[lit-ideas] Re: Wagner and Philosophy: Magee and Grice &c.
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:31:36 -0800
Some remarks on JL's recent posts.
Witters used to say that English, like German, but perhaps unlike Italian,
is a non-logical language, labyrinthine -- and what is a labyrinth but a
place where you get lost (on purpose or not). Since Witters wrote in German,
it's no wonder people get lost in what he wrote. On the other hand, P.
Trudgill has a chapter in his "Language Myths" (Penguin):
"French is a logical language".
'This case is similar to the one in which someone imagines that one
could not think a sentence with the curious word order of German or
Latin just as it stands. One first has to think it, and then one has to
arrange the words in that strange order. (A French politician once wrote
that it was a peculiarity of the French Language that in it words occur
in the order in which one thinks them.) [Philosophical Investigations, §336]
Although Wittgenstein wrote the Tractatus, the Investigations, and other
'works' carved out of his Nachlass by his literary executors, in German,
he dictated the Blue and Brown Books in English, so there are no
problems of translation to worry about. Unless you want to.
......................................................................
I prefer to call it the "Robinson Crusoe" argument. It is argued that, on
his island, Robinson Crusoe did not have the need for a language. When
"Friday" (as he called the native) appeared, the first 'implicatures' were
created, even if missed by "Friday" -- cfr. Chesterton, for an elaboration,
"The
Man Who Was Friday".
This is, I take it, a sequel to the wildly popular, 'The Man Who Was
Thursday.'
Robert Paul,
cautioning people not to watch Battlestar Galactica.
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