[New-Poetry] Wittgenstein

[Anny Ballardini]

this is the best of the ones you sent:

155. A poet's words can pierce us. And that is of course causally connected to the use that they have in our life. And it is also connected with the way in which, conformably to this use, we let our thoughts roam up and down in the familiar surroundings of the words.

+ 1

474. I shall get burnt if I put my hand in the fire: that is certainty.

        That is to say: here we see the meaning of certainty. (What it amounts to, not just the meaning of the word “certainty.”)

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jason Quackenbush" <jfq at myuw.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 11:26 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Wittgenstein


> ah, uncle ludwig. some other favorite aphorisms of mine dealing with tangents of that point:
> 
> 336. this case [asking do you have the thought before the expression is found] is similar to the one in which someone imagines that one could not 
> think of a sentence with the remarkable word order of German or Latin just as it stands. One first has to think it, and then one arranges the words in 
> that queer order. (A French politician once wrote that it was a peculiarity of the French language that in it words occur in the order in which one 
> thinks of them.)
> 
> 117. You say to me: "you understand this expression, don't you? Well then--I am using it in the sense you are familiar with."--As if sense were an 
> atmosphere accompanying the word, which it carried with it into every kind of application. If, for example, someone says that the sentence "this is 
> here" (saying which he points to an object in front of him) makes sense to him, then he should ask himself in what special circumstances this sentence 
> is actually used. There it does make sense.
> 
> 107. It was true that our considerations could not be scientific ones. It was not of any possible interest to us to find out empirically 'that, 
> contrary to our preconceived ideas, it is possible to think such-and-such.'--whatever that may mean. (The conception of thought as a gaseous medium). 
> And we must not advance any kind of theory. There must be nothing hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and 
> description alone must take it's place. And this description gets its light, that is to say, its purpose, from philosophical problems. These are, of 
> course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize 
>  those workings: in despite of an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by reporting a new experience, but by arranging what we 
> have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.
> 
> And finally, from Zettel,
> 
> 155. A poet's words can pierce us. And that is of course causally connected to the use that they have in our life. And it is also connected with the 
> way in which, conformably to this use, we let our thoughts roam up and down in the familiar surroundings of the words.
> 
> Anny Ballardini wrote:
>> 501. “The purpose of language is to express thoughts.” – So presumably 
>> the purpose of every sentence is to express a thought. Then what thought 
>> is expressed, for example, by the sentence “It’s raining”?-
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> Ludwig Wittgenstein
>> Philosophical Investigations
>> 
>> 
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