xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Variant: If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 50e

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“I am my world.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

The microcosm.
5.63
Original German: Ich bin meine welt (Der Mikrokosmos.)
1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916
Variant: Man is the microcosm:
I am my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Translated: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

7
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
Also: About what one can not speak, one must remain silent. (7)
Source: 1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“To pray is to think about the meaning of life.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Journal entry (11 June 1916), p. 72e and 73e
1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916
Context: What do I know about God and the purpose of life?
I know that this world exists.
That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field.
That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning.
This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it.
That life is the world.
That my will penetrates the world.
That my will is good or evil.
Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world.
The meaning of life, i. e. the meaning of the world, we can call God.
And connect with this the comparison of God to a father.
To pray is to think about the meaning of life.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

On Certainty (1969)
Context: 144. The child learns to believe a host of things. I. e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131
Context: Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman. His explanations of primitive practices are much cruder than the meaning of these practices themselves.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 454
Philosophical Investigations (1953)
Context: "Everything is already there in...." How does it come about that [an] arrow points? Doesn't it seem to carry in it something besides itself? — "No, not the dead line on paper; only the psychical thing, the meaning, can do that." — That is both true and false. The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 5e
Context: Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which our arguments have their life.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

On Certainty (1969)
Context: 105. All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments; no it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which our arguments have their life.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“A hero looks death in the face, real death, not just the image of death.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 50e
Context: A hero looks death in the face, real death, not just the image of death. Behaving honourably in a crisis doesn't mean being able to act the part of a hero well, as in the theatre, it means being able to look death itself in the eye.
For an actor may play lots of different roles, but at the end of it all he himself, the human being, is the one who has to die.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“People are deeply imbedded in philosophical, i. e., grammatical confusions. And to free them presupposes pulling them out of the immensely manifold connections they are caught up in.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 185

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“The world is the totality of facts, not things.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

1.1
Original German: Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“One would like to say: This is what took place here; laugh, if you can.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 123
Context: A religious symbol does not rest on any opinion. And error belongs only with opinion. One would like to say: This is what took place here; laugh, if you can.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

On Certainty (1969)
Context: 105. All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments; no it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which our arguments have their life.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 9 : Philosophy (chapters 86–93 of the so called Big Typescript), p. 161
Corresponding to TS 213, Kapitel 86
Context: What makes a subject difficult to understand — if it is significant, important — is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will. [Nicht eine Schwierigkeit des Verstandes, sondern des Willens ist zu überwinden. ]