Abstract
In his work as an architect, Wittgenstein gained important insights that would lead him to a new philosophical thinking. They are contained in the notes originally published in the Wiener Ausgabe, which are of inestimable value for understanding the path leading to the Philosophical Investigations. His new orientation is centered around practical human action and the spatial dimension of thought. The human body, movements, and actions now come into play. In Wittgenstein’s new way of doing philosophy, one can see that his architectural work seems to have developed a spatial and object-oriented engagement with things in the world. In this chapter of this book, Gebauer shows how Wittgenstein integrated the physical space of action into his thinking, and how he incorporated the self into this world.
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Notes
- 1.
The translation by Frank P. Ramsey and C.K. Ogden is “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” The David Pears and Brian McGuiness translation conveys the active sense of schweigen in “pass over in silence.”
- 2.
See T 5.631: “There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas. If I wrote a book called The World as I found it, I should have to include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this being a method of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject; for it alone could not be mentioned in that book.”
- 3.
RoF, p. x; WA III, p. 262, note dated 19.6.1931.
- 4.
Stenius 1960, p. 92.
- 5.
Ibid, p. 92.
- 6.
- 7.
Malcolm 1993, p. 32.
- 8.
See Malcolm 1986, p. 65, with reference to the NB, September 1916: “What Wittgenstein could have been wanting to say in the Notebooks is that a thought is a structure in a certain medium, and a word-proposition is a structure in a different medium; and that these two structures can have the same sense, i.e. they can be the same proposition.” “A straightforward interpretation of his remarks is that all thoughts are composed of mental elements. No thoughts consist of words, i.e. physical signs.” (ibid.) “We see that in the Tractatus thoughts (Gedanken) are more basic than word-propositions (Sätze). A thought does not have to be expressed in a physical sentence. A thought is always a configuration of mental elements. This configuration depicts a possible state of affairs, which is the sense of the thought. If a thought is expressed in a physical sentence, what happens is that the sense of the thought is thought into the sentence. ‘And applied, thought, propositional sign, is a thought.’ (3.5) The physical sentence is given the same sense that the thought already has. Thus, there are two structures with the same sense. One structure is composed of mental elements, the other of physical signs (words). Since these two structures have the same sense, they are one and the same proposition.” (p. 66)
- 9.
N. Malcolm 1986, p. 66, “…what happens is that the sense of the thought is thought into the sentence.” Or, as Malcolm writes elsewhere: “…the Tractatus was heavily influenced by the notion that spoken and written sentences are clothings of thoughts” (p. 78). Wittgenstein himself wrote: “Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes.—The tacit conventions on which the understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated.” (T 4.002) “It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is.” (ibid.)
- 10.
“One could think of it as the ‘hidden’ philosophy of mind and of language of the Tractatus.” (Malcolm 1986, p. 73).
- 11.
Malcolm 1986, p. 73.
- 12.
Malcolm 1986, p. 99. Malcolm continued by saying that the image of a method of projection as a “bridge” between a propositional sign and reality was not his but Wittgenstein’s. The metaphor of the bridge appears, as Malcolm surmises, only in 1936 in Wittgenstein’s notes. See also Wittgenstein’s discussion of “the method of projection” in PG, p. 213 f.
- 13.
The normal direction of Wittgenstein’s picture theory is from the depiction to reality; it corresponds to the philosopher’s interest in achieving clarity of analytical thought through the use of an ideal language.
- 14.
A relation can be made up “of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, books)” (T 3.1431). This relation is something like a materialization of the proposition’s sense: Then the spatial arrangement of these things will express the sense of the proposition.” (ibid.) The relationship among the spatial objects is already defined, if possible, even before each linguistic act. It is part of the structure of thinking. There is already the fact “that ‘a’ stands to ‘b’ in a certain relation” (T 3.1432). The case is similar with the model of the traffic accident represented through the positioning of cars, houses, and people in the Paris court case (Malcolm, p. 115). Then language can depict the relationship between “a” and “b” as “aRb.”
- 15.
In Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, he embraced this broad understanding of the concept of picture. He then understood, for example, a facial expression, a mien, a view of the face from a particular perspective each as a picture. Of course, the picture concept no longer had the same meaning in his later work as it did in the Tractatus: the picture was no longer understood as a representation of internal structures of reality.
- 16.
Stenius 1960, p. 22.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
See Wittgenstein’s note in the foreword to the Tractatus, “the truth of the thoughts communicated here seems to me unassailable and definitive” (T, p. 28).
- 19.
T 1, note.
- 20.
See LE, p. 11. In this quotation, he does not explicitly mention the beauty of the world, but it is doubtless contained in these thoughts.
- 21.
See Kroß 1993.
- 22.
The Confessions was an important point of orientation for Wittgenstein throughout his life. It seems very possible that he had the Confessions in mind not only in the Philosophical Investigations but also when writing the Tractatus.
- 23.
- 24.
Cf. “The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.” (T 6.43)
- 25.
This idea was inspired by the work of Sven Rücker (2013).
- 26.
See Wittgenstein: WL, p. 24: “In science you can compare what you are doing with, say, building a house. You must first lay a firm foundation; once it is laid it must not again be touched or moved. In philosophy we are not laying foundations but tidying up a room, in the process of which we have to touch everything a dozen times.—The only way to do philosophy is to do everything twice.”
- 27.
Nietzsche describes this situation in one aphorism poetically, but unlike Wittgenstein, in drastic terms as well: “In the horizon of the infinite. – We have forsaken the land and gone to sea! We have destroyed the bridge behind us – more so, we have demolished the land behind us! Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean; it is true, it does not always roar, and at times it lies there like silk and gold and dreams of goodness. But there will be hours when you realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that has felt free and now strikes against the walls of this cage! Woe, when homesickness for the land overcomes you, as if there had been more freedom there – and there is no more ‘land’!” (F. Nietzsche 2001, Aphorism 124)
- 28.
Deleuze discussed the possibility of gaining poetic expressiveness in his essay “he stuttered…,“ although without reference to Wittgenstein (Deleuze 1993).
- 29.
Wittgenstein’s interest in an objectified expression of the self was clearly recognized by Paul Engelmann. The two friends shared an admiration for Uhland’s poem “Graf Eberhards Weißdorn.” After Engelmann had pointed the poem out to him, Wittgenstein wrote back: “The poem by Uhland is really magnificent. And this is how it is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be—unutterably—contained in the unexpressed!!” (Wittgenstein – Engelmann, dated 9.4.1917, p. 7) Engelmann also reported Wittgenstein’s enthusiasm for Mörike’s story “Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag,” adding the following observation: “And again his enthusiasm here is aroused by what is banal (in the highest sense of the word). The significance of that banality, which is closely bound up with the most central problem of the contemporary moral-aesthetic scene—that of the border between genuine and sham emotion—was discovered and discussed by Karl Kraus. (This is also Adolf Loos’ problem in architecture.) And it is always and only simplicity which, if successful, hits the very centre of the target.” (ibid., p. 86)
- 30.
On solipsism in Wittgenstein, see Birk 2006. Cf. Birk’s summary: “Despite the many different ways the topic is dealt with in the various phases of his work, it is always closely connected with the existentially motivated, ideological question of the true relationship between subject and world, a question that Wittgenstein responds to in different ways over the course of his life.” (p. 221)
- 31.
Schopenhauer’s argument that will objectifies itself in the world was fundamentally revised by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s Notebook entry (dated 15.10.1916) quoted above makes indirect reference to The World as Will and Representation (Vol. II, p. 256): “Just as the intellect presents itself physiologically as the function of an organ of the body; so it is to be regarded metaphysically as a work of the will, the objectification or visibility of which is the whole body. Therefore the will-to-know, objectively perceived, is the brain, just as the will-to-walk, objectively perceived, is the foot; the will-to-grasp, the hand; the will-to-digest, the stomach; the will-to-procreate, the genitals, and so on. This whole objectification, of course, exists ultimately only for the brain, as its perception; in such perception the will exhibits itself as organized body. But to the extent that the brain knows, it is not itself known; but is the knower, the subject of all knowledge. But in so far as it is known in objective perception, that is to say, in the consciousness of other things, and thus secondarily, it belongs, as an organ of the body to the objectification of the will. For the whole process is the self-knowledge of the will.…”
- 32.
This refinement of the argument appears in Wittgenstein’s later writings and is discussed further in Chapter 8.
- 33.
NB, 4.11.1916: “One cannot will without acting.”
- 34.
NB, 15.10.1916.
- 35.
Wittgenstein did not consider the idea of subsuming the subject’s relation to the world into the concept of “use” in the Tractatus, but he did recognize its importance, see NB, 11.9.1916: “The way in which language signifies is mirrored in its use.”
- 36.
The precise amount of time that elapsed depends on the date when one considers the Tractatus to have been completed: when his manuscript was finished, in 1919, or when it was published in 1921. In my opinion, the first point in time seems more accurate.
- 37.
On his professional training and work as a teacher, see the highly informative book by Konrad Wünsche (1985). This work can be seen as a key to understanding Wittgenstein’s development and personal situation in the period immediately following the end of World War I.
- 38.
- 39.
Rhees 1997, p. 84.
- 40.
Savickey 1999, p. 118.
- 41.
Iris Murdoch, herself deeply influenced by Wittgenstein, reported the views of Stuart Hampshire, which probably mirrored her own, in terms that strongly echo this description: “Hampshire suggests that we could abandon the image (dear to British empiricists) of a man as a detached observer, and should rather picture him as an object moving among other objects in a continual flow of intention into action. Touch and movement, not vision, should supply our metaphors: ‘Touching, handling and the manipulation of things are misrepresented if we follow the analogy of vision.’ Actions are, roughly, instances of moving things about in the public world. Nothing counts as an act unless it is ‘bringing about of a recognizable change in the world.’…What is ‘real’ is potentially open to different observers. The inner or mental world is inevitably parasitic upon the outer world, it has ‘a parasite and shadowy nature’.” (Murdoch 1999, p. 302)
- 42.
The concept of use qualities used here is derived from Arnold Gehlen’s concept of Umgangsqualitäten (see Gehlen 1988, Part II “Perception, Movement, Language,” especially the two sections: “Fundamental Circular Processes in Interaction,” pp. 119–128, and “The Further Development of Circular Processes,” pp. 129–136). There, however, the concept is translated simply as properties.
- 43.
See the essay by Thomas Sperling in Gebauer et al. (1982): “Daten, Pläne und Erläuterungen zum Haus Kundmanngasse 19,” pp. 10–75.
- 44.
When Wittgenstein first saw one of the rooms of the house he had built, he felt that the ceiling was too low. He demanded that it be raised immediately—with no concern for the costs, and despite the fact that the very slight difference in height was almost unnoticeable given the size of the room.
- 45.
- 46.
- 47.
This section traces the development of Wittgenstein’s thought following the chronology of the Wiener Ausgabe. Wittgenstein incorporated some of these citations into his later writings, but with slightly altered wording. The advantage of referring back to the WA is that it reveals the genesis of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy.
- 48.
In PI §12, Wittgenstein uses almost the same formulation, word for word.
- 49.
Cf. the discussion in WA II, p. 298.
- 50.
Cf. the reflections in Candlish 1995.
- 51.
Merleau-Ponty (1969) developed a conception in his extraordinarily differentiated posthumously published works, especially in The Visible and the Invisible, which is similar to many of the ideas in the Philosophical Investigations. But with regard to the point under discussion here, I would argue that Merleau-Ponty does not adequately consider the function of language in perception.
- 52.
See Gehlen 1988, particularly the section “Movement Symbolism,” p. 175–180.
- 53.
- 54.
Wittgenstein’s thoughts published in WA III include a series of observations on how negation could be taught through action; see, e.g.: “One tells a child: ‘No, not one more piece of sugar!’ and takes it away. In this way, the child learns the meaning of ‘not one.’” (WA III, p. 208) Somewhat later, he describes the act of holding the door as an “illustration” of the statement “You may not come in.” It is also “the act that I want by nature to carry out, regardless of all symbolism…(WA III, p. 226).
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Gebauer, G. (2017). From Seeing to Practice. In: Wittgenstein's Anthropological Philosophy. History of Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56151-6_3
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