[lit-ideas] Re: The Life and Death of Wittgenstein
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 16:06:14 EDT
In a message dated 5/16/2009 10:16:46 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
So, again, the "grammatical" objection to this strikes me as wrong-headed.
Donal
----
Well, if you followed my commentary on "Napoleon farts", your next move
would be to ask whether 'dying' is important enough to merit the "historical
present". I googled "Wittgenstein died" in Italian and retrieved, among
many hits:
_www.windoweb.it/guida/cultura/biografia_Ludwig_Wittgenstein.htm_
(http://www.windoweb.it/guida/cultura/biografia_Ludwig_Wittgenstein.htm)
Nato a Vienna il 26 aprile 1889 da una ricca famiglia di industriali,
Ludwig Wittgenstein viene avviato agli studi di ingegneria, che compie a
Berlino
e Manchester.
...
Muore a Cambridge il 29 aprile 1951.
Note that "Nato" is short for "e nato", almost. "Born on the ...". "Born",
whose present tense is 'bear' is hardly used in the present. "is born" is
strictly past perfect with 'is' as 'auxiliary'.
Similarly, the familiar formula in Italian would be not the preterite,
hardly used, but the 'e morto'. Oddly, this biography above does use the
'historical present': 'muore a Cambridge'. It does not add what happened to him
afterwards.
I especially hate when a biography does not mention the 'born' (nato's)
mother's maiden name:
Herbert Paul Grice was born in Halborne, March 26 1913,
the first son of Herbert Grice and Mabel Fenton. ...
Grice died on Aug. 28 1988 in the Intensive Therapy
Ward (W3) of the San Francisco Hospital. His body was
cremated and his ashes spread over the bay. To his
memory, his younger brother Derek and other members
of the family inaugurated a bench-warming ceremony
for the display of a bench in his memory which still
graces the Moses Hall on the Berkeley Campus.
The philosopher wrote: "We should treat those who are
great and dead [Aristotle, Kant -- "but none of your
'minor' figures like Wollaston, Bosanquet, or
Wittgenstein] as if they were great and alive: that is,
as if they had something to say to us _now_."
When asked by his wife, whether he had had a happy life, he replied,
"Surely I cannot complain. I have been very
fortunate."
R. I. P.
Borges, too, had a momentous death in 1986. His attitude was perhaps
different:
"No afterlife shit with me. I want to _rest_"
I forget Wittgenstein's last words as he expired.
One paradox of this is Roberto Lasagna's solution of the "King of France"
paradox:
"Surely the most economical way of solving Russell's
denotational paradox, "the king of France is bald" is
to apply Aristotle's 'to ti en einai', (en: literally, was):
'the king of France _was_ bald" -- and no paradox!
The _relic_ of life, as I call it, is the use of 'he' or "Wittgenstein"
once the name has made 'vacuous' by his death. I cannot think of a more
economical way to refer to the _former_ Wittgenstein but by 'Wittgenstein'. (As
in "Wittgenstein had said that he did not want
flowers by request, therefore there were no flowers by request. He laid in
the coffin for
two weeks. Anscombe prayed with the bead, and gave a memorial in the little
Catholic
Church outside Cambridge (Rupert Brooke country). He was finally cremated,
and
many editions of his books have been published since. He left no heirs,
bloodwise."
Cheers,
JLS
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