Talking About Wittgenstein

Reading time ~5 minutes

My interest in Wittgenstein was developed further through television. There were a few programmes about his life and work which were aimed at a broad audience and I found them very absorbing. The following is a collection of those programmes that can now be found on the web.

In Christopher Sykes’ BBC Horizon documentary Wittgenstein is brought to life through anecdotes from people that knew him, his letters to friends and commentaries on his work:

A series of programmes that I always looked forward to was the BBC’s The Great Philosophers with Brian Magee. The series covered the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, among others, and ended with a discussion with John Searle on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. In their discussion they cover Wittgenstein’s legacy; ranging from his early work, the Tractatus, to his posthumously published, Philosophical Investigations. Although the thought of two philosophers in deep discussion about Wittgenstein may feel daunting Brian Magee keeps the discussion at a level that is very accessible to the the non-academic:

The quality of the writing in the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations were mentioned in the discussion and the following sections show the difference in approach and style between the two works. First a section from the Tractatus that discusses language and the nature of philosophy:

4.001   The totality of propositions is the language.

4.002   Man possesses the capacity of constructing languages, in which every sense can be expressed, without having an idea how and what each word means—just as one speaks without knowing how the single sounds are produced.

Colloquial language is a part of the human organism and is not less complicated than it. From it it is humanly impossible to gather immediately the logic of language.

Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.

The silent adjustments to understand colloquial language are enormously complicated.

4.003   Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language.

(They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)

And so it is not to be wondered at that the deepest problems are really no problems.

The following section is from the Philosophical Investigation and discusses again language and the nature of philosophy:

122 .  A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words.—Our grammar is lacking in this sort of perspicuity. A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in 'seeing connexions'. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases. The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things. (Is this a 'Weltanschauung'?)

123 . A philosophical problem has the form: "I don't know my way about".

124 . Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is. It also leaves mathematics as it is, and no mathematical discovery can advance it. A "leading problem of mathematical logic" is for us a problem of mathematics like any other.

125 . It is the business of philosophy, not to resolve a contradiction by means of a mathematical or logico-mathematical discovery, but to make it possible for us to get a clear view of the state of mathematics that troubles us: the state of affairs before the contradiction is resolved. (And this does not mean that one is sidestepping a difficulty.) The fundamental fact here is that we lay down rules, a technique, for a game, and that then when we follow the rules, things do not turn out as we had assumed. That we are therefore as it were entangled in our own rules.

This entanglement in our rules is what we want to understand (i.e. get a clear view of). It throws light on our concept of meaning something. For in those cases things turn out otherwise than we had meant, foreseen. That is just what we say when, for example, a contradiction appears: "I didn't mean it like that."
The civil status of a contradiction, or its status in civil life: there is the philosophical problem.

126 . Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.—Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.

One might also give the name "philosophy" to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions.

127 . The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose.

It would have been fascinating, although daunting, to have attended one of Wittgenstein’s lectures at Cambridge University. His rooms were in Trinity College and they had a large view of the sky and also of Cambridge roofs. They were were sparsely furnished and extremely clean with a deck chair, or two, and virtually nothing else. His lectures were given without preparation and without notes. He would openly struggle with his own thoughts about a philosophical problem and passionately question his own thinking as well as those of the students. The closest example of what it would have been like experiencing one of his lectures is from Derek Jarmin’s film Wittgenstein:

Although Wittgenstein never committed to any formal religion he had a lifelong interest in religion and claimed: “I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.” In television series Sea of Faith Don Cupitt gives a different aspect on Wittgenstein’s life and work. The clip starts with a short introduction about previous religious thinkers:

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