As I prepared to do further reading on the Utilitarian successors to Bentham and Mill I ran across a comment about the importance of the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein to the 20th century philosophy. The writer made a brief comment about the unusual mystical “hints” in Wittgenstein’s work, which I found intriguing.
So, I have spent some time in a Wittgenstein diversion from the Utilitarians.
This will not be a long note. While Wittgenstein is generally recognized as brilliant and original in his thinking and as an important personality in the world of 20th century philosophy, his actual philosophical views do not have a particularly wide following.
One of the fascinating commonalities I’ve found among professional philosophers is the assertion that they have “solved the problem”. In prior posts, I’ve quoted both Kant and Mill as they made that assertion for their work.
In the case of Wittgenstein one paper (Mysticism and Nonsense in the Tractatus; by Morris and Dodd) which is predictably critical of his work, notes:
“…one could not fail to be struck by the immodesty of the claim (by Wittgenstein) that the problems of philosophy – that is, all of them – ‘have, in essentials, finally been solved’ (Tractatus p29)”
And further, quoting Wittgenstein in discussing the thoughts presented in his Tractatus:
“the truth of the thoughts… communicated here seems to me unassailable and definitive.”
Morris and Dodd term Wittgenstein’s thinking “incoherent” and “nonsense” but it does not seem tongue-in-cheek that only a few paragraphs after criticizing Wittgenstein for his immodesty they claim to have determined just what is wrong with his thinking in no less immodest terms:
“…given that the text looks to be for all the world to be incoherent, what could Wittgenstein have been up to in writing it?….we think we may well have solved it (i.e. the problem of apparent incoherence) once and for all.”
The work that earned Wittgenstein early acclaim and attention was published in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). In it his aim, according to A.C. Grayling in his Introduction to Wittgenstein in the Oxford University Press series: “is to show that the problems of philosophy will be solved once we grasp how our language works.”
Grayling continues:
“Both language and the world, Wittgenstein says, have a structure…Language consists in propositions…Correspondingly, the world consists in the totality of facts…Each level of structure in language matches a level of structure in the world…”
Further: “The limits of what can significantly be said, and therefore thought, thus turn out to be imposed by the structure of both language and the world, and by the way they connect with each other through the ‘picturing’ relation…
And because the content of ethics, religion and the ‘problems of life’ lie outside the world – outside the realm of facts…– nothing can be said about them…
This does not…mean that ethics and the rest are nonsense. It is only the attempt to talk about them which is so.” (emphasis added)
In Wittgenstein’s view, matters of ethical and religious significance show themselves; they cannot be stated.”
Religion and ethics are matters of value but according to Wittgenstein “nothing …can be said [except] the propositions of natural science…”
Now, for me, this idea is worth the high price of admission to Wittgenstein.
The issues of principal concern to me are not those about which Wittgenstein could formulate propositions. If language in a sense starts at the level of the material, which appears to be what he is saying, then it makes sense that nothing can be said about that which has no material qualities.
Some will say that the essential function of language is to communicate. But there is a function or property of language that is more basic than communication: that is, language discriminates; it separates a thing from all that is not that thing.
By assigning a word to a thing we assign a separate meaning to that thing. It is different from all other things.
The world, in the Genesis story, was spoken into existence. The initial speaking separated the unformed and void stuff of precreation into the specific material components of creation. When there was a need to interact with the living things of creation, names were proposed and agreed upon. And that naming effected a separation of them from other things that were not them.
Language breaks the unity of existence or the beingness of the state that is prior to materiality. That unity is the essential stuff of which Wittgenstein could not speak.
That stuff was the subject of the Buddha’s famous silent sermon (also known as the flower sermon). The Buddha did exactly as Wittgenstein said he must: he showed his sermon by holding up a flower, rather than speaking it.
Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel (in Pirke Avot 1:17) makes the same point when he says:
“All my life I grew up among Sages and I found that nothing is better for a person than silence. Not learning but doing is the main thing…”
Shimon’s “doing” here is the “showing” of Wittgenstein and the Buddha.
It is as Ramana Maharshi said:
“Silence is permanent. . . By silence, eloquence is meant. It is the best language. There is a state when words cease and silence prevails…All that is required to realize the Self is to be still.” (The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi. Shambala 1988)
It is as the revelation at Sinai was when understood in the words of the midrash that finds the only thing transmitted was the silent, unvocalized aleph of the first word of the first of the 10 “speakings” or “utterances”.
The Hebrew used in describing the transmission at Sinai comes from the root meaning to speak, but that same root also means “thing”. The correspondence between language and the material world that was so important to Wittgenstein is a fundamental characteristic of the language of the Bible.
The philosopher uses language as the principal tool of his trade. What was written by Wittgenstein and what is written about his work is a language-of-language exploration of the material world. Even Professor Grayling finds it too soon to say whether lasting value will be found in Wittgenstein’s written work.
In his intuition that language can only allow exploration of the material, though, I think he sets himself apart from his professional colleagues and earns respect from those interested in subjects he found unable to explore with the philosopher’s tool.
©Charles R. Lightner