From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Mon Sep 22 2003 - 11:26:10 BST
Hi Matt,
A brief comment on something you mentioned last week.
> Rortyans read Wittgenstein as not saying that the silence we reach says there is a wall with
something special on the other side, but that the silence means "mu", it means we've asked a bad
question, conducted a bad line of inquiry.
This is something of a debated question in Wittgenstein studies, often referred to by the comment,
'was he trying to whistle it?' - ie, that at the end of the Tractatus, when he says we cannot speak
about the mystical/value/ ethical realm, was he holding open the option of there being other ways to
express/access that realm?
Some interpreters say that he was, some that he wasn't. I am firmly in the former camp, largely on
the basis of various other comments he made, and the integrity between his pattern of life and his
thinking. (The reason why I have never felt bothered enough about Heidegger to explore him in
depth).
Of course the deep question is whether this attitude (whistling or not whistling) carried through
into his mature work. Again this is disputed, but I would say that it was. In other words, that his
later understanding of language, although it was much richer than the picture theory of language,
was still governed by the inexpressibility of the mystical.
To refer to the point about the wall, Wittgenstein comments that although it is an urge to run up
against the boundaries of language, he has a profound respect for that urge. It is not at all that
he thinks it (necessarily) a waste of time.
This could feed in to a conversation about transcendence, if you were minded to have one. Did I ever
send you my MA thesis on this topic?
Cheers
Sam
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