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Three Conceptions of Philosophy

On the aims and limits of philosophy -- the views of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert Schweitzer, and Socrates (Xenophon and Plato) are contrasted here.

Query: what is philosophy, and what are the different conceptions of philosophy?

Are there two questions here? Is there such a thing as philosophy apart from particular conceptions of philosophy?

Outline of this page ...

The Essence of Philosophy

The historical and general definition of philosophy, namely "love of wisdom", is very general indeed. Therefore to explain what philosophy is, rather than point to that vague essence of philosophy, we have to point to similarities between the interests and aims of particular philosophers. What all philosophy does have in common is that it works by the natural light of reason alone and that its only tool is language: philosophy is discourse of reason.

"Conceptions of Philosophy"

By a 'conception of philosophy' is meant here how a philosopher: (1) sets the limits to (the subject area) philosophy, and (2) defines what the philosopher's aim or project in philosophy is (Philosophers may be classified by their projects in philosophy. Eight historical examples briefly).

Metaphysics, logic, ethics -- that is where the Greek Stoics set the limit to philosophy, but there are many ways to slice a pie, and philosophers have also written about the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of history, the philosophy of etc.

The expressions 'conception of philosophy' and 'concept of philosophy', as well as 'definition of philosophy' and 'view of philosophy', are equivalent in meaning, and they are defined here as the limits and aims three philosophers have called by the name 'philosophy'.

Notes: throughout this page there are older stupid remarks that should be replaced with more recent stupid remarks that at present I don't think are stupid, or not overly so.

The philosophical background of this page is "logic of language", Wittgenstein's expression which as my jargon means: How to distinguish sense (i.e. language with meaning) from nonsense (meaningless words or combinations of words) when thinking about philosophical problems.

Preface. Wittgenstein. Schweitzer. Socrates.

Since the time of Socrates and the Greek Stoics there have been three broad parts to philosophy, namely metaphysics, logic and ethics. But Wittgenstein limited philosophy to logic and metaphysics, because, according to him, ethics would concern "absolute value", which cannot be talked about rationally (LE p. 11), and therefore ethics is not part of philosophy. But later Wittgenstein also declared that metaphysics is nothing more than conceptual confusion, no deeper than a "grammatical joke" (PI § 111), the product of following false syntactic analogies (ibid. § 90), and that philosophy has no other function than to unmask it as nonsense (ibid. § 464). That seems quite distant from philosophy's origin as an ancient Greek project to understand life and the world by the natural light of reason alone.

Logic and Ethics (Socrates)

In contrast, Socrates' interest in philosophy was confined to ethics with logic as its tool, but he took no interest in metaphysics (Aristotle, Metaphysics 987b). Before Socrates, ethics, which is "concerned with life and all that has to do with us" (Diog. L. i, 14, 18), was not part of philosophy.

The words "Know thyself" were inscribed in Apollo's temple at Delphi, but Socrates subjected "no small matter, but how to live our life" to the tests of reason and experience by cross-questioning proposed answers to ethical questions in discussion with his companions (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1). Socratic ethics, in contrast to Wittgenstein's Kantian Ethics, is thus thoroughgoingly rational.

Schweitzer and World-view

Quite different in his project for Philosophy was Albert Schweitzer, whose concern was to establish a viable "world-view" -- i.e. an understanding of the universe and of our place in it, which would consist of a melding of Nature-philosophy with Life-philosophy. Schweitzer was a scientist, a medical doctor, but he was looking to understand Nature in a way that related it to Ethics, which was his concern in Philosophy.

Schweitzer himself concluded that it is not possible to understand the natural world (for it destroys as readily as it creates) from the point of view of Ethics, and therefore that our concern must be Life-philosophy, the aim of which is "the ethical perfecting of the individual and of society" rather than only the material advancement of human civilization (cf. Plato, Apology 30a-b, 36c, Gorgias 518e-519a). That rather than Nature-philosophy is the guide to how we should live our life.

A fundamental impulse to philosophy

That was the partial world-view that Schweitzer himself developed. But he believed that each of us is by nature intended to create a view of the world and of our place in it through "reflection about final and elementary things". Evidence for this he saw in that a "fundamental impulse to reflect about the world stirs us during those years in which we begin to think independently" (The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization, Chapter 5, tr. Campion). (Schweitzer's question to philosophy about worldview.)

Schweitzer makes no sharp distinction between defining words and defining the things the words name. This can sometimes, although rarely, make it difficult to understand what he is saying. He also makes no sharp distinction between the concepts 'Philosophy' and 'Religion', but for Schweitzer, both philosophy and religion are rational, as he wrote: "Reason ... is given us that we may bring everything within the range of its action, even the most exalted ideas of religion" (Memoirs of Childhood and Youth iii, tr. Campion). Given how he wishes to understand Nature, namely, Ethically, and that he treats Religion in a rational way, it may have been natural for him not to make a sharp distinction between Philosophy and Religion.

Relationship between these three conceptions

Of these three "conceptions of Philosophy", Wittgenstein is related to Socrates through Logic, and Schweitzer is related to Socrates through Ethics. But only Schweitzer is concerned with Metaphysics (broadly), although Wittgenstein's first work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was thoroughly metaphysical (both in the sense of being concerned with the Wesen der Welt ("essence of the world") and as being a misunderstanding of the logic of our language). Although neither Socrates nor Schweitzer clearly distinguished between word-definition and thing-definition, their thinking is nowhere so guilty of misunderstanding the logic of our language as is Wittgenstein's TLP, and both of them are very helpful guides to "no small matter, but how we should live our life".

Some Historical Aims in Philosophy

Is Philosophy a Mistake?

Notes. Overviews are: an introduction to the elements of Wittgenstein's philosophy as well as a much later brief summary of Wittgenstein's view of philosophy.

Words that follow "Query" are Internet searches that were directed to this site, that I wanted to respond to.

Query: Wittgenstein - philosophy is a mistake.

The fallacy apparent in Wittgenstein's view of philosophy: that because some philosophy is "a mistake", a misunderstanding of the logic of our language, i.e. of what gives words meaning (and of what makes them nonsense), therefore all philosophy is a mistake, an illness of the understanding to be cured of rather than a wisdom to be cured by, when in fact it is both.

Query: does studying philosophy mean anything to human life?

Strange it is that philosophers could have moved so far away from Socrates and the Delphic precept, from Plato's "we are discussing no small matter, but how to live" (Republic 344e), that someone can now ask whether philosophy is of any importance to human life -- or is philosophy just so much idle opinion, metaphysical speculation, irrelevant to our living life?

"What? he said, it be of no use?" (Plato, Charmides 174d, quoted in Z § 454)

The dialog talks about a universal key to test knowledge -- to distinguish what anyone knows from what he doesn't know (but may presume he does). That would be the wisdom in "love of wisdom" that Plato's Charmides seems to be seeking; and Charmides is responding to Socrates' doubt, for Charmides (174d) imagines that "the knowledge of knowledge-and-ignorance" ("wisdom") will be knowledge of the good as well, but, Socrates says (174e), not according to "the definition of wisdom" they have been using.

Is knowing what one knows and does not know equivalent to self-knowledge? Plato says it isn't clear that it is (170a). Self-knowledge would be the wisdom sought by the Greeks, and Charmides begins by explaining what he thinks the Delphic saying "Know thyself" means. Regardless of the dialog's outcome, however, what they are discussing "means everything to human life".

Socrates did not identify ignorance with madness; but not to know yourself, and to assume and think that you know what you do not, he put next to madness. (Xenophon, Memorabilia iii, 9, 6, tr. Marchant)

The madman is estranged from reality and from himself.

"Don't stop thinking"

Wittgenstein's last words to Drury were: "Drury, whatever becomes of you, don't stop thinking" (Recollections p. 170). But if philosophy is nothing but "houses of cards" (Luftgebäude) (PI § 118), then why ought we to think (that is, idle away our time demolishing them)? On the other hand, Wittgenstein wrote to Malcolm: "What is the use of studying philosophy if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life" (Memoir, Letter No. 9)? Why did Wittgenstein exclude those very questions from philosophy? Socrates and Plato had not (indeed those questions were what philosophy is about), and Wittgenstein's philosophy would have looked very different if he had not.

Wittgenstein did call his work "just a small fragment in the history of philosophy" (Recollections p. 160), but he did call his work philosophy's "legitimate heir" (BB p. 28). I don't think the Greeks would be pleased with their posterity.

Do not the "important questions of everyday life", which are questions of how we should live our life, belong to philosophy? Socratic ignorance "means something to human life" because the gravest ignorance is not knowing how to live your life.

Wittgenstein's Achievement

I don't think that Wittgenstein's later work -- his revision of our concept 'grammar' (which I have called his 'logic of language') -- is profound. Philosophy in the manner of the later Wittgenstein is certainly not profound in the way the eternal questions without answers are, because the riddle does exist, as Wittgenstein was later to admit. The need in philosophy to understand the logic of our language, or in Wittgenstein's jargon, its grammar, in order to distinguish between sense and nonsense, is an important insight. But only because language (discourse) is the tool of philosophy -- not because language as such is its end. This was Wittgenstein's view of the relationship between language and philosophy:

Philosophical problems are solved by "looking into the workings of our language" -- but that looking "gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical problems" (PI § 109).

Language is only important because philosophy is important. It mustn't be allowed to become a distraction.

Wittgenstein's achievement was, in my view, to invent a method for distinguishing sense from nonsense, a method for making a verifiable distinction between language with meaning and mere undefined combinations of words. But that is all.

We shouldn't over-estimate the importance of Wittgenstein's achievement. It must be remembered that Wittgenstein's work doesn't answer any of philosophy's questions: The riddle of existence remains and remains untouched, as does all of ethics. Just because Wittgenstein showed that philosophy is the product of a failure to distinguish between factual and conceptual investigations (Z § 458) in some cases doesn't mean that it is in all. To those of us whose way of thinking has been changed by it, Wittgenstein's work is of the highest value. But remember that some serious thinkers find nothing of interest in it (Bertrand Russell's rejection of it was not on ancient Greek grounds).

About Wittgenstein and the "last word" in philosophy, he may have thought he said that with his Philosophical Investigations -- but years earlier he had called the ideas of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus "unassailable and definitive" (Preface), which he later saw they are not.

Pro et Contra Wittgenstein

What is philosophy? Is it no longer composed of Stoicism's three parts: logic, ethics, metaphysics? Things I agree with Wittgenstein about (which are things I learned from him alone): (1) that when a philosophical question suggests itself to us, we are not at first clear about whether we are asking for "facts about abstract objects" or about our concepts (i.e. rules for using words), and (2) that philosophical questions are always in some way entangled in conceptual -- that is to say, language -- confusion.

"Metaphysics does not distinguish verbal from real definitions"

Philosophical investigations: conceptual investigations. The essential thing about metaphysics: it obliterates the distinction between factual and conceptual investigations. (Z § 458)

Philosophical investigations: conceptual investigations. The essential thing about metaphysics: that the difference between factual and conceptual investigations is not clear to it. A metaphysical question is always in appearance a factual one, although the problem is a conceptual one. (RPP i § 949)

But although philosophy may begin in wonder, i.e. in confusion or perplexity (Plato, Theaetetus 155c-d), caused by false analogies, metaphors that cannot be restated in prose (and therefore are not metaphors), and language-conjured pictures that mis-explain the logic, that is, the grammar of our language (PI §§ 90, 36, 350) ... I do not see that it can end there. And thus:

Things I disagree with Wittgenstein about: (1) that logic is all that remains of philosophy because all metaphysics is nonsense and ethics is irrational, and (2) that philosophy is an illness of the intellect that man needs to be cured of -- that, as Wittgenstein says in his Philosophical Investigations, philosophical questions should completely disappear (§ 133).

But the riddle of existence, the eternal questions of why there anything rather than nothing, of whether reality is confined to what is in principle perceptible to the senses, of whether good and evil are absolute, of whether there is an afterlife, of what the purpose of man's life is, of whether there is providence, and so on, are not going to disappear; how could they? And would it be to mankind's good were they to disappear?

Query: what can logic do to help me to a clearer grasp of the meaning of life?

Wittgenstein's later logic of language? Nothing at all. Maybe it can mark off false paths of investigation, but it does nothing to set you on the true path to "grasping life's meaning". It does not even discuss that topic (even to set it aside as nonsense as the earlier logic (TLP 6.521) had done; passing over a question in silence is not an answer to it).

Life is a puzzle to human beings -- that seems to be a very general fact of human nature. It may be that this puzzlement is an excellence that is proper to man; it is certainly unique to man. Its disappearance would be a fundamental change. Man would lose what makes him human: the impulse to philosophize, to understand in a metaphysical and ethical, not only in a scientific, way. Nonetheless, the disappearance of philosophy is as possible as the disappearance of religion.

"The starry sky above, and the moral law within"

Kant, who denied that Metaphysics in the traditional sense were or could be a science [a body of knowledge attained by a method], none the less allowed that we cannot remain indifferent to the objects with which Metaphysics professed to deal, God, the soul, freedom ["Preface to the first edition of Critique of Pure Reason"]; and [Copleston adds] we cannot remain indifferent to the human intellect's search for the True and the Good. (Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy: Volume 1, Greece and Rome (rev. 1947), Introduction ii, 3, p. 6 [p. 6n4])

That does not seem to say much, if anything, Wittgenstein would disagree with, and yet his post-TLP writing is silent about the most important questions. It isn't that he had nothing to say about them, for indeed his Lecture on Ethics and the students' lecture notes (LC) and his own miscellaneous notes (CV) about religious faith show that he had much to say. It may have seemed to him that no one in our day could write about the eternal questions with the naturalness of Plato -- but there is nothing false about Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics. Nor is there anything unnatural or insincere about Schweitzer's writing, although it is of course a very different conception of philosophy from Wittgenstein's. World's apart.

About his own work, Wittgenstein said that he would like to have said what Bach wrote, "... and that my neighbor may be benefited thereby." But he did not publish his work. And so I wrote, "No one lights a candle to place it under a basket, but maybe Wittgenstein did."

"That philosophical problems should completely disappear"

For the clarity we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But that simply means that philosophical problems should completely disappear. (PI § 133)

Are all philosophical problems misconceptions = linguistic confusion such that clarity is all that is needed to make them disappear? Are there no real philosophical problems?

Is the answer that what is or is not a philosophical problem is a question of a more or less arbitrary choice between classification schemes?

Of course Wittgenstein will not say that, because like all metaphysicians he thinks he has identified the essence of philosophy. But he certainly also won't say, Philosophy is essentially linguistic muddle, and therefore whatever is not linguistic muddle is not philosophy!

But "essence belongs to grammar" (PI § 371), because concepts define (the essence of) phenomena, not vice versa.

If a question can be put into words at all, then it can also be answered.

The riddle does not exist. (TLP 6.5, tr. Ogden)

Despite the TLP's eccentric definitions no longer justifying his calling all non-natural-science propositions nonsense (ibid. 6.52), Wittgenstein did not alter his view about "the riddle":

The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem. (TLP 6.521)

Which is a puzzling view to hold because we don't normally say that you have solved a problem simply because you have stopped thinking about it.

According to Wittgenstein, if the problem of life has not dissolved for you, it must be because you are not looking at life the right way.

"Life is Problematic" (The riddle does exist)

The way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that will make what is problematic disappear.

The fact that life is problematic shows that the shape of your life does not fit into life's mold. So you must change the way you live and ... what is problematic will disappear.

But don't we have the feeling that someone who sees no problem in life is blind to something important, even to the most important thing of all?

Or shouldn't I say rather: a man who lives rightly won't experience the problem as sorrow, so for him it will not be a problem, but a joy rather; in other words for him it will be a bright halo round his life, not a dubious [murky] background. (CV p. 27 [MS 118 17r c: 27.8.1937])

Twenty years after his Tractatus had dissolved the problem of life (TLP 6.5), Wittgenstein was still troubled by it; maybe Franz Parak had more insight than he is credited with: "... filosofava ancora, quindi." The riddle does exist. But it is nonsense to say that; it cannot be to put into words. "The deepest questions are not philosophical questions."

"Concept blindness"

... that someone who sees no problem in life is blind to something important ...

What must the man be called, who cannot understand the concept 'Life is problematic'? Are we to say he suffers from some blindness?" (cf. RPP i § 213)

Wittgenstein says that this problem cannot be put into words that are not nonsense, but that he respects deeply the tendency of the human mind to try.

Original thoughts, eleven years earlier

6.7.16.
And in this sense Dostoyevsky is right when he says that the man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence.

Or again we could say that the man is fulfilling the purpose of existence who no longer needs to have any purpose except to live. That is to say, who is content.

The solution of the problem of life is to be seen in the disappearance of this problem. [cf. TLP 6.521]

But is it possible for one so to live that life stops being problematic? That one is living in eternity and not in time? [cf. "viewing the world sub specie aeterni" (TLP 6.45)]

8.7.16.
To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life.

To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.

To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning. (Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-1916 2e, tr. Anscombe, p. 73-74)

Background. In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, what can be put into words (i.e. into propositions of the form: This is how objects stand), are not the limits ("the end of the matter") of reality. Nonsense is not absolute nonsense, i.e. 'nonsense' in the TLP sense ≠ 'meaningless' as we normally use the word 'meaningless'.

"The murky background"

Wittgenstein: change your way of life, or more so: change the way you think about our life, so that the riddle of existence isn't a source of sorrow for you.

When Wittgenstein wrote "The riddle does not exist", that meant that the riddle can't be put into words that are not nonsense. Later though Wittgenstein did put it into words, but earlier he had put the whole Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus into words despite saying that couldn't be done (When is nonsense not nonsense? When it's nonsense in the TLP's sense of 'nonsense'). And so it seems that Wittgenstein meant that it shouldn't be done. That may have been his later view of it, for here 'what is problematical' = 'what is riddling' about existence.

Well, what exactly is riddling about existence as such? Can that be put that into words? There is a philosophical way in which the riddle exists, in three questions, questions that a cat does not ask itself; "animals are unacquainted with the problems of philosophy" (PG i § 138, p. 191).

"Without sorrow"

One can't really say that what is good is whatever God wills (presuming that God's will is both the moral law for man and how things stand in the world) and therefore that whatever is real is good (because it is willed by God). But Hegel did say that, and so did Wittgenstein, as had the Stoics, as had Spinoza. Whether God is identified as Nature ("the infinite Object") or the Absolute makes little difference: whatever is natural is rightful. In "the philosophy of Spinoza the self is called on to recognize an already existing ontological situation, namely its position as a modification of infinite substance, and to surrender itself" (Copleston, History of Philosophy, Volume VII V, 3).

[Spinozism], says Schelling, involves in the long run the absolutization of the non-ego. Man is reduced to a mere modification of the infinite Object, Spinoza's substance, and freedom is excluded. It is true that Spinozism, which aims at the attainment of peace and tranquillity of soul through "quiet self-surrender to the absolute Object", possesses an aesthetic appeal and can exercise a powerful attraction on some minds. But ultimately it means the annihilation of the human being as a free moral agent. (ibid.)

Spinoza's most basic view of ethics follows from this. Whether good and evil is called Natural ["life's mold"] or God's will matters little. Yet Wittgenstein at the same time regarded himself as a moral agent, and he was a severe one.

[According to Schelling, Spinoza's] ideal [is] of self-surrender, of absorption in the impersonal Absolute [or Nature], of renunciation of personal freedom as illusion, [whereas Fichte's] ideal [is] of constant free activity in accordance with one?s vocation, of becoming more and more the moral agent who rises free and triumphant over the mere object. (ibid. [According to Schelling and Hegel a synthesis of these two views is possible.])

The following may be seen as a variation of Fichte's ideal. Wittgenstein said that he did not think of God as if of an almighty person, but that if he had he would have regarded it as his duty to rebel (Recollections p. 108).

Promethean Rebellion

Note: there is a comparison of Prometheus with the serpent in the Garden of Eden, for both made man distinct from the other animals (for the Greeks, through the gift of reason; for the Jews, through the knowledge of good and evil). Philosophy is a discourse of reason, which the animals haven't got, and which according to Wittgenstein man oughtn't to have either.

What is the ethical point of Prometheus' revolt, his defiance of Zeus? Maybe this, that rebellion may also be seen as the meaning of human life. From the point of view of ethics, the natural world is incomprehensible -- "life is at war with life" -- but man does not have to thoughtlessly participate in that war. That was Schweitzer's thought. Wittgenstein did consider rebellion against God, but decided against it (Diary 8.12.14, quoted by McGuinness).

An individual can give most any meaning (as in Russell's "theory of descriptions") he likes, and as Wittgenstein did, to the word 'God' (PI § 373), especially since "the nature of God" is independent of the world ("the conceived facts"), an invention of the imagination, just as the word 'God' is a tool of the English language (and if there were no such word we would have nothing to talk about). If I say one thing I may love God; another and I may hate Him. Or the concept 'God' may simply stop having a place in my life and thought.

That last was not, however, the case for Wittgenstein (RPP i § 213). At the end of his life, he wrote that the experience of life, suffering e.g., "can force this concept on us" (CV p. 86). But he does not say which concept.

Schweitzer: "When I must use the language of traditional religious idioms ... then I employ the word 'God' in its historical definiteness and indefiniteness" (Letter to Oskar Kraus, 2 January 1924, tr. McCalman). Do I understand this -- for when is "indefiniteness" not nonsense? Suppose someone in whose life the concept 'God' is important says, "'God' is a vague concept, but this does not trouble me" -- do I understand him? "Everything that is said about God is anthropomorphic, but it is not to be understood in an anthropomorphic sense." Do I understand that? But can't a game be played according to such rules then? (Wittgenstein compared using language to playing games according to rules; he called these "language games". Moves contrary to the rules of the game are nonsense: the bishop in chess cannot jump over other chessmen, and I cannot answer the question of what time it is by saying 'Twenty-six o'clock'. But those are examples of games with strict rules; contrast that with the game of skipping rope and the language use of talking about philosophy, or God.) The notion "ways of life" is a description, not an explanation. Belief in God is a way of life, as is philosophizing: it is only the latter Wittgenstein wanted to do away with.

An account of what Wittgenstein knows (The Socratic standard)

Wittgenstein, like Socrates, wants an account of what you know. That and nothing more (BB p. 45).

Or in any case, this is the standard for knowing Socrates set for philosophy : If a man knows anything, then he can tell others what he knows -- and when he does this, he does not tell them less than he knows himself. To know = to be able to explain and defend in cross-questioning whatever it is you claim to know (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1; Plato, Laches 190c; PI §§ 210, 208).

Does Wittgenstein claim to know how language works, what its verifiable meaning is -- i.e. how to objectively distinguish between sense and nonsense? That is the claim I make for his work.

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein had said that language is a picture or model of how things stand in the world, and language consists essentially of such propositions. But that account of language does not describe how language works in ethics, aesthetics and religion, language which it says is "nonsense".

Then later Wittgenstein said that language works like a game (if a game is characterized by its rules). But this simile also does not give a useful account of language as used in ethics, or religion, or aesthetics (although, according to Wittgenstein, the role of language in aesthetics is very small).

Indeed, both periods ("early" and "later") of Wittgenstein's philosophy in this respect say that same thing -- namely, that the deepest questions of existence (i.e. the riddles of life) are not questions at all. The TLP's pictures, the Philosophical Investigation's games -- neither account differs in this respect.

I don't know whether Wittgenstein would accept my characterization of his work. Regardless of that, I do not think it was as Russell said, that Wittgenstein had chosen for himself "a lazy philosophy". Or that Wittgenstein had chosen the meaning of 'meaning' he choose because it had the result of dissolving philosophy [metaphysics] -- i.e. the result of showing that there are no philosophical problems (but only conceptual muddles), which is what he had always wanted. Wittgenstein: "I don't call an argument good just because it has the results I want" (cf. PG i § 133, p. 185), and I don't regard a way of looking at things good just because it has the results I want (or do I?)

"The deepest problems are really no problems"

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.

And so it is not to be wondered at that the deepest problems are really no problems. (TLP 4.003, tr. Ogden)

When Wittgenstein or anyone else says what the logic of our language is, are they stating what the essence of language meaning is -- or only what the way they choose to look at language meaning is? (Is it true to say that whether language is not a cage -- i.e. whether there are logical limits to what can be put into words -- depends on the frame of reference provided by a particular logic of language? or is there only one such logic, and therefore whether or not "language is a cage" is determinable?)

Wittgenstein says that he does not make theories, that philosophy does not result in "philosophical propositions", i.e. metaphysical propositions (hypotheses about reality) (TLP 4.112), that he only describes what we find when we look (using his methods, point of view) at language and human life, that philosophy is essentially a work of conceptual clarification.

But when he writes that "A metaphysical question is always in appearance a factual one, although the problem is a conceptual one" (RPP i § 949), isn't that a theory -- doesn't the word 'always' indicate a theory? (Other examples of Wittgenstein's theories about philosophy.)

Earlier I wrote that I had never found a counter-example to Wittgenstein's general statement (theory about the essence of philosophy), but many years later I became aware of two counter-examples, namely Plato's question "What is the essence of man?" (I can describe taking up residence in a different body, but not in a different soul) and the response of Socratic ethics to the question "What is the good for man?" (which is existence in accord with the specific excellence that is proper and unique to man, namely reason). Those examples are contrary to Wittgenstein's claim that philosophical questions are never questions of fact (of any kind except facts about our use of language).

To return to things I disagree with Wittgenstein about: (3) I cannot understand why he devoted so much time to the Philosophy of Psychology (four volumes of remarks have been published). We are going to die and to know thyself and therefore how to live our life is important to think about (Phaedrus 229e-230a) -- and to write about in order to allow one's thoughts to develop. Wittgenstein claimed that such philosophy is no longer possible -- but he never explained or justified that claim. (On Certainty, a work Wittgenstein did not undertake because of an inner need but because of discussions during his visit to Norman Malcolm in America, belies the claim that the original problems of philosophy are nonsense and therefore can no longer be discussed.)

Ethics as religion rather than philosophy

As to how to live a philosophical life, a life of thoroughgoing reason, of rational moral virtue, of "There is no place in my life where I would want to say: Here I do not use reason", Wittgenstein gives no clue. I've often thought this is because Wittgenstein's worldview is religious rather that philosophical; the notion "absolute value" in Wittgenstein's ethics is a religious rather than a philosophical notion, in contrast to Socrates in Xenophon's identification of the good with the useful (or beneficial): i.e. 'good' is a relational rather than an absolute concept (Memorabilia iv, 6, 7-8; ibid. iii, 8, 2-3). Wittgenstein told Drury: "It has puzzled me why Socrates is regarded as a great philosopher" (Recollections p. 115); it might have puzzled Socrates why Wittgenstein is regarded as a great philosopher, for in Plato's words "we are discussing no small matter, but how to live". It was Socrates who gave this question to philosophy (Diog. L. i, 14, 18), and Wittgenstein who took this question away from philosophy.

Why is unclarity sought?

I don't want to think just to convict myself, or even someone else, of unclarity. I am not trying to understand something, simply in order to see that I still do not understand it. (CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 133 188: 27.2.47])

That paragraph comes directly after: "It's true, the Sophist does not know what he thinks he knows, but that is no triumph for Socrates." This was in 1947, four years before Wittgenstein's death at 62 years of age. Wittgenstein's remarks show, or seem to show (although there is nothing to suggest that they do not show it), that he did not understand or appreciate that simply to know that you don't know, not to think yourself wise when you are not, is the Socratic and Delphic aim in philosophy (It is to "know thyself").

To have done away with a misconception is itself a form of clarity (cf. Guthrie, Socrates (1971), p. 129), and without that humbling refutation no one will seek to find the correct conception ("For no one seeks to know what he thinks he already knows"). Wittgenstein did understand the importance Plato assigned to being refuted in philosophy though (Letter to Piero Sraffa dated 20 December 1944).

Can what Wittgenstein said about the TLP, namely "how little has been done when these problems have been solved" (Preface), be said about Socratic ignorance? Yes and no. Yes, we still cannot answer the eternal questions; no, we are better off for knowing that we cannot, not thinking ourselves wise when we are not.

Does Wittgenstein's sidestep of Plato's puzzle find the correct conception?

Plato's dilemma: either a common name names a common nature or it does not, but if it does not, then what is its meaning, and if it does, then how is its meaning to be known? If it does not, then common names name nothing common, and if it does, then the meaning of most common names is unknowable. It seems that either way, common names are meaningless, and then "what becomes of philosophy?"

If the meaning of a common name is not a defining common nature, then what is its meaning? Wittgenstein's vague notion family resemblances does not answer that question; it simply sets the question aside in favor of describing how common names are used -- and so, unlike the Socratic dialogs, according to Wittgenstein's view of them, does it "prove anything or make anything clearer" (CV p. 14 [MS 111 55: 30.7.1931])? What it does not do is give anyone a standard by which to judge whether any particular thing is or isn't an instance of things named by the common name.

Logic-philosophy and hypotheses

The only the limit of philosophy is concept-formation, but also concept revision, or in other words, imagination. Is there a cannot, a limit, to concept formation? But philosophy cannot be "unlimited" by concepts that have not been formed (DW p. 111); logic "makes no hypotheses", e.g. the "hypothesis of abstraction".

A 'concept' is a 'rule for using a word'. But an abstracted common nature that cannot be put into words -- an unknown x -- is not a rule for the use of a word. 'All things sharing the common nature x are just' is not a rule for using the word 'justice'. That there is a concept 'ineffable common nature' is an "hypothesis".

Classical philosophy and Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein did not see, or maybe did not want to see, the nobility of the Socrates of Plato's Apology, or of Plato's thoroughgoing confidence in philosophical reasoning. (He will not have known of, because he cannot be presumed to have read, Socrates' conscientiousness towards his companions in Xenophon's work. Wittgenstein came to philosophy through mathematics, not classical studies.)

And so another disagreement: (4) the high calling of philosophy and Wittgenstein's work not answering it. For it cannot be acceptable to human life to set philosophy's limits where Wittgenstein set them, passing over in silence the eternal questions without answers -- if they are eternally without answers. Man must ask himself (1) what his relation to eternity is, and (2) how he must live his life in this world if he is to be a good man. (These are the questions of a world-view, I think, according to Schweitzer.)

According to Wittgenstein's first account of the logic of our language, "what cannot be put into words" but must be "passed over in silence" is determined by the TLP's strange notion "the propositions of natural science". Nevertheless, after the "picture theory of meaning" had been replaced by the new simile "language games", Wittgenstein still did not allow his thoughts about the topic of "how we should live our life" to develop by writing them down (Recollections p. 109). This puzzles me, although it's true that not every philosopher concerns himself with ethics, and Wittgenstein did not in any case classify ethics as part of philosophy.

Philosophy is discursive -- philosophy is discourse either with oneself or with one's companions. It is not "silencing thought".

And so one last disagreement, because (5) Wittgenstein rejected Socrates' thorough-going application of reason to our life. And maybe Socrates did not get very far with his philosophical investigations in Plato's dialogs (certainly not with respect to common nature definitions in ethics, but the investigations are different in Xenophon), but wasn't he right to ask the questions he did and to rely on reason ("the natural light of reason") alone to answer them? That was, after all, the birth of philosophy.

Philosophy as demolishing houses of cards (PI § 118). It is not that those "houses" are straw men; it is rather than they are not all there is to philosophy. Some philosophy is demonstrably conceptual muddle, but not all.

Wittgenstein's statements about philosophy in the Philosophical Investigations are nevertheless categorical: Philosophy is a struggle against language, and nothing more. To the question of whether it was still possible for philosophers to create "a serious and constructive philosophy such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle offered in their time" rather than only "the correct analysis of the meaning of sentences", Wittgenstein replied that it was not.

To say that we should not examine every day the riddle of our life (Plato, Apology 37e-38a) is -- Well, Wittgenstein himself did not live that thoughtless way. When at the end of his life Wittgenstein told Drury, "Don't stop thinking", he was also saying how he had lived his own life.

If it is the case, and I don't believe it is the case, that Wittgenstein's logic of language shows that 'the riddle of life' is a meaningless combination of words, then of what worth is his logic? Is that what we are calling "Wittgenstein's achievement"? If it is, then we need another logic of language, an alternative to Wittgenstein's way of distinguishing sense from nonsense. "Compare language-use to game-playing" -- we need a different comparison, a different approach entirely.

For these five points of disagreement, I do not believe that Wittgenstein's can be "the last word" in philosophy. (And I want to talk instead about the recovery of philosophy which should never have been lost. Wittgenstein may be a needed antidote to conceptual confusion in philosophy, but he is not the grave digger, the burier of philosophy.)

The question about meaning replaces the question of truth and falsity

The question of a proposition's truth comes after the question of whether or not the proposition (statement of fact) has meaning; nonsense (undefined combinations of words) cannot be true or false. Thus the first question in philosophy is the question of sense and nonsense: words are merely spoken sounds, marks on paper -- what gives words meaning? Further, the method of verification -- of how we determine whether the proposition is true or false -- belongs to the proposition's logical grammar (rules for its use in the language). And of course we must determine the method of verification (cf. Plato, Euthyphro 6d-7d) before we can determine the proposition's truth or falsity.

That is the Socratic context for the following remark, but Wittgenstein's has another reason, namely that in his view there are no solutions (true or false propositions as answers) to philosophical problems, because philosophical problems are not problems but are nonsense (mere expressions of conceptual confusion, and conceptual problems are problems about the meaning of language).

Wittgenstein's later method in philosophy (Sense rather than truth)

This method [my new way of philosophizing] consists essentially in leaving aside the question of truth and asking about sense instead. (CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 105 46 c: 1929])

And judgment is replaced by description

Wittgenstein may have had another reason to set the question of truth and falsity aside, namely that in his philosophy, judgment gives way to description.

You must bear in mind that the language game ... is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable).

It is there -- like our life. (OC § 559)

Look on the language game as the primary thing. (PI § 656)

Of course if a "language game" (a use of language comparable to a game played according to rules) doesn't have grounds, it is neither true nor false. Its existence is simply a fact (human artifact). But its meaning (rules of the game) can be described.

The sense of the world must lie outside the world [i.e. outside "the totality of facts"].... In [the world] there is no value [only fact] ... (TLP 6.41 [1.1])

Wittgenstein's philosophy describes ways of life ("language games"), but does not judge their worth (how man should live his life). (This is an Aristotlean attitude.)

On the other hand, Wittgenstein may have meant only that when we philosophize we try to determine the truth of language whose meaning is not clear to us. And, therefore, he is "leaving aside the question of truth and asking about meaning instead".

But to describe language is to describe facts

"The subject matter of philosophy is the totality of language, not of facts" (cf. TLP 1.1) -- could we say that? Not if by 'language game' is meant "language and the actions into which it is woven" regarded as "a whole" (PI § 7), because when we give an account of the semantic grammar of our language, what are we doing if not describing facts -- both linguistic and non-linguistic? A "way of life" is a bundle of facts.

Even when we invent fictitious language games by imagining some very general facts of nature to be other than they are (ibid. II, xii, p. 230), what are we inventing if not other possible worlds of facts?

And in the case of aesthetics in Wittgenstein's conception or of the philosophy of religion, language is not so important to philosophy, which means that other facts are.

In grammatical investigations if we report e.g. that the word 'thunder' is equivalent in meaning (or use) to 'noise in the clouds', we state a fact, and although it is not a fact about thunder, it is a fact about the English language and a "way of life" (i.e. about both linguistic and non-linguistic fact).

Meaning versus impressions of meaning

Query: what is your concept of philosophy? What do you understand by the word 'philosophy'?

About the "conceptions of philosophy" on this page, it can be asked: What are these philosophers' projects or aims in philosophy: what do they want from philosophy and what is their method for seeking it? That is very different from what the query seems to be asking for, namely an "impressionistic definition": "Philosophy to me means ..." What someone is inclined to say ("To me philosophy is ...") may be "raw material" (cf. PI § 254) for philosophy -- i.e. something to explore rationally -- but it is not a definition. How I would define the word 'philosophy' as it has been used through the centuries; maybe that is "what I understand by" that word.

What I have called 'logic of language' is a method in philosophy; it is not philosophy itself or the whole of philosophy. But with respect to Wittgenstein one might speak of "The Philosophy of Logic of Language" or Logic-philosophy as Wittgenstein's "conception of philosophy".

Schweitzer - Philosophy as "World-view" Formation

Among the many fog-casting, nebulous in meaning words of our language is the word 'conception'. If we try to describe how we use that word, we don't get very far; to the extent that it has any meaning or rules for its use, its meaning is vague; and the only way for its meaning not to be vague is to turn it into a jargon-word (as I did e.g. with the word 'concept', making it equivalent in meaning to the word 'grammar' in Wittgenstein's sense of 'rules for using a word' or 'any description of how a word is used in the language'), because there aren't anything we normally call 'rules' for this word.

The word 'conception' is a danger to philosophy.

It is dangerous because it produces confusion. (Z § 649)

The word 'concept' is too vague by far. (RFM vii § 45, p. 412)

Compare the word 'conception' with the word 'theory'. We use the word 'theory' in many -- indeed, in too many ways. Any way (method, model) of organizing or explaining a selection of facts can be called a theory (a theory is facts plus imagination).

What would the word 'theory' make clearer if we spoke of 'Wittgenstein's theory of comparisons between language-use and game-playing' (cf. "Wittgenstein's theory of language games")? It does suggest that there are other theories -- i.e. other ways looking at things -- possible. And the word 'conception' does that too.

The antithesis of 'theory' is 'fact' (Facts are what are theorized about, what the imagination works on). But what is the antithesis of 'concept'?

Socrates may never have used the word 'philosophy', but unlike Socrates neither Schweitzer nor Wittgenstein needed to invent the subjects that have now long been called philosophy. And yet, nonetheless, each of the three could have a different "conception" of philosophy -- i.e. give a different account of what its nature is and make judgments about what its aims should be (Each could write a different "How I see Philosophy"). Because, as I was told at school: The question of what philosophy is, is itself a philosophical question.

For Schweitzer, in contrast to the others, the broad limits set to philosophy by the Greek Stoics (who traced their roots back through Antisthenes to Socrates) were a matter of course. Schweitzer's had only to concern himself with what he thought our aim in philosophy should be, and that was to seek a viable world-view -- i.e. a world-view of life- and world-affirmation: a view in which life in this world is worth living, and this world worth working in, both for the material welfare and the ethical perfecting of the individual and of society. That was not the "conception" of philosophy of either Wittgenstein or Socrates, but it is nonetheless philosophy.

Schweitzer and World-view

Albert Schweitzer's conception of philosophy differs from Wittgenstein's in that it includes both Nature-philosophy (i.e. Metaphysics, not Natural Science) and Ethics (Life-philosophy).

In contrast, Wittgenstein's conception, which never included Ethics, came to identify Philosophy with Logic -- i.e. grammatical investigations or, in my jargon,logic of language -- only. Wittgenstein's reason for excluding Metaphysics (which he identifies with Rationalism) is that, in his view, what metaphysicians think they are doing is not what they are doing: they are not investigating reality prior to and independently of experience (a priori), but instead are merely confusing factual and conceptual investigations, as if there were real definitions of abstractions ("abstract objects") -- in other words, philosophers are linguistically muddled.

Although the Ethics of both Schweitzer and Socrates are empirical, Socrates' interest in the natural world goes no further than seeking the specific moral excellence that is proper to man, which is a question of man's seeking to know his own nature (which is an empirical question). But Schweitzer wants to base his Life-philosophy on far more knowledge of man's place and destiny in Nature than that.

What is your aim in philosophy? (PI § 309)

Which is, I think, another way of asking: What do you want from philosophy? Schweitzer states what in his view is the real meaning of world-view (Weltanschauung). (Despite not distinguishing between verbal and real definitions, and stating definitions of words such as 'civilization' and 'world-view' that are "persuasive definitions", Schweitzer's statements do make clear what his project in philosophy is.)

What is meant by a world-view? It is the content of the thoughts of society and the individuals which compose it about the nature and object of the world in which they live, and the position and the destiny of mankind and of individual men within it. (The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization, tr. C.T. Campion, Chapter 5)

By a 'world-view' Schweitzer means: a Life-philosophy grounded in a Nature-philosophy. But on reflection, Schweitzer's Nature-philosophy was unable to go beyond -- although this was enough nonetheless for his purpose -- "I am a will to live in the midst of other wills to live". Knowing this, in Schweitzer's view, tells us how we should live our life, but it does not tell us what (if anything) nature is aiming at, for we find in nature both purposeful creation and mindless destruction. If we look at nature from the point of view of ethics, then we must resign ourselves to not being able to explain nature:

:

Whatever our point of view Nature will remain for us an enigma.

As Socrates identifies the good with the useful ("good for something" either as a practical tool or as beneficial to the ethical aspect of man), Schweitzer identifies the good with whatever promotes life (whether human or non-human, and evil is whatever damages life). Wittgenstein's view, on the other hand, is anthropological: "The world is there", and about it "We can only describe and say human life is like that" (OC § 559, Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough), and nothing more, nothing about the good.

Weltanschauung (Schweitzer, Wittgenstein)

Wittgenstein used, or seemed to use (because there is little evidence in his writing, and therefore these remarks are conjecture), the word 'Weltanschauung' in a different sense than Schweitzer did. There does, however, seem to be a relationship between these uses. Maybe it is the relationship between the words 'Übersicht' (Anscombe's "perspicuous representation" or other translators: 'bird's eye view', 'synoptic view') and 'Weltanschauung' ('world over-view', at least for Schweitzer I would say, because it is not a picture of only a corner of reality, but of the whole world).

A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view [Cf. the view a field artillery spotter, such as Wittgenstein was in WW1, seeks of the plane below] 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 connections"....

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"?) (PI § 122)

A philosophical problem has the form: 'I don't know my way around'. (ibid. § 123; cf. the artillery spotter whose view is blocked by foliage.)

When Wittgenstein asks "Is this a "Weltanschauung"?" what is he asking? If he does not know if this is an example of a Weltanschauung, then he is asking for a definition of that word, because its meaning is not clear to him? (This is the trouble with his idea "family resemblances": it solves no problem.)

In the example below, he seems to mean by 'Weltanschauung' an inescapable frame of reference or "pair of eyeglasses" (ibid. § 103) that someone finds it impossible to take off. (Cf. involuntary "ways of life" and Aquinas's first principles and Kant's categories of mind. Is our feeling that existence is a riddle an example of a Weltanschauung in Wittgenstein's sense?)

So I am trying to say something that sounds like pragmatism.

Here I am being thwarted by a kind of Weltanschauung. (OC § 422)

'Pragmatism', if I understand and I don't think that I do, is the title given to the notion that "truth" is whatever it is useful ('useful' in the sense of 'practical', not 'wish-fulfilling') to someone to believe. And the Weltanschauung that "thwarts" that notion? It belongs to logic of language that the grammar of 'know' and the grammar of 'verifiable grounds' are interconnected and inseparable, that 'knowledge' and 'belief' are different concepts, as are 'true' and 'useful', meaning that the rules for the use of those words is different.

I am not saying a proposition is true if it is useful. (RPP i § 266).

Indeed, it is nonsense to say that. But I don't know if that is what Wittgenstein has in mind.

The concepts 'know' and 'public verification' are inter-bound? "But only because that is how I want to fix the concept" (Z § 325) 'know'? No, there are well-established "language games" that give the word 'know' its meaning. And that meaning is therefore not arbitrary (There is no question of our extending a concept here, but only of describing our actual use of a word). Pragmatism is metaphysics if it tries to say what "knowledge really is", just in the way that the TLP is: what it regards as a profound insight is only an eccentric definition of a word.

Philosophical doubts such as "We can never know ..." have a foundation in instinct. (cf. CV p. 73 [MS 137 57b: 30.6.1948])

In instinct or reflection -- philosophical doubts are not rational? Wittgenstein doesn't prove his claim, but it does show that by 'Weltanschauung' he does not mean something that one chooses for oneself: it is instead an instinct. The difference, then, is that by 'world-view' Schweitzer means something rational -- the result of reflection, whereas Wittgenstein means something non-rational (and prior to reflection, although human instinct may be overcome by argument or learning, reflection, experience).

But enough of that for now. What I want to know is why Wittgenstein's extension of the concept 'philosophy' was much more limited than either that of Socrates or Schweitzer. But was it more limited -- or was only its view of "what can be put into words" more limited? Because a "Weltanschauung" (in Schweitzer's sense) was what the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus had attempted to express with its two parts, the one written, the other silent. The trouble is that most anything can be read into silence ... which of course Wittgenstein would have known.

"A book is a mirror. When an ape looks in, no apostle can look out." Lichtenberg's remark is very cynical, like Wittgenstein's "the better sort of reader" (CV p. 66 [MS 136 81a: 8.1.1948]), and I am grateful Socrates did not share its contempt (Anyone could follow him around in the streets and public places of Athens and learn to discuss the things that he discussed: "I spend my whole life in going about and persuading you all to give your first and greatest care to the improvement of your souls" (Plato, Apology 30a-b, tr. Church), although Plato did think as Lichtenberg thought.

Silence -- what supposedly "cannot be put into words" (If it can't be said, it can't be thought either: there are no thoughts on the philosophical level without words) -- is not philosophy; philosophy is discourse: "what a man knows he can explain to others" (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1) -- without that Socratic definition (standard) of 'knowing', philosophy ceases to be.

Philosophy began as man lifting himself out of irrational ways of thought (Thales); it should not end with his descending into them again (Wittgenstein).

Drury: "If philosophy is not an attempt to state the "Wesen der Welt", I feel lost." (Wittgenstein's answer to the question "What is philosophy?" in 1930.) People come to philosophy for different reasons. For some it is "space, time, and deity" (Recollections p. 99), but the question of the "essence of the world" (Wesen der Welt) did not move me, but instead "language meaning, ethics, God", as if to say "What is this world to me; I am going to die someday." From whatever point of view, human beings do need to try to make some sense of life.

Socrates versus Wittgenstein

The place of ethics in philosophy, even more than the question of a serviceable logic of language, is the principal difference between Socrates and Wittgenstein. (My view of that difference: "The recovery of philosophy", but also "All that music has meant in my life".)

In Logic. Socrates' master question. (1) In Xenophon: How to distinguish what you know -- whether about the meaning of words or the truth of a proposition -- from what you only think you know but do not, because if you think you know what you don't know, you are both misled yourself and mislead others (Memorabilia iv, 6, 1)? To answer this question Socrates chose one meaning of 'know': If anyone knows anything he can explain what he knows to others (ibid.), and defend his explanation in cross-questioning against refutation by unclarity or self-contradiction or conflict with experience. And thus when someone explains to us what he knows, he does not tell us less than he knows himself (cf. PI §§ 210, 69). Thus knowing in philosophy is public and verifiable. (2) In Plato: What is the method to define such moral virtues as Piety, Justice, Courage and Temperance, because, Plato says, Socrates seeks a universal standard in ethics (Euthyphro 6d-7d)?

In Ethics. Socrates' master question: What must man do in order to obey the Delphic precept "Know thyself"? What is the specific excellence proper (1) to humanity as such, and (2) to the individual human being (for each individual has his own particular limits), because this knowledge will answer for each of us the question of how we should live our life, because to live in accord with the specific excellence that is proper to a thing is the good for that thing?

Logic is a tool -- and a tool is used to do some work, in Socrates' case the work of inquiry in ethics ("no small matter, but how to live"). Logic is not, as it became after Socrates in some schools of philosophy, an end in itself. (The Stoic Epictetus responded against Aristotelian by-standing in philosophy by saying that the purpose of thinking about ethics is to live an ethical life, not to be wise only in the methods of logical inquiry.)

Query: definition of philosophy by Socrates.

Seeking to know the true and the good about how we should live our life (the object of the search ≠ the method, but 'logic' = 'the method of the search').

Plato will again extend philosophy out from ethics and logic alone to seek knowledge of absolute reality as in the pre-Socratic question "Is there a reality that does not change, despite the ever-changing appearances of things?"

But we don't know that the historical Socrates ever used the word 'philosophy'.

Ethics and Philosophy

Philosophy lost sight, not of ethics, if by 'ethics' is meant 'the question of how to live' -- but of rational ethics, of Socrates' thoroughgoing application of reason to our life. But if ethics is irrational (as Hume and Kant said), then is ethics the concern of philosophy? Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was written for the sake of ethics: "we do not understand Wittgenstein unless we realize that it was philosophy that mattered to him and not logic" (Engelmann). But in that work Wittgenstein assigns ethics to the category of "what cannot be put into words" -- i.e. to the non-rational.

But when Socrates in Xenophon equates the good with the useful or beneficial (Memorabilia iv, 6, 7-8), ethics is then the use of reason to decide what is useful to man for "care of the soul", i.e. what is beneficial to man's ethical self.

The proposition 'The good for a thing is the excellence proper to that thing' perhaps cannot be refuted; cf. 'Their perceived good is that at which all things aim' (Aristotle). But it is a point of reference (point of view, way of looking at things), and the adoption of these is always discretionary. And this is why ethics can be both objective (Socrates) and non-objective (Wittgenstein).

According to Wittgenstein, philosophy cannot give ethics a foundation (He never presents an argument that this is so, however; it is instead based on his notion of "absolute value"). But even if that is so, why would that be a justification for being silent about ethics? For if it comes to that, philosophy cannot give logic a foundation either (PG i § 81, p. 126-7, PI § 124), but that does not stop us from talking about logic. ("Absolute value" -- if you can't say what you mean, then you don't "mean" it. You can only mean something that has meaning.)

Query: logic and ethics, Socrates.

That was what concerned Socrates. He was not concerned with either physics or metaphysics. He did not have a metaphysical theory of the soul, as had Plato who made a distinction between spirit and material. For Socrates the word 'soul' means simply: the ethical aspect of man.

Wittgenstein: "The essential thing about metaphysics: it obliterates the distinction between facts and concepts" (Z § 458), but is ethics (the question of the good for man) metaphysical (does it consist of speculative hypotheses)?

Query: Socrates' view of logic.

Logic is the tool, question-and-answer the method, of investigations in ethics. What was the aim of that method? To lead the discussion from unclarity to a definition (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 13). But whether Socrates expected that clarity to be found in a common nature definition (which Aristotle says is Socrates' contribution to philosophy-logic), I don't know.

Visitors from Elea and Ephesus (Parmenides and Heraclitus)

I have long thought that Plato should have replaced his literary Socrates with the Eleatic visitor ("stranger") or the visitor from Ephesus (Heraclitus' home) much earlier in his dialogs, soon after the Apology, the Laches, the Euthyphro, dialogs that are in the Socratic spirit of seeking wisdom -- rather than presuming to teach it, as Plato's later dialogs presume to do.

Wittgenstein: Think about the thing for yourself! But even original thinkers sometimes need the help of others if their thoughts are to be well thought. Wittgenstein often seems to me to have fallen into the mistake of the artisans Socrates questioned. I certainly do not think that Wittgenstein's thoughts about Socrates are well-thought. It is as if Wittgenstein had never read Plato's Euthyphro and therefore had never understood why Socrates sought general definitions in ethics ... And I don't know whether he ever had read it or not.

The three four lines of thought that are have formed my own thinking

Together these are the three greatest influences on my thinking [Marx's absolute determinism of "the economic base" notwithstanding; Socrates' companions Phaedo and Aeschines and Antisthenes were poor economically]: Socrates (philosophy, ethics), Wittgenstein (logic of language), Schweitzer (philosophy of religion). Actually there is a forth line, namely Immanuel Kant (on concepts and phenomena: concepts define phenomena (unconceptualized percepts are blind), and not vice versa).

Can philosophy be taught?

If you cheat in philosophy, who are you cheating but yourself? (Cf. CV p. 24)

Philosophy stands on three legs: (1) a distinction between sense and nonsense in language, (2) a standard for distinguishing what you know from what you think you know but do not, and (3) reverence for thoroughness, clarity and truth, and its corollary irreverence for all authority.

The first two can be taught; the third cannot, although an example can be set. No one can think my thoughts all the way through for me. No one can love for me.

Except for the sophists (the "dear colleagues"), philosophy is a "breadless art". You study it for yourself alone, for your own interpretation (CV p. 16). And in it you reach the limits of your own honesty: thinking a thing all the way through is not easy; it makes demands on one's character.

Can philosophy be taught? How do you teach someone to be an outsider?

Aeschines, companion of Socrates in the love of learning

Aeschines (1) The Socratic (There was also an orator of that name), son of a sausage-maker at Athens, lived in the most pinching poverty, but would not let it discourage him in his zeal for learning.... He composed Dialogues, which were prized for their faithful descriptions of Socrates ... (Oskar Seyffert, Classical Dictionary. Aeschines is named in Plato's Apology 33e and Phaedo 59b, and, as is the case with Antisthenes, all his work is lost.)

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