[lit-ideas] Re: News via the web
- From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 19:35:43 -0500
Eric writes:
"Yet part of appreciating complexity is knowing where the map ends and
one's life begins, just as maturity involves knowing when to disregard
authority."
There is no end to the map (it is scaled 1:1) as well as authority. The
trick is in knowing which map and authority.
Eric continues:
"Wittgenstein's " 7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in
silence." is not necessarily about shutting up. More likely it relates
to the limits of language, maps, imagery, and other games of thought."
[Here I will make my contribution to the W. thread on TLP 7]
It makes no sense to talk about the limits of language. It seems to me
that TLP 7 is about the limits of a particular method (i.e.
scientific/philosophical) of trying to make sense of propositions. For
W., everything that matters falls under 'Whereof one cannot speak'.
6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world
everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no
value - and if there were, it would be of no value.
6.42 Hence also there can be no ethical propositions. Propositions
cannot express anything higher.
6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed. Ethics is
transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one.)
6.432 How the world is, is completely indifferent for what is higher.
God does not reveal himself in the world.
6.44 Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.
6.522 There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the
mystical.
In my opinion, 7 is a more condensed version of 6.52:
We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the
problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is
then no question left, and just this is the answer.
I have no idea how those who want to read W. as a proto-positivist get
around these texts. Everything that matters to us as human beings lies
beyond the reach of propositions.
Sincerely,
Phil Enns
Toronto, ON
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