La condition humaine, 1933 by René Magritte, National Gallery of Art
But Wittgenstein had a point. If we are interested in the nature of representation in general, then it does not help to presuppose the operation of representation at one level to explain it at the next level. We will have only created an endless regress. Wittgenstein continued: “In order to be able to represent logical form, we should have to be able to station ourselves with propositions somewhere outside logic, that is to say outside the world” (TLP 4.12). And that we cannot do: “Propositions cannot represent logical form” (TLP 4.121).
Instead, Wittgenstein introduced a new notion—that language can show how it relates to the world, even if it cannot say so: “Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it” (TLP 4.121). And: “A picture cannot depict its pictorial form: it displays it” (TLP 2.172). Show, mirror, and display stand in contrast to say, depict, and represent. A picture shows it is about a scene by resembling it. A sentence shows it is about a fact by sharing a logical form with it. Two sentences show that they are about the same object by it being named in both.
This notion of showing is also used to account for logical truths. Tautologies are not true because they correctly describe the world. Rather, they show by their structure that they are always true. Truth tables display this structure.
Wittgenstein claimed that: “What can be shown, cannot be said” (TLP 4.1212). While he did not put it this way, it seems plausible to hold that what can be shown is roughly what is known a priori, that is, prior to experience. And what is said is what must be known a posteriori, that is, after, or based on, experience. Thus, Wittgenstein claimed that conceptual truths cannot be treated as experiential truths.
Pseudo-propositions
According to Wittgenstein, attempts to say what can only be shown lead to nonsense. Nonsense (in German: Unsinn) is different from what is senseless or lacking sense (in German: sinnlos). Tautologies and contradictions lack sense. However, nonsense is created when a sentence appears to be saying something about the world, but it is not. By calling a sentence “nonsense,” Wittgenstein meant to criticize it. Tautologies and contradictions, because of their structure, do not even appear to be about the world. They are not pictures.
Wittgenstein had no problem with sentences like “There are dogs” or even “There are unicorns.” While the latter is false, it is still attempting to describe the world. But he had problems with the sentence, “There are objects” (TLP 4.1272). Here we are not so much describing the world as characterizing our conceptual scheme. The structure of the sentence gives it the same appearance as the previous two sentences, so it appears to be saying something about the world—true or false. The problem, according to Wittgenstein, is that it employs a “formal concept” (TLP 4.126), rather than a proper descriptive concept, which, like “blue,” is part of a genuine proposition that tells us something about the world. A formal concept gets at the form of our conceptual scheme; it is used to try to say something about our conceptual scheme, and so it produces only a pseudo-proposition.
However, assertions involving formal concepts, like “object,” “property,” and “fact,” can be expressed indirectly instead. Sentences such as “There are dogs,” and “Fido is a dog” show that there are objects, since names are part of our language and names pick out objects (4.126). “Greenness is a property” is nonsense, but the sentence “Grass is green,” shows that greenness is a property because “is green” functions as a predicate in this and other sentences. Our conceptual scheme is shown by what we say and by how we describe the world. But we can’t describe our conceptual scheme.
Philosophy
Wittgenstein thought that philosophy largely consists of pseudo-propositions that appear to make descriptive claims about the world, but do not: “Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently, we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language” (TLP 4.003 and Preface). The few examples that Wittgenstein gave do not seem especially helpful, such as “whether the good is more or less identical than the beautiful.”
But we could consider a question like: “What is the meaning of life?” Certainly this does not ask us a question about the world, like: “What is the meaning of that smoke?” “Smoke means fire—we better call 911!” But it looks like it does. So it is a pseudo-question.
Wittgenstein went on to say: “All of philosophy is a critique of language” (TLP 4.0031). It might seem that “meaning” (as in “meaning of life”) names some single thing or activity that we should try to discover: What is it? This contributes to the feeling that there is some secret to the meaning of life. And it may seem very mysterious and frustrating if we are unable to discover such meaning. But, in this particular context, “meaning” does not name a particular thing or activity. Our language misleads us into looking for some secret thing which life means.
Once we realize that “meaning” is not functioning here as a name of something, we can consider other possibilities. Perhaps what we really want to know is: “What things or activities make life meaningful?” This seems much more answerable, if not quite so mysterious and profound. In a sense, we have offered a critique of language by noting that what appeared to be a name, really functions as an adjective.
This illustrates Wittgenstein’s comment on the nature of philosophy: “Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity…Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions’, but rather in the clarification of propositions” (TLP 4.112). It is not, then, the job of the philosopher to figure out what makes life meaningful—any person can reflect on that. Perhaps enjoyment and a sense of accomplishment are important components of a meaningful life. But, it is the job of philosophy to keep us from asking the wrong question, “What is the meaning of life?” which would lead us astray. “The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said…and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give meaning to certain signs in his proposition.” That is just what we have done with the question “What is the meaning of life?” Wittgenstein continued: “Although it would not be satisfying to the other person—he would not have the feeling we were teaching him philosophy—this method would be the only strictly correct one” (TLP 6.53).
I leave it to the reader to decide if this is how a philosopher should proceed.
The Great War
Between 1911 and 1913, Wittgenstein studied with Russell, working on a set of philosophical problems formulated largely by Russell. These were the problems that comprised the Tractatus as we have discussed it so far.
In September of 1913, Wittgenstein spent a month visiting Norway with a Cambridge friend, David Pinsent. Initially, the two had gotten to know one another because Pinsent served as a subject for Wittgenstein in some experiments he was doing on the psychology of rhythm. Their bond was cemented by a strong mutual interest in music. The previous year they had visited Iceland together, and now Wittgenstein invited Pinsent to accompany him on another trek; at the last minute, they decided on Norway.
Apparently, Wittgenstein liked what he found there. He called Norway “the ideal place to work in” because it provided “peace and simplicity in the highest degree.” He decided he needed time away from Russell and Cambridge to reflect on his logic for himself. Pinsent recorded in his diary:
…he swears he can never do his best except in exile…. The great difficulty about his particular kind of work is that—unless he absolutely settles all the foundations of logic—his work will be of little value to the world. He has settled many difficulties, but there are still others unsolved…. There is nothing between doing really great work and doing practically nothing…. So he is off to Norway in about 10 da
ys!
By the way, Pinsent, who trained as a test pilot during WWI, was killed in a flying accident in May of 1918. Wittgenstein dedicated the Tractatus to his friend’s memory.
Russell tried to talk Wittgenstein out of his plan to settle in Norway: “I said it would be dark, & he said he hated daylight. I said it would be lonely, & he said he prostituted his mind talking to intelligent people. I said he was mad & he said God preserve me from sanity. (God certainly will)” (DG, p. 91). So off he went to live and work in virtual isolation for nearly a year.
What we know of Wittgenstein’s work in Norway is largely due to the following circumstance. When he was at Cambridge, Wittgenstein had briefly attended lectures by G. E. Moore (1873-1958), who was a University Lecturer in Moral Sciences. Though Wittgenstein did not like the lectures, he had come to like Moore and invited him to visit Norway during the Easter break to discuss philosophy. It is an indication of the high regard in which Wittgenstein was held that Moore, a prominent philosopher in his own right, accepted the invitation. While there, he took extensive notes of Wittgenstein’s developing ideas, including the importance of showing.
After Wittgenstein’s father had passed away in 1913, Wittgenstein stood to inherit a fortune. He felt an obligation to devote a portion of this windfall to charitable purposes. In the summer of 1914, he anonymously donated a sum currently equivalent to about half a million dollars to various artists, chosen by an editor whom Wittgenstein trusted. Among the 17 who benefited were three Austrians who became famous in their fields: the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who received roughly $100,000 in contemporary conversion; the Austrian painter, Oscar Kokoschka, who got roughly $25,000; and the architect Adolf Loos, who was the recipient of about $10,000.
When World War I broke out in August of 1914, Wittgenstein volunteered to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Army. A hernia had exempted him from the draft, but he apparently saw military service as a test of his soul. William James, a writer whom Wittgenstein greatly admired, wrote: “No matter what a man’s frailties might otherwise be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffers it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.” Wittgenstein’s sister Hermine wrote that “he had the intense wish to assume some heavy burden and to perform some task other than purely intellectual work.” Wittgenstein encountered some additional burdens, very different from what he had expected. In his diary, he wrote: “The men of the unit with few exceptions hate me because I am a volunteer….And this is the one thing I still do not know how to take. There are malicious and heartless people here. It is almost impossible to find a trace of humanity in them” (GT, p. 69). But after the war, he told his nephew: “It [the war] saved my life; I don’t know what I’d have done without it” (WL, pp. 211 & 204). In fact, he continued to wear his uniform and to carry a rucksack for months after he was discharged.
During the war, Wittgenstein kept a notebook, in which he continued to write about his philosophical problems, and at the same time, he kept a personal diary, where he reflected on his circumstances and inner life. As a child, he had learned to write fluently in code that reversed the alphabet. Now he again put that skill to use. He wrote his personal reflections in code to keep them from being easily read by his fellow soldiers.
For the first several months, Wittgenstein was assigned to an artillery unit but saw no action. The only event of note was his discovery of Leo Tolstoy’s book, The Gospel in Brief. As Russell later retold the story, Wittgenstein went into a small bookshop, “which, however, seemed to contain nothing but picture postcards. However, he went inside and found that it contained just one book: Tolstoy on the Gospels. He bought it merely because there was no other. He read it and re-read it, and thenceforth had it always with him, under fire and at all times.”
Wittgenstein’s near obsession with this book is well documented. His fellow soldiers nicknamed him “the one with the Gospel,” and he later wrote that “this book virtually kept me alive.”
In late March of 1916, Wittgenstein was transferred to the front, and by June of that year, his unit came under heavy attack. He began to reflect on a wider range of issues than had preoccupied him in Cambridge and Norway, including God, fate, will, good and evil, the purpose of life and death. Wittgenstein recorded these new topics and lines of thinking in his notebook. In fact, he noted this transformation when he wrote: “Yes, my work has broadened out from the foundations of logic to the nature of the world” (NB, p. 79).
Consider three key remarks near the end of the Tractatus:
The world is independent of my will. (TLP 6.373)
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….The world of the happy man is a different one from the world of the unhappy man. (TLP 6.43)
…If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.… (TLP 6.4311)
Taken in the context of the Tractatus, it is very hard to see why Wittgenstein made these assertions, or why he thought them plausible. But taken in the context of his experiences at the front, as recorded in the coded remarks in his diary, they make a great deal more sense.
The antecedents for these propositions in the Tractatus appear in the Notebooks beginning in July, as Wittgenstein was under attack. We know this from the coded diary, where he wrote that he was first “shot at” on April 29, 1916. A week later, he was “in constant danger of my life” (May 6, 1916). The Russian army’s Brusilov Offensive began on June 4, 1916, and two days later Wittgenstein recorded: “Colossal exertions in the last month” (GT, pp. 69-74). And this mortal danger continued through the end of July. During this time, he was constantly coaching himself about how to hold up under such difficult conditions that were totally out of his control.
After he was shot at, God and death were first mentioned in the Notebooks (May 6 and July 5, respectively: NB, pp. 72-73). In the coded diary, he had been calling on God regularly since he entered the service, but it was apparently mortal danger that propelled these topics into the Tractatus.
Perhaps only in such extreme circumstances could Wittgenstein find it plausible to say that the world was independent of his will. This assertion was expressed in the Notebooks on July 5, 1916, preceded with: “I cannot bend the happenings of the world to my will: I am completely powerless.” Then Wittgenstein went on stoically to recommend: “I can only make myself independent of the world—and so in a certain sense master it—by renouncing any influence on happenings.” The remark takes life as a form of self-coaching, but then after reflection takes on a metaphysical cast—“the world is independent of my will.”
Having renounced the role of the will in changing the facts of the world, Wittgenstein retained a role for the will in changing his view of those facts. He had earlier reflected (GT, p. 70): “In constant danger of my life….From time to time I despair. This is the fault of a wrong view of life.” Writing in the coded diary on July 29, 1916, he equated sin with “a false view of life.” And on the same day in his philosophical Notebooks, he stated twice what would become proposition 6.43: “The world of the happy man is a different one from the world of the unhappy man.” Wittgenstein encouraged himself to be happy rather than unhappy in his circumstances as they were. This was a matter of will: “A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death” (NB, p. 74).
We know that Wittgenstein took no consolation in the notion of an afterlife: “Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended…” (TLP 6.4312). But he sought something similar in the present. Tolstoy offered this epigram to one of the chapters of his Gospels in Brief: “Therefore true life is to be lived in the present.”
In the philosophical Notebooks, Wittgenstein tells himself (July 8, NB, p.
75): “For life in the present there is no death….If by eternity is understood not infinite temporal duration but non-temporality, then it can be said that a man lives eternally if he lives in the present.” And (July 14, p. 76): “Whoever lives in the present lives without hope and fear.” This self-coaching in the midst of battle then became proposition 6.4311 in the Tractatus: “If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”
The report that accompanied the Silver Medal for Valor that Wittgenstein was awarded in 1917 for actions during the first days of the offensive, proved that his self-coaching was successful:
Volunteer Wittgenstein was attached to the Observer officer during the engagements…from 4-6 vi 16. Ignoring the heavy artillery fire on the casement and the exploding mortar bombs he observed the discharge of the mortars and located them. The Battery in fact succeeded in destroying two of the heavy-caliber mortars by direct hits, as was confirmed by prisoners taken. On the Battery Observation Post…he observed without intermission in the drumfire, although I several times shouted to him to take cover. By this distinctive behavior he exercised a calming effect on his comrades. (WL, p. 242)
As for the fears he expressed on May 5, 1916: “Will I endure it??” he had shown that he could.
After the halt of the offensive in late 1916, Wittgenstein was withdrawn from the front and sent to train as an officer in Olmütz, Moravia. There, beginning in October of that year, he made friends with Paul Engelmann (1891-1965), a resident of the town who had been discharged from the army. It was in conversations over two months with Engelmann and three of his friends that Wittgenstein deepened his new lines of thinking and ultimately incorporated them into the Tractatus.
Simply Wittgenstein Page 4