I cannot continue reading this book.
I mean no disrespect to Herr Wittgenstein’s Erinnerung, but his 232 pages seem to me to be utterly repetitive of all he tried to say in the first handful of pages. I get that he was trying to define the meaning of meaning and words and their context as associated with meaning, but it’s far too repetitive for me.
As I read more about the man and this and his other work, I’d found that he’d even pulled the book from the publisher! That this book had been published after his death in 1951 and that the second part of the book had been added by the editor. So, I’m not really clear what he’d meant for this book to be comprised of. These all seem to me to be notes he’d written to himself over time to try to philosophically ferret out what he was trying to get across, and I simply cannot bear to keep reading the same trope over and over again (which may thoroughly be the fault of the publisher)…even if I do largely agree with some of his statements. I do feel that words and language are defined according to their use (if I put that right)…and not so much on their own. I do feel that words mean something and to theoretically try to use them otherwise would be unintelligible. Maybe that’s too much of a simplification of his efforts, but that seems to sum it up for me. If that is not the case, then I’m sorry but I cannot muddle through his journey up to his epiphany, because it’s far too repetitive and provides no further enlightenment for me. I have skipped ahead and read sections, and they’re no better.
And at times, he even seems to be making things up, like saying that philosophy is not meant to explain things, but is to instead state the obvious and “assemble reminders.” That it explains nothing but “simply puts everything before us.” And that since “everything lies open to view, there is nothing to explain.”
Then why is he and others explaining everything?
If everything so exists and there is nothing to explain, and that if one were to advance any so-called “theses” it would never be debatable, because everyone would agree to it, then how does he explain not only his own behavior, but the behavior of every other philosopher out there? Unless I am missing something so hideously basic, this is exactly contradictory to what is and has been done through time immemorial. There are so many philosophers because everyone does, indeed, have their own—different!—take. How did he not see this? What am I missing?
So the upshot is, I could go into more detail, but I do not want to spend the energy. Philosophy may be a verb and not a noun to him, but it is something that does, indeed, try to explain something else, or it wouldn’t exist. Nothing is obvious. Everything is perception. And there is not only one pure way of defining anything, by the very evidence of so many disparate philosophical theses proves (explains, reminds, or otherwise clarifies…) this to be the case.
And that I’m no longer in college and no longer have to read something beyond my exhausted interest anymore. I’ve studied my philosophy, found my own…wisdom…and am perfectly comfortable with it. I’m more into the metaphysical aspects of life and philosophy, where his seems more oriented toward logic and language. I am not. Again, I could go deeper, but just don’t feel the need to do so at this stage in my life. I’m not writing a paper that needs to be incorporated into a grade.
So, I leave his book and will go on to something else. It’s not that he lost me…he exhausted me with repetition and nothing new that I haven’t already heard, read, lived, or studied before, and I really do not feel the need to revisit…especially at this level of detail…but I thank him for defining it for those who need this journey.
Here is an explanatory link to the Philosophical Investigations.
Here is a definition of philosophy.
Here is another definition of philosophy.
Here is a link to Wittgenstein’s life.