[lit-ideas] Wittgenstein: "He is a _human being!" (Was: Mirembe...Ny Times...eternitytime)
- From: "Richard Henninge" <henninge@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 04:19:23 +0200
Robert Paul first wrote:
> 'A characteristic remark that Wittgenstein would make when referring to
> someone who was notably generous or kind was "He is a _human
> being_!"—thus implying that most people fail even to be human.'
>
> —Norman Malcom, Ludwig Wittgenstein: a Memoir, p. 61
Peter D. Junger wrote [in reply]:
> I doubt that that is the implication, since Wittgenstein would
> probably have been thinking "er ist ein Mensch" or, as people
> would say in New York, "he is a mensch." "Mensch" can be
> translated as "human being" but that hardly gets the sense
> of the word, which is probably more like "humane person" or
> "warm person" or simply "good person." But then, of course,
> the word "person," when translated back into German, is a rather
> unflattering word for a woman---a lady of good family might well
> refer to a shopgirl as "diese Person."
>
> To translate is, after all, to betray.
[Robert answered:]
No doubt. But in this case, Wittgenstein was speaking English.
[...then checked himself:]
Sorry. I read Peter's remarks too hastily. I see now that he suggests
that Wittgenstein was 'thinking in German,' not that he was speaking to
Malcolm in German. This is, of course, possible; but one must remember
that Wittgenstein had mastered the use of 'Hot Ziggety!'
Of course, Malcolm's inference goes against the usual understanding of
'all too human,' which suggests that mere humanity most of the time
falls short.
>>>>>>All this talk of Wittgenstein's "implying" X and Malcolm's "inference"
on Y really gets my goat (and I know Robert has been longing for news of my
goat!). The fact of the matter is that Peter has correctly pointed out that
Malcolm is off base in his assumptions concerning the mental state of Ludwig
Wittgenstein as interpreted through his English usage. I think it is safe to
infer that Robert's quoting of Malcolm implies that he, Robert, agrees with
the latter's assessment. But not only does Robert not want to admit that he
made a mistake in endorsing Malcolm; he also does not want to admit that
Malcolm himself had made a false inference (as a result of his naive
interpretation of Wittgenstein's comment, responding to it as if English
were Wittgenstein's first language and thus the determinant of the semantic
force of his utterance, whereas in fact it was, as Peter points out, a
superficial--and thus unsuccessful--translation of a meaningful--or
"differently meaningful" utterance in German). This is a non-trivial
observation (the onus having been upon me to show that mine are such ever
since I first let peep on Phil-Lit and Lit-Ideas on subjects philosophical,
said onus having been oft incumbed upon me by said Robert) when one
considers that it is precisely people of Malcolm's ilk, or likes, or caliber
who have "brought us" Wittgenstein. We've been reading Wittgenstein in
English so much, we've come to think of him as an English wit! But whether
Wittgenstein was speaking in English or German is neither here nor there
(whatever *that* means). The point is that he was not impugning the humanity
of members of the species, unless one wants to say that the German language,
insofar as "its" (and we should reflect on the use of the genitive in
speaking of a language) word for "human being," the generic term, "Mensch,"
can be a term of praise, even high praise, for someone who is, after all,
just a "Mensch" by nature, by birth. But this, in turn, is in English as
well, as was discussed here on the subject of tautologies a while back, in
"Now that's a woman!" (where that is obvious), or in French, as in
Napoleon's encounter with Goethe: "Voilà un homme!" (which may have spurred
the latter to legitimize his relations with his "Frau" of long standing and
mother of his children [so that the next time a world-historical individual
came through his town he could introduce her with the words, "Voilà ma
femme!", and mean it according to the Code Napoléon]). Finally, it is in
Goethe's _Faust_, appropriately in the "Osterspaziergang" or Easter Walk,
that the famous line occurs, as Faust stands outside the walls of Frankfurt
on a pleasant Easter day ["Here is the people's paradise / And great and
small shout joyously"]: "Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf ich's sein!"--which
Walter Kaufmann translates as "Here I am human, may enjoy humanity."
I must admit that by the time I got to the second "Of course" on the far
side of Wittgenstein's mastery of "Hot Ziggety," I was well lost in the
thicket-ure of implicature and could not make out what or who was meant by
"Malcolm's inference goes against the usual understanding of 'all too
human,' which suggests that mere humanity most of the time falls short."
First, we have to remember that "Malcolm's inference" was that
_Wittgenstein_ thought "that most people fail even to be human." My problem
is that I can't get my head around "goes against the usual understanding of
'all too human"--who? Malcolm? Wittgenstein? It would be nice to know that
all this doesn't matter, and that Malcolm had made a stupid mistake, but
instead we are plunged into what I've called the "thicketure of
implicature," where we end up desperately trying to parse the degrees of
"the usual understanding of 'all too human' ... which suggests that mere
humanity most of the time falls short" (where "suggests" is the word you use
when the humans required for "implies" are not available). So if "Malcolm's
inference" = "Wittgenstein's thought" ("that most people fail even to be
human") [forgetting for the moment that this is hogwash], in what way would
that "go against" a low view of humanity? Wouldn't it seem that that would
"go _for_" such a view, the view, that is, that "humanity most of the time
falls short"? And check out that frustratingly incomplete "falls short"!
What is missing? Precisely the person in whose eyes another human is falling
short, humanity-wise. And why is that missing? Perhaps because we are meant
to thrash around in this thicketure of implicature (perhaps Goethe's
autobiography, _Dichtung und Wahrheit_, should be translated as _Thicketure
[instead of Poetry] and Truth_) until we forget whose views is whose--at
least until Malcolm, and Robert, can slip out, face saved.
All said in love of the phil side of philosophy, and hoping also to provide
something as close to April Fool's Day as possible for Mirembe's project, on
"forgetive" and Shakespeare's "No longer mourn for me when I am dead"
(Sonnet 71).
Richard Henninge
University of Mainz
Robert
>
> Robert Paul
> Reed College
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