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Ode to Man
Tho’ many are the terrors,
not one more terrible than man goes.
This one beyond the grizzled sea
in winter storming to the south
He crosses, all-engulfed,
cutting through, up from under swells.
& of the gods She the Eldest, Earth
un-withering, un-toiling, is worn down,
As the Twisting Plough’s year
into Twisting Plough’s year,
Through the breeding of horse, he turns.
& the lighthearted race of birds
all-snaring he drives them
& savage beasts, their clan, & of the sea,
marine in kind
With tightly-wound meshes spun
from all-seeing is Man.
Yet too, he masters by means of pastoral
beast, mountain-trodding,
The unruly-maned horse holding fast,
‘round the neck yoked,
& the mountain’s
ceaseless bull.
& the voice & wind-fast thought
& the passion for civic ways
He has taught, so from crag’s poor court
from under the ether’s hard-tossed arrows
To flee, this all-crossing one. Blocked, he comes
upon nothing so fated.
From Hades alone escape he’ll not bring.
Tho’ from sickness impossible
Flight he has pondered.
A skilled one, devising of arts beyond hope,
Holding at times an evil,
But then to the noble he crawls,
honoring the laws of the Earth, &
Of gods the oath so just,
high-citied.
Citiless is the one who with the un-beautiful
dwells, boldly in grace.
Never for me a hearth-mate
may he have been, never equal in mind
He who offers this.
Ode to Man
A BwO is made in such a way that it can be occupied, populated only by intensities. Only intensities pass and circulate. Still, the BwO is not a scene, a place, or even a support upon which something comes to pass. It has nothing to do with phantasy, there is nothing to interpret. The BwO causes intensities to pass; it produces and distributes them in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension. It is not space, nor is it in space; it is matter that occupies space to a given degree—to the degree corresponding to
the intensities produced. It is nonstratified, unformed, intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity = 0; but there is nothing negative about that zero, there are no negative or opposite intensities. Matter equals energy. Production of the real as an intensive magnitude starting at zero. That is why we treat the BwO as the full egg before the extension of the organism and the organization of the organs, before the formation of the strata; as the intense egg defined by axes and vectors, gradients and thresholds, by dynamic tendencies involving energy transformation and kinematic movements involving group displacement, by migrations: all independent
of accessory forms because the organs appear and function here only as pure intensities. The organ changes when it crosses a threshold, when it
changes gradient. "No organ is constant as regards either function or position, . . . sex organs sprout anywhere,... rectums open, defecate and close, . . . the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments." The tantric egg. After all, is not Spinoza's Ethics the great book of the BwO?
Ode to Man
But human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; we have not, therefore, an absolute power of shaping to our use those things which are without us. Nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to us in contravention to the claims of our own advantage, so long as we are conscious, that we have done our duty, and that the power which we possess is not sufficient to enable us to protect ourselves completely; remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and that we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavour to persist. For, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we cannot desire anything save that which is necessary, nor yield absolute acquiescence to anything, save to that which is true: wherefore, in so far as we have a right understanding of these things, the endeavour of the better part of ourselves is in harmony with the order of nature as a whole.
Wittgenstein’s picture theory — which perhaps he died doubting — must necessarily isolate individual ideas (or, as Spinoza might have said, “conceptions of thought”), treating them as “things” (objects) that sprang whole from the mind. Thus follows the validity of your criticism of W’s historical method. It is also good that you distinguish the theoretical nature of words from their naming function, for, in my opinion, the historical development of all words begins in theory and maturates into convention.
I also believe a much simpler correction of W’s view of Augustine’s “error” can be obtained by broadening the meaning of the Latin “rem aliquam” to mean all objects, including those that are not things of the “table,” “chair,” and “bread” sort. From the bodily gestures of his “elders” Augustine may very well have deduced the meaning of all the sorts of words W subsequently deals with, again, putting the quietus to his picture theory.
We may, however, offer balm for his wounds in the form of the notion that the pictures are not “stills” but are actually motion pictures that the mind adapts to its own uses, those being, in my opinion, to justify itself to itself. We transcend the mind’s selfish self concern — when we do — by statements that defy categorization as other than “organizers.” “We are not bound by our beliefs,” one such statement, while probably untrue (if we treat the statement as a belief) fits very poorly into a structure of ideas that demand to be “maintainers of the status quo.” Such statements may lead the mind to question itself and lead it (on rare occasions) to work for the good of the Self rather than its own good.
I believe Augustine’s “Confessions” can be more adequately understood in the light cast by a model of that sort. As Spinoza remarked, “nobody as yet has learned from experience what the body can and cannot do” (E3p2,note)). He would just as easily as Augustine have attributed the cause of the as-yet-unknown to God, but of course, to God as he understood God to be.
Frank,
It is unclear quite how far Wittgestein meant to take naming to mean signifying in the vision of the Augustinian “picture”. As Method of Projections pointed out, Wittgenstein sees even the marks of a tool capable of standing for an object (and its hidden command form), quoting below.
“The word “to signify” [bezeichnen] is perhaps used in the most straightforward way when the object signified is marked with the sign. Suppose that the tools A uses in building bear certain marks. When A shews his assistant such a mark, he brings the tool that has that mark on it.
It is in this and more or less similar ways that a name means and is given to a thing.—It will often prove useful in philosophy to say to ourselves: naming something is like attaching a label to a thing.”
(PI, §15; cf. §10, §13)
Now in such cases we still are dealing with objects proper, and not Latin res. And it does not see that Wittgenstein comes close at all to the nature of Augustinian semiotics (let alone his conception of truth). Also, if we expand the number or kinds of things that can be referred to by a sign, it seems that Wittgenstein himself employs a kind of sign-res conception, where the sign points to the “use” (those conditions, those rules, that “situtation”), showing it.
[i]Wittgensgtein wants to say that Augustine sees language as fundamentally a naming process, as essentially designative, something of an over-simplification, and in so doing fails to see the consitutive role of truth, the theoretical role of God, creation and incarnation in an expressive vision of language… [/i]
What is the role of God, or more generally, myth-making in the development of language? The sign-making, first discovered at the caves of Lascaux, are efforts to transcend into the world of concepts – the “other” world. Sign-making is a rule following designation. These rules are after matters – After material (beyond material). “Material” comes from “mater”, meaning “mother”. “Father” comes from “fader”, meaning to appear or disappear gradually. Father (God(s)) appear after mother. God is after matter. God is beyond matter. Mother is immanence, and Father is transcendence. Fathers provide, hence the etchings of bovines and spears, oddly. Tool-making is a rule-following activity, just as symbol-making is. Fathers make thier appearance after matter – after mother. God(s), are inextricably linked, I think, to rule-following. Rules appear as fathers appear, in thier after-matter.
I appreciate all of these ideas on this site greatly. I do believe, consistently with some your own views, that Wittgenstein did not take the important religious ideas into consideration when he commented on Augustine’s work concerning “a certain picture of the nature of the humanly language” (i.e., my translation from PI §1. “ein bestimmtes Bild von dem Wesen der Menschlichen Sprache”). However, I think that there is some misinterpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s works here.
Wittgenstein appears to me to be treating St. Augustine with the utmost respect, and he is only focusing on a particular paragraph of Augustine’s dense philosophy. As a consequence of this latter fact, I think that it is unfair to treat Wittgenstein as interpreting St. Augustine’s whole philosophy of language rather than using just a paragraph of Augustine’s book to support Wittgenstein’s purposes. Moreover, I take it that there is no evidence to suggest that Wittgenstein was an expert or even that he considered himself to be an expert on these matters concerning Augustine.
I believe that some of the misinterpretation may come from reading Anscombe’s translation rather than Wittgenstein’s original Austrian text. Please consider my translation of Wittgenstein’s third paragraph in his PI.
I translate it as “Augustine does not speak about a difference about the parts of speech. To whom the Learnings of the language are so described, do think, as I would like to believe, initially about nouns such as “table”, “chair”, “bread”, and the names of persons, which only in the second case of the names shall one discover certain occupations or activities and qualities and the remaining parts of speech as something.”
This is quite different than Anscombe’s translation. It is also a good idea to take a look at Wittgenstein’s Zettel from 681. through 691. because it was written later by Wittgenstein and 681-91 refer back to his PI, especially the sections that are important in relation to this paragraph written by Augustine.
Thanks for your time and thoughts.
William
William, thank you for your thoughts and your translation. Unfortunately I do not share your benign treatment of Wittgenstein’s reading of Augustine. There can be no doubt that he respected Augustine highly, but there are all kinds of respect, and his respect did not lead to a close or comprehensive reading of Augustine’s Confessions. Language plays a very important role in that text. What I suspect is that Wittgenstein was caught in a picture of language that he thought he had located in a very brief passage, something that seemed to him very much like what Russell and put forth. The problem is that Augustine’s view of language, EVEN in the passage quoted, is much richer than that. Wittgenstein is very quick to leap from this little paragraph to an entire system of language which he calls “Augustine’s”.
I think that signs of the malevolence of interpretation(unconscious no doubt) are found in the selective way that he quoted the material, leaving off the last sentence of the paragraph which works to undermine his interpretation (signs are not only of things, but of wills). He, through selective quotation, invents the over-simplifying picture. Further, in being unable to understand the role of God or a theory of truth plays in sense making in language, he dramatically undercuts Augustine’s entire point of writing the Confessions, in language. He may have respected Augustine, but not the content of his project. As quoted, he compares Augustine’s appeals to God in the Confessions as nothing more than the content-empty, non-theoretical rituals that can be found in the mouth of a Hindu. In some sense, Wittgenstein “respects” Augustine, in the way that one respects (idealizes) a primative or a savage. He finds in Augustine a primative, undeveloped picture. It is for this reason that he draws on primative language games to make clear the picture that he feels that Augustine is presenting.
The last bit of difficulty I have in reading Wittgenstein’s interpretation charitably is that it makes a very significant point of quotation in Latin, as if this were a VERY close reading, one in which the specificity of the Latin exposes the entire reading. This appeal to the Latin is deeply contrasted with a non-appeal to ANY of the context of the passage (even its concluding line). Instead a meaning, indeed an entire system is exercised out, wrenched free from the context. This is exactly the abuse of not turning to the “rest of the mechanism” that Wittgenstein warns about in other conditions, and can only be achieved by de-theorizing, that is miminizing the role of ideas, in Augustine’s presentation. It must be a “picture” for Wittgenstein to be able to extract it.
Augustine was not presenting a picture of language, and he certainly was not presenting an entire systemization of language. Instead he was arguing (in theory, using ideas) for the dependency we have upon others (authority figures,, the intersubjective significations of others in general, and ultimately God), in order to make sense of the world or ourselves at all. The entire world is signifying for Augustine.
William,
I might add that though a fan of Wittgenstein, I have to say that due to his gnoimic, analogistic style, he is granted far more interpretive charity that is required. Regularly his comparisons, analogies, pictures escape any reflective, self-critical turn by readers that end up being unexpectedly dogmatic in their hook-line-and-sinker approach to Wittgenstein’s descriptions. In my view this approach that seldom if ever questions the form of the argument betrays Wittgenstein’s own liberating, and playful approach to thinking. One must be Wittgensteinian when reading Wittgenstein, and this means often challenging the very picture he presents, as a picture.
Thanks again for your comments. I enjoyed reading your responses to some of my thoughts. There is definitely a sense in which what you say is true, and it appears to contradict a couple of my own ideas above.
Do you think that Anscombe’s translation of Augustine’s paragraph in Wittgenstein’s PI (i.e., in both German and English) is quite flawed? It seems to me to be flawed from the translation of the first word from Latin to English and from Latin to German.
I translate Wittgenstein’s first words following Augustine’s “partial” paragraph as: “In this word we are receiving, so it seems to me, a certain picture of the nature of the humanly language. Namely this: The words of the language are naming objects–sentences are connections of such designations.– In this picture of the language we find the roots of the idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is assigning or classifying the word as belonging to something. It is the object for which the word stands.”
I think that Wittgenstein perhaps would have agreed with your criticisms of his own works.
Thanks for your thoughtful remarks about the picture theoretical views.
William Brant
Thoughtful post. Not sure if a late comment is helpful – but for what it’s worth… Wittgenstein’s characterisation of Augustine’s theory of language is certainly (imo) a travesty. And Wittgenstein may just be being an idiot – he’s not exactly renowned for his close readings of other thinkers. On the other hand, I’d suggest it’s at least possible that Wittgenstein is here trying to do something equally strange but perhaps less foolish. The Tractatus (obviously) concludes with various propositions that are meant to be both profound in their mysticism and strictly speaking non-sensical. And I think it’s fairly widely agreed that this sort of “this sentence is nonsense” approach is at least problematic. Certainly Wittgenstein seems to have abandoned it by the time we get to the later work. It’s always puzzled me, however, that more attention isn’t paid, in Wittgenstein exegesis, to whether a similar preoccupation with the spiritual-unsayable is at play in the later writings. I’d be inclined to suggest it is: and I think I’d also probably argue that opening the Investigations with a quote from Augustine’s Confessions is meant, at least in part, as a kind of hint in this direction. If Augustine is just a stand-in for the picture theory of meaning, then I agree that the passage is almost absurdly ill-chosen (mis-paraphrased, etc.). If, on the other hand, Wittgenstein is trying (very obliquely) to suggest that his work is concerned with some of the same questions that preoccupy Augustine – for instance, the kind of human language appropriate to a properly spiritual life – then I think the opening section of the Investigations makes more sense. Wittgenstein is straw-manning Augustine when he attributes to him the picture theory of meaning, clearly. But I think the real engagement with Augustine (and Augustine’s theory of language), is taking place ‘off stage’, as it were. Wittgenstein, in the Investigations, is trying genuinely to remain silent regarding that of which one cannot speak. In this matter – the capacity of mortal language to speak of or to God – Wittgenstein disagrees with Augustine. Wittgenstein thinks we must remain far more radically silent than Augustine’s confessions would countenance – Wittgenstein thinks our language is radically, near-utterly impoverished, in its ability to relate to the divine. But he’s not going to come out and say this: to do so, he believes, would be to transgress what he regards as the boundaries of legitimate and holy mortal speech. So Wittgenstein brings on Augustine for entirely other, more or less spurious reasons, and leaves the question hanging: why quote Augustine at all, if one’s target is apparently the Tractatus?
I’m not particularly confident in this read of the opening section, I should say. I’m just offering it as one way of making some sense of what on earth Wittgenstein thinks he’s doing. He may just be being an idiot. 🙂
Duncan,
Very nice thoughts.
When you say, “If, on the other hand, Wittgenstein is trying (very obliquely) to suggest that his work is concerned with some of the same questions that preoccupy Augustine – for instance, the kind of human language appropriate to a properly spiritual life – then I think the opening section of the Investigations makes more sense.”
I think you have a very good point. It is clear that Wittgestein at some level respects Augustine’s confessional discourse, and may even see its authenticity to be of the same kind he is aiming at in his Philosophical Investigations. But if you pay close attention to the “untheoretical” position he places the discourse’s orientation (it is not capable of making a mistake), perhaps the “silence” you invoke, you see that Wittgenstein must devalue the very claims, the very form, of Augustine’s Confessions. That is, his ideas either are NOT properly ideas (being pre-theoretical), or they are Ideas (or the roots of ideas) and are dreadfully wrong. As usual, Wittgenstein splits the baby with beautifully obscure rhetoric. The problem is the very form of Augustine’s confessions is a theoretical form, a form which turns on the very notion the possibility of “mistake”. Wittgenstein wants to honor Augustine’s gesture, but does so by either restricting it to pure gesture, or the source of a deeply misleading “picture” which has plagued the West until Wittgenstein comes along to save it. In my opinion, if Wittgenstein had paid closer attention to the meaning of Augustine’s words, the place they played in the arguments he was presenting, he would have seen that the “picture” of language Augustine presented was actually quite different than assumed, with some rather interesting affinities and contrasts with Wittgenstein’s own.
William,
I like your retranslations, and it does go some distance towards minimizing the extent to which there is so stark abuse. But as you can see by Wittgenstein’s own examples (apple language and slab language), and the incredibly inflating claim of an entire system of word/object correspondence (missing the entire signs of our wills), I can’t say that even the most benign translation does not save Wittgenstein’s point.
Anscombe’s translation takes out some of the flexibility of the expression, but works rather mechanically towards the same overall point.