Category Archives: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein

[Freud] always stresses what great forces in the mind, what strong prejudices work against the idea of psycho-analysis. But he never says what an enormous charm that idea has for people, just as it has for Freud himself. There may be strong prejudices against uncovering something nasty, but sometimes it is infinitely more attractive than it is repulsive.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, quoted in Normal Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, Oxford, 1958, p. 39

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Now when this is urged against me I at once see clearly, as it were in a flash of light, not only that no description that I can think of would do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I would reject any significant description that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the ground of its significance. That is to say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions were not nonsensical because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that their nonsensicality was their very essence.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘A Lecture on Ethics’, The Philosophical Review, vol. 74, no. 1 (January, 1965), p. 11

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wenn diese Arbeit einen Wert hat, so besteht er in Zweierlei. Erstens darin, dass in ihr Gedanken ausgedrückt sind, und dieser Wert wird umso grösser sein, je besser die Gedanken ausgedrückt sind. Je mehr der Nagel auf den Kopf getroffen ist. – Hier bin ich mir bewusst, weit hinter dem Möglichen zurückgeblieben zu sein. Einfach darum, weil meine Kraft zur Bewältigung der Aufgabe zu gering ist. – Mögen andere kommen und es besser machen.

Dagegen scheint mir die Warheit der hier mitgeteilten Gedanken unantasbar ist un definitiv. Ich bin also der Meinung, die Probleme im Wesentlichen endgültig gelöst zu haben. Und wenn ich mich hierin nicht irre, so besteht nun der Wert dieser Arbeit zeitens darin, dass sie zeigt, wie wening damit getan ist, dass die Probleme gelöst sind.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, London, 1922, Vorwort

Ludwig Wittgenstein

And now I must say that if I contemplate what Ethics really would have to be if there were such a science, this result seems to me quite obvious. It seems to me obvious that nothing we could ever think or say should be the thing. That we cannot write a scientific book, the subject matter of which could be intrinsically sublime and above all other subject matters. I can only describe my feeling by the metaphor, that, if a man could write a book on Ethics which really was a book on Ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books in the world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘A Lecture on Ethics’, Philosophical Review, vol. 74, no. 1 (January, 1965), p. 7