The friend

 

I have a book that I cherish.
It is called "Café amical".

It is a booklet from my grandfather, it is a logbook of the house rent he paid. Every page says almost the same thing: "Received from Joseph Bosmans the sum of X francs as house rent for date x to date y".
The first page starts in March 1944 and the last page ends in March 1949.

(Note for the euro generation: fifty francs house rent corresponds to 1.25 euros house rent. Per month!)

I cherish the book because it reminds me of a truth. A text is only important to two people: the person who writes it and the person who endorses it.
During 1938, Wittgenstein wrote down his thoughts in a notebook similar to that of my grandfather. I suspect it was barely bigger. There are only a few sentences on one page, and there are barely 32 pages. If you were to copy the text and print it in A4 format, a few pages would be enough. It is an unpublished work and is known as "manuscript 160" (Ms - 160).
Despite his own claims to the contrary, Wittgenstein is not easy to read.
"Wenn dieses Buch geschrieben ist, wie es geschrieben sein sollte, so muß alles was ich sage leicht verständlich, ja trivial sein, schwer verständlich aber,warum ich es sage."
(Ms -160, 4)
"If this book is written as it should be written, everything I say should be easy to understand, even trivial, but difficult to understand why I say it."

Hey, I love that guy, but that shows a shocking lack of self-knowledge.
Sometimes I think about a text by Wittgenstein as I think about a text of mine that I reread over time: "What had that guy been drinking?"
What at the time of writing seemed as clear as the water of a gurgling mountain river, seems on closer inspection as cloudy as a slowly meandering stream at its mouth.
The countless texts written about Wittgenstein's work alone make this clear. If it were all that easy to understand, they would be completely unnecessary.
When you pick up manuscript 160, you soon feel the urge to say, "Oh My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me."
Sometimes it seems as if I understand Wittgenstein's interpreter better than Wittgenstein himself: "Language is a game, words usually do not have a single meaning. The concrete meaning is expressed in the use of the word. Meaning not only requires a shared definition but also a shared "form of life". Et cetera, et cetera."
As an experiment, there is no doubt that you could set up a course by selecting some of Wittgenstein's "Bemerkungen", rearranging them a bit, and then turning them into a continuous text.
But what do we do with all those other "Notes"?
Wouldn't it be much more convenient if we had a paper shredder available?
Why does that feeling of unease persist when you read Wittgenstein himself instead of his interpreters?
What prevents him from writing as clearly as his interpreters?

"Es handelt sich nicht um einem Konsens der Meinungen sondern der Lebensformen."
(Ms-160, 26)
“It is not a matter of consensus on opinions but on forms of life.”
That is a clear position. Before we continue, perhaps consider a similar - and no, that is not coincidental at all - proposition of Nietzsche.
Es genügt noch nicht, um sich einander zu verstehen, dass man die selben Worte gebraucht: man muss die selben Worte auch für die selbe Gattung innerer Erlebnisse gebrauchen, man muss zuletzt seine Erfahrung mit einander gemein haben.
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 268)
"It is not sufficient to use the same words in order to understand one another: we must also employ the same words for the same kind of internal experiences, we must in the end have experiences IN COMMON."

When we come across such a statement, we tend to give our minds some rest. Any problematic aspects are covered with the cloak of love. Not so with Wittgenstein.
What is a consensus?
What are life forms?
In his Ms-160, 22 Wittgenstein makes the problematic point clear with a small drawing of almost nothing: A definition of a circle with two arrows (a clockwork?) by means of two circles with an arrow.

 

What benefit does such a definition bring?
"Consider as an example the question “What is time?” as Saint Augustine and others have asked it. At first sight what this question asks for is a definition, but then immediately the question arises: "What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?"
(The blue book, proper technical reference reads Ts-309, 41-3)
What is a consensus?
WHEN is there a consensus?
Usually we prefer an armed peace if we have to judge about it: "let's ignore it." After all, what is the alternative?

(Cartoon posted on the twitter account of "the British Wittgenstein Society". The basis is a well-known cartoon from the time of Dreyfus, but I have no information about the origin of the adapted inscriptions.)

In order to make a Wittgensteinian analysis of concepts such as language games, forms of life or consensus, we are of course forced to remain within Wittgenstein's own literature. After all, nothing can assure us that the secondary literature is right. If we are condemned to do so, there may be a preliminary consensus (an agreement between you and me) that Wittgenstein's statements should be seen in context. That is problematic.
"On his death in 1951, the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein left behind a significant volume of some 20,000 pages which were written between 1913 and 1951. This is called "Wittgenstein's Nachlass" and contains Wittgenstein's philosophical notebooks, manuscripts, typescripts and dictations."
(https://wab.uib.no/wab_nachlass.page/)
That is problematic because you (or I) can always say: "but there he wrote this" and "there he wrote that". So be it.

"Mein Ziel ist es zu beweisen, daß das, was ich schreibe, nicht wahr ist."
(Ms-160, 33)
“My goal is to prove that what I write is not true.”
When you are confronted with this proposition, you decide after some consideration that this is a beautiful paradox. Not so for Wittgenstein, however.
Wittgenstein ends up in an endless wave movement, he sways from sliding towards relativism to renouncing relativism, from sliding towards relativism to renouncing relativism...
And again, and again, and again....

〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰
And down:
Eine Definition geben ist nicht wichtiger als feststellen, daß wir keine Definition zu geben wissen.
(Ms-160, 17)
"Providing a definition is not more important than realizing that we don't know how to provide a definition."

​And up:
"Aber es ist doch gewiß, daß man einen Körper || ein Ding irgendwie durch seine Erscheinungen definieren kann! Exakter aber als einfach so: “Wenn etwas so ausschaut, sich so anfühlt, etc., so ist es eine Lampe”.
(Ms -160, 24)
"But it is certain that one can somehow define a body || a thing by its appearance! But more precisely than just: “If something looks like this, feels like this, etc., then it is a lamp”

For Wittgenstein these waves are not paradoxes, they are contradictions.
Wittgenstein is fully aware that he is at sea, he knows that it is only a matter of time before he contradicts himself again. Moreover, he sees that you are also at sea and that it is only a matter of time before you realize that. That moment is the moment when the phrase “we are at sea” that he shouts to you will hit you amidships.
"What's the point in throwing that at me? Of course we're at sea!"

"Mein Ziel ist es zu beweisen, daß das, was ich schreibe, nicht wahr ist."
(Ms-160, 33)
"My goal is to prove that what I write is not true."
Now, after thorough research on your part, you might say, "I can help you with that. Wittgenstein didn't write that at all. Ms-160, 33 doesn't exist at all!"
And that's true, I just made it up.
If Stephen Hawking can do that, then so can I.
"Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this century, said, “The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.” What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant."
(Stephen W. Hawking, A brief history of time, 185)




“The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.”
Small problem: Wittgenstein didn't write that anywhere!
(@Stephen: He wants to transcend language.)
That being said, unfortunately I cannot accept your helping hand.
“My goal is to prove that what I write is not true.”
I can't call on your help at all.
After all, if I prove something, then it is true for obvious reasons.

And then, suddenly I get stuck on Ms-160, 27
"Ich will nicht Vorurteile || ein Vorurteil der Meinung sondern der Technik beseitigen. Erschrick z.B. nicht prinzipiell vor einem Widerspruch".
"I don't want to remove any prejudices || a prejudice about the opinion, I want to remove the technique. For example, don't be put off by a contradiction on principle"

 

 
"What Wittgenstein wants", I am attracted to it like a bee to a flower.
Every consensus must give way!
A page further it sounds even better.
"Kann ich Dich nicht bewegen, unter den veränderten Umständen z.B. einen Widerspruch nicht als Zeichen einer tödlichen logischen Krankheit des Kalküls anzusehen?"
(Ms -160, 28-29)
"Can't I persuade you, under the changed circumstances, for example not to see a contradiction as a sign of a fatal logical disease of calculation?"

The possibility that a paradox can become a contradiction at any time is a trivial idea. Why am I even writing that?