[Wittrs] Re: [C] Re: Re: Re: Metaphysical Versus Mystical
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:03:52 -0800
On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 8:06 PM, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> [sending this again to clear up a few things -- sw]
>
<< SNIP >>
> Devoutly-felt spiritual statements must be regarded as per-se erroneous under
> Tractarian thought -- not because God is false or absent -- but because the
> form of life cannot language outside of itself (the extra-worldly cannot be
> understood). But non-devoutly felt metaphysics of the sort not revealed to us
> must be perpetually regarded as noise.
>
> You on board here, J?
>
> 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
>
Hi Sean --
You were addressing J, not me, so please forgive my butting in here.
I just wanted to add my appreciation for recent postings about the
Tractatus, including those remarks to the publisher about "gassing"
(lets remember that context: letter to a publisher), and all your
thinking around a taxonomy of nonsense varieties, ending up narrowing
the categories to approximately two.
I also want to register my suggestion that you not lose sight of the
question: where does the Tractatus itself fit in to your taxonomy,
i.e. what kind of nonsense is it?
Of course that's somewhat begging the question (to ask "what kind of
nonsense?"), but not really, because Wittgenstein has already given
his endorsement for the view that we consign the Tractatus to the
nonsense side of the fence (after taking the time to appreciate how
come).
This isn't a work in the realm of true/false. Depicting the
relationship of language to the world is actually not the proper
business of language. Depicting the world is its proper business.
The Tractatus is an attempt to pry apart what, at a logical limit, is
a non-dual enterprise, with its author not trying to conceal this
point. The author has a consistent intent, an agenda: to move from
disguised to patent nonsense.
To bring this up is not to negate any of the points you were making.
I'd simply suggest we fit the Tractatus itself into your "bona fide
expression of an aesthetic viewpoint" category, the kind of nonsense
of which Wittgenstein approved.
He isn't apologetic about his work, on the contrary is coming off as
victorious in the sense of feeling he's made a sincere and worthwhile
contribution to the literature. Don't you agree?
The plot twist, however, is that Wittgenstein later did come to have
aesthetic problems with the TLP. He wanted to update his name and his
image with a second take, another angle. We could say he reinvented
himself and made a comeback.
I'm not trying to trivialize his achievement in describing his career
(trajectory) in those terms. I think a mark of a great philosopher is
an ability to shed one's own skin as it were. We do not begrudge him
either attempt. Applause in both cases. And in some ways the
philosophy is all the more clear because of the contrast (TLP + PI is
better than either on its own).
I don't think he repudiated the Tractatus because he thought it was
false. That's the trap one falls into if one thinks it was true. The
true/false world is where sense is being made. That's not his world
when doing philosophy.
When all your theses are true (alluding to the PI, recent threads),
you're in some other realm (the terms "exotic" and "esoteric" come to
mind -- but not "aloof" and not "idle").
In addition to your "varieties of nonsense" taxonomy (allusion to
William James), let's give a nod to "false" as a category.
You've got "nonesense", usually considered inferior to "true", but
then you also have "false", also less valued than "true".
What do we think about "false" versus "nonsense," which is worse?
In asking the question that way, I'm inviting naive moral judgments
and that's probably not constructive at face value.
However, I do think your somewhat Nietzschean endeavor to "rank"
different kinds of nonsense might be enhanced with some consideration
of "false" (misinforming, misleading, incorrect) as a separate
category.
To be more specific, we might take your two categories of nonsense and
say the lesser kind ("gassing") is nonsense tinged with falsehood,
precisely because it's not logically pure enough to admit it's not
truth. Make any sense?
Kirby
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