[lit-ideas] Re: testing waters

"The right method of philosophy would be properly this: to say nothing but what lets itself be said, hence sentences of natural science--hence something that has nothing to do with philosophy--and then, always, when another wants to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that to certain signs in his sentences he has given no meaning. This method would be unsatisfactory for the other--he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy--but _this_ would be, strictly speaking, the only right method.
My sentences clarify insofar as one who understands me recognizes them in the end as nonsensical when by them--upon them--he has climbed out beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up on it.) 
   He must overcome these sentences; then he sees the world right.

   Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent."
The end of the Tractatus (6.53, 6.54 & 7), with this note: that Wittgenstein's verb "clarify" (German "erlaütern"), unusually intransitive in this usage, has the same etymology as the first syllable in his first name, "LUDwig," with a basic meaning of "washed, cleaned" and thus "purified, brilliant," like cleaning diatoms, to reveal their structure, by removing all the soft living matter obscuring them, concealing them. The word "lauter" can also be used as an adjective to mean "nothing but," as in "lauter Soldaten" or "lauter Unsinn" (nothing but soldiers, nothing but nonsense, pure and simple--see "blanker Unsinn," so to speak, "blitzblanker Unsinn," pure nonsense, spic-and-span, shining, perfect nonsense) and as a suffix on names of streams to underscore their purity ( -lauter). A "Selbstlaut," a self-loud, is a vowel, uncontaminated as it is by gutterals, consonants. Let's get loud. Louder. Loudest. This is how, self-proclaimed, Wittgenstein's sentences elucidate, explain, clarify, comment upon, provide a commentary. 

Richard Henninge
University of Mainz
----- Original Message ----- From: "Torgeir Fjeld" <torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx> 
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 12:23 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] testing waters




cann we stroll these lakes?



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