[lit-ideas] "Wovon mann nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss mann schweigen": a tautology?
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 13:58:45 EST
John Wager writes:
but I would
like to suggest that "to keep silence" may not just be the negative of
"to speak."
----
Okay. It's not yet clear to me how you can formalize 'keep silence' such that
it is _not_ the negative of 'speak'.
I have been thinking that to save Witters's dictum No. 7 from being a
tautology, one should revert the order of the modals:
(1) Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen
becoming
(2) Wovon man nicht sprechen MUSS, darueber KANN man schweigen.
-- It's perhaps less emphatic, but at least _informative_...
Cheers,
JL
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