[C] [Wittrs] Re: Re: How to Regard On Certainty
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:15:36 -0800 (PST)
... wanted to send these quotes along from Monk. They are interesting. First,
some preliminaries:
1. OC 300-676 written in the last month and a half (month and three weeks) of
his life. Wrote furiously. Very regularly.
2. OC 65-299 written late in the summer of 1950.
3. OC 1-64 written on separate paper and left at Anascombe's house, date of
authorship uncertain but believed to be in 1949.
And now two very interesting assessments:
FROM MONK:
"During the two months left of his life Wittgenstein wrote over half (numbered
paragraphs 300-676) of the remarks which now constitute On Certainty, and in
doings so produced what many people regard as the most lucid writing to be
found in any of his work." He continues, "... explores the issues in much
greater depth, and expresses the ideas with much greater clarity and
succinctness than hitherto. Even when he is chiding himself for his own lack of
concentration, he does so with amusingly apt simile: 'I do philosophy now like
an old woman who is always mislaying something and having to look for it again:
now her spectacles, now her keys.' Despite this self-deprecation, he was in no
doubt that the work he was now writing would be of interest: 'I believe it
might interest a philosopher, one who can think himself, to read my notes. For
even if I have hit the mark only rarely, he would recognize what target I had
been ceaselessly aiming at.'" (577-578)
FROM WITTGENSTEIN:
"The truth is this. a) I have not been able to do any sustained good work since
the beginning of March 1949. b) Even before that date I could not work well for
more than 6 or 7 months a year. c) As I'm getting older my thoughts become
markedly less forceful & crystallize more rarely & I get tired very much more
easily. d) My health is in a somewhat labile sate owing to a constant slight
anemia which inclines me to catch infections. This further diminishes the
chance of my doing really good work.e) Though it's impossible for me to make
any definite predictions, it seems to me likely that my mind will never again
work as vigorously as it did, say, 14 months ago. f) I cannot promise to
publish anything during my lifetime." (letter written to Malcolm about
Malcolm's efforts to secure a research grant for Wittgenstein from the
Rockefeller Foundation). (Monk, 565).
MY THOUGHTS
One thing that I think we should be careful of here is the assumption that if
Wittgenstein is writing clear passages, that those writings reflect work of a
certain caliber or quality. Indeed, one of the hallmark features of clear and
lucid exposition is that the ideas are often very ordinary. And one of the
things we don't want to do is to attribute the fact that we can follow
something as evidence for the fact that it therefore must be good. One of the
hallmark features of Wittgenstein's writing is that each passage requires you
to contemplate what on God's earth is gong through his mind. Wittgenstein is a
lot like scripture in this sense. But I have to be careful. Because, once
again, I am not making any assertion that OC is deficient to any of
Wittgenstein's writings. I just think when people read it, they need to be
cognizant of what it is and the conditions under which it is authored.
Really, the mistake is to read ANYTHING of Wittgenstein's without understanding
who Wittgenstein was. One can only properly understand Wittgenstein as one does
his or her child. And so, if a child said something that you could attribute
to knowing the ways of the child -- what Wittgenstein referred to as
"imponderable evidence" -- the learning of this attribution would be the
highest you could obtain to "making sense." No one should read OC or any
Wittgenstein writing without first developing an understanding of the
"imponderable evidence." And if they don't have this, they need to read for
that objective (and read biography).
Regards.
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html
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