Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (English): Difference between revisions

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (English) (view source)

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 .36111 The Kantian problem of the right and left hand which cannot be made to cover one another already exists in the plane, and even in one-dimensional space; where the two congruent figures ''a'' and ''b'' cannot be made to cover one another without moving them out of this space. The right and left hand are in fact completely congruent. And the fact that they cannot be made to cover one another has nothing to do with it.
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+[[File:TLP 6.36111.png|330px|center|link=]]6.362 What can be described can happen too, and what is excluded by the law of causality cannot be described.
+.363 The process of induction is the process of assuming the ''simplest'' law that can be made to harmonize with our experience.
+.3631 This process, however, has no logical foundation but only a psychological one. It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest course of events will really happen.
+.36311 That the sun will rise to-morrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know whether it will rise.
+.37 A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only ''logical'' necessity.
+.371 At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
+.372 So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.
+And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear terminus, whereas the modern system makes it appear as though ''everything'' were explained.
+.373 The world is independent of my will.
+.374 Even if everything we wished were to happen, this would only be, so to speak, a favour of fate, for there is no ''logical'' connexion between will and world, which would guarantee this, and the assumed physical connexion itself we could not again will.
+.375 As there is only a ''logical'' necessity, so there is only a ''logical'' impossibility.
+.3751 For two colours, ''e.g.'' to be at one place in the visual field, is impossible, logically impossible, for it is excluded by the logical structure of colour.
+Let us consider how this contradiction presents itself in physics. Somewhat as follows : That a particle cannot at the same time have two velocities, ''i.e.'' that at the same time it cannot be in two places, ''i.e.'' that particles in different places at the same time cannot be identical.
+(It is clear that the logical product of two elementary propositions can neither be a tautology nor a contradiction. The assertion that a point in the visual field has two different colours at the same time, is a contradiction.)
+.4 All propositions are of equal value.
+.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. ''In'' it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.
+If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
+What makes it non-accidental cannot lie ''in'' the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
+It must lie outside the world.
+.42 Hence also there can be no ethical propositions. Propositions cannot express anything higher.
+.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.
+Ethics is transcendental.
+(Ethics and aesthetics are one.)
+.422 The first thought in setting up an ethical law of the form "thou shalt…" is: And what if I do not do it? But it is clear that ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the ordinary sense. This question as to the ''consequences'' of an action must therefore be irrelevant. At least these consequences will not be events. For there must be something right in that formulation of the question. There must be some sort of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but this must lie in the action itself.
+(And this is clear also that the reward must be something acceptable, and the punishment something unacceptable.)
+.423 Of the will as the subject of the ethical we cannot speak.
+And the will as a phenomenon is only of interest to psychology.
+.43 If good or bad willing changes the world, it can only change the limits of the world, not the facts; not the things that can be expressed in language.
+In brief, the world must thereby become quite another. It must so to speak wax or wane as a whole.
+The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy.
+.431 As in death, too, the world does not change, but ceases.
+.4311 Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.
+If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.
+Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.
+.4312 The temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say, its eternal survival after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but this assumption in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that I survive for ever? Is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies ''outside'' space and time.
+(It is not problems of natural science which have to be solved.)
+.432 ''How'' the world is, is completely indifferent for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world.
+.4321 The facts all belong only to the task and not to its performance.
+.44 Not ''how'' the world is, is the mystical, but ''that'' it is.
+.45 The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole.
+The feeling of the world as a limited whole is the mystical feeling.
+.5 For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.
+The ''riddle'' does not exist.
+If a question can be put at all, then it ''can'' also be answered.
+.51 Scepticism is ''not'' irrefutable, but palpably senseless, if it would doubt where a question cannot be asked.
+For doubt can only exist where there is a question; a question only where there is an answer, and this only where something ''can be said''.
+.52 We feel that even if ''all possible'' scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.
+.521 The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem.
+(Is not this the reason why men to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear, could not then say wherein this sense consisted?)
+.522 There is indeed the inexpressible. This ''shows'' itself; it is the mystical.
+.53 The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, ''i.e.'' the propositions of natural science, ''i.e.'' something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other—he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy—but it would be the only strictly correct method.
+.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)
+He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
+Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.