[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein's Punch Line

  • From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 13:28:13 +0000 (GMT)

Even the very early Wittgenstein might also be thought to show a sense of 
humour, even though this is obscured in the accounts handed down to us.

The Russell story about whether W was tormented in thought by "logic" or his 
"sins" - "Both" replied W - might easily be thought that of a humourless 
person; but brevity is the soul of wit and someone truly humourless about their 
mental torment might not express themselves with such directness and 
punchiness. It is possible to combine utmost seriousness with a sense of 
humour, and this is usually reflected in one's expression, as in life as in art.


The question is open as to how well people like Russell understood Wittgenstein 
as a person: their were facets of Wittgenstein's personality that were perhaps 
so alien to Russell that they produced a reaction of wry amusement - so the 
Wittgenstein of Russell's imagining is the archetypal 'weird tormented 
"genius"' and not the flesh-and-blood W who must have been. In the above story, 
Russell may not have appreciated that "logic" and "sins" were firmly linked in 
Wittgenstein's mind - for there was a kind of (ethical) purity of mind needed 
to tackle "logic" just as to tackle one's sins (a Catholic - and W was from a 
Jewish-Catholic background - could appreciate this perhaps in a way a WASP, 
particularly an irreligious one like Russell, could not). 

People like Russell OTOH, and the tendency to idolise Wittgenstein OTOH, may 
have conspired to blind us to the Wittgenstein with a sense of humour. I mean: 
almost everyone has a sense of humour of some sort. 


It is an unusual person, by Oxbridge standards anyway, who gives away their 
vast wealth as an act of 'purification' - so that they are not corrupted by 
their wealth; and even more unusual by those standards that they give not to 
charity or the poor but to their rich relatives, on the basis that the money 
might corrupt others lacking money but could not corrupt those who already had 
money. Yet I think I can understand the POV from which this is an intelligent, 
serious moral choice and not merely an amusing one: conversely we should not 
perhaps blind ourselves to a kind of wit in Wittgenstein's expression even when 
he is being utterly serious.


Dnl

Btw, WTF were W and R doing up at 3 in the morning? They weren't students 
anymore.



On Friday, 21 February 2014, 11:50, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
 
I thought the following was funny: something like: "We're not crazy, we're just
doing philosophy."

And "Moore knows nothing!", replying to Moore's hand-waving as part of his proof
of an external world (and to other stuff).

Cheers, Walter


Quoting Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>:

> "I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to
> enjoy ourselves."
> 
> 
> Is a response to Kierkegaard, whom W. supposedly appreciated. I haven't got
> the exact quote from K. at hand, but in the context of Kierkegaard's weird
> existentialist Christianity, 'why we are here' is obviously meant to to mean
> (a Gricean expression ?) 'why we are here in the world.' 
> 
> W: Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century.
> Kierkegaard was a saint.
> 
> Was this meant as a humorous or perhaps ironic remark ? Who would know,
> especially if not armed by a Gricean analysis of implicature and
> communicative intentions ? :)
> 
> O.K.
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday, February 20, 2014 12:19 PM, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx"
> <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>  
> 
> 
> In a message dated 2/19/2014 3:49:20  A.M. Eastern Standard Time, 
> donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes in Re:  Wittgenstein's Humour
> while there is nothing playful about the Tractatus,  there is something 
> playful (or possibly playful) in aspects of Investigations.  
> 
> However, we seem to have a bit of a punch line:
> 
> "My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally 
> recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on 
> them,  over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has 
> climbed up  on it.) (6.54)"
> 
> R. Paul quotes from N. Malcolm -- and thanks for O. K. for his examples,  
> which can be seen as punch lines by Witters to implicated pieces of  
> philosophical reasoning --:
> 
> "A curious thing, which I observed innumerable times, was that when  
> Wittgenstein invented an example during his lectures in order to illustrate
> a  
> point, he himself would grin at the absurdity of what he had imagined. But
> if  
> any member of the class were to chuckle, his expression would change to 
> severity  and he would exclaim in reproof, ‘No, no; I’m serious!’"
> 
> McEvoy elsewhere refers to 'authorial intent', which is a keyword, since,  
> with Beardsley, and Grice, I would not count a joke as an implicature.  
> Implicature and thus most 'authorial intents' are reason-based, not
> cause-based, 
> and one does not need a _reason_ to be amused; only a cause.
> 
> Note the Moore-type ("It is raining, but I don't believe it") in Malcolm's  
> punchline:
> 
> "No, no [Nanette]; I'm serious" 
> 
> YET I grin.
> 
> Or not.
> 
> C. Bruce referred to a 'hint of a smile', which is yet not quite a  
> Cheshire-cat sort of grin, NOR a more or less sonorous chuckle.
> 
> Or not.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Speranza
> 
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