[lit-ideas] Wittgenstein's Ladder (TLP 6.54, PI 26 & PI27)
- From: "Richard Henninge" <RichardHenninge@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 03:53:30 +0200
On 8-Jul-09, at 5:13 AM, Robert Paul wrote:
Wittgenstein says somewhere early in the Investigations, that naming a
thing is like attaching a label to it.
"The word 'to signify' is perhaps used in the most straight-forward
way when the object signifies is marked with a sign. Suppose that the
tools A uses in building bear certain marks. When A shews his
assistant such a mark, he brings the tool that has that mark on it.
It is in this and more or less similar ways hat a name means and is
given to a thing. - It will often prove useful in philosophy to say to
ourselves: naming something is like attaching a label to a thing." (PI
§ 15)
Wittgenstein returns to say something important about this simile and
its usefulness for the philosopher.
"One thinks that learning language consists in giving names to
objects, Viz, to human be[i]ngs, to shapes, to colours, to pains, to
moods, to numbers, etc.. To repeat—naming is something like attaching
a label to a thing. One can ***say*** that this is preparatory to the use of
a word. But WHAT is it a preparation FOR?" (PI § 26)
Karl Trogge
Hamburg
------ A translator or a student of translation is--auf Dauer
("permanently"?)--in a position of putting his feet on the rungs of a
Wittgensteinian ladder, which he, by virtue of his peculiar
language-critical status, constantly ("stets"?) recognizes as insupportable
("haltlos"?), rungless, as W. says, nonsense (but a necessary nonsense,
"Notlüge, Notunsinn"?), upon which one can per miracolo climb, as if it were
there, as if it were a rung, a support, a structure, a ladder, as it were,
als ob, until one must, again, of necessity, cast it away (if it does not
itself--and does it not?--cast itself, or fade, and dissipate, away).
Heraclitus would have recognized it: it is the quick aqueity of the river
water, into whose ever-passing-by, he reminded us, one can not step twice
(not even once, as his student, Cratylus, would claim in upping his mentor's
ante).
Our example above exemplifies the (fluid) dynamics of the situation in so
far as the sextuply asterisked "say" is one of those ephemeral cartoon rungs
of the ladder that our oblivious translator has solidified for the lay
reader, in support of his easier climb, by glossing over the fact that
Wittgenstein had abysmalized the whole black-hole-like discussion by--not
"saying" that naming is "preparatory to the use of a word"--but by
***naming*** (nennen) naming (Benennen) "a preparation for use of a word."
In other words, if naming is something like attaching a label to a thing,
and one can further say that one can name that naming thing--that
attaching-a-label-to-a-thing-thing--"preparation for use of a word," in
still other words, thus attaching the label "preparation for use of a word"
to the thing "naming," well, then, what is *that* "preparation" for.
It's turtles all the way down: it's tags tagging tags as preparation for
tagging tags with other tags. For what is the "use" of a word? Especially
keeping in mind that we are trying to clarify what "learning a language
consists in" and we hardly know what a "word" is in that context. In the
following paragraph, PI 27, Wittgenstein mocks those who operate "[a]s if
there were only one thing called 'talking about a thing.'" This was preceded
by:
"We name things and then we can talk about them: can refer to them in
talk."--As if [Als ob] what we did [No! "what we *do* further"--W.'s present
tense underscores the contrast between the actual operating without a net
and the quasi-magical fixing, or calling into existence, merely by
naming--past tense solidifies the cartoon rung, "as if" in just the sense
that Wittgenstein is mocking] next were given [gegeben wäre] with the mere
act of naming. As if there were only one thing [nur Eines gäbe] called
"talking about a thing." Whereas in fact we do the most various things with
with our sentences. Think of exclamations alone, with their completely
different functions.
Water!
Away!
Ow!
Help!
Fine!
No!
Are you inclined still to call [actually "name" again] these words "names
[perhaps more accurately "namings"] of objects"?
In the ladder comment nearly ending the Tractatus (TLP 6.54) Wittgenstein
talks about the various things _he_ does with his sentences by saying that
his sentences "clarify thereby that those who understand [him] in the end
identify them as nonsense when he has climbed out through them--on
them--beyond them. (He must so to speak cast away the ladder after he has
climbed up on it.)" I hope this clarifies the aqueity of the "preparation"
for the "use" of a word and the fluidity of "talking about a thing" as
opposed to the constant efforts--including those of oblivious
translators--to understand things (language) apostasized (by language) as
fixed, or given, and not in the flux pointed to by Wittgenstein in his
"preparation" of the diatoms of language for public viewing by means of the
sentences forming the inevitably nonsensicalizing rungs of his incredible
disappearing ladder.
Richard Henninge
University of Mainz
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] Wittgenstein's Ladder (TLP 6.54, PI 26 & PI27) - Richard Henninge
