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Your opinion on Ludwig Wittgenstein. | ||
Tags: Philosophy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| mahasiswa Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 4218 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Malay Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Persian, Russian, Turkish, Mandarin, Hindi | Message 9 of 13 09 November 2012 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
And so I err no longer. I could have sworn that you used your languages for no kind of reading whatsoever, seeing your scathing critique of the escapism of fiction in another thread. I'm glad to see you're into philosophy enough to provide the link to Kant, as well as provide the fuller context and the correct writing of that particular section of the Tractatus. I've just started reading Kant a week or two ago, and the language is quite easy in comparison to Nietzsche. But it was Wittgenstein who I first started reading about a year and a half ago when I started to learn German. Your observation completes the train of thought this thread had. About the virtuous mathematician types and the interesting philosopher types, I would have to say that Russell certainly had a public life, always aware of the state of philosophy as a study among ordinary folks, and one of my favourite mathematically-cold philosophers, Paul Weiss, certainly had a life as well, though one of academia. Of course, thinkers such as Borges and George Steiner are much more interesting for their involvement in the literary arts. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4630 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 10 of 13 09 November 2012 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
Padon me? What are you reading by Kant? He is famous among philosophy students for his absolutely unintelligible sentences, which have only been surpassed by Hegel. I have known enough native Germans that capitulated when they were faced with the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritk der reinen Vernunft) and I must say, I sometimes struggled myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FinnegansWake Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4221 days ago 10 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: French | Message 11 of 13 11 November 2012 at 7:26am | IP Logged | |||||
I've read 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' and I find 'Philosophical Investigations' a lot harder. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason again is a very hard read, in my opinion (I could barely start). I read English translations so I don't know how the originals are. Nietzsche's verse is a lot like Ancient Greek hymns. As a Romantic, I have an affinity to natural, sublime, earthly and more importantly APPROACHABLE philosophy. Kant doesn't fit into that category. Wittgenstein's first book is beyond my zone of understanding, just like Spinoza's work. [Axioms & Props - not my cup of tea; never managed to go beyond a couple of dozen pages] 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6489 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 13 11 November 2012 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually I have a degree in French and ... surprise ... literature, and even though I rarely read literature these days there are exceptions. For instance I have just finished the glorious nobelprize-deserving Harry Potter II in Latin, and I read through a selection of Paul Valéry's excellently wrought poetry in the original French version after a visit to the P.V. Museum in Sète, where I visited the Cimétière Marin. And when I made my illfated videos on my paintings I read through a lot of texts which I had depicted long ago in those paintings - from T.S.Eliot to Chrétien de Troyes. But most literature is either trying to drag me through boring personal pseudopsychology and sentimental confrontations which the characters could have avoided if the author had given them a few brain cells OR it is empty glorification of bloody crime and bloody crime fighting - with psychopathic monsters on both sides of the law. I can to some extent survive that debâcle if the setting isn't our real world, but there is bluidy murder enough in this world and I see no reason to add to the misery. In this respect me taste is the diametral opposite of the taste of the communist Hungarian literature guru Lukacs, who spoke in scathing terms about 'escapist' literature. For me 'escapist' literature is the genre that is least repulsive. I have a similar relationship with philosophy. For me philosophy is the soil from which science grew long ago, and hurray for that, but it has become obsolete in the same way as the horse cart has become obsolete. Sometimes a useful idea has been formulated by a philosopher, and the line between science and philosophy may be blurred. For instance Popper's idea that scientific theories are those that can be falsified is as firmly imprinted in my mind as E = Mc2. But the part of philosophy that doesn't point towards science is for me more like some kind of literature. And I find people like Platon very overrated - it is a pity that the writings of the sophists have more or less been lost, I would probably have felt much more at home with these guys. Speaking about Kant: he actually formulated an important precursor for our current understanding of the birth of planetary systems, so he belongs to the blurred zone. Once upon a time I actually read through much of his "Critik der reinen Vernunft", but it was difficult to keep track of his arguments over so many pages. To some extent it is a linguistic problem because he writes in almost endless (and endlessly complicated) sentences. An example - actually the first sentence I read when I wanted to revive my desiccated memories about Kant the philosopher ran as follows (Critique p. 323): Die Ideen, mit denen wir uns jetzt beschäftigen, habe ich oben cosmologische Ideen genannt, theils warum, weil unter Welt der Inbegriff aller Erscheinungen verstanden wird, und unsere Ideen auch nur auf das unbedingte unter den Erscheinungen gerichtet sind, theils auch, weil das Wort Welt, im transcendentalen Verstande, die absolute Totalitet des Inbegriffs existierender Dinge bedeutet, und wird auf die Vollständikeit der Synthesis (wiewohl nur eigentlich im Regressus zu den Bedingungen) allein unser Augenmerk richten. It should be clear that the words generally aren't difficult, but the sentence structure is horrendous - maybe a heritage from philosophical works in Latin - and you have to build a mental structure of the relations within those sentences in order not to get completely lost. Nietzsche has a very different style, which in an eerie way reminds me of a mix between the Apocalypse of St.John and the secret diary of a suicidal patient - a passage from "Also sprach Zarathustra" (PS. don't miss the musical rendering by Richard Strauß - an excellent work even beyond the famous beginning): Also sprach Zarathustra im Steigen zu sich, mit harten Sprüchlein sein Herz tröstend: denn er war wund am Herzen wie noch niemals zuvor. Und als er auf die Höhe des Bergrückens kam, siehe, da lag das andere Meer vor ihm ausgebreitet: und er stand still und schwieg lange. Die Nacht aber war kalt in dieser Höhe und klar und hellgestirnt. Ich erkenne mein Loos, sagte er endlich mit Trauer. Wohlan! Ich bin bereit. Eben begann meine letzte Einsamkeit. And finally the succinct style of the early Wittgenstein, which most of all reminds of an essay I once delivered to my teacher in Danish in the 'Gymnasium' (he refused to assign a note to this work, in which I described the Biafra war as as a mathematical system): 1 Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist. 1.1 Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge. 1.11 Die Welt ist durch die Tatsachen bestimmt und dadurch, dass es alle Tatsachen sind. 1.12 Denn, die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen bestimmt, was der Fall ist und auch, was alles nicht der Fall ist. Edited by Iversen on 11 November 2012 at 8:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5633 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 13 11 November 2012 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you very much, Iversen, for giving these text examples of famous German philosopher's writing styles. Normally I am neither a reader of literature nor philosophy, but I like such a quote of the early Wittgenstein. It's a verse written in very simple German with a great depth of meaning in it.
The writing style of the quote from Kant a good example of a bad sentence structure, when you fight through this you loose the meaning of what is being meant. Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful |
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