Compared with the Preface of the Tractatus the Preface of PI shows some striking similarities as well as differences. (I'll refer to the former as 'Preface#1' , to the latter as ' Preface#2'.) I'm sure I'm not the first to notice these but it seems useful to try and collect them in one place: it might turn out that Preface#2 itself "could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against the background of [W.'s] old way of thinking." Most introductions to the Investigations emphasize its reactive nature (see e.g. Schroeder 2006, p. 123). I think it can be nicely demonstrated with the (obviously restricted) example of the Prefaces that, on the one hand, there are some persistent features and how, on the other hand, the reaction happens on a performative level as well. (Not closely related to the Preface but still important to note here, as e.g. (Lugg 2000, p. 7) does, that the motto of PI taken from Nestroy's Der Schützling didn't make it to the monolingual English edition.)
Let's take the similarities first. In both cases W. defines the target audience: readers who gain pleasure from reading and understanding the book (Preface#1) and readers whose thoughts are fertilized by the ones contained in the book (Preface#2). (It might be worth noting here that W. throughout his life remained fairly confident that no one really understood what he was doing.)
In both cases W. mentions a few influential thinkers to whom he's indebted (Frege and Russell in Preface#1 and Ramsey and Sraffa in Preface#2) but, more interestingly, he is quick to add that "it is a matter of indifference to me whether the thoughts that I have had have been anticipated by someone else" (Preface#1), and that "[i]f my remarks do not bear a stamp which marks them as mine, - I do not wish to lay any further claim to them as my property" (Preface#2). (I believe that in that background of these huffy remarks we might expect to find a wound sustained from academia in 1914 when his notes on logic weren't accepted as a BA thesis for lack of a Preface (!) and notes. For more on this see for example McGuinness 2008, letter no. 41 to G. E. Moore, 7.5.1914, p. 73)
Another interesting feature shared by both Prefaces is the author's dissatisfaction with his work. In the case of the Tractatus the dissatisfaction has two sources: (1) that in the end the solutions offered in the book show "how little is achieved when these problems are solved" (note that this is not so much a shortcoming on W.'s side but rather a shortcoming of philosophy) and (2) that he hasn't always managed to find the best way of expressing his ideas (to hit the nail exactly on the head). The second (more substantial) worry has its counterpart in Preface#2 in the extended album-metaphor: the effects of poor (or, at best, mediocre) draughtsmanship take the place of failing to hit the nail exactly on the head. This, together with admitting that despite his best efforts he was unable to weld his results into a whole in which the thoughts "proceed from one subject to another in a natural order and without breaks", I think, explains why the Investigations, according to W., is not a good book.
The most striking (and most significant) difference between the two Prefaces, I think, are the radically different emphases. While in the Tractatus we get a fairly comprehensive summary and evaluation of the main aims, means and results of the book (e.g. the genesis of philosophical problems, the sense/nonsense dichotomy, the importance of finding the solution for all significant questions etc.), such things are hardly mentioned in Preface#2 . Instead of substantial claims regarding the content of the Investigations what we have here nothing more than a short and incomplete list of to-be-discussed subjects ("the concepts of meaning, of understanding, of a proposition, of logic, the foundations of mathematics, states of consciousness, and other things"). Apart from this one sentence the rest of the Preface consists entirely of formal considerations. W. talks about the reasons for, and purposes of writing the book, i.e. quieting his vanity stung by the misuse/misunderstanding of his work, the discovery of "grave mistakes" in the Tractatus, the wish to "bring light into one brain or another" and to stimulate readers to their own thoughts.
Finally and perhaps most importantly W. confesses that despite his best efforts the best he could write "would never be more than philosophical remarks." The album-like nature of the Investigations is, according to the author, "connected with the very nature of the investigation." It is temping to understand this as a reference to the diverse list of contents quoted earlier (the concepts of meaning, understanding, proposition etc.), but I don't think this is the case. It seems to me that we have here a preliminary remark on method. That is to say the fragmented nature of the Investigations is far from being a result of the diversity of its subject matter: in fact W. himself says that "[t]he same or almost the same points were always being approached".
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Monday, 23 March 2009
Monday, 16 March 2009
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Haller on Spengler and Wittgenstein
Recently I've been reading a paper entitled 'Was Wittgenstein Influenced by Spengler?' by Rudolf Haller published in his Questions on Wittgenstein. The author is best known for his seminal work on Austrian philosophy including W.. This collection of essays consists of nine short pieces (almost) each of which attempts to answer one particular question concerning Wittgensteinian philosophy.
The answer to the question whether W. was (profoundly) influenced by Spengler is, not surprisingly for the contemporary reader, affirmative. However, the fact that the influence seems so obvious to us doesn't mean that it was recognized from the beginning. In fact, Haller starts his discussion by noting that "until the discovery of the notes that are now collected in the Vermischte Bemerkungen no one would have associated Wittgenstein with Spengler in any way [...]". (Haller 1988, p.74) Janik & Toulmin and von Wright are mentioned as perceptive interpreters who did recognize the connection (in the form of a shared, pessimistic attitude, for example) but failed to infer to an actual influence from it. (I think one can mention in defense of von Wright that W. himself seems to suggest a shared critical Einstellung or Zeitgeist rather than a particular 'line of thinking' by referring to the notion of 'Weltanschauung' along with the name 'Spengler' in the precursors of PI §122 (e.g. TS 220, §100).)
Before going into the details of Spengler's actual influence on W. Haller spends some time articulating the above mentioned cultural pessimism shared by both authors and what he thinks is 'dubious' about this agreement. He points out that W., like Spengler, obviously considered himself a Kulturkritiker (see e.g. the prefaces to PR, PI, several remarks in CV etc.). This however, so Haller's argument goes, doesn't explain why W. should have considered Spengler as influential to his own thinking. Another puzzling circumstance is that the Decline was heavily attacked and ridiculed by philosophers (in one way or another) close to W., namely Schlick and Neurath. Even more remarkable than the fact that W. listed Spengler as an influence is the fact that he never cited him. Haller's (for my mind convincing) solution to these puzzles is that while W. may or may not have agreed to Spengler's particular analyses, forecasts etc. the importance of the Decline lay for him somewhere else, namely in its method. This shows that while W. needn't have agreed with Spengler on any particular application of the method of descriptive morphology he could nevertheless recognize something substantial, "an original and independent line of thinking" (p.78) and regard it as crucial for understanding his own conception of philosophy.
The whole issue of Spenglerian influences on W. gets really interesting when Haller starts discussing some details of descriptive morphology and its application i.e. comparative research. Haller quotes a passage from the Decline where Spengler claims that as a result of his proposed method "one ought to be able to discover the original form of all culture, which lies at the basis of all individual cultures, free of cloudiness and insignificances." (p.79) Nothing in this is very surprising if one takes into account the fact, admitted by the author, that the basic idea had been inspired by Goethe's theoretical works. As Goethe put it in 1787: "[f]rom first to last, the plant is nothing but leaf, which is so inseparable from the future germ that one cannot think of one without the other." (quoted in Baker & Hacker 2005a, p.316) The interesting thing here is, I think, that both Spengler's and Goethe's projects are obviously essentialist ones, i.e. both attempt to find an original form or archetype shared by all instances of a particular species (cultures or plants). One thing that Haller hints at (and Baker and Hacker discuss explicitly mention) is that W. accused Spengler of "not realizing that he had not discovered laws of history but only introduced an illuminating form of description." (Baker & Hacker 2005a, p.320) (Note that this seems to lead to some inconsistencies in Hacker's reading. That is to say, on the one hand he admits that W. conceived of his own method as significantly distinct from the ones proposed by Goethe and Spengler, while on the other he insists that the purpose of that method was basically the same, i.e. to map out the fundamental grammatical relations underlying our language.)
Haller then goes on identifying resonances of Spengler's theory in W.'s thoughts. This includes finding Wittgensteinian counterparts for dichotomies like 'causality' vs. 'destiny', 'natural law' vs. 'fate', the 'mechanical' vs. the 'organic', and 'systematic' vs. 'physiognomic' morphology. More interesting than this, however, is Haller's comparative analysis of W.'s method and another proposed by Christian von Ehrefels for gauging 'Gestalt-level' and 'Gestalt-purity'. Haller suggests that the latter, i.e. accidentally dismantling (the representations of) objects in order to see what degree of change they can tolerate is similar to how language games (i.e. perspicuous representations) function as frames of reference (i.e. objects of comparison) in W.. I'm not sure I see Haller's point here, and unfortunately the matter doesn't become much clearer when he says in the concluding paragraph that "[i]n so far as [perspicuity] is primarily suited to that which possesses form (Gestalt), those who see a relationship between Wittgenstein and Gestalt psychology are at least aiming in the right direction […]". (p.87)
Finally, it is interesting to note that Haller and Hacker give different answers to the question "How would W. have answered his own question if the method of giving perspicuous representations was a 'Weltanschauung'?" Hacker seems to interpret Weltanschauung as something similar to Zeitgeist, i.e. as "a way of looking at things, characteristic of leading intellectuals of [W.'s] times" and states that "[i]n this he was surely mistaken."(Baker & Hacker 2005a, p.320) But, Haller argues, Weltanschauung need not stand for the cultural, intellectual etc. climate of W.'s times - it might simply refer to a particular way of looking at the world characteristic to W. and his intellectual predecessors, in contrast to those obsessed with the "scientific method". Haller's way of solving the riddle seems preferable to me because it points in the direction of an important insight so far unmentioned. That is, I think that the pessimistic attitude shared by Spengler and W. and the more specific methodological similarity are in fact tightly connected. More precisely, what I'm suggesting is that W.'s reasons for rejecting essentialism (most prominently in the Family resemblance discussion) and his reasons for rejecting the main cultural direction of the 20th century are one and the same.
The answer to the question whether W. was (profoundly) influenced by Spengler is, not surprisingly for the contemporary reader, affirmative. However, the fact that the influence seems so obvious to us doesn't mean that it was recognized from the beginning. In fact, Haller starts his discussion by noting that "until the discovery of the notes that are now collected in the Vermischte Bemerkungen no one would have associated Wittgenstein with Spengler in any way [...]". (Haller 1988, p.74) Janik & Toulmin and von Wright are mentioned as perceptive interpreters who did recognize the connection (in the form of a shared, pessimistic attitude, for example) but failed to infer to an actual influence from it. (I think one can mention in defense of von Wright that W. himself seems to suggest a shared critical Einstellung or Zeitgeist rather than a particular 'line of thinking' by referring to the notion of 'Weltanschauung' along with the name 'Spengler' in the precursors of PI §122 (e.g. TS 220, §100).)
Before going into the details of Spengler's actual influence on W. Haller spends some time articulating the above mentioned cultural pessimism shared by both authors and what he thinks is 'dubious' about this agreement. He points out that W., like Spengler, obviously considered himself a Kulturkritiker (see e.g. the prefaces to PR, PI, several remarks in CV etc.). This however, so Haller's argument goes, doesn't explain why W. should have considered Spengler as influential to his own thinking. Another puzzling circumstance is that the Decline was heavily attacked and ridiculed by philosophers (in one way or another) close to W., namely Schlick and Neurath. Even more remarkable than the fact that W. listed Spengler as an influence is the fact that he never cited him. Haller's (for my mind convincing) solution to these puzzles is that while W. may or may not have agreed to Spengler's particular analyses, forecasts etc. the importance of the Decline lay for him somewhere else, namely in its method. This shows that while W. needn't have agreed with Spengler on any particular application of the method of descriptive morphology he could nevertheless recognize something substantial, "an original and independent line of thinking" (p.78) and regard it as crucial for understanding his own conception of philosophy.
The whole issue of Spenglerian influences on W. gets really interesting when Haller starts discussing some details of descriptive morphology and its application i.e. comparative research. Haller quotes a passage from the Decline where Spengler claims that as a result of his proposed method "one ought to be able to discover the original form of all culture, which lies at the basis of all individual cultures, free of cloudiness and insignificances." (p.79) Nothing in this is very surprising if one takes into account the fact, admitted by the author, that the basic idea had been inspired by Goethe's theoretical works. As Goethe put it in 1787: "[f]rom first to last, the plant is nothing but leaf, which is so inseparable from the future germ that one cannot think of one without the other." (quoted in Baker & Hacker 2005a, p.316) The interesting thing here is, I think, that both Spengler's and Goethe's projects are obviously essentialist ones, i.e. both attempt to find an original form or archetype shared by all instances of a particular species (cultures or plants). One thing that Haller hints at (and Baker and Hacker discuss explicitly mention) is that W. accused Spengler of "not realizing that he had not discovered laws of history but only introduced an illuminating form of description." (Baker & Hacker 2005a, p.320) (Note that this seems to lead to some inconsistencies in Hacker's reading. That is to say, on the one hand he admits that W. conceived of his own method as significantly distinct from the ones proposed by Goethe and Spengler, while on the other he insists that the purpose of that method was basically the same, i.e. to map out the fundamental grammatical relations underlying our language.)
Haller then goes on identifying resonances of Spengler's theory in W.'s thoughts. This includes finding Wittgensteinian counterparts for dichotomies like 'causality' vs. 'destiny', 'natural law' vs. 'fate', the 'mechanical' vs. the 'organic', and 'systematic' vs. 'physiognomic' morphology. More interesting than this, however, is Haller's comparative analysis of W.'s method and another proposed by Christian von Ehrefels for gauging 'Gestalt-level' and 'Gestalt-purity'. Haller suggests that the latter, i.e. accidentally dismantling (the representations of) objects in order to see what degree of change they can tolerate is similar to how language games (i.e. perspicuous representations) function as frames of reference (i.e. objects of comparison) in W.. I'm not sure I see Haller's point here, and unfortunately the matter doesn't become much clearer when he says in the concluding paragraph that "[i]n so far as [perspicuity] is primarily suited to that which possesses form (Gestalt), those who see a relationship between Wittgenstein and Gestalt psychology are at least aiming in the right direction […]". (p.87)
Finally, it is interesting to note that Haller and Hacker give different answers to the question "How would W. have answered his own question if the method of giving perspicuous representations was a 'Weltanschauung'?" Hacker seems to interpret Weltanschauung as something similar to Zeitgeist, i.e. as "a way of looking at things, characteristic of leading intellectuals of [W.'s] times" and states that "[i]n this he was surely mistaken."(Baker & Hacker 2005a, p.320) But, Haller argues, Weltanschauung need not stand for the cultural, intellectual etc. climate of W.'s times - it might simply refer to a particular way of looking at the world characteristic to W. and his intellectual predecessors, in contrast to those obsessed with the "scientific method". Haller's way of solving the riddle seems preferable to me because it points in the direction of an important insight so far unmentioned. That is, I think that the pessimistic attitude shared by Spengler and W. and the more specific methodological similarity are in fact tightly connected. More precisely, what I'm suggesting is that W.'s reasons for rejecting essentialism (most prominently in the Family resemblance discussion) and his reasons for rejecting the main cultural direction of the 20th century are one and the same.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
