Sublime

It does not follow that there is no simple Self; it only follows that we cannot know whether there is or not, and that the Self, except as a bundle of perceptions, cannot enter into any part of our knowledge. This conclusion is important in metaphysics, as getting rid of the last surviving use of “substance.” It is important in theology, as abolish

Wittgenstein was hostile to modern philosophy as he found it. He thought it the product of a culture that had come to model everything that matters about our lives on scientific explanation. In its ever-extending observance of the idea that knowledge, not wisdom, is our goal, that what matters is information rather than insight, and that we best ad

we don’t talk about what we see; we see only what we can talk about.

without regard to how understandable any part of them would be. It

If we know the rules, we consider that we “understand” the world.

possible to determine, just from an f-number’s arithmetic properties, whether the string of symbols it stands for forms a meaningful mathematical or logical statement

The matters that are suitable for treatment by the Socratic method are those as to which we have already enough knowledge to come to a right conclusion, but have failed, through confusion of thought or lack of analysis, to make the best logical use of what we know. A question such as “what is justice?” is eminently suited for discussion in a Platon

“One cannot think without writing.” (Luhmann 1992, 53)

Now assuming that Wittgenstein does indeed regard Pascal’s characterization of how she feels as an instance of bullshit, why does it strike him that way? It does so, I believe, because he perceives what Pascal says as being—roughly speaking, for now—unconnected to a concern with the truth. Her statement is not germane to the enterprise of describin