woensdag 28 maart 2018

Sophia





 “Wittgensteinian approaches to moral philosophy” was the theme of a philosophical conference at the university of Leuven.
I submitted a paper, but it was not selected.
What was I thinking!
The idea that Wittgenstein scholars would be attracted to a Wittgenstein lover was one of my worst ideas ever. And believe me, I've had bad ideas.
Without the slightest feeling of rancour, let me assure you, I would like to make an existential remark.
Wittgenstein attended in his life only one conference.
Never having seen Wittgenstein before, he [Mabbott] assumed that this [Wittgenstein] was a student on vacation who did not know this hostel had been given over to those attending the conference. 'I'm afraid there is a gathering of philosophers going on here', he said kindly. Wittgenstein replied darkly: 'I too'.
(Ray Monk in his biography of Wittgenstein)
The POSSIBILITY that Wittgenstein would make the same remark in the present crossed your mind?
I strongly believe in the possibility that you might like reading my essay.

Wittgenstein is considered as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. He had a somewhat atypical career. When he was having legendary discussions with philosophers like Frege, Moore and Russell at the age of twenty-five he didn’t even have a BA in philosophy. Although he taught at Cambridge, he didn’t get his PhD until he was forty years old. On this occasion, he said to his examiners Moore and Russell when they raised some questions: “Don’t worry, I know you’ll never understand.” Would that be possible today?  Telling examiners that they don’t understand your dissertation and getting a degree from them? During his lifetime Wittgenstein published only one little book, the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. To his own bewilderment, he had great difficulty in getting it published. He wrote a lot, but except for an article “Some remarks on logical form”, he never published anything else. He was sort of a Van Gogh of the philosophers. As far as ethics is concerned, Wittgenstein gave only one lecture which dealt exclusively with ethics and he made a rather radical statement in it. So, it’s not a great deal of work to become a specialist in the moral philosophy of Wittgenstein.

WITTGENSTEINIAN APPROACHES TO MORAL PHILSOSOPHY.
 (Why Wittgenstein won’t ridicule me.)

This title assumes that anyone who submits a paper understands Wittgenstein. Or that the author at least believes that he understands Wittgenstein. If this was not the case, it couldn’t be Wittgensteinian approaches, it would be the author’s approaches. However, considering that Wittgenstein himself emphasised on numeral occasions that nearly no one did understand him, it is a bold statement to claim that you understand Wittgenstein. It’s even bold to claim that you believe you understand Wittgenstein.
“Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself had the thoughts that are expressed in it – or at least similar thoughts” is written in the Tractatus.
“What are these thoughts” seems to be the first object of investigation when you want to look deeper into this proposition.  What is the essence of the book? What is the essence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy in general?  However, since I am inclined to believe that the book is understood only by someone who has himself had the thoughts that are expressed in it, I would like to postpone this subject for obvious reasons: I already know what these thoughts are, I already know what the essence of the book is, I already know the essence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. So why would there be any need to explain this?
Instead, I would like to start with the question “When did you have these thoughts?” It must be obvious that “these thoughts” are prior to the reading of his book. It’s not my intention to play hide and seek in this matter. As “these thoughts” were overwhelming to me, I know exactly where and when I had them. August 2010, at that time I hadn’t read a single word of Wittgenstein. Quite a reference, isn’t it. For obvious reasons, I forgot to mention this in my abstract.
Let me try to explain.






This is a picture of a ring box that is on the dressing table of our bedroom.
For years and years, this was a very familiar picture. I watched it every morning and every night.
It’ s my wedding ring. I almost never wear it because in my work there is a danger that my finger gets ripped off and even worse, the insurance company won’t pay a dime if it turns out that you wore a ring at that time.
Now, imagine my surprise when one evening some months ago I found the box like this.





The ring next to mine is a ring a gave to my wife when we were a couple for a year or so. She had worn it ever since. I never knew her take it off. What the hell was going on?
I found out when I took the ring out of the box.



The ring was broken. I have to admit that the ring hadn’t cost a fortune back then, we were teenagers and teenagers don’t have a lot of money. But still, I wanted to make a proposition if you know what I mean, so I definitely wanted it to be a real ring.
As I said, my wife wore it every single day. And each and every day the ring became thinner and thinner, each and every day it became a little less of a ring. Until one day it’s broken, until one day it’s no longer a ring. It has lost the essence of being a ring. It has become another object. If I ask you to give a definition of a ring and this object fits into that definition, then every object could be qualified as a ring, it would be a completely useless definition of a ring.
And yet, I still can refer to this object as a ring. If I would ask my wife what happened to her ring, she would understand perfectly well what I was talking about. Even to you I can refer to this object as a ring.
Maybe… maybe, maybe, maybe, I can refer to this object as a ring not despite it has lost his essence but because, BECAUSE IT HAS LOST HIS ESSENCE!
Maybe this is what the thoughts of Wittgenstein are. After all, it’s a rather nonsensical thought.
(“My propositons 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.”)
Now, you may disagree. Or maybe you nod in agreement, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand it. Nothing wrong with that. I don’t want to discuss what Wittgenstein’s thoughts are. It would be a nice side effect if there would be a glimpse of recognition, but I only want to make clear that the way Wittgenstein came to his thoughts are like the ring. You might come close to these thoughts, you might come a little bit closer every single day, but you should realise that in the end there is only one moment that counts.
That is the moment when the ring breaks.

Convinced that the thoughts that are expressed in the Tractatus came in a similar sudden way to Wittgenstein, I want to give a suggestion when this happened to him. When did Ludwig Wittgenstein had these thoughts for the first time? When did he see clearly, as it were in a flash of light, the essence of his philosophy?
This was on the tenth of May 1915.

When Wittgenstein was nineteen he read “The Principles of Mathematics” by Bertrand Russell and from this day on he would focus on the fundamentals of logic. He was convinced that he offered an answer for the fundamentals in his Tractatus. (“On the other hand the truth of the thoughts communicated here seems to me unassailable and definitive. I am, therefore, of the opinion that problems have in essentials been finally solved.”)
 All his writings before the tenth of May 1915 should be considered as an account of his search for these essentials.
In his notebooks 1914-1916 Wittgenstein is continuously asking questions.
20.09.1914
“How can a function refer to a proposition? Always the old, old questions. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed with questions; just take it easy.”

He’s looking for answers, but he doesn’t seem to find them.
29.09.1914
“The solution to all my questions must be extremely simple.”

He gets frustrated.
09.10.1914
In all these considerations I am somewhere making some sort of  FUNDAMENTAL MISTAKE.”

Wittgenstein is desperately looking for a theory.
23.10.1914
“On the one hand my theory of logical portrayal seems to be the only possible one, on the other hand there seems to be an insoluble contradiction in it!”

In this process of his constant thinking he gives himself advise.
01.11.1914
“Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.
03.11.1914
“Only don’t lose the solid ground on which you have just been standing.”
15.11.1914
“Don’t worry about what you have already written. Just keep on beginning to think afresh as if nothing at all had happened yet.”

Wittgenstein thinks he knows what the problem is.
25.11.1914
“It is the dualism, positive and negative facts, that give me no peace. For such a dualism can’t exist. But how to get away from it?”

But he cannot find an answer.
15.04.1915
“I am almost inclined to give up all my efforts.”

By the ninth of May, he is on the verge of getting to the end.
09.05.1915
But it is clear that components of our propositions can be analysed
by means of a definition, and must be, if we want to approximate
to the real structure of the proposition. At any rate, then, there is a process
of analysis. And can it not now be asked whether this process comes to
an end? And if so: What will the end be?
If it is true that every defined sign signifies via its definitions then
presumably the chain of definitions must some time have an end.
But does not that of itself presuppose that the class of all propositions
is given us? And how do we arrive at it?”

And then, on the tenth of May, Wittgenstein writes nothing.
Of course, there are a lot of days in his notebooks when Wittgenstein writes nothing. But this is different. Wittgenstein writes “nothing”. That means, he writes the date in his notebook. And then nothing else. When his notebooks were published, the editors omitted this date as if it was insignificant. You can find the date only written in the facsimile. The importance of saying nothing or writing nothing is very often underestimated. You cannot find another entry in his notebooks where Wittgenstein writes nothing but the date.




The next day Wittgenstein tries to formulate the answer he found.
11.05.1915
“Is the logical sum of two tautologies a tautology in the first sense?
Is there really such a thing as the duality: tautology — contradiction?
The simple thing for us is: the simplest thing that we are acquainted
with. The simplest thing which our analysis can attain — it need
appear only as a protopicture, as a variable in our propositions—  that is
the simple thing that we mean and look for.”

Actually, Wittgenstein did write something on the tenth of May 1915.
It was in his secret diary.
10.05.1915
“MUCH excitement! Was close to CRYING!!! Feel broken and sick! Surrounded by vulgarity”
Although this “surrounded by vulgarity” fits into the general atmosphere of this entry, it must be noted that is a line which appears frequently in his secret diary. The first part however is very unique.
The original words in German:
“VIEL Aufregung! War nahe am WEINEN!!!! Fühle mich wie gebrochen und krank!“

Was close to crying (War nahe am weinen).
Tell me about it.

Until the tenth of May, Wittgenstein is thinking within the boundaries of the ring. Every word he writes is like a grain of sand that scrapes against the gold of the ring. Every grain of sand asks the question “Is it now?”
Every proposition can be questioned in this way.
For example: “I have a piece of paper in my hand.”
“Have you now?”, is a more logical question to be asked, more adapted to the particular proposition, but that would lead us to an infinite number of questions.
However, if we reformulate the above mentioned proposition as “It is true that I have a piece of paper in my hand.” Then actually, every proposition can be questioned with “Is it now?”.
Now this “now” is the most important word in the question because this “now” is the exact moment when I’m picking up a piece of paper. Or dropping it.

This ‘now’ is the most important word in the question.
“Is it now?”
Another grain of sand scraping against the ring.
Until the ring breaks, until Wittgenstein understands.
But then again, what is it he understands?
The answer to this question would have to be a nonsensical expression.
All that can be done is providing grains of sand, providing grains of sand as much as possible. That is what all his writings after the tenth of May are all about. They are nothing more, but also nothing less than invitations to think. Mind you, it is a special kind of thinking, it is a thinking that goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.”

With this in mind I would like to focus on Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics.
“The absolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs, would be one which everybody, independent of his tastes and inclinations, would necessarily bring about or feel guilty for not bringing about. And I want to say that such a state of affairs is a chimera”
I think there is little scope for interpretation here.
The absolute good is a chimera.
Categorical.
However, there might be more than one option in the way we deal with this chimera.
At this point Wittgenstein makes a distinction between his audience and himself
You will say: Well, if certain experiences constantly tempt us to attribute a quality to them which we call absolute or ethical value and importance, this simply shows that by these words we don't mean nonsense, that after all what we mean by saying that an experience has absolute value is just a fact like other facts and that all it comes to is that we have not yet succeeded in finding the correct logical analysis of what we mean by our ethical and religious expressions.
Now when this is urged against me I at once see clearly, as it were in a flash of light, not only that no description that I can think of would do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I would reject every significant description that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the ground of its significance. That is to say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions were not nonsensical because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that their nonsensicality was their very essence. For all I wanted to do with them was just to go beyond the world and that is to say beyond significant language. My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.
I think that it is safe to say that the whole tendency of Wittgenstein was to refute his own statements. There was always something to add in his writings, there was always something new in his writings, there was always something to change in his writings. He never finished writing.
Wittgenstein writes: “My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language.”
It must be obvious that without the negation of this sentence, we have to admit that it is not possible to write or talk Ethics. Without the negation of this sentence, the whole subject of ethics falls within the realm of relativism. Or perhaps even worse, if it would not be possible to negate this proposition, it would place ethics in the mystical region as Bertrand Russell pointed out in his introduction of the Tractatus. “The whole subject of ethics, for example, is placed by Mr. Wittgenstein in the mystical, inexpressible region”, he writes.
Now Mr. Wittgenstein was not at all happy with this introduction. He was convinced that Bertrand Russell didn’t understand him, so the odds that Mr. Russell is right about this are very poor. It is indeed possible to deny this proposition. But the real challenge is of course to reject the proposition in a Wittgensteinian way. Let’s not forget that it is our aim to formulate Wittgensteinian approaches. It seems like a catch 22. How to make a Wittgensteinian approach to moral philosophy while Wittgenstein himself claimed that all men who ever tried to do this was to run against the boundaries of language?

In order to do this, it’s necessary to understand Wittgenstein. There is no intellectual challenge to understand at all. But at the very same time, it’s a huge assignment.
 “What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.”
(Nicht eine Schwierigkeit des Verstandes, sondern des Willens ist zu überwinden.)

It’s not possible to explain Wittgenstein, it’s only possible to provide some grains of sand.
A grain of sand that keeps on nagging your brain.
Here is a grain of sand:
There are no boundaries of language. There are no boundaries because they exist.(1)






(1) When reading Wittgenstein, one must ask himself whether Wittgenstein is explaining a language game or playing a language game.


zaterdag 10 maart 2018

Paula Sémer


Vanmorgen sprak Paula Sémer mij toe tijdens het ontbijt.

"In hun binnenste weten alle vrouwen dat ze nog niet gelijkwaardig zijn aan mannen."
Paula Sémer (De Morgen).

Wat zou het vreemd zijn als mijn vrouw mij op één of andere ochtend zou zeggen:
"Diep in mijn binnenste weet ik dat ik niet gelijkwaardig ben aan jou."



zaterdag 3 maart 2018

John Maynard Keynes

I like quotes.

Here is a quote from Nietzsche.

I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that ‘immediate certainty,’ as
well as ‘absolute knowledge’ and the ‘thing in itself,’ involve a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO; we really ought to free ourselves from the
misleading significance of words.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond good and evil.

However, these days you're not making yourself very popular quoting Nietzsche.
More and more he gets associated with that villainous "postmodernist" discours.
No, better quote Hannah Arendt instead.
A quote which actually circulates the internet this moment.

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction [..] and the distinction between true and false [..] no longer exists.”

He or she who best succeeds in hiding the adjective from the noun is more likely to be quoted.
'the existing totalitarianism'

Another quote that attracted my attention this week was a quote from John Maynard Keynes.


'changing facts'.
Actually, it is far from certain that this quote can be attributed to Johan Maynard Keynes. How ironic! I have found a changing fact!