This video montage includes film taken in Austria-Hungry before Hilter invaded in the Anschluss. The video artist, a Buddhist monk, mixed some home movies of the Wittgenstein family with other archival film of the time. I think the patriarch, Karl Wittgenstein, is in the film also. Karl was one of the riches men in Austria-Hungry being a wealthy steel industrialist. When Hilter invaded Austria-Hungry, the Germans seized all assest, but by this time Karl has died and left all his wealth to his children. Ludwig Wittgenstein gave away all his massive wealth to artists. When the Nazis finally got to the remainder of the Wittgenstein fortune they discovered 7 TONS OF GOLD BARS! In this film is a Buddhist monk is reading from Ludwig's personal letters, and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, (1921) which is a synthesis of symbolic logic and mysticism. Ludwig wrote most of the Tractatus while in an Italian prison camp after being captured as a soldier during WWI. He lived long enough to see Hitler invade his country and strip his family of most of their wealth. The short vignette images are meant to help the viewer understand what the propositions in the Tractatus mean. The Tractatus so impressed the scientists of his day that they formed a group called the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivism in honor of Wittgenstein's work. The scientists included Rudolf Carnap, Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, Friedrich Waismann, and Otto Neurath--that is, until they found out Wittgenstein was a radical mystic. Much of today's symbolic logic is based on his work such as truth tables. Famous scientists and artists would visit the Wittgenstein mansion. The musician, Felix Mendelssohn, was a frequent guest. The most famous sentence in the Tractatus is the last entry, and it also ends this film. “7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Lol. Will there be a sequel exploring the Philosophical Investigations with an explanation of why he leaves the Tractatus behind? Will Popper be cast as his arch nemesis (in a scene involving a very famous fire poker)? Your citing of Marcuse in your signature...any cognitive dissonance here with your signature and your post (with its glowing treatment of the early Wittgenstein and the logical positivists)?
I was thinking "How the heck did you know I was going in that direction!" It really freaked me out! I reported it to the moderator...now I know. Isn't it beautiful? I was going to put it in the "Focus On A Stone and the Problem of Time" post--as the debris of historical time, but decided against it. From Wikipedia... And it all started because a single atom didn't stay in its lane! Oops, my computer overheated...I'm good now!
I found an extremely important summary of Wittgenstein's conception of language in Roger's "Adorno: The Recovery of Experience." Roger ties together the problem Wittgenstein has with the way language distorts our experience. Wittgenstein was not well read in the history of philosophy like his colleague at Cambridge. I believe Wittgenstein arrived at his conclusions completely independent of the Frankfurt School of thought and other literature of his day.
Wittgenstein’s Dream G-d’s logician, reluctant as he may be has seen reality’s depravity. Finding only illogical syllogism and paralogism he worried for the mystical a priori. Where is the morality of rationality when theology is merely tautology? Ludwig Wittgenstein tried to pass the altar to the mystical stairs but his progress ended in despair. He sought a higher spiritual level not knowing if it would be gold, silver, or iron metal. He cleverly combined magic, logic, and spiritual panic to form metallurgic magic. The alchemic transformation is done by illogical negation, and a-theologic speculation. G-d showed him a sacred rug, in a dream, its tapestry beautiful with complex designs and schemes. The sacred rug’s beautiful center is cataphatic, but its faded and undefined edges are apophatic. And yet spiritual agony remains. --by Kyklos
