[Wittrs] Re: [C] Re: Notes on Duncan Richter's essay 'Did Wittgenstein Disagree With Heidegger?'
- From: John Phillip DeMouy <jpdemouy@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 04:02:17 -0400
On Tue, 2011-04-19 at 23:09 -0700, Sean Wilson wrote:
>
> If we imagine
> one who held a claim to deep insight but could not see it as only a
> picture of
> such, it would, of course, require therapy
Rubbish!
Wittgensteinian therapy is to resolve confusions that are troubling to
the patient. If the picture leads a thinker to misunderstandings,
confusions, and puzzlement, they may (or may not) benefit from
Wittgensteinian methods. Even then, they do not "require" them. And
certainly, someone who accepts a picture without question should not be
said to require therapy.
To assume such a posture toward them would have aroused in Wittgenstein
the same disgust as he felt toward those who treated the beliefs of
so-called "primitives" as a sort of proto-science, as superstition. It
is arrogant presumption, pure and simple.
> to help him see this. And this would
> surely undercut the claim to "deep insight" -- for the whole point of
> being
> "deep" is to both see the picture and appreciate what it is compared
> to others
> that might be formed.
>
"Depth" has many and varied uses, even when used in the sense of
"profundity". A picture may be profound in itself or in the use one
makes of it without one's possessing the self-consciousness about its
character as a picture: after all, the simile of "pictures" is itself a
picture in Wittgenstein's sense! The idea that this particular picture
represents "the whole point" is a form of monomania reminiscent of the
various instructors of Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, each of whom
saw the respective arts they taught as of more importance than anything
else in the world.
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