[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein's Garden
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2014 10:03:03 -0800 (PST)
The garden is a totality of plants, not things.
On Saturday, March 1, 2014 3:50 PM, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
McEvoy: "[S]ome of Wittgenstein's thoughts were worked out as he sat
overlooking his garden, and then subsequently amended. "1. The garden is all
that is the case. 1.1 The garden divides into plots. "The limits of my garden
are the limits of my world." "Whereof we cannot plant, thereof we should
pass over in silence". His famous "beetle-in-the-box" arose from a time when
he caught a ladybird in a matchbox and then sat in his garden for several
days opening and closing the box. The "private language" argument was
originally the "private garden" argument, which Wittgenstein derived from
reflecting on how it was not logically possible to have a garden entirely
closed
off from public view.
McEvoy is elaborating on a point raised by Ritchie.
It should be pointed out, as Palma perhaps should, that the phrase,
'garden all'italiana' is MISLEADING. The implicature is that Italians cannot
conceive of a garden unless a symmetrical thing. But a brief inspection of
gardening practices in Ancient Rome (especially up those irregular hills -- of
which seven remain) should falsify (in Popper's sense) this generalisation.
On the other hand, it is said that ENGLISH gardening is, just to contrast
with the Italians, 'irregular', and focused on 'wild' flowers.
The French are somewhere in the middle between the symmetrical Italian
conception of a garden and the irregular romantic English cottage-type one.
Witters God knows.
Cheers,
Speranza
----
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