Leamington Letters #44: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

7/4/2013

Today's listening: It ought to be John Cage, but 4'33" is a long time. And as Chris pointed out, which version? So I'm playing Love Minus Zero/No Limit because my love, she speaks like ...

22 Comments

Carl

8/4/2013 01:19:43

Ha! By far your best blog. More of the same please.

Max

9/4/2013 06:28:01

Coming up!

PaulR

8/4/2013 01:49:21

Golden!

Max

9/4/2013 06:30:18

Thank you (I think).

8/4/2013 02:03:37

More appropriate:
"I can hear the silence call
It's a certain kind of sound ...
Holes in what's left of my reason
Holes in the knees of my blues"
- Saint of Circumstance, GD

max

8/4/2013 03:59:41

Holes in what's left of my reason. Yep!

GrahamMc

8/4/2013 03:00:48

Interestingly, my copy of the Tractatus has "pass over in silence" rather than "be silent". I would have thought that this is a very significant distinction. What is lost in translation in either or both versions?

max

8/4/2013 03:57:17

It is very different, isn't it? Yours gives a concrete reality to that which we are not discussing (which is ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics etc). Before I checked the reference, my recollection was "one must remain silent" which is something else again, implying that we have always been silent on these subjects (which is clearly not the case, see Western Philosophy passim). I don't know whether I have 'mis-remembered' or read it thus once.

Steve

8/4/2013 05:42:20

"Remain" is the word used in my (very old) copy. Is the sense here that nothing relevant/important has been said up to this point? In other words, that philosophy as been addressing the irrelevant and the unimportant. Discuss.

James

9/4/2013 02:19:02

What W. wrote is "Worüber man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen". Rendering this literally one arrives at the archaic "whereof...thereof" formulation which certainly appeals to those who like their philosophy sonorous. The verb "schweigen" means "to be silent", possibly rendered as “remain silent", though using “remain” in the sense of the “keep” in “keep mum” – i.e. it doesn’t really imply the continuation of a state, merely the response to the specific current situation. W. could easily have said”...schweigen bleiben” if he wanted to convey that sense of maintaining a (long) established position of silence. “Pass over in silence” does the job quite well in the absence of an active English verb meaning “schweigen” (“to be silent”). But to me there is a very priestly and perhaps even slightly disapproving tone when people “pass over something in silence”. This certainly isn’t in the German, which is actually quite conversational in tone. I don’t think you lose anything by going for a more vernacular translation like “If you can’t speak about it, don’t speak about it”. Thought some might like to underscore the prescriptive tone of the “muss”: “If you can’t speak about it, you mustn’t speak about it”. Substituting the first “it” for “something” might be nice. I think it’s fair to say that the best a translation can ever be is the nearest possible approximation.

myers

8/4/2013 03:03:14

I wish Wittgenstein would shut the f*** up!

max

8/4/2013 03:57:45

He did!

GeoffS

8/4/2013 05:59:41

Steve, don't forget that Cambridge in those days - as Max will remember - didn't study philosophy but moral sciences. It was the prevailing wisdom which he was implicitly attacking. Natural sciences versus moral sciences. And before Max quotes it yet again, it's not about interpreting the world; the point is to change it!

Don

8/4/2013 06:32:51

True. It ended with Nietzsche. Which would have made Nietzsche happy - he would have believed it - but was no good to anyone else. And of course, Wittgenstein also wanted to bring everything to a full stop. I think we should all re-read Bertie to re-discover what was and remains important.

8/4/2013 11:31:59

Russell taught Wittgenstein of course. clearly not enough, or not well enough. Wittgenstein believed he had brought things to a full stop, that he had said all that was required. And however much we may admire the aphoristic nature of Proposition 7, it doesn't explain anything and certainly doesn't change anything. I preferred it when Max ranted about Dylan and baseball. Whereof he can speak, thereof he can go on and on.

Max

9/4/2013 06:25:39

Normal service with traditional rants on traditional subjects will be resumed (possibly) next time. I merely need to recover from the news of Thatcher's death.

Max

10/4/2013 02:36:07

I say nothing and receive more feedback more quickly than ever before! Thanks to everyone for their comments. Especially to James for the detailed deconstruction of the translations. Really like the simplicity of "If you can't talk about it, don't." But as we discussed, we are then into the nuances of talk and speak, a subject in its right. Can't promise but may say nothing on another occasion.

Martin Skinner

18/4/2013 02:38:14

I have always understood this as being about resignation rather than prescription. Not a moral imperative but an inevitable fact of language and its uttering. 'Mussen' not as 'ought to' but as 'have to put up with'. As in 'Wooden Heart' by Elvis Presley.

Max

2/5/2013 01:03:31

Neat. And probably right. It's an interpretation which had not occurred to me. But if it is about resignation and acceptance, can it be a proposition? Not sure.

kevin phelps

22/4/2013 05:48:02

I had the misfortune to meet the woman once!

Remain silent?

She had three mouths & half an ear, you had to remain silent as she had no interest in what you had to say, & even less for any thing else but the sound of her own bloody voice!

Wittgennietzpierre my a***