 520a).

To learn, for Socrates, was to gain knowledge—to achieve wisdom (sophos). (Theatetus, 145d) Learning can be considered the “right use of words”, which is the way it is put in the Cratylus (277e). He also refers to the notion of learning as a game (278b). In the twentieth century the general use of language has become a game according to Wittgenstein (1989, para. 67).

When we are learning we put what we know into words. We name the thing as we play the game leading ourselves onward toward understanding (Theatetus, 146a)

Plato, Complete Works. John M. Cooper, ed. Hackett, 1997.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations. G.E. M. Anscombe, trans., MacMillan, 1989 (1953)

Philosophy as a Process

Philosophical Investigations 

by Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Our investigation is a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language.”   ― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations



Comments, I



Enter into a philosophy where outside of human thought and speech there are no independent, objective points of support. Meaning and necessity are preserved only by the linguistic practices which embody them. This then is a world that seems not unlike the skeptical realms of those from at least Descartes onward that allow for no objective reality independent of one's mind.
For Wittgenstein it is not quite so simple as that, as he continually asks questions and in doing so creates a philosophy of process much more akin to that of Socrates than Descartes, Kant or any other modern - particularly the camp of the logical positivists where he once dwelt.

His questions center on words and language so we find ourselves asking: is language a real thing? Is there any knowledge of things as they are independent of our language? How can we look at knowing as understanding the nature of things? In this sense there are things (objects) in the world and we can develop an understanding of their nature. This will not necessarily be certain knowledge, but knowledge of a sort nonetheless. "For them after all it is not nonsense" to say that "there are physical objects." (37)

It would seem that statements are only meaningful if they ask questions - Wittgenstein would ask - but there are other points of view out there.

Fragmentary Thoughts on Approaching Death

Living Up to Death 
by Paul Ricœur



"Where to begin this late apprenticeship?  By what is essential, right away?  by the necessity and difficulty of mourning a wanting-to-exist after death?  by joy--no, instead, with cheerfulness joined to a hoped-for grace of existing until death?" (p 7)



Near the end of his life the philosopher Paul Ricoeur began to meditate on death with a focus on three questions: "1) "imagined figures" (what representation can I give myself?); 2) "mourning and cheerfulness" (what is their root?); and 3) "Am I still a Christian?" (along with In what way am I not a "Christian philosopher"?)." (p viii) The result of thinking about these questions is the slight book, Living Up to Death. The thoughts in this spare book that he left unfinished at the end of his life may be summed up by the phrase "Get on with life." That is we must address the choices in our life that one is mortal and that one cannot be loved by everyone. (p ix)

I read this book and discussed it in a course on the "Art and Practice of Dying". I will try to share some of the issues that I found both interesting and important in Ricoeur's book. One surely is his discussion of the "philosophies of finitude". That is our human mortality that we all share -- we all are obliged to die and having to die must consider our own mortality. But can we really do any more than look forward, unable to really see the end? Each day we look forward to the next day, week, month, perhaps year but the end is something that, at best, we can only hope to live up to. Then it happens. Ludwig Wittgenstein said it well in the Tractatus: "Death is not a lived experience,". Ricoeur observes that "so long as they remain lucid ill dying people do not see themselves as dying, as soon to be dead, but as still living," (pp 13-14) 
With the emphasis on still living he theorizes that this feeling is connected with something essential that everyone experiences - perhaps in a religious way - but perhaps only when actually facing death.

These thoughts do not sound very cheerful, yet they are discussed in a chapter entitled "Mourning and Cheerfulness". What is cheerful about death? Ricoeur references narratives about death camp experiences ( Jorge Semprun and Primo Levi) observing that the connections between humans and the comfort that comes from the process of mourning. This he calls the "relation of our desire to live" in relation to all others. The discourse presents ideas that, while not necessarily convincing, are thought-provoking. They enable and encourage meditation on issues that might otherwise be hidden away in some corner where we do not go. This does not mean that it is comfortable to think about these ideas, but it can be comforting. I would compare it to what Ricoeur has to say about writing about these issues: "the work of memory is the work of mourning. And both are a word of hope, torn from what is unspoken." (p 39) 
It is important to note that, even here with these thoughts, the manuscript left by Ricoeur was not complete and included notes in the margin that the editors of the book refer to.

The book concludes with fragments for a final chapter (chapters?) that were left unformed. Here Ricoeur was attempting to distinguish between his role as philosopher and his life as a Christian. He also comments on his own physical deterioration. His wife had died in 1998 and in 2003 he suffered degeneration of his eyesight and his heart. Yet even during this time he noted "People see me as looking better than I feel". (p 95) 
He continued to think about these issues in his last days and while doing so he sent the following note to a younger colleague:

"Dear Marie,
At the hour of decline the word resurrection arises. Beyond every miraculous episode . From the depths of life, a power suddenly appears, which says that being is being against death.
Believe this with me.
your friend, Paul R."

This reminds me of a quote from Albert Camus, "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."  I have always found this uplifting and there are similar moments in Paul Ricoeur's book.   While it  is incomplete and only partially fragments of what would have been a larger work it is still a valuable contribution to the literature about the philosophy of death and dying.



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London, necessary and contingent

Under the Net 

by Iris Murdoch

“I hate solitude, but i'm afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself.”  ― Iris Murdoch, Under the Net




Iris Murdoch's first novel, Under the Net, has wonderful characters, including writers, eccentrics and a glamorous actress; but the character that imbues the novel as no other is London itself. The novel follows a picaresque structure, recounting a series of episodes narrated in the first person by James Donaghue, known as Jake. Moreover, London becomes the central setting of the main character’s adventures (particularly Holborn and the financial districts), together with brief but important scenes that take place in another great and enigmatic city, Paris. 

 London appears in many other ways, even philosophically. She wrote "There are some parts of London which are necessary and others which are contingent". But for Murdoch, in her novel, all of London is part of the story she weaves around her writer-hero, Jake Donaghue. It was dedicated to Raymond Queneau. When Jake leaves Madge's flat in Chapter 1, two of the books he mentions taking are Murphy by Samuel Beckett, and Pierrot mon Ami by Queneau, both of which are echoed in this story. Another character, Hugo Belfounder, is mainly based on Yorick Smythies, a student of Wittgenstein's.  It seems that literary references abound as in this example:
"...I like the women in novels by James and Conrad who are so peculiarly flower-like and who are described as 'guileless, profound, confident, and trustful'. That 'profound' is good: fluttering white hands and as deep as the sea..." (p 28)

 The epigraph for the novel, from John Dryden's Secular Masque, refers to the way in which the main character is driven from place to place by his misunderstandings. Angus Wilson summed it up as "wine, women, and Wittgenstein". Overall the novel is an exciting beginning to what would become a brilliant writing career.

Under the Net by Iris Murdoch. Penguin Books, 1977 (1954)