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Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein Books

Philosopher

On Certainty

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“Our craving for generality has [as one] source … our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is “purely descriptive.”

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Author:Ludwig Wittgenstein
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“In everyday language it very frequently happens that the same word has different modes of signification — and so belongs to different symbols — or that two words that have different modes of signification are employed in propositions in what is superficially the same way. Thus the word 'is' figures as the copula, as a sign for identity, and as an expression for existence; 'exist' figures as an intransitive verb like 'go', and 'identical' as an adjective; we speak of something, but also of something's happening. (In the proposition, 'Green is green'— where the first word is the proper name of a person and the last an adjective — these words do not merely have different meanings: they are different symbols.)”

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Book:Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
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“1. The world is everything that is the case. 2. What is the case (a fact) is the existence of states of affairs. 3. A logical picture of facts is a thought. 4. A thought is a proposition with a sense. 5. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.) 6. The general form of a proposition is the general form of a truth function, which is: [p, E, N(E)]. This is the general form of a proposition. 7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

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Book:Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
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“6.1 The propositions of logic are tautologies. 6.2 Mathematics is a logical method. The propositions of mathematics are equations, and therefore pseudo-propositions. 6.3 The exploration of logic means the exploration of everything that is subject to law. And outside logic everything is accidental. 6.4 All propositions are of equal value. 6.5 When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.”

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Book:Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
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“Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following examples, and in others: Giving orders, and obeying them— Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements— Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)— Reporting an event— Speculating about an event— Forming or teasing a hypothesis— Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams— Making up a story; and reading it— Singing catches— Guessing riddles— Making riddles— Making a joke; telling it— Solving a problem in practical arithmetic— Translating from one language into another— Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. —It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language. (Including the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)”

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Book:Philosophical Investigations
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“6.4 All propositions are of equal value. 6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value. If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental. It must lie outside the world. 6.42 So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics. Propositions can express nothing that is higher. 6.43 If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language. In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole. The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. 6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. 6.45 To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole—a limited whole. Feeling the world as a limited whole—it is this that is mystical.”

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Book:Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
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“One interesting thing is the idea that people have of a kind of science of Aesthetics. I would almost like to talk of what could be meant by Aesthetics. You might think Aesthetics is a science telling us what's beautiful - almost too ridiculous for words. I suppose it ought to include also what sort of coffee tastes well. I see roughly this - there is a realm of utterance of delight, when you taste pleasant food or smell a pleasant smell, etc., then there is a realm of Art which is quite different, though often you may make the same face when you hear a piece of music as when you taste good food. (Though you may cry at something you like very much.) Supposing you meet someone in the street and he tells you he has lost his greatest friend, in a voice extremely expressive of his emotion. You might say: 'It was extraordinarily beautiful, the way he expressed himself.' Supposing you then asked: 'What similarity has my admiring this person with my eating vanilla ice and like it?' To compare them seems almost disgusting. (But you can connect them by intermediate cases.) Suppose someone says 'But this is a quite different kind of delight.' But did you learn two meanings of 'delight'? You use the same word on both occasions. There is some connection between these delights. Although in the first case the emotion of delight would in our judgement hardly count.”

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Book:Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief
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“The great delusion of modernity, is that the laws of nature explain the universe for us. The laws of nature describe the universe, they describe the regularities. But they explain nothing. [Es ist die große Täuschung der Moderne, dass die Naturgesetze uns die Welt erklären. Die Naturgesetze beschreiben die Welt, sie beschreiben die Gesetzmäßigkeiten. Aber sie erklären uns nichts.]”

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Author:Ludwig Wittgenstein
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“All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much as the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.”

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Book:On Certainty
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“Ich glaube, daß der Mensch sein Leben ganz in allen seinen Handlungen von Eingebungen leiten lassen kann, und ich muß jetzt glauben, daß dies das höchste Leben ist. Ich weiß, daß ich so leben könnte, wenn ich wollte, wenn ich dazu den Mut hätte. Ich habe ihn aber nicht und muß hoffen daß mich das nicht zu Tode, das heißt ewig, unglücklich machen wird.”

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Book:Public and Private Occasions
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“La Ética, en tanto surge del deseo de decir algo acerca del significado último de la vida, del bien absoluto, de lo absolutamente valioso, no puede ser una ciencia. Lo que dice no le agrega nada a nuestro conocimiento en ningún sentido. Pero es un testimonio de una tendencia de la mente humana que yo, personalmente, no puedo si no respetar profundamente y que no ridiculizaría jamás, aunque mi vida dependiera de ello”

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Book:Lecture on Ethics
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