Wittgenstein

[Hotaka]

What was Wittgenstein's message of life or higher purpose?

It seems to me that he had been in much conflict with the collective unconscious of the world, quite a queer thing, he couldn't handle it and it's customs, so he tried to define what it was that he was looking at, starting with reality I imagine, but then he tried to explain reality using words and couldn't get there, then he tried to explain words using words and it was the feeling in these that was revealed to me as being something else, it was being itself that showed me I could read Wittgenstein without shooting myself in the head.

A quote that I like from W in Philosophical Investigations:
"The evolution of higher animals and of man, and the awakening of consciousness at a particular level. The picture is something like this: Though the ether is filled with vibrations the world is dark. But one day man opens his seeing eye and there is light. What this language primarily describes is a picture. What is to be done with the picture, how it is to be used, is still obscure. Quite clearly, however, it must be explored if we want to understand the sense of what we are saying. But the picture seems to spare us this work: it already points to a particular use. That is how it takes us in."

Another quote:
"You can think now of this now of this as you look at it (a triangle), can regard it now as this now as this, and then you will see it now this way, now /j-."-What way? There is no further qualification."

Quote:
1. The feeling of confidence. How is this manifested in behaviour?

2. An 'inner process* stands in need of outward criteria.

In my opinion the outward criteria is already there in the open, and Wittgenstein speaks of this himself. What he did was he showed us that something physical like a word or a letter could be a limited phenomena with a completely predefined purpose in the realm of possibility or perception. By predefined I mean a purpose by the eye of infinite intelligence, as maybe it could be called in this forum which exists and stands alone. I think he was able to show tangibly that most of the processes we think we go through are non existent and reality is out in the open as others in the world bear witness to you as entity. I don't really know if I am making any sense. And I think the other thing he did was show us the spirit of the now in the words in italics. He talks about this.

Quote from the book Philosophical Investigations:

And we do here what we do in a host of similar cases: because we cannot specify any one bodily action which we call pointing to the shape (as opposed, for example, to the colour), we say that a spiritual [mental, intellectual] activity corresponds to these words. Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, we should like to say, is a spirit.

He seems to be pointing to a multi-dimensional view of perception where we see reality and ideas directly without any particular form but rather looking at the essence without definition and with infinite intelligence. And he seems to be doing much more than this if we look through the peep hole that he has opened for us.

 

[Joseph Maynor]

This book will answer your questions.  I read it twice.

https://www.amazon.com/Ludwig-Wittgenstein-Genius-Ray-Monk/dp/0140159959

[Hotaka]

Cool thank you Joseph. I like the tip for writing you have there, it's great, I use it a lot. Surely a man who posts such things has read Wittgenstein?