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Rationalism and Empiricism both fail philosophically, according to Wittgenstein. Language, belief, self-mystification, and tilting at scarecrows. The remarks on this page are very old.

Philosophers - They let the words speak to them

When philosophers use a word ... and try to grasp the essence of the thing ... (PI § 116)

In Wittgenstein's description both Rationalism and Empiricism fail as philosophy, because the second is natural science and the first is impossible (because there are no real definitions of abstractions ("abstract objects", i.e. ghosts), and propositions derived from axioms do not yield knowledge about the world independently of verification, as the example of Euclidean geometry shows). Language, belief, self-mystification, and tilting at scarecrows. ["... and try to guess the essence", but contrast 'meaning' = 'essence-of-the-thing-named' with 'meaning' = 'use in the language'.]

Topics on this page ...

• Empiricism versus Rationalism (Wittgenstein's account)
  • The models of Mathematics and Natural Science
  • Wittgenstein's limited project in Philosophy ("if ethics is not rational")
• "Empirical Possibility"
  • "Metaphysics obliterates the distinction" (Z § 458)
  • Philosophy and Theory
  • Confucius, Socrates
  • "Logic" and "Grammar", and Jargon
    • Children's riddles and Philosophy (Kings and metersticks)
      • The riddle of curiosity
      • Shadows of grammar riddles
• Is Philosophy about First but not Last Questions?
  • Laying a foundation versus tidying a room
• Solutions to the Riddle of Existence
  • Does Religion belong to "the childhood of mankind"?
    • "Can one feel that God himself is not implicated in evil?" (Primitive concepts 'God')
  • But surely this does not belong to humanity's childhood (The religious sense of existence)
    • Reason in Mystery
    • The eternal questions as a pattern or way of life

Background: the background of these remarks is the question of how language with meaning is distinguished from words or combinations of words without meaning, which in my jargon, although the expression is taken from Wittgenstein, is called 'logic of language'.

[Words that follow "Query" were Internet searches directed (or misdirected) to this Web site.]

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Empiricism versus Rationalism (Wittgenstein's view)

Note: this continues the discussion about "Empiricism", and is somewhat related to: Rationalism and Empiricism as the two halves of knowledge seeking.

Note: Wittgenstein's remarks aim to prove that there is no such thing as philosophy. That view aside, the historian of philosophy Frederick Copleston says that the difference lies in this: that empiricists hold that there are no innate ideas, whereas rationalists (Descartes, Leibniz) hold that there are. Locke says that the principle of innate ideas is superfluous if all it says is that there are principles (including those of mathematics) that all rational men recognize as true once they are presented with them, for if that is so, then they are learned through experience. The trouble, in my view, is that Locke defines the word 'experience' so broadly that the distinction between experience of the world and introspection (reason) is lost. (A History of Philosophy, Volume V, iv, 4-5) The question is, I'd say, whether there are principles that can be known to be true independently of verification by experience of the world -- and if what can be deduced from those principles can be known to be true independently of verification by experience of the world. Rationalists answer both parts of the question in the affirmative, while empiricists answer the second part of the question in the negative. ("Nothing in the mind not first in the senses.") Wittgenstein's view:

The rationalists were right in seeing that philosophy was not empirical, that is, that as soon as it became empirical it became a question for a science of some sort.

But they were wrong in supposing that there were a priori synthetic judgements. They endeavoured to settle everything by reason, by sitting in arm-chairs and inspecting words -- they let the words speak to them.

The empiricists saw that we could only describe the world. They missed the point when they tried to make philosophy empirical, but they were right in maintaining that reason could not settle everything, and that synthetic propositions were matters of experience. (Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge, 1930-1932, ed. Desmond Lee (1980), p. 79-80)

Rationalists "let words talk to them", meaning: they left it to whatever suggested itself -- i.e. whatever "seemed right" (PI § 258) without regard to verification but only with regard to the avoidance of contradictions in their views [systems: their only requirement was self-consistency] .... However, this is not really a criticism because in the view of the rationalists, verification, involving as it does the empirical -- i.e. the inherently untrustworthy senses -- was of "uncertain" value. That is, the rationalists wanted the certainty they thought they saw in mathematics (for Descartes, as well as geometry): that was their standard of knowledge; they did not want something less than that: for them, less than that certainty reduced philosophers to skepticism. (That is a much stricter standard than Socrates set for philosophy, and so for the Rationalists Socratic ignorance was skepticism, and not what they wanted.)

["They let the words speak to them ..." Cf. the "impressionistic meaning" of words. And analytic propositions.]

The empiricists, on the other hand -- did they really work in the spirit of philosophy -- i.e. did they really want knowledge, or only hypotheses? For the philosopher, if all that is possible is hypotheses, then if he is not of a metaphysical-speculative temperament, he prefers to go thirsty, to do without (because hypotheses cannot satisfy the philosopher's thirst for certainty: the philosopher wants to know.

[But, G.E. Moore asked: doesn't the philosopher know many things, e.g. that he has hands? Wittgenstein: "If you do know that here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest.... What we can ask is if it can make sense to doubt it" (OC §§ 1-2). Of course here the rationalist's doubt can be demonstrated to be purely subjective doubt (because objective doubt, like objective certainly, requires grounds that can be put to the test and in that way resolved). But should that disturb the rationalist, if those tests are merely empirical?]

The rationalists were misled, if they were misled, by what it seems possible to do with mathematics, where e.g. in geometry countless theorems can be demonstrated a priori (i.e. independently of experience, without regard to empirical verification) -- and therefore that much knowledge [certainty] can be gained purely by thinking. The question the empiricists asked was: but what is the relationship between mathematical knowledge and the world -- i.e. can geometrical knowledge gained a priori be applied to the world of our experience without [experiential] verification [e.g. by taking measurements]?

But the rationalists, however, went further than this: they wanted to leave mathematics behind while still using its methods to decide questions that are not mathematical, e.g. do vacuums [void space] exist? Descartes reasoned that they, logically, cannot: "There can be no extension that is extension of nothing," he wrote (Principles of Philosophy ii, 18, quoted in Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume IV, v, 3 The world outside the mind is essentially extension). And if Pascal appears to demonstrate otherwise, then that must be a mere empirical illusion. Question: can a philosopher have one set of beliefs about reality when he is in his study and a different set of beliefs when he leaves his study? "I have seen it demonstrated with my own eyes, but nonetheless vacuums don't really exist; they are a theoretical construct, a useful fiction" [like electrons, but not like the ether, I don't think, because that has no empirical basis whatever: it is purely a substance drawn from the imagination -- it is rationalistic].

["There is nothing in the mind which was not first in the senses" seems to be a doctrine directed against Descartes, rejecting his "innate ideas". (Among the differences between Empiricism and Rationalism.) It is a thoroughly metaphysical doctrine [axiom], ironically not itself empirically demonstrable.]

The models of Mathematics and Natural Science

Frederick Copleston compares (or contrasts) Rationalism and Empiricism based on their thought models.

It is thus possible to look on both rationalism and empiricism as experiments, on rationalism as an experiment to see how far the mathematical model was applicable in philosophy, and on empiricism as an experiment in applying in philosophy the methodological limitations of classical [i.e. Newtonian] physics. (A History of Philosophy, Volume IV, xvii, 3)

Wittgenstein's limited project in Philosophy

Note: that in his remarks above Wittgenstein says nothing here about ethics, because he excludes ethics from the domain of philosophy (The essence of ethics, according to Wittgenstein, is the notion of "absolute value", and because that notion cannot be treated rationally, ethics cannot be part of philosophy). But what if the propositions of ethics, if there are such propositions -- i.e. if ethics is rational (as Socrates' account of ethics presumes that it is), are fundamentally different from the propositions of metaphysics? Then what becomes of Wittgenstein's project in philosophy? At the very least its application may not be universal.

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"Empirical Possibility"

According to Arthur Eddington, what will happen to the water in my coffee pot when placed over the fire? It may boil, freeze, it seems change in any way imaginable. ["The water in my teapot" -- further comments.] -- And Eddington is not talking about logical possibility ("what can be described") but about -- empirical possibility? Is what is theoretically possible also empirically possible? Not as I defined 'real possibility': something that can happen -- 'can' because it has been observed to happen. [Real and Logical Possibility.]

"Metaphysics obliterates the distinction"

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

We could rewrite this (without loss of sense):

The essential thing about metaphysics: it obliterates the distinction between real and verbal definitions.

When that distinction is lost, the result is nonsense: we wander in an exitless maze of vagueness and confusion. And in that sense metaphysics is nonsense -- but only in that sense. [The classification of metaphysical propositions]

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Philosophy and Theory

Does it add clarity or obscurity to call a way of looking at things in philosophy a 'theory'? What is our model theory? In Drury's words, in natural science a 'theory' is a "model, picture or map" that is (1) consistent with the data it seeks to summarize (i.e. the selection of conceived facts it seeks to organize in a humanly coherent way) and (2) can (i.e. this possibility must exist) be inconsistent with further evidence (in which case the theory must be modified or replaced with another theory). If we look at the heliocentric and geocentric models -- these are two ways of looking = organizing the data of observation, and the heliocentric model was modified from circular to elliptical orbits to better conform to the data. Then question: if we call Wittgenstein's logic of language a way of looking at language-meaning, would it make Wittgenstein's method clearer if we called it a "theory that summarizes the conceived facts (in this case about the use of words in the language)"? No, it would not: to select a definition of 'meaning' out of the many possible definitions is not to put forth a theory about what "the true meaning of words" is. (Wittgenstein did have theories about the origin of philosophy, and I think these can be refuted by anomalies if they are held to be universally true.)

As to metaphysical conjecture in philosophy -- i.e. speculation that cannot be refuted by the facts of experience (and therefore is unsocratic), the only reason I can see to compare that to theory in natural science theory -- is to point our how metaphysics is unlike natural science -- i.e. to compare for the sake of contrasting. What metaphysical conjecture offers is only a logically possible explanation, one about which Wittgenstein says, "It may be that way", meaning that it may also not be that way.

Historical theories

In What manner of man was Wittgenstein? where I say: "the explanation fully consistent with the facts" -- aren't I offering a theory? Further evidence might disprove my theory, if it is a theory. But, then, (1) am I summarizing or organizing the selected data by means of a "model, picture or map"? or (2) am I only offering a verifiable hypothesis (proposition): If these are the facts, then this explanation of their cause is consistent with the facts? Isn't the assignment of a cause called a theory (e.g. aren't Newton's "Three Laws of Motion" theories)? "Why did Wittgenstein do this?" asks for an explanation. "Here is why he did this" states a cause.

It appears that the statement 'A theory summarizes or organizes a selection of data' isn't an adequate definition of 'theory', unless the assignment of a cause is a summary or organization, which it is not obvious that it is.

Are historical explanations (e.g. as recorded in Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus), provided they are clearly falsifiable (which statements using words such as 'probably' and 'no doubt' are not) theories?

Theories in philosophy ...

That does not answer the question of whether there are philosophical theories. For example, is Wittgenstein's "family likenesses" (family resemblances and the grammar of the word 'game') metaphor a theory? It does account for all the facts, e.g. in the case of the grammar of the word 'game', and it could be disproved -- if it were somehow (I don't know how) discovered by reexamining the facts in plain view -- that the word 'game' really has an essential meaning ..... But what would it be like if someone found that all games had a defining common nature that no one had noticed before?

[Note that Wittgenstein does not deny that some words do have essential meanings (In some cases the meaning of a common name is indeed the common nature it names). And that is the difference between Wittgenstein and our inherited view derived from Plato (namely the "Theory of Abstraction", which is metaphysical speculation), which is that all words have essential meanings -- even if we are unable to say what they are. If we are unable to say what they are, Wittgenstein said, that is because those meanings don't exist, but instead those words are defined in a different way.]

... and not

In contrast, does Wittgenstein have a theory of language-games -- e.g. does he say these games are the "true origin of all language"? No, 'language-games' is instead a concept (based on a comparison: Let us compare the use of words in the language to the use of pieces in a game, and say that the rules for the use of each is defining their meaning) -- i.e. a definition. (Wittgenstein nowhere claims that the meaning of everything we do with language can be compared to a game in such a way that is helpful for understanding the language's place in our life or for making philosophical problems clearer, as it does not e.g. in the case of prayer.)

"... in which sense of 'theory'?" Because if the word 'theory' is thoughtlessly applied -- i.e. without saying what we mean by 'theory' in this particular case, it should be expected to have the effect of clouding rather than clarifying things. (One way we make things clear is by classifying them, showing which categories they belong in [where in our classification scheme (system of classification) they belong], e.g. the category {theory}.)

Similarly "Wittgenstein's philosophy of language" (i.e. "theory of language") is fairly meaningless -- unless we explain what we mean by calling Wittgenstein's work that. Because Wittgenstein's later work (i.e. work after the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus which is a thoroughgoing work of metaphysics) is not a case of: Plato had a theory about "the real meaning of language", and Wittgenstein had a theory": there is a difference in kind here that the word 'theory' should not be allowed to gloss over [obscure] -- namely, Plato's theory is metaphysical speculation, whereas Wittgenstein's "theory" is only a description of the conceived facts in plain view. (I try to explain Wittgenstein's later method in philosophy in the Introduction to the Synopsis of Wittgenstein's Logic of Language.]

Query: Wittgenstein's religious theories.

When Wittgenstein conjectures, as he does frequently in the collection of remarks published in English as Culture and Value, "I think ..." (what believers have wanted [p. 85], that Christianity says [p. 53]), are these theories? Are they consistent with the evidence? Yes, but these conjectures are not falsifiable. They are only explanations in the sense that a new way of looking at things -- a new frame of reference -- is an explanation.

What are we calling a 'theory'? How are we defining that word -- what are we treating as defining characteristics of a 'theory'? Any essential definition of the word 'theory' we state is going to be an assigned meaning or, in other words, our jargon.

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Confucius, Socrates

"That is the real Ch'iu," Confucius said to his students. Confucius did everything in the open, as Socrates did. They had no secret knowledge our ignorance of which prevents us from being like them. But then why aren't we like them? The answer is their consistently Promethean self-watchfulness. Prometheus's name means "one who gives thought before he acts" (in contrast to his brother Epimetheus whose name means "one who acts before he thinks") (Protagoras 320c-322a). The cost of virtue is eternal vigilance. (Also, Confucius observed his companions for good and bad examples.)

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"Logic" and "Grammar", and Jargon

Query: inventor of logic, Socrates.

Although I would want to say that, and regard other definitions of 'logic', centering on form as they do, as of no interest, obviously that is not the predominant view of the matter. [Aristotle's account of Socrates' contribution to logic.]

Query: how is logic relevant to the exploration of meaning in language?

What are you calling 'logic'? In Wittgenstein's jargon, 'logic' = 'grammar' is the 'meaning of language'.

Query: definition of language in logic.

Whose "logic" and which type of definition? The query assumes that we already know that.

Query: chess, geometry.

You could put any two words together and then ask: what does it mean? You could "let the words speak to you" (suggest a meaning or use in the language to you). It does at the very least require [demand] that you think [try to think]. Philosophy really does require imagination, ideally as much as writing fairy tales.

This is another why in why you cannot run out of things to think about in philosophy -- why you cannot find your questions "drying up" ["drying up of problems"]. Because language is everywhere, or nearly everywhere thought and perception are.

Although, more important, is that you can always go deeper in your understanding of questions and answers "What is linguistic meaning in the context of philosophy?" e.g. is a question you can never get to the rock bottom [bedrock] of, even if you start there [i.e. even if you began with Wittgenstein's logic of language, defining 'meaning' as rules for using signs]: because there are countless things that you overlook [do not see at first]: what begins as a smooth surface shows itself not to be smooth at all; to continue Waismann's metaphor: there are countless indentations in the bedrock, each of which takes you a bit deeper [although never beyond the bedrock, because the expression 'beyond the bedrock' is meaningless]. I think what I wrote in the Preface is correct: "Nothing stays clear for very long, only for so long as we see no problem with it." And this is the principal reason why there cannot be an end to philosophy: we can only finish with it if we choose or are able to stop thinking about it.

There was a joke Professor Trudinger told us: "There's a sermon in each blade of grass" [-- "Yes, and most of them could be a lot shorter" --] -- i.e. if a blade of grass can suggest meanings, pictures, stories, parables, metaphors, how much more so can "undefined language" [i.e. undefined combinations of words].

Points and tangents in geometry: a line touching a circle at only one point. "But how can undefined language suggest pictures to us?" It doesn't suggest pictures to us, unless we give the language a meaning, which is what these pictures are, if they are coherent -- i.e. a meaning for the language to have. (If someone said "I can imagine it, although I cannot draw it", we must ask what 'imagine' means in the case of 'imagining a picture'. To imagine a picture that cannot be drawn is not to imagine anything [Otherwise what is the word 'picture' to mean here]. But then how can the word 'tangent' not be meaningless? Because by 'a point' in geometry we simply mean 'a location', and the grammar of 'location' is not the grammar of name-of-object [They are different parts of speech]. In other words there are no "real pictures" [cf. "real definition"] of tangents, only conventional ones.) [Philosophy of Geometry: what is geometric point?]

Query: questions about Wittgenstein's philosophy.

This was I hope a request for criticism of Wittgenstein's work; I also wish that I could provide that. But I can't I'm afraid: it needs the genius of a philosopher to see how to criticise another philosopher -- to say a new word: to see things in a new light (by which others can afterwards also see). But I am not a philosopher.

But it could be worthwhile to try to compile a collection of questions to ask about Wittgenstein's -- or anyone else's -- philosophy. For example, did Wittgenstein invent theories about the origins of philosophy? Which suggests the question: is there such a thing as a philosophical theory [What might we mean by the expression 'philosophical theory'? This asks for definitions of the word 'theory'], or what type/s of theory did Wittgenstein invent, if he did invent theories?

[In the years after those remarks there has been much criticism of Wittgenstein's work written on this site.]

Query: equivalent word for 'student wisdom' in Greek.

Is this not correct, then: 'philosopher' = 'student of wisdom', or, rather, 'one who seeks [i.e. a student] wisdom in logic, ethics, metaphysics'? Maybe 'student of wisdom' is equivalent in meaning to 'student of philosophy' -- but only if the area and kind of wisdom sought ("studied") is specified.

Query: Ludwig Wittgenstein, language as tools and games.
Query: language is tool playing by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

But this is not a theory of language. It is a way of looking at language [comparison, metaphor, a selection] -- and it gets its point from the problems of philosophy; it is a very limited view of language. [Wittgenstein's tool metaphor and game metaphor.]

Query: Wittgenstein, theories of language.

Again, in my view Wittgenstein did not have a philosophy of language. But when I say that I have the Philosophical Investigations in mind. So would my view include the Tractatus? But maybe the account of the nature of language in the TLP is a "theory of meaning" [and therefore also a Philosophy of Language] -- but 'theory' in which sense of that word (because that word has no essential meaning)?

Children's riddles and Philosophy

Query: how is a king like a meter stick? riddle.

Both are judges [standards of judgment], but neither can be judged [There is no further standard against which to judge the standard; justification comes to an end, which in this case is with the standard (whether king or meter stick)]. Here the king must be an absolute monarch [absolute dictator]; there must be no Magna Charta e.g.

Of course I don't know if that is the answer this riddle requires; e.g. if it is a conundrum the answer should be a pun or play on words: "Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?" Alice asked the Mock Turtle. "We called him Tortoise because he taught us. Really you are dull!" (Alice in Wonderland ix)

They are both judges to which no judgment applies. They are both judges without judges [like Supreme Court judges].

[Weeks later.] How is a king like a meter stick? They are both rulers. (Not every riddle is philosophical.)

[God and the Meter Stick]

The riddle of curiosity

Query: riddle question, If curiosity is the Mother of all inventions, then who is the Father of all inventions? Replies must be logical.

Ignorance is the Father of curiosity and therefore also of all inventions: Recognizing that you don't know -- i.e. that you are ignorant of -- something that you would like to know. ("Philosophy begins in wonder = perplexity.")

Shadows of grammar riddles

Query: is there a view from nowhere?

Can a shadow cast a shadow? But maybe 'a view from nowhere' is an undefined combination of words (i.e. nonsense)? -- But that question is never asked. Cf. 'Is there nowhere from a view?' This is not like the case of the White King's response to the messenger who reported that he had seen nobody on the road: "Quite right. This young lady saw him too" in that -- although it too is a grammatical joke -- it does not make us smile. But it ought to.

I can assign a meaning to the query, namely, If it is concepts that assign a "somewhere", is there no percept that is concept-free ("a view from nowhere")? Is it possible to look at things without preconceptions (Z § 711)? Is it only possible to look at things "this way!" or "that way!" (CV p. 61)?

"Can a shadow cast a shadow?" That is a grammatical question, but it looks as if it were a factual one -- i.e. it looks as if it were a question, not about how we use the word 'shadow' [its meaning or definition, its use in our language], but about the nature [physical properties] of shadows. There is after all a similar question whose meaning is clear: "Are shadows reflected in mirrors?" The meaning here is indeed given by the method of verification: Go to a place where a shadow is cast by some object, set up a mirror and look: do you see only the reflection of the object or is the shadow it casts also reflected in the mirror? However, how is 'Can a shadow cast a shadow?' to be tested? (If you describe a test, then you give the question-sign -- i.e. the combination of words 'Can a shadow cast a shadow?' -- a meaning [a sense, use in our language]; otherwise that combination of words is nonsense, "sound without sense" [an undefined (or, useless) combination of words or our language].

'Can a shadow cast a shadow?' We can frame countless seemingly profound questions simply by following patterns of syntax and grammatical analogies. The difficulty is not to put combinations of words together -- but to give those combinations a sense [a meaning, use in our language].

'Can a dream cast a shadow?' Figuratively, certainly a dream can cast a shadow. "That nightmare has cast a shadow over the whole morning"; cf. "cast a cloud". But our question isn't about the question's figurative sense but its non-figurative sense -- i.e. does it have one? Well, what might that question mean?

We follow an analogy: a man standing against the light casts a shadow behind him; -- now, does his shadow also cast a shadow "in the same way" (Why, is there some other?) as the man himself does? Draw a picture of casting a shadow "in the same way" -- "Generally nothing explains the meaning of words so well as a picture" (LC p. 63). And using our imagination we can certainly dream up something ..... And that is the trouble: that we can invent a use to make in the language for any combination of words whatsoever. (And this is the importance of the standard of normal usage to logic, that the distinction between sense and nonsense "not be evaded by hypotheses", i.e. the fabrications of imagination for figments of syntax.)

Pindar [518-438 B.C.] speaks of the flower's bloom that falls to earth. About mortal things he says, "Things of a day! ... Man is a shadow's dream." (Pythian Odes 8, tr. E. Hamilton in The Greek Way (1942); cf. Prospero's words in The Tempest: "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep" (Act iv, Scene 1), and Hamlet's words "A dream itself is but a shadow" (Act ii, Scene 2; Rosencrantz: "I hold ambition of so airy and light a / quality that it is but a shadow's shadow"). Pindar adds between his words above, "What are we and what are we not." What is his meaning?)

What becomes of those who die before us? "They are now no more than a shadow cast on our lives." Is that language figurative? And can there be a figurative sense if there is non-figurative sense? Metaphors have a prose version (what may appear to be metaphorical language that cannot be restated in prose is not metaphorical). But that prose version is not the literal sense of the metaphor: the metaphor has no literal sense -- if by 'literal' we mean 'in the same way', as above: "a man casts a shadow; does his shadow cast a shadow in the same way?"

Query: the shadow cast by grammar.

This is a very fine metaphor. For grammar, what Wittgenstein called "surface grammar", very often does indeed cast a shadow -- i.e. obscurity, darkness -- over the meaning of the language we use, e.g. with the false analogies between different regions of language it innocently suggests to us.

Query: philosophical shadows cast by words.

Those are the hypostatized shadow-objects (the ghost-like objects that we "sense" the presence of, although only when we know their names) I wrote about in The False Grammatical Account. Other possible meanings for the query, however, are more poetical: words may cast a shadow of doom or fear, the pronouncement of a court or other authority e.g.

Query: riddle, if you say its name it no longer exists.
Query: if my name is spoken I no longer exist, riddle.

The answer would be 'silence', eh? But is it clear what it might mean to call the word 'silence' a name? Are we really that poor in categories? Yes, it seems that we are. Try to explain the use of a word without grasping for "some sort of object" to point at. The picture that rules our imagination: 'word' = 'name'. [The False grammatical account | Names in the context of Plato's Phaedrus]

Variation. When my name is spoken I disappear. If you say my name, I disappear.

Riddle: What is the same in every language?
Answer: Silence.

Query: if you are ignorant of me, I am something; if you know me, I am nothing; puzzle.

Nichts. Is the sought answer Silence again? Someone asks, "What is silence?" meaning "What is called by the name 'silence'?" for that is what we reflexively think when confronted with an unknown word. Does the absence of something, e.g. sound, = nothing.

Query: it's a word that when you speak it no longer exists.

The word continues to exist, only the silence doesn't. The silence is broken, not the word 'silence'. (Cf. 'Mr. N.N. is dead'.)

Query: when one doesn't know what it is, then it is something; but when one knows what it is, then it's nothing; what is it?

Ghost? names of ghosts, e.g. 'elf': When we hear a noun we ask "What is it?" i.e. what is the noun the name of? But then we learn that in many, possibly most, cases the noun is not a name, but has a different use in our language.

Query: I do not ask anything but I demand an answer riddle.

A telephone? But someone might say: "When it rings, it asks to be answered." This shows the fluidity of our concept 'ask', how a solution to this riddle can always be avoided -- Or would that be "only playing with words" [another fluid concept]? Cf. a knock on the door. Another answer: A captain's command? "Do this!" The sailor must answer, "Aye, aye, sir!" The captain is not asking; he is ordering: the sailor is not being asked; he is being ordered. Yet another answer: Life? It does not ask us: How should we live our life? Nonetheless that question must be answered. But, again, someone might say: "Human nature, which is part of the natural world, asks us that question. And our ability to reason has been given us to answer it ("We are discussing no small matter, but how to live")."

Query: puzzle: what is an answer that cannot be questioned?

An echo? which is the answer to a call ("Hello", "Hello Hello"). Silence ("But answer came there none. And this was scarcely odd because they'd eaten every one") -- is silence an answer or is silence no answer? (It appears that only propositions can be questioned.)

Water, Wet, Wetness ("wethood")

Query: is water wet?

Only if it can [also] be dry. On the other hand, how can water impart [the quality of] wetness if it is not itself wet [cf. Plato, Republic 335d]? But water doesn't impart anything -- it doesn't, as it were, give or share its wetness with other things -- a thing is wet not because water has made it wet, but because the thing has absorbed water (Rather than 'wet' we could use the word 'watery', although that word has another use in the language). Water has made the thing wet only in the sense that the thing has absorbed water. "How can it give what it doesn't have?" Answer: it doesn't give anything; the question 'What does water give?' is nonsense (an undefined combination of words).

Query: answers without questions.

Setting aside other possible meanings, the query does suggest an important question: If it is nonsense to speak of 'an answer for which there is no question', isn't it also nonsense to speak of 'a question for which there is no answer'? "What do you mean by calling 'Why is there anything rather than nothing at all?' a question?" What's a question without an answer when it's at home?

"What does the combination of words 'question without an answer' mean?" But words cannot mean anything. Only a human being can mean something by words. The combination of words 'a question without an answer' is not the name of a thing that has an existence independent of our language use, nor a thing about which a natural science or metaphysical hypothesis about its nature might be formed.

Of course, here we mean logically without. Because we might make a list of statements such as "It is blue" and then ask what question that statement might be used to answer (e.g. "What color is the sky?"), and call that list "Answers without Questions". [This is an example of inventing a sense, use, meaning, for a random combination of words.]

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Is Philosophy about First but not Last Questions?

These are preliminary ideas for Agreement and Disagreement with Wittgenstein about "What Philosophy is?". Note: this section is particularly weak in its reasoning, which given how weak my reasoning normally is, is not at all good.

Constructing a building does not interest me, but having a clear view of the foundations of possible buildings [does]. (CV p. 7)

In Wittgenstein's statement from November 1930, I see, or I think I see, the "elemental" part of Schweitzer's definition of 'philosophy' as critical reason applied to "elemental and final" questions. But where is the "final" part for Wittgenstein? I think that for Wittgenstein either the elemental and final parts were the same ("The target I am aiming at is clarity as an end in itself," he wrote at the same time) -- or philosophy is not concerned with "final questions": final questions are the concern of religion. That is not really either/or: the reason that clarity is the only aim of Wittgenstein's philosophy is because attaining clarity is the only task philosophy is capable of: philosophy has its sphere [domain] and religion has its sphere [domain] -- and the two do not intersect [overlap].

I do not want to agree with Wittgenstein ... What I want is for [dogmatic] religion to pass away to be replaced by "the reflections inspired by a thoughtful philosophy" (Plato). As I wrote in the context of the Philosophy of Religion: There is no place in my life where I would want to say: "Here I do not use reason." Of course, that I want something does not make that something possible.

[And maybe it is not possible for me, although religion is not metaphysics -- it is in nowise hypothetical, and not using reason ≠ accepting what is contrary to reason, only that we feel our existence to be a unfathomable mystery to us, but that within that mystery there are various points of reference.]

Wittgenstein, unlike Descartes, did not believe that the task of philosophy was the construction of a building:

Laying a foundation versus tidying a room

In science you can compare what you are doing with, say, building a house. You must first lay a firm foundation; once it has been laid it must not again be touched or moved. In philosophy we are not laying foundations but tidying up a room, in the process of which we have to touch everything a dozen times. (Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge, [students' notes from] 1930-1932, ed. Desmond Lee (1980), p. 24])

Philosophy is as at least as much about excavation as about construction [Philosophers are indeed always digging up the plant in order to examine its roots], or at least as much about demolition: because philosophers are sappers (PI § 118). Philosophy asks: "How do you know?" Skepticism in the Socratic tradition does not build houses: it undermines them (although not for the sake of undermining them, but in order to clear the path to the truth).

But there is also construction: "first lay a firm foundation", although that foundation is subject to revision. I am thinking of Wittgenstein's distinction between sense and nonsense: that is indeed a foundation that must first be laid, if we are to know the difference between language-with-meaning and "mere sound without sense".

What is philosophy? An enquiry into the essence of the world? We want a final answer, or some description of the world, whether verifiable or not.

What we are in fact doing is to tidy up our notions, to make clear what can be said about the world. We are in a muddle about what can be said, and are trying to clear up that muddle.

This activity of clearing up is philosophy. We will therefore follow this instinct to clarify, and leave aside our initial question, What is philosophy? We start with a vague mental uneasiness, like that of a child asking "Why?". The child's question is not that of a mature person; it expresses puzzlement rather than a request for precise information. So philosophers ask "Why?" and "What?" without knowing clearly what their questions are.

The voice of instinct is always right in some way, but has not yet learnt to express itself exactly. (Wittgenstein's Lectures ... op. cit. p. 21-22)

Wittgenstein's expression "to make clear what can be said about the world", despite that form of expression's datedness in his thought, concerns logical possibility which is another way of saying: it concerns "grammar": "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language" (PI § 109). [Wittgenstein's earliest statement of what philosophy is.] ["The limit of the empirical -- is concept formation."]

I acknowledge that the non-reasonable is essential to our humanity ("feeling, intuition, the irrational ... these vital values"), but nonetheless I cannot help but choose -- if that is the word I want, because this is involuntary -- philosophy over poetry. [If there is, if there were, a religious solution to the problem of existence, it would not interest me.] As if to say: seeking clarity for its own sake belongs to the spirit of philosophy, -- but logic is not the whole of philosophy. There is also the longing for something else, for the "final" part of life's first and last questions.

I can only think that: we are resigning ourselves to what philosophy can give us: This is what is logically -- i.e. 'logic' in the sense of Wittgenstein's "logic of language" -- possible for us to do. The rest is "metaphysics": nonsense or idle pictures (myth-making). But nonetheless the longing remains .... Isn't what the philosopher really wants: to see into the mind of God?, on the assumption that that would be the "absolute frame of reference" (The fixed point for Archimedes' fulcrum) rather than our relative frames of reference, although of course we still owe ourselves a definition of 'absolute' here (Simply alluding to God here does not somehow magically define that word. [Am I saying that what the philosopher wants is nonsense? It is as nonsensical as the question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' ("The riddle does not exist") Whether language (false grammatical analogies) or instinct ("Our hearts are made for you ...") or something else points us in this direction, these pictures are there They are part of our humanity, of our "form of life" (as is linguistic confusion).])

But on the other hand, it cannot be correct to say: but the philosopher cannot and therefore he talks about "philosophy as a critique of language" (as if sense and nonsense really were more important than truth). You really can't say: it is entirely a question of what you want from philosophy: your aim will define your methods, even if all your results, like those of Socrates, are negative. Or can you? [Is it this like: "Trying to get past [beyond] the limits of language? Language is not a cage"? As if one were free to set the limits of philosophy wherever one wished ...]

[This is all too vague without examples. Well, this thought just is ragged: "What's ragged should be left ragged" (CV p. 45; cf. p. 79) -- so let it remain that way. Don't pretend that you have understood more than you have, that you have seen farther than you have, that you have resolved a problem when you haven't.]

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Solutions to the Riddle of Existence

I think my conclusion was: "If there was for Wittgenstein a solution to the riddle of life, it was a religious not a philosophical solution." Wittgenstein actually wrote something -- This was in 1937 when he was forty-eight years old -- that makes it clear why for him the solution to life's riddle could only be a religious, not a philosophical, one:

What inclines even me to believe in Christ's Resurrection?... If he did not rise from the dead ... [if] he is dead and decomposed [then] he is a teacher like any other and can no longer help; and we are once more orphaned and alone [cf. (CV p. 13: "What would it feel like not to have heard of Christ? Would we feel left alone in the dark?"]. And we have to make do with wisdom and speculation. It is as though we are in hell ... shut out from heaven, roofed in as it were. But if I am REALLY to be redeemed [what I need is not wisdom or speculation but the certainty of faith [trust]]. Because it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be redeemed, not my abstract mind [my speculative intellect]. (CV p. 33)

For Wittgenstein, I think, the riddle of life was how to become a decent human being. It was a practical-ethical riddle to be solved, not an intellectual [logical-philosophical] one. It was not e.g.: why is there anything rather than nothing? It was: how shall I be able to face a last judgment? And here is the difference between a non-religious and a religious man: that someone like me does indeed see himself as "extremely imperfect" (and I am able to accept this as the nature of things) -- but Wittgenstein who was a religious man saw himself as "wretched" (ibid. p. 45).

I do not think the following can be a correct: That I myself need a "philosophy of life" -- i.e. a philosophical solution to the riddle of existence -- because I do not have a religion [a religious solution], whereas Wittgenstein had a religion and therefore did not need a philosophy of life. Because on Wittgenstein's account, what I am seeking is nonsense -- i.e. it cannot even be put into words (which is what "The riddle does not exist" means).

Further, even if there is such a thing as a philosophical salvation (or, redemption), that would not have been what Wittgenstein wanted: it was not his "abstract mind" but his "soul with its passions" that he wanted redeemed (CV p. 33). But what if "virtue is knowledge", what if philosophy has the power to change man's life, as, according to Socrates, it does? If the use of thoroughgoing reason in ethics, not only shows me how, but also makes me stop my wrong-doing, then would that be what Wittgenstein means by 'being redeemed' or 'redemption'? Well, that is what I do not know -- if stopping his wrong-doing alone is what Wittgenstein was seeking; maybe there was something more. For Socrates, to do what is good means to live in accord with the excellence ("virtue") that is proper to man; anything else is harmful ['harmful' = 'bad'] to man's ethical mind ("care of the soul"). It may be, as men say, that "the gods are mindful of us", but we cannot know that; and anything that we do not or cannot know cannot be a guide to how we should live our life: only knowledge is useful in order to "Know thyself". (That we cannot know something is itself a kind of knowledge -- a knowledge of that and where there are limits; that is what the eternal "questions without answer" are.)

Our Knowledge of God

Query: Socrates and knowledge of God.

It says in Xenophon that Socrates believed that the gods know all our thoughts (Memorabilia i, 1, 19); but is that belief a "metaphysical hypothesis, or does it belong always in the realm of religion only? Of course we know nothing about God. We have a concept 'God', i.e. various, indeed variable, rules for using a word, but it is a concept entirely of our own invention: there are no general facts of nature that might explain concept-formation (PI II, xii, p. 230) in this particular case. It is a tool we use to respond to what we experience as a mystery, namely, our own existence. But we mustn't confuse wonder at the meaning of our life with rational speculation about natural phenomena (metaphysics), much less with knowledge of reality.

Introspective psychology doesn't interest me because my first response to any statement in that psychology is: How do you verify that? And because there is no objective answer but in its place mere persuasion to acceptance of a particular view of things, it has no interest for me. When I think about philosophy, I think, as did Socrates, as Everyman -- i.e. from the point of view of universally applied critical reason, not as a particular human being. (There are two parts to Know thyself; however, it is not a challenge for me to recognize my limits as the individual, particularly now that I am old and failing.) I am also uninterested in -- i.e. I do not look at my life using this concept -- being "redeemed" if that is something God alone can do, because even were God to transform me magically into a good man -- "magically" in contrast to transforming me through instruction (where "virtue is knowledge") -- that would not solve the problem of life for me. Because that would be a religious solution (or at least Wittgenstein seemed to think that was a solution), and a religious solution is not what I want; it is not what I am looking for: what I want is a rational solution to the riddle of existence.

There is no place in my life where I would want to say "Here I do not use reason", but there were many such places in Wittgenstein's life -- indeed at the very center of his life ("my soul with its passions"), indeed the most important places in his view.

All religion is mythology ("belief in") -- e.g. 'redemption' is a concept belonging to religion, not philosophy -- and I don't want to believe in. I want to know. ("... temples dedicated to the Truth, which no man knows, and to Reason, which never dried a tear," Chateaubriand said.)

I could also say that if there is for me a solution to life's riddle, it does not belong to ethics -- unless ethics is knowledge. But if ethics is Kantian (i.e. based on a non-rational conscience that issues imperatives) rather than Socratic, then ethics is not a solution to the riddle of existence. Is it possible for ethics to be that solution? If reason can guide us to how we should live our life, despite our being surrounded by fundamental mystery, then why not? (I am of course here offering a possible use for the combination of words 'solution to the riddle'. But I don't know if that use would be what anyone else wanted.)

Philosophy seeks only the truth and even if death is a sleep without dreams (and even if it overtakes the last living human being), the search for truth through the application of thoroughgoing (universal) reason to experience [i.e. philosophy, as we have philosophy from Socrates] will remain as evergreen as Count Eberhard's hawthorn. It will remain a bright ideal.

Query: what do you call a person who wants to make sense of everything?

Unhappy? I don't think "the search says more than the discovery" -- I want to know. Berkeley: the philosopher is more, not less confused than other people. To him life and the world do not make sense.

Query: explain the perennial character of logic.

The principle of contradiction has a perennial character as the bedrock of language and rationality: philosophy is not just discourse, but discourse of reason.

Does Religion belong to "the childhood of mankind"?

Note: the rest of this discussion has more than once been radically revised. As I learn and think more, my thinking changes, as what once seemed important now either no longer does or shows itself to be simply a misunderstanding [misconception]. (There is also not-so-destructive criticism of this topic from many years later, and even later.) Warning: nothing is more idle in philosophy than setting up your own straw man God and knocking it down. If you are going to tilt, then at least find a windmill rather than a pinwheel of your own invention to tilt at. (Wittgenstein's religious views, as far as we can know them.)

Rudolf Carnap wrote ("Autobiography", 1964) that: Wittgenstein did not believe, as Moritz Schlick had believed, that religion belongs to mankind's childhood. I do not know what I believe if we do not first answer the question: What are we calling 'religion'? I would say that the religion of Abraham (Abraham, "our father in childhood") belongs to the childhood -- to Kant's "eternal childhood" or "universal nonage" -- of mankind: it is the obedience to its father of the child who refuses to grow up (i.e. take moral responsibility for its own acts).

Query: Job, who are you to question my ways? Bible.

Job's reply should be: I am a rational being with a moral sense, an ethical personality. But what are You who behave as you do? Pantheism (for what else is Job's God if not Nature's God -- i.e. amoral power, "beyond good and evil", as if there could be such a place for an ethical personality) -- that "picture" -- "honestly disgusts me". [European pantheism should have been buried forever on 1 November 1755 under the rubble of the Lisbon earthquake, All Saints' Day. But Job's faith is apparently inextinguishable.]

Is Abraham's only one type of religion? [We are always preoccupied with the god of our own religious tradition.] What is religion without pantheism, however? Is there another "religious picture" than Abraham's, other, that is, than the picture of an Olympian god? For is that not what God-Nature dualism amounts to? (Schweitzer: we can reason our way to one picture or the other, but not both together: the God of Christianity is an ethical personality, but that is not what the God of Nature is, as our experience shows us only too well.)

The God of Abraham was, I think, Wittgenstein's God: "Good is whatever God commands", according to Abraham and Wittgenstein. (God Himself is neither good nor evil: He says what is good and what is evil. He is like the meter standard in Paris -- That stick is the standard measurement of length and therefore it itself is of no length. It is therefore nonsense (undefined language) to say that "God is good".) Wittgenstein was a pantheist, an ideology ("picture") which it is incomprehensible to me that anyone could embrace.

"Can one feel that God himself is not implicated in evil?"

Query: a man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying; interpretation.

In Wittgenstein's terms, my own religious ideas are 100% Greek: the good is the good, both for God and for mankind. "Thy will be done" means: "Whatever God wills is good." That is the picture I cannot accept. Do I even understand Wittgenstein's attitude, his acceptance of "whatever God wills is good"? No. [The word 'understand' has many meanings.]

Wittgenstein: The meaning of the word 'God' is precisely that God is not an Olympian-type god. But then "What is God" -- i.e. how is the word 'God' to be defined? If the word 'God' is not a [proper] name, then what is its use [part of speech] in our language? If the meaning is shown by how you use the word, then mustn't we say that for most users the word 'God' is a name, the name of an Olympian god, although "God is in all places at once, but in no place physically"?

It cannot be the case that "The way you use the word 'God' shows only what you don't mean" (cf. CV p. 50), as in: "We can only say what God is not, not what He is" -- which is "the way of obscurantism": because we are not, after all, trying to describe a phenomenon, but only to state the grammar of a word -- to give an account of the human-invented concept [as if concepts were ever invented by anyone else] 'God'.

Via the via negativa God is made into the invisible hippopotamus in the study, defined out of existence. Can you define a word by saying what you don't mean by it? as e.g.?

Query: Sophist, negative theology.

And what is that when it's at home? This: negative theology = positive self-mystification.

In 1951 Wittgenstein (1889-1951) wrote:

God may say to me: "I am judging you out of your own mouth. Your own actions have made you shudder with disgust ..." (CV p. 87)

But only a who, and not a what, can "say to me". Clearly here Wittgenstein is using the picture Yahweh (while simultaneously denying that he is using that picture). But Yahweh is an Olympian-type god; he is a personality, although not an ethical one. And, no, Wittgenstein is not speaking metaphorically. Religious language is not metaphorical, because a metaphor can be to be restated in prose but Wittgenstein's statement cannot be restated in prose. And so then, what did Wittgenstein mean by it? But he nowhere says what he means by the word 'God'.

I think that, without being unethical, I could not "use" -- i.e. utter the sound -- a word that I chose not to define; it is no use "talking about God", until one has said what this God one is talking about is. This is not a matter of human limitation; no, if a word is "undefinable", it is only because we have chosen not to define it. Language is a tool in our hands, nothing more. That is a most important lesson to learn from Wittgenstein, I think.

Can a philosopher use the word 'God' "in all its historical indefiniteness"? Or do you want to claim that the grammar of the word 'God' resembles the grammar of the word 'beautiful'? But if so, then is it a word that has a place in philosophy -- or is philosophy not about truth? But truth is objective -- i.e. that belongs to the grammar of our word 'truth'.)

"How can you understand the mind of God with a bone three fingers high!" "Can a goat think a man's thoughts? Well then, how can a man think God's thoughts!" "My ways are not your ways," says the Lord God. I want to reply: Foolishness! The only mystery here is the self-mystification produced by language: no one can understand nonsense: not a goat, not a man, not even God himself -- because nonsense is -- and 'is' in this instance indicates a definition (PI § 500) -- is nothing more than undefined combinations of words. Is it possible to worship (to trust as opposed to fear) the God of pantheism -- i.e. to worship Nature? "Amen. God is good, but God is not good."

"Certainly I don't understand any of this; nobody has ever understood any of this ...!" Voltaire wrote mockingly in his Philosophical Dictionary.

Because it is inconsistent with experience -- i.e. because it is a "map for which there is no territory" or a picture which is inapplicable to our world -- talk of "God" amounts to talk of honor to Falstaff: God is air. There is no picture so absurd that a human life cannot be guided by it. Human beings can [This is both logical and real possibility] and do believe in "air". (But what of the picture of God not as "a being like ourselves, only omnipotent" (because what else might we mean by 'omnipotent')?)

In this context recall that Wittgenstein's notion "forms of life" is simply a way of describing how we live; it is neither an explanation nor a justification for how we live. I.e. the notion does not place anything beyond philosophical criticism. (Refuges of ignorance in Wittgenstein.)

... Can honour set to a leg? no ...
Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is
honour? a word. What is in that word honour? ...
air ...
... 'Tis insensible, then. (Henry IV, Part 1 v, 1)

Why is the soul moved by idle thoughts? -- [since] After all they are idle?... (How can the wind move a tree when it's nothing but air [wind]?...) (CV p. 35 [CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 162b 24r: 1939-1940]])

Well, it is (ibid.) But philosophy doesn't have to take part in this. (Which does not mean that Socrates was not a religious man, only that he knew the difference.)

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But surely this does not belong to humanity's childhood

Does everything even I call [classify, put in the category] religion [call by the common name 'religion'] belong to humanity's childhood? No: Schweitzer's "I have taken with me into life a feeling for what is solemn" is not something that humanity will ever "outgrow" -- unless it loses the very thing about it which we call its "humanity". Kant's "the starry sky above and the moral law within" do not belong to mankind's childhood. These are "the reflections inspired by a thoughtful philosophy" although they are not philosophical: they are "religious". (What I mean is that these ideas have and can pass through the crucible of critical reason and survive [without losing their vitality].)

Again: what are we calling 'religion' -- i.e. to what examples do we point [What are our "paradigms" (preeminent models)]? That I myself cannot do anything with the concept 'God' or 'gods' -- because those words suggest only anthropomorphic beings to me (which I find in all respects revolting) -- I have said too many times already. Wittgenstein told Drury that he did not think of God as if 'God' were the name an Olympian god, but he did not say how he did think about God (Recollections p. 108). Why do I seem unable to persist in not seeing 'God' as a proper name, as if that were the only way to look at this? Because that is the grammar of 'God' as evidenced by the way people who use that word speak; and so, what I am trying to resist is a rule of grammar (which is, on the face of it, a very foolish [stupid] thing to be trying to do).

Am I making the elementary mistake of identifying the meaning of a word with the pictures it suggests to me rather than asking how we use the word (i.e. for grammatical rules or a verbal definition)?

Carnap also said that Wittgenstein believed religion to be without "theoretical content", meaning that the doctrines [propositions] of religion are not hypotheses -- i.e. (1) there is no logical possibility of verification, and, (2) nor would these propositions be 'religious' if there were that possibility) = (3) putting forth an hypothesis in religion shows a misconception -- they are instead life-guiding pictures, points of reference.

The riddle [of existence] does not exist. (TLP 6.5b)

... which is precisely why we cannot help but be obsessed with it -- i.e. because "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is not a question that can [by definition (cf. "for we ourselves made it unverifiable" (Z § 259)] be answered by an observation of the natural world.

This is why humanity will never "outgrow religion" in some form or other, because there will always be something about existence as such [per se] that defies our understanding, which we call "the meaning of existence". From Kierkegaard's Journals: "to understand more and more that there is something that we are never going to understand" (quoted by Drury in "Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Symposium", 1960).

Reason in Mystery

Schweitzer says of "God is the father" that "it is a thought of God's" [cf. Isaiah 55.9], as far beyond the understanding of man as the higher thoughts of man are from a goat (20 July 1930, sermon "Our Father", and 20 April 1930, "Easter Sunday"). I would want to say that "God is the father" is "a mystery of faith". But I have to explain what I mean by that, even to myself. Because it's not that I don't at all understand Jesus' words -- his picture of God as a father who loves his children -- i.e. 'God is the father' isn't an undefined combination of words. [They aren't in this respect like Jesus' words when he consecrates the bread at the Last Supper, "This is my body", in which the Lord gives himself to his disciples in a special way, but I haven't any idea in what way beyond that it is special.]

Faith that God is the father

It's not that I don't understand Jesus' words at all, but that I don't know how to apply the picture "God is the father" to the world of my experience. And so I call its application to this world a mystery, a mystery I would express this way: That existence has a meaning, and that it is a good rather than an evil meaning, and that saying that God is the father is to say that life's meaning is good, although I don't know what that meaning is. (That is why it is called a mystery.)

That there are mysteries of faith is hardly to be wondered at, given that we feel existence itself to be a mystery. A "faith" is a way of looking at things, a reference point.

The eternal questions as a pattern or way of life

Most bluntly: How am I to understand the kitchen ant that is crawling across the counter? If I kill it, what does that signify? And if I practice reverence for life, what does that signify? (Am I asking a question without an answer, or is 'signify' simply an undefined word here?)

When we reach this limit, that "There are more things in Heaven and earth ...", then we see existence aright.

Whatever our point of view the world will remain for us an enigma [existence will remain a riddle]. (Albert Schweitzer, Out of my Life and Thought, tr. A.B. Lemke (1990), Chapter 18, p. 204 [tr. Campion])

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. (Wittgenstein, CV p. 27 [MS 118 17r c: 27.8.1937])

I wonder if Wittgenstein ever arrived at that, although I believe that was what he sought all his life. But I do think that Schweitzer arrived at that for he used Paul's word's "the peace that surpasses all understanding" to describe it ... or maybe he did not: "I have experience in struggling for stillness in God".

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