Re: [Wittrs] On Christmas Trees, Metaphysics and Law
- From: Justintruth <justintruth@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 08:05:04 -0700 (PDT)
I have had direct religious experience. I do not believe that what
Wittgenstein describes is correct. In fact, especially after reading
his biography, I realize that Wittgenstein seems like a man who was
smart enough to know that to just dismiss the subject was wrong, but
that he had never penetrated the subject to its heart and seen the
clarity of Logos in its own self realization that is inherent in such
experiences. Or at least it is not evident in the record.
There is an old Zen proverb that says "At first I saw the tree and it
was a tree. And then I saw the tree and it was the Tao. And then I saw
the tree and it was a tree". One possibility that I consider but do
not think is true is that Wittgenstein somehow went directly from step
1 to step 3 without ever seeing it directly. (I hear him cringing
"What do you mean "steps"?! but you do know what I mean don't you? So
why can't I use the phrase?) He makes no mention that I can find of
synchronistic experience also. In a way he never seems to have
untangled himself from ... objectivity?... - yet he knew there was
more. He divorced the two having seen one early as an engineer, as a
logician, as a builder, as someone intensely involved and careful in
his perception of nature (look at his examination of the plant in the
car in the US) but he never seemed to have grasped the other
possibilities that marry the religious and secular fundamentalist
views.
If you think that I think that there is any answer that is technically
incorrect. I am not saying that Wittgenstein missed some answer. I am
saying that he seems not to have had a kind of experience and further
that that experience is intellectual as well as can be described as
not being limited to what most people think "intellectual" means. It
is as if what we call intellect is something very limited but which if
experienced in a certain way is religious. He was like an alcoholic
searching for that drink and suffering greatly from the relief he
could not find. But is this drink wrong? Was it his will that kept him
from converting - from "drinking the Koolaid" ? By converting I mean
converting in his own mind. Is to be religious to be intoxicated in
the bad sense of the word? Yielding and getting his will out of the
way of his intellect? His intellect involved so much effort! You can
almost describe him as this Herclean figure driving his mind down into
it, refusing to let go, rubbing his nose into it wherever he could
with intense concentration and holding on at all costs, never
experiencing (or being the experience of) that moment of nuclear
release when the energy comes out and is not just being put in - the
explosion after the compression. Where it is anything but you, and
everything is crystal clear and you wonder how you could have missed
it. Is there ever a time when he experienced the fruit of stopping
that willful effort?
To divorce the heart, hopes, sanctity from the intellect is incorrect.
It is incorrect technically. It may be incorrect in other ways. But
the key is to see that it is incorrect technically. Perhaps even
logically in the way he used the term. That I think was his mistake.
In a way that is why I am trying to understand the ethics and logic of
the statement "That about which..." I know that this was early Wit but
I also know that latter Wit had also given up on language - even
though it was now an expanded version. No, even more latter, he seems
to know that there is a kind of impossibility of language in this
area. I have tried, and continue to try to locate the source of this
opinion.
I write as if its a conclusion. What I really have is a simple
question. What is the basis of this limitation that Wittgenstein saw
in language? At one point he seems to imply that it has to do with
that fact that should one try the terms themselves would lack
reference. At other times he speaks of not being able to say anything
about everything. Sometimes he seems to me to think it is an ethical
prohibition. It seems his entire latter way of doing philosophy was
based on not being able to do something else that is usually called
philosophy and so he just wanders around the so called streets,
describing them over and over, hoping his student's would ...
what? ... draw the right conclusion? ...obtain the right familiarity
of recall of the scene?...a familiarity that would allow them to
dismiss it with a "Been here, done this" that would liberate them from
philosophy? ... avoiding systemic descriptions at all costs, in many
ways offering his philosophy in koan-ic, parablic, form? Why? Was Witt
trying to cause enlightenment in his students or bore them into
abandoning the task as futile?
What is the basis? Is it a "shouldn't"? Is it a "can't"? Is it both? I
can't find it. It's infuriating. In many ways I find the outright
religious way of speaking about it that was present in the Middle Ages
clearer. But that way was so mixed up with superstition. Is Heidegger
any better? Try to read him. Zen? They refuse also to admit that they
speak. It makes sense to me in a way to think Witt ultimately is right
when I look at the wreckage of previous attempts. But still I cannot
find the principle that undoes them all as it seemed to me originally
that Witt had claimed to have.
Here is a clip of Derrida. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_nyd45czM
It is very long and exceedingly infuriating the way his qualifications
run on and on but I offer it as a random example of how easily it is
to find parallels to this prohibition about speaking everywhere.
Almost a kind of necessity for privacy. I am reminded of the Russian
version of the movie Solaris. Its as if the rigor of intellect, the
urge not to profane the sacred, and the embarrassment of teenager
should he be forced to talk about his sex life with their parents and
peers, topped off with a kind of fear of ridicule of not being
"scientific" or "rational". Surely there must be a better way. We are
not advocating having sex in the street. Or a collapse of rigor. Or
perhaps that is the problem. In any case I don't know.
I had hoped once to find in Witt the answer to why this prohibition
exists. I now think that whatever it is it prevented him, at least in
the late phase, of describing it clearly. That or else he just did not
actually know. Or more likely, I still just don;t understand. I
discount completely the fact that Witt would not admit it. The section
on his biography about the period when he had the urge to "confess"
convinces me completely that the one thing Witt was not was a coward.
He would have stood in the street naked on a soapbox and proclaimed
Armegedon if he thought it. He drove himself. I know that he was a
professional philosopher and I realize how corrupting having your
livelihood tied up could be but - well - he gave away a fortune. Witt
is almost like a penatatent in the way he was willing to embrace and
use what most see as the scourge of poverty. I do not think it was
just him giving his money away and then just not having an option to
get it back.
In many ways Witt seems like a monk. I am aware of the synchronism
with the name of his biographer. He is kind of a unique kind of monk.
I imagine I can see him it that movie theater, his mind relaxing into
the play of images on the screen, embracing a kind of Dadistic
experience of prayer. The only release he found or at least a release
from the problem for a spell.
But Witt was not religious in the final, ultimate, sense I think. His
intellect was never given that experience, although he could sense the
emptiness of the alternative, he still did not see a way to let go in
order to achieve rigor instead of abandon it . He seems not to have
been enlightened preferring to cling to that shrinking iceberg of
imagined rigor. Still you can see him feeling around. And if you take
him at his word on his deathbed all was not lost.
Here is a final link on the subject which I hope you will enjoy enough
to make having slogged through this awful post worth it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGf2loLAwVE
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