He taught us how we see happiness, how we see the world, how we look at friendship or love. ...... We are always blind to the truth of the world. Wittgenstein meant this: Philosophy removes these delusions and finally sees how we actually see the world.
——Chen Jiaying
April 29, 2021 is the 70th anniversary of Wittgenstein's death, and we excerpted part of Professor Chen Jiaying's narration of Wittgenstein in Hanfen Building to commemorate this great philosopher with everyone.
Wittgenstein in Swansea in 1947
Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26 April 1889 and died on 29 April 1951 in Cambridgeshire, England. As one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, his research areas are mainly in the fields of mathematical philosophy, spiritual philosophy and philosophy of language, and his major works include "Philosophy of Logic", "Philosophical Research", "Basic Research in Mathematics" and so on.
Russell saw Wittgenstein as "the most complete example of a genius": passionate, profound, intense, and aggressive.
Mr. Chen Jiaying said that Wittgenstein did not come from a philosophical background and did not have a deep attainment in the history of philosophy, but he had a very profound cultural attainment, and in the most authentic way inherited the spirit of Western philosophy of loving wisdom and loving truth, his profound perception of the nature of human existence, and his special talent in reason, enabled him to reach a depth in philosophy that is difficult for other philosophers to reach.
Wittgenstein's Collected Writings
Chen Jiaying told wittgenstein in the Hanfen Building of the Commercial Press
A genius born 130 years ago in the heart of European culture
Wittgenstein's father was named Carl Wittgenstein, and his family was not a prominent family, but his father worked independently and became a steel king in Central Europe and became a huge rich man. But in the cultural background of Europe at that time, their family was not the kind of upstart that people imagined, on the contrary, it was a very traditional aristocratic family. Wittgenstein grew up in this environment. But his father was very strict, very strict with himself, to the people around him, and to his children.
This strictness is not due to how fierce Wittgenstein's father was, but that he cultivated a very high standard from an early age to demand himself. Another biography book says that the children of their families, especially boys, if they have any moral imperfect practices, will feel like the whole failure of life. This feeling is almost non-existent in the people of our time.
The same was true of Vienna at that time. He was born in 1889, the same year as Heidegger, the same year that two of the most influential philosophers of the first half of the 20th century were born. At the turn of the century, about 100 years ago, Vienna was indeed a time of great stars. At that time, Vienna became a cultural center in Europe, and all walks of life, from art to music, to architecture, to poetry, to literature, to philosophy, to economics, to science, then a small city was full of talents, all of whom were first-class talents.
Vienna at the end of the 19th century
Wittgenstein grew up in such a family environment and cultural environment, which is indeed a clear contrast or contrast with our time, because our time is a particularly mediocre era, or our life goal is almost to be able to live a good life, live well, live a little lucky, it is already very good, if not particularly inferior, despicable, you can be very self-satisfied. At that time man had a strong desire for his own demands, for the creation of the spiritual realm, and without such a desire there would have been no Wittgenstein, and there would have been no other philosophers of the time.
Speaking of him personally, Wittgenstein started out studying engineering. His father also wanted him to learn something tangible, his father was a very practical man, also a love of art, funded a whole group of artists in Vienna, from fairy tales to poets, but he was a practical man. Wittgenstein himself has an interest in engineering, and has talent in this area, I do not talk about details, he began to do engines by studying engineering, when the aircraft just came out, just had the idea of aircraft, which involved a lot of mathematics, he slowly became interested in the data basis through mathematics (sometimes we call it "the philosophical foundation of mathematics"), interested in mathematical logic, mathematical foundations, and gradually interested in logic, because there were many people at that time who thought that the foundation of mathematics was logic, and he began to study logic. He wanted to learn from Frege, but Frege didn't accept him and recommended him to Russell, which was also good. At that time, Frege was an obscure professor, and no one paid attention to Freig, including colleagues at the same university, who did not know what Frege was doing. So Wittgenstein was very discerning in his selection of teachers, and Frege recommended him to Russell, who later studied with Russell, which was actually a very fortunate choice, because Cambridge was almost always the center of philosophy.
Russell
Wittgenstein went from engineering to mathematics, from mathematics to mathematical foundations, from mathematical foundations to logic, from logic to logical philosophy, and then to philosophy, and this is the path he probably followed. Everyone's love of philosophy has always been a variety of approaches, some people come from religion, some people come from literature, and some people come from science. Wittgenstein followed such a path. Such a path will have some path dependence, and the style of each thinker is different, and sometimes it has a little to do with the path taken.
No matter how much influence he was influenced by Cambridge, he was a lone thinker, a thinker whose main mind needed to sit there and immerse himself in it. From the information available to us now, his ideas developed very rapidly, and within a few years he had gone from being a layman in logical philosophy to an expert in logical philosophy, and some of his ideas were very close to him, including Russell, who already felt that he had many questions to ask Wittgenstein for advice, or at least Russell would try to ask Wittgenstein's opinion when he expressed his philosophical views, and if Wittgenstein objected, Russell would be very frustrated, wary, and would repeatedly re-weigh his scholarship.
Philosophy: an inconclusive discipline
Philosophers often debate different philosophical theories over and over again, which is a characteristic of philosophy, and this characteristic is similar to... Science develops differently, and science is debated at the forefront. Mathematical frontiers are debated, but what about quadratic equations? Just go and learn. But philosophy is always arguing, and this philosophical debate takes us far, and although the layman seems to be a subtle stub, we cannot comment on whether it is a subtle stub or a key fulcrum.
Wittgenstein had no interest in the purely theoretical arguments of philosophers; his interest lay in the fact that all the people behind them could think of problems in this way, and there was some common distorted tendency in human conception.
Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language
The philosophy of language has at least two distinct meanings, one of which is to understand the philosophy of language, the idea that the phenomenon of language is one of our phenomena, that the philosophy of studying the phenomenon of language is the philosophy of language, and that if the study of money is the philosophy of money, and if the study of sports has the philosophy of sports, this is the philosophy of categories. The philosophy of language can also have another meaning, we began to study philosophy to study money, to study law, to study sports, to study various problems, but when we slowly deepened these problems, we found that philosophy is ultimately the study of language, which is another understanding of the philosophy of language, that philosophy is ultimately the philosophy of language. Wittgenstein is the latter, the former is easy to understand, the latter is difficult to understand, that is, why is it that in the final analysis, it is the study of language? But this is indeed Wittgenstein's very clear idea.
He began by saying in The Philosophy of Logic that all philosophy is a criticism of language. I quote two sentences, Wittgenstein said that philosophical inquiry is not about phenomena, but about the way phenomena are expressed. Such words are said in such a context.
You say what time is, it's a very difficult question, but Einstein has solved what time is, the new quantum theory has proposed a new theory of time, Wittgenstein said that all this has nothing to do with us, we are not looking at what time is in that sense, we are exploring how we talk about time. What is imagery? He said that we are not looking at mental activity when we are intentional, but we are looking at how we say the image. If you don't grasp this idea, then "Philosophical Studies" really can't be read, because it is through-cutting.
During World War I, Wittgenstein was in the army's ID
Wittgenstein taught us something
Now if you want, the happiness pills that the ancients fantasized about were easy, and you went to the hospital and it would make you happy right away. But what is the concept of happiness? Are we all striving for happiness? You say that everyone pursues happiness, so is Van Gogh pursuing happiness? You say he is, he is bitter, but he is happy.
Is pleasure in suffering the same thing as pleasure in pleasure? These are all questions, these are the concept of happiness, science does not answer these questions, scientists are not very interested in this, so that in the end the whole society is not interested.
The philosopher does not study in that sense how happiness arises, he cannot do it, what does he study first? He studies how we see happiness, that is, we don't study how happiness is formed, we study how we look at happiness.
What do we think about happiness? For example, is happiness important? Is everyone pursuing happiness? If happiness conflicts with morality, do we want to stick to morality or pursue happiness? These are our perceptions of happiness.
In 1925, Wittgenstein with his students
But philosophers don't teach us how to look at happiness; philosophers explore how we actually think about happiness. This separates philosophers like Wittgenstein from philosophers who teach us how we should be, who don't teach us how we should be, which is odd, but I personally agree, he teaches us how we see happiness, how we see the world, how we look at friendship or love.
But our world is a highly scientific world, and most people think about this problem openly or implicitly or involuntarily, that is, if we encounter any difficulties, either we pray to God and worship Buddha, or we seek science, or vice versa: if we cannot seek science, we pray to God and worship Buddha. In the intellectual world, it seems that only the scientific method can lead us to the truth, and there seems to be nothing important except truth.
Philosophy is not trying to figure out how the world works, but how we see the world and ourselves, and for various reasons this is the most difficult thing for us to see clearly.
When we talk about "water"
We're talking about the "world."
We formed the concept of water is not used to study water, not the concept of water can better study water, no need! It is enough that we have the name "water", we know it is water, we start to study water, and it has nothing to do with the concept of whether there is water or not.
Then there is the concept of water, which we understand the world through water. We will see that the world has a flow and static, there is a feeling of moisture and irrigation, without the concept of water, it is difficult for you to form a feeling of moisture and irrigation, what is moisture? What is irrigation? What is flow? What is stillness? Of course, you can also study mercury, but the truth is that we understand moisture, irrigation, flow, and stillness through the concept of water.
Conversely, can we also form the concept of water by moisturizing, irrigating, flowing, and stationary? Nothing wrong with that! Concepts are all pulled out of the radish with mud, one set is formed, and finally a set of concepts and a concept network are formed. We end up with a concept web like this. Because of such a whole set of concepts, the world becomes an understandable world, and the concept of water is used to understand the world, not to understand water.
In the summer of 1950, Wittgenstein was in Cambridge
I will briefly summarize Wittgenstein's thinking, from language to concept, I said at the beginning that Wittgenstein attaches importance to the study of language, in fact, in the end, it is the study of concepts and the study of mechanisms, and further this concept is the concept we use to understand the world. The reason we figure out the concept is to understand the world, but understanding the world is a scientific job. The question is, is that really how we understand the world? Or do we think we understand the world this way? At this time, it seems that "Philosophical Studies" looks like a book on language, a book on all aspects of language, but it is definitely not! It is exploring the fundamental question of philosophy, which is how do we understand the world, and we think we understand the world that way, but really? It is revealing all sorts of illusions.
Including our many motives, our true understanding of the world is hidden, and as a result, the world we see is a confused world, a world that has been whitewashed by layers, and we can never see the truth of this world. Wittgenstein meant this: Philosophy removes these delusions and finally sees how we actually see the world.
Philosophers diagnose and treat a problem as much as they treat a disease. Philosophy is not about providing theories, not about teaching you something new, it is about removing disease and restoring you to a healthy person, and this health is intellectual health.
[Excerpt from Chen Jiaying's lecture "Introduction to Philosophical Studies", with deletions]
《Philosophy Research》
[Au] Wittgenstein by Chen Jiaying, translated
Philosophical Studies is a representative work of the late Wittgenstein. It mainly criticizes its early ideas about language, mind and world, proposes relevant new understandings, holds that the consistent relationship between language, mind and world occurs within language, rather than outside language; and makes a new interpretation of the nature of philosophy, asserting that philosophical research is grammatical research.