Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
I just worked my way through a book. Yeah, that's right, reading. Let me share with you some of my favorite parts. It starts off, on the dedication page, with a quote:
"...and whatever a man knows, whatever is not mere rumbling and roaring that he has heard, can be said in three words." ---Kürnberger
Then there's an introduction, where Wittgenstein immediately earns a place as my personal hero:
"Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it---or at least similar thoughts.---So it is not a textbook.---Its purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it."
"I do not wish to judge how far my efforts coincide with those of other philosophers... and the reason why I give no sources is that it is a matter of indifference to me whether the thoughts that I have had have been anticipated by someone else."
So he goes into his ideas, which are pretty darn complicated, but occasionally he draws succinct conclusions from them. It all becomes more meaningful if you follow his lead, but sometimes things work as sound bites out of context. Ponder these disconnected weird ones:
"Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly."
"We cannot infer the events of the future from those of the present. Superstition is nothing but belief in the causal nexus."
"Nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye."
"A right-hand glove could be put on the left hand, if it could be turned round in four-dimensional space."
In the very end, he starts to get to big-picture stuff that's less technical and almost gets poetic:
"The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both are right and both are wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained."
"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."
"We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer."
"There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical."
To close, he starts a new chapter with the following sentence:
"What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."
And there's nothing after that.
"...and whatever a man knows, whatever is not mere rumbling and roaring that he has heard, can be said in three words." ---Kürnberger
Then there's an introduction, where Wittgenstein immediately earns a place as my personal hero:
"Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it---or at least similar thoughts.---So it is not a textbook.---Its purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it."
"I do not wish to judge how far my efforts coincide with those of other philosophers... and the reason why I give no sources is that it is a matter of indifference to me whether the thoughts that I have had have been anticipated by someone else."
So he goes into his ideas, which are pretty darn complicated, but occasionally he draws succinct conclusions from them. It all becomes more meaningful if you follow his lead, but sometimes things work as sound bites out of context. Ponder these disconnected weird ones:
"Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly."
"We cannot infer the events of the future from those of the present. Superstition is nothing but belief in the causal nexus."
"Nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye."
"A right-hand glove could be put on the left hand, if it could be turned round in four-dimensional space."
In the very end, he starts to get to big-picture stuff that's less technical and almost gets poetic:
"The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both are right and both are wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained."
"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."
"We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer."
"There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical."
To close, he starts a new chapter with the following sentence:
"What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."
And there's nothing after that.