Ludwig Wittgenstein

Public and Private Occasions

Edited by
James C. Klagge and Alfred Nordmann

Movements of Thought: Diaries 1930-1932, 1936-1937

SOBRE SIMIL
(pg. 153)
Just as the screws are tightened, they become loose again, because what they are to
squeeze together is [I45] giving way again.
I always take joy in my own good similes; were it not such vain joy.

15.2.[37] (pg. 181)

These images thus impose themselves upon me. And yet I am reluctant to use these [ 173]
images & expressions. Above all these are not similes, of course. For what can be said by
way of a simile, that can also be said without a simile. These images & expressions have
a life rather only in a high sphere of life, they can be rightfully used only in this sphere.
All I could really do is make a gesture which means something similar to unsayable, &
say nothing.-Or is this absolute aversion to using words here some sort of flight? A flight
from a reality? I dont think so; but I dont know. Let me not shy away from any conclusion,
but absolutely also not be superstitious!! I do not want to think uncleanly! (16.2.37)
God! let me come into a relation to you in which I can be cheerjlul in my work!
The German Gleichnis has been translated as metaphor and simile. Compare the Lecture on Ethics
in Philosophical Occasions [73,f13p, p. 42f.: Now all religious terms seem in this sense to be used as similes
or allegorically. . . . And if I can describe a fact by means of a simile I must also be able to drop the simile and
to describe the facts without it. For remarks on religion and whether speaking is essential to it, see also
Wittgensteins conversations with the Vienna Circle [74,a], p. 117. [IS.]

(pg. 215)
It is strange that one says God created the world & not: God is creating, continually, the
world. For why should it be a greater miracle that it began to be) rather than that it continued
to be. [207] One is led astray by the simile of the craftsperson. That someone makes
a shoe is an accomplishment, but once made (out of what is existing) it endures on its own
for a while. But if one thinks of God as creator, must the conservation of the universe not
be a miracle just as great-as its creation,-yes, arent the two one and the same? Why
should I postulate a singular act of creation & not a continuous act of conservation-which
began at some point, which had a temporal beginning, or what amounts to the same, a continuous
creating?

SOBRE METFORA
Paul Emst (1866-1933) was a German novelist, an advocate of the strict, antipsychologistic form of the
renaissance novella. According to Brian McGuinness, it is likely that during the 1916-1917 Olmutz discussions
with Paul Engelmann Wittgenstein read or reflected on the Nuchwort to the Grimms fairy tales by Paul
Emst, which influenced him so powerfully with its account of how language misleads us-graphic modes of
expression and metaphors being taken literally (Wittgenstein: A Life [6O,c], pp. 251f.). [I.S.] See also Wolfgang
Kiinne, Paul Ernst and Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Wittgenstein Studies, January 1996.

8.2.[37]
The ideal name is an ideal, that is, a picture a form of representation to which we are inclined.
We want to represent the destruction & change as separation & [163] regrouping
of elements. One could call this idea in a certain sense sublime; it becomes sublime in that
we see the whole world through it. But now nothing is more important than making clear
to ourselves which phenomena, which simple, home-spun cases-are the original picture off
.t.h..i s idea. That is: When you are tempted to make general metaphysical statements, ask
yourself (always): What case am I actually thinking of?-What sort of case, which conception
do I have in mind here? Now something in us resists this question for we seem
to jeopardize the ideal through it: whereas we are doing it only in order to put it in the place
where it belongs. For it is supposed to be a picture with which we compare reality,
through which we represent how things stand. Not a picture by which we falsify [164]
reality.
Therefore we will ask again and again about that image for which we want to vindicate
such general significance? Where does that image derive itself from?!
The sublime conception forces me to move away from the concrete case since what I
say doesnt fit it. I now move into an ethereal region, talk of the real sign, of rules that must
exist (even though I cant say where & how)-& find myself on thin ice.b
asignificance is an undecided alternative to applicability which received wavy underlining.
baufs Glatteis geraten is also used in Philosophical Investigations, 107 as a metaphor for the faults of the
sublime conception. Wittgenstein discusses the sublime with reference to the ideal, the real sign, and the original
picture (Urbild) also in MS 157a and b. There, too, he arrives around February 8 at a point of dissatisfaction.
See MS 157a, pp. 115f., 122, 130f.. MS 157b, 27.2.1937 and thereafter: compare Philosophical Investigations
94, 101, 108f. [I.S.]

24.2 .[ 37]
The one who is pure has a hardness which is tough to bear: That is why one accepts the
admonitions of a Dostoevsky more easily than those of a Kierkegaard. One of them is still
squeezing while the other is already cutting.
If you are not willing to Sacrifice your work for something still higher; [205] there is no
blessing with it. For it attains its height only when you place it at its true altitude in relation
to the ideal.
That is why vanity destroys the value of the work. This is how the work of Kraus, for example,
has become a tinkling bell.(Kraus was an architect of sentences, extraordinarily
talented at that.)
c place it at its true altitude is an undecided alternative to put it in its right place-altitude (Hohenlage)
resonates with the metaphor of the work attaining height (Hohe erhalten).

6.3 .[37]
It is interesting how wrong Spengler, who usually has much judgement, is in his evaluation
of Kierkegaard. Here is one who is too great for him & stands too close, he only sees
the giants boots
In The Decline ofrhe West Spengler refers to Kierkegaard only once as someone who plays with religious
expressions (see [16,b], vol. 2, p. 137). That scholars are dwarfs between the feet of intellectual giants is a favorite
theme of Schopenhauers Parerga and Paralipomena (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974, vol. 1, pp. 157f., 181,
vol. 2, $5 4-6,248-254,379f., pp. 535f., 542), also at the end of volume 2, chapter 15 of the World as Will
and Representation. A definitive formulation of Schopenhauers metaphor is offered by Nietzsche in the first
section of his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks.

SOBRE FILOSOFA

6.5.
When teaching philosophy one can often say: Scoundrels themselves who turn us into
rogues!
It is 3 weeks since I thought of philosophy but every thought of it is so foreign to me as if
I had not thought [47] such things for years anymore. In my first lecture I want to speak
about the specific problems of philosophy & have the feeling: how can I say anything
about this, I dont know them anymore.
Wittgenstein began his lectures for the Michaelmas term on October 13 with the following remarks about
the r6le and difficulties of philosophy: The nimbus of philosophy has been lost. For now we have a method
of doing philosophy [. . .] What we are in fact doing is to tidy up our notions, to make clear what can be said
about the world. [. . .] This activity of clearing up is philosophy. [. . .] The only way to do philosophy is to do
everything twice.

8.[2.3 1]
The task of philosophy is to soothe the mind about meaningless questions. Whoever
doesnt tend to such questions doesnt need phi1osophy.

[88] As in philosophy so in life we are led astray by seeming analogies (to what others do
or are permitted to do). And here, too, there is only one remedy against this seduction: to
listen to the soft voices which tell us that things here are not the same as there.

2.2 [37]
Remind yourself at the right time when doing philosophy with what satisfaction children
(& [160] also plain folk) hear that that is the greatest bridge, the highest tower, the greatest speed . . . etc. (Children ask:
what is the greatest number?) It is impossible
for such a drive not to produce various philosophical prejudices & therefore philosophical
entanglements

The Wittgenstein Lectures

who attended CMSC meetings during that time, recalls (Pascal 1984, p. 16): Wittgenstein
was the disturbing (perhaps disrupting) centre of these evenings. He would talk for long periods
without interruption, using similes and allegories, stalking about the room and gesticulating.
He cast a spell. . . . Once he said: You cannot love God, for you do not know him,
and went on elaborating the theme. Wittgenstein was away from Cambridge academic life
from the fall of 1936 to early 1938, living mostly in Norway.
(pg. 334)

I used at one time to say that, in order to get clear how a certain sentence is used, it was a good
idea to ask oneself the question: How would one try to verify such an assertion? But thats just
one way among others of getting clear about the use of a word or sentence. For example, another
question which it is often very useful to ask oneself is: How is this word learned? How would
one set about teaching a child to use this word? But some people have turned this suggestion
about asking for the verification into a dogma-as if Id been advancing a theory about meaning.