Wittgenstein

I've been reading about Wittgenstein the last couple of days, and I must say someting about this right now. These texts about W that I have read are of a very superficial and introductory nature, but nonetheless I have come to a stunning and sudden realization. I have never read much about W before, because all that talk about language and what it can or cannot express seemed uninteresting to me, and this is seems allways to be what is focused on in texts about him. This is not unreasonable, of course, because the tractatus (which I haven't read, though I will) speaks mainly of this. The point, of course, is that this is not what it's about. All these learned men and women trying to give a simple account of W's philosophy, going on and on about language, are entirely missing the point. Here is a passage cut from Wikipedia's article about W. It illustrates my point accurately and clearly:

6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.

This leads him to reassert the main point of the book:

7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

Some have chosen to interpret this as deliberate irony, others as outright performative contradiction.

The last sentence is the important one here. It shows how completely W is misunderstood by interpreters if this is what is commonly said about the 7th parapraph. The text above states that this is the main point of the book, and then goes on to say that it is irony or deliberate contradiction. Why would the genius W write a book that has a piece of nonsensical itony or contradiction as its main point? It's ludicrous!

Obviously, it is these readers who fail to understand what W is trying to say here. I can not understand why, it is quite simple, really, and he tells us in plain language: The point of the book is not what is said in it, but what it leads us to. The arguments are meant as guides on the road towards understanding, or as W himself calls it: the ladder. The words themselves are not trying to describe the truth as W sees it, in fact they can not, and this is his point. The central philosophical truth is spiritual, or "mystical", as he calls it, and thus cannot be expressed by words. This does not make the words meaningless, however. Since the truth cannot be spoken of directly, the purpose of philosophy is to show the way towards an understanding that the individual must reach on is own.

This is marvellous! This is very much the same as I am trying to express in my own clumsy and inferior way on this blog! What a wonderful revelation! I will read the tractatus in the near future.