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Count Eberhard's Hawthorn - Showing versus Saying
Ludwig Uhland's poem can be looked at in the context of the early philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. (There is a later, longer discussion of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus elsewhere.)
Outline of this page ...
- Must philosophy be put into words?
- Count Eberhard's Hawthorn
- Saying and Showing
- "Showing" versus Philosophy
- What becomes of "showing" after the Tractatus?
- "Showing" that is not nonsense
- Wittgenstein's philosophy is fact bound, but it also explores "counter-factual facts"
Must philosophy be put into words?
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence (tr. Pears & McGuinness). Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent (tr. Ogden). (TLP 7)
It may seem that 'what cannot be spoken about' DEF.= 'what cannot be put into words'. But not, according to Wittgenstein (at least at one time), because he does not identify anything that essentially can't be "spoken about". Indeed, he says that the TLP itself "speaks about" things that "cannot be put into words" (6.54). Wittgenstein says that, that there are things that cannot be put into words "shows itself; it is the mystical" (6.522), but that doesn't mean those things can't be spoken about because, again, the TLP does speak about them; e.g. it speaks about the propositions of logic (tautology and self-contradiction), and it says that "God does not reveal himself in the world", that God is higher than "how things stand" (4.5) in the world (6.432), despite the TLP's claim that language can only "put into words" propositions that state how things stand in the world.
On the one hand, Socrates held that if a man knew anything, he could explain what he knew to others (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1), i.e. philosophy is essentially discourse of reason. But on the other hand, Wittgenstein claimed to know many things that "cannot be put into words" ... although they can be "spoken of", because, according to TLP 6.54, that entire book speaks of things that "cannot be put into words"; indeed the entire book is "nonsense" ..... Although just as a ladder without rungs cannot be climbed, can language without meaning nonetheless convey meaning?
The impossibility isn't logic
Query: Wittgenstein. What can't be said mustn't be said.
Why must metaphysical speculation be banished? Is it because it is language without meaning -- or because Wittgenstein simply doesn't want metaphysical speculation?
Well, if the TLP's "nonsense" is nonetheless able to convey meaning -- ("But if it can't be put into words, then how can it be that you are putting it into words?"), then what is the TLP's "we must pass over in silence" if not a moral prohibition? As if to say: You could -- but you must not. You must self-discipline yourself, your impulse to speak about "what can't be put into words" (metaphysics) -- i.e. to speak about whatever is not ultimately a statement of sense perception ("This is how things stand"). That is what someone who "sees the world aright" (6.54) will do.
[Wittgenstein's meaning of 'nonsense' in the TLP is at times closer to 'foolishness' than to 'mere noise or scribbling', the latter being the way Wittgenstein in his later work defined 'nonsense', namely as 'undefined words or combinations of words'.]
"Although it can be spoken about." Everything paradoxical here is made clear once the TLP's eccentric, assigned definition of the word 'nonsense' is made clear.
Count Eberhard's Hawthorn
The following poem is, I believe, an example of Wittgenstein's "showing" rather than "saying". The deeper meaning -- the "symbolism", maybe -- of this poem "shows" itself although the author does not "say" [explicitly state] what its deeper meaning is, if he intended it to have one.
Count Eberhard Rustle-Beard,
From Württemberg's fair land,
On holy errand steer'd
To Palestina's strand.The while he slowly rode
Along a woodland way;
He cut from the hawthorn bush
A little fresh green spray.Then in his iron helm
The little sprig he plac'd;
And bore it in the wars,
And over the ocean waste.And when he reach'd his home;
He plac'd it in the earth;
Where little leaves and buds
The gentle Spring call'd forth.He went each year to it,
The Count so brave and true;
And overjoy'd was he
To witness how it grew.The Count was worn with age
The sprig became a tree;
'Neath which the old man oft
Would sit in reverie.The branching arch so high,
Whose whisper is so bland,
Reminds him of the past
And Palestina's strand.
Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862). Translation by Alexander Platt, 1848; quoted by Paul Engelmann in his Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, with a Memoir, p. 83-84.
The effect on Engelmann and Wittgenstein's comment
This poem made a deep impression on Paul Engelmann when he first read it, not for the beauty or depth of its lines taken singly, because taken singly they have neither. Instead, Urland's verses were simple, "tersely informative ... so that none of them, taken by itself, would cause delight. But the poem as a whole gives in 28 lines the picture of a life." The impression this made caused Engelmann to see that there is a "higher level of poetry and language" than he had been aware of before. When Engelmann sent a copy of this poem to Wittgenstein, the latter wrote back:
And this is how it is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable [das Unaussprechliche] then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be -- unutterably -- contained in what has been uttered! (Engelmann, Memoir p. 82-85 [4 September 1917 (Letter No. 6)])
There are indeed things that cannot be put into words [allerdings Unaussprechliches] [tr. Ogden: "There is indeed the inexpressible"]. They make themselves manifest [tr. Ogden: "This shows itself"]. (TLP 6.522, tr. Pears & McGuinness)
In art it is hard to say anything that is as good as: saying nothing. (CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 156a 57r: ca. 1932-1934])
How Uhland's Poem might be Read
This poem alludes to the Crusades to capture the Holy Land -- but I am actually guessing because I don't know that. What matters here is the general remark about how to read this poem as Wittgenstein would have read it. That is, regardless of what Count Eberhard went to "Palestina's strand" for, to read this poem as Wittgenstein did, you must set aside your own views about the Crusades (or whatever other event the poem may allude to). Because all that is important here is: how Count Eberhard saw things.
And in the count's eyes the hawthorn symbolized the bright ideal of his youth that he had remained faithful to throughout his life and now into his old age. That is the picture of a life that the poem shows us. That is the symbolism of the hawthorn, its deeper meaning, I think, but Wittgenstein at the time of the Tractatus would not have said this; -- not that he would have said it had some other meaning either: "if only you do not try to say what is unsayable then nothing gets lost." And indeed in my statement of the poem's deeper meaning it may seem that the picture of the count's life gets lost.
Of course, that is not the only way the poem may be read, i.e. not the only meaning that can be given to the hawthorn; other, possibly darker, readings are also possible given the history of Palestine. By not making the poem's deeper meaning explicit, Uhland left that possibility open. But whatever is taken for its deeper meaning, the poem is for Wittgenstein an example of "showing" rather than of "trying to say what cannot be said".
Saying and Showing
The proposition 'Moore good' shows that 'Moore' is on the left, but it does not say that. Other propositions can say that. (Notebooks 1914-1916 (Oxford, 1961), p. 110 ["Notes dictated to G.E. Moore in Norway, April 1914"])
In any ordinary proposition, e.g., 'Moore good', this shews and does not say that 'Moore' is to the left of 'good'; and here what is shewn can be said by another proposition. But this only applies to that part of what is shewn which is arbitrary. The logical properties which it shews are not arbitrary, and that it has these cannot be said in any proposition.
But the topic here is the application of that distinction to poetry. And in that context consider:
There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. This shows itself. (TLP 6.522)
This treats statements of ideas as if they were passages of instrumental music.
There is poetry which is described as "musical", e.g. Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott, the sound of which can be appreciated even if the sense of its language is unknown. But Engelmann does not say that Urland's poem is musical in that way.
[There are cases where instrumental music can be said to have a determinate meaning, e.g. in the leitmotifs that are associated with characters and ideas in Wagner and "Peter and the Wolf". There is as well the conventional music that used to be played to accompany silent movies, e.g. at the appearance of the villain or hero or of danger. But these meanings can be clearly stated; they are not an example of "meaning that can only be shown".]
"Showing" versus Philosophy
Treating language as if it were in some sense music -- i.e. in the sense of its "meaning" being "inexpressible". That is not what I want from philosophy. I would call it self-mystifying rather than "mystical". Language can be heard as music, but I would not apply the word "meaning" to instrumental music in any sense that is useful to logic. There are many meanings of the word 'meaning'; Wittgenstein, in his post-Tractatus philosophy chose one sense of that word in order to make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense in the context of philosophy. [The words "in the context of philosophy" are important to understanding what Wittgenstein did. He did not by making this selection say "what linguistic meaning really is".]
Philosophy is discursive: If something cannot be put into words, then it has no place in philosophy. "But in a deeper sense ..." -- In philosophy a sense that cannot be put into words is no sense. [Piero Sraffa's criticism of "showing" versus "saying".]
If it can't be put into words, and put into words clearly, then it is nonsense [i.e. undefined language, noise]. I would state that as a first principle of philosophy [of Wittgenstein's "logic of language" as I understand it], or at least of what I want from philosophy: I want to get rid of the vagueness and confusion (Philosophy seeks to bring clarity and order to chaos) and the only-in-appearance metaphors ("You must be able to restate metaphors in prose").
[There is no show without tell in philosophy. But there is "showing" that is not nonsense, although it is also not philosophy.]
What becomes of "showing" after the Tractatus?
Question: If the "theory of meaning" of the Tractatus -- and it is a metaphysical theory [every bit as metaphysical as the "theory of abstraction"] -- is, as shown by the criticisms of it that Wittgenstein makes at the beginning of his Philosophical Investigations, unsound -- i.e. if the TLP is a misrepresentation of how our language works [i.e. of its logic ('Logic' is 'the study of everything subject to rules, including the rules of sense and nonsense'; 'logic' DEF.= 'grammar' in Wittgenstein's jargon], then what becomes of its distinction between "saying" and "showing"?
By what methods is the TLP refuted by Wittgenstein?
In what way or ways is the Tractatus a misrepresentation of the logic of our language? Is it unsound in its reasoning -- i.e. is it not self-consistent, or does it contain nonsense [i.e. undefined language]? Isn't that the only criticism that can be made of a metaphysical theory, given that metaphysics is non-empirical (incomparable with, and thus unverifiable and unfalsifiable by facts)? But is that Wittgenstein's criticism in the Philosophical Investigations? In some instances it is; e.g. the expression 'absolutely simple', like 'absolutely complex', is nonsense (PI § 47).
But isn't Wittgenstein's principle criticism that the logic-of-language of the Tractatus is inconsistent with what anyone can recognize as facts about our language?
What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of human beings ... observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes. (ibid. § 415)
Augustine's picture of language as consisting essentially of names of things (ibid. § 23: "The multiplicity of tools in language ... the multiplicity of kinds of words"), which leads to questions such as "What is time?" and "What is the location of the mind?", as if -- contrary to what anyone can observe -- the words 'time' and 'mind' were names of things. Plato's demand for essential definitions, as if -- contrary to what anyone can observe -- when he looked he actually found "common natures" (rather than only family likenesses). [The persistent false grammatical account of our language; our unquestioning acceptance of the correctness of inherited metaphysical theories instead of a simple acceptance of the facts.]
That is, isn't Wittgenstein's criticism of the Tractatus as much empirical as logical (i.e. uncovering nonsense)? But can metaphysics be refuted this way? Refuted -- I don't think so, not if the expression 'metaphysical theory' is to be defined differently from 'scientific theory', not if a sharp distinction is to be maintained between empiricism and rationalism. Metaphysics is rationalism, and not being empirical, cannot be refuted by facts [or, to the extent that a theory can be refuted by facts, it is not metaphysical]. But, on the other hand, even if the unverifiable-unfalsifiable pictures of metaphysics cannot be refuted, they can lose its charm. "The philosopher says: Look at things this way!" (CV p. 61), and it is as if Wittgenstein had said: distinguish between facts and fanciful pictures, and if you do, you will prefer the facts.
But of course many people do not share this preference, feeling as they do that the facts by themselves "must" be an uncertain and incomplete account of reality. Metaphysics can't be refuted by a confrontation with the facts, because of the facts it simply asks, "But what really happens here -- what is the reality behind the apparent facts? How do we explain these apparent facts?" For example, the "abstraction of essential meaning" isn't a fact, but the claimed reality behind the facts, and this is why it can't be refuted by confrontation with the facts.
Metaphysics asks: what is the reality behind the apparent facts -- i.e. what metaphysics regards as the "appearances"? It seeks to discover the "true facts" underneath the apparent facts. As opposed to this is the view that the facts themselves are reality:
The question is not one of explaining a language-game ... but of noting a language-game. (PI § 655; cf. Z § 314)
["Can metaphysics be refuted?" Criticism here is difficult. But why is it difficult? Is it the subject matter per se -- or is it the absence of more than a very few examples? One naturally reaches out to grab hold of something solid, but there is nothing there -- because we have put nothing there. Which is to say that our difficulty is entirely self-made. What makes this question difficult [if not insoluble] is its lack of definition, the lack of definition that comes from the absence of examples.]
"Showing" that is not nonsense
There is still a place -- and a very important place -- for "showing" by any other name in Wittgenstein's post-Tractatus thought; -- but this "showing" is not nonsense. On the other hand, it is not meaningful in the sense of the word 'meaningful' that Wittgenstein chose for his logic of language either. It is meaningful in other senses of the word 'meaningful', just as "nonsense poetry" is not nonsense in all senses of the word 'nonsense' (PI § 282, 13). "Feeling, intuition, the irrational, etc." should be excluded -- only where their inclusion is inappropriate, Engelmann wrote. Wittgenstein asked Drury how the spirit in which his work was done could be understood by his readers given that he was not able to say "one word about all that music has meant in my life" in his Philosophical Investigations. "How then can I hope to be understood."
Many of our feelings and thoughts are [essentially] unclear [less so even than our questions without answers]. These find expression in poetry and in the other arts, and that expression is not nonsense. But if we do not hold philosophy to a different standard [i.e. definition of 'meaning'], then the search for truth -- the search for understanding that is philosophy -- becomes nebulous: thoughts are allowed to remain cloudy and are never forced to become clear; the distinction between sense and nonsense breaks down until there is no longer a useful distinction to be made; philosophy descends into the endless night of "whatever seems correct, whatever seems right" (ibid. § 258). [Must we be able to give an account of what we know? ("how a clarinet sounds", a the scent of oranges). In the context of philosophy: yes.]
"What is undefined is without meaning ... Or what else shall we mean by 'undefined' [in the context of philosophy; in poetry of course we can dream]", I wrote elsewhere (and none too clearly). -- What then, are there different standards of nonsense? No. What there are is different meanings of the word 'nonsense'. There is no essence of nonsense, because there is no essence of meaning. The meaning of the word 'meaning' that Wittgenstein chose for his logic of language is pared with one sense of the word 'nonsense' (where nonsense is determined by grammar: "the connection between grammar and sense and nonsense" [BB p. 65]), and there 'nonsense' means 'undefined'. But there are countless other meanings of the word 'meaning' than the one Wittgenstein chose for his philosophical work of clarification, and thus there are countless other meanings of the word 'nonsense' than 'undefined'. This is why we have "nonsense poetry" -- precisely because in some sense of the word 'meaning', it is not nonsense.
Wittgenstein's philosophy is fact bound, but it also explores "counter-factual facts"
Someone wrote (I'm sorry but I cannot remember who, but I think it was J.J.C. Smart) that there is an "unacknowledged verificationism" in Wittgenstein's philosophy. This is incorrect [otherwise 'I have a toothache' would be nonsense in that philosophy, which it is not], unless it means that Wittgenstein's post-Tractatus thinking is fact bound -- i.e. that it sticks to the facts and wishes to be held accountable to them. It prefers fact to fancy (Newton's "hypotheses": "dreams and vain fictions of our own devising"): it does not wish to create the idle pictures of rationalism, although on the other hand it is not strictly [solely] anthropology either: it is not just a report of facts about our language.
Wittgenstein's philosophy is also, and just as importantly, conceptual investigations: examinations of alternative concepts such as might appear natural to us if certain general facts of nature were other than they are. And these investigations of language are not done for their own sake, but take [get] their light [purpose, direction] from philosophical problems (PI § 109). [Again, Wittgenstein's philosophy is philosophy, not linguistics and not Philosophy of Language.]
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