/lit/ - Literature

>"Following which he [Wittgenstein] caused further controversy and scandal in the little village of Hassbach where he was undertaking his brief stint as a secondary school teacher when it came to light that he possessed a whole file cabinet full of charts and figures which monitored the status of the virginity of all his students, as well as calculating for the probability and date of their losing it. Those who had already done so had their names marked out with an enormous red 'x'. When confronted by several of the outraged parents and disconcerted board members, Wittgenstein was dismissive and even piqued at their incomprehension. "It's a simple science," he sighed to me later in private. "Basically, I had formulated a thesis that loss of virginity and the subsequent investment of energy in sexual concerns by young men at that most susceptible age will lead to a corresponding decrease in academic performance. The more lascivious the lad, the duller the student. So far my charts were tracking at a suitably rigorous rate to convince me such a correspondence does indeed exist." He smeared his sleeve across his mouth after downing the whole cup of coffee my wife had handed him in one go and finished off by muttering, "And I'd simply hoped to steer a few of the brighter young boys away from such lecherous fates." I was close to speechless by the oddity of my friend's endeavor, though I knew the futility of trying ask him what could have possibly instigated it in the first place. So instead I decided to humor the ever-inscrutible fellow and asked, "Well, what about the young girls? Does your data show if it affects their academic perfomance, too?" In reply to which he merely looked at me for a moment before keeling over in peels of contagious laughter." - Norman Malcolm, in Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (1966), p. 84

id beat the fucken SHIT out of witty
tractatus my ass you pear shaped cuck

>>12013593
>[methodological reductionism] is just a byproduct of misunderstanding language
fixed it fer ya

Wittgenstein had long been troubled by his inability to appreciate the greatness of Shakespeare. In 1946, for example, he had written:

>It is remarkable how hard we find it to believe something that we do not see the truth of for ourselves. When, for instance, I hear the expression of admiration for Shakespeare by distinguished men in the course of several centuries, I can never rid myself of the suspicion that praising him has been the conventional thing to do; though I have to tell myself that this is not how it is. It takes the authority of Milton really to convince me. I take it for granted that he was incorruptible. - But I don't of course mean by this that I don't believe an enormous amount of praise to have been, and still to be, lavished on Shakespeare without understanding and for the wrong reasons by a thousand professors of literature.

>One of the difficulties he had in accepting Shakespeare as a great poet was that he disliked many of Shakespeare's metaphors and similes: "Shakespeare's similes are, in the ordinary sense, bad. So if they are all the same good - and I don't know whether they are or not - they must be a law to themselves.

Why didn't Wittgenstein like Shakespeare?

On the subject of the writing talent of philosophers, Redpath asked Wittgenstein which philosophers he considered the most impressive authors. Wittgenstein’s prompt reply was “Nietzsche”. Redpath goes on to say: “When I told him I had read a certain amount of Nietzsche and asked what he thought of his general world view, he said that he didn’t think there was much ‘consolation’ to be had from it – it was ‘too shallow’”

One day, walking in the Zoological Gardens, we admired the immense variety of flowers, shrubs, trees, and the similar multiplicity of birds, reptiles, animals.

WITTGENSTEIN: I have always thought that Darwin was wrong: his
theory does not account for all the variety of species. It hasn't
the necessary multiplicity. Nowadays some people are fond of saying
that at last evolution has produced a species that is able to
understand the whole process which gave it birth. Now that you
can't say.

DRURY: You could say that now there has evolved a strange animal
that collects other animals and puts them in gardens. But you can't
bring the concepts of knowledge and understanding into this series.
They are different categories entirely.

WITTGENSTEIN: Yes, you could put it that way.

>>7052092
though he does look kind of short here. I might have been thinking of someone else

It is remarkable how hard we find it to believe something that we do not see the truth of for ourselves. When, for instance, I hear the expression of admiration for Shakespeare by distinguished men in the course of several centuries, I can never rid myself of the suspicion that praising him has been the conventional thing to do; though I have to tell myself that this is not how it is. It takes the authority of Milton really to convince me. I take it for granted that he was incorruptible. - But I don't of course mean by this that I don't believe an enormous amount of praise to have been, and still to be, lavished on Shakespeare without understanding and for the wrong reasons by a thousand professors of literature.

Shakespeare's similes are, in the ordinary sense, bad. So if they are all the same good - and I don't know whether they are or not - they must be a law to themselves.

I could only stare in wonder at Shakespeare, never do anything with him

Beethoven's great heart" - nobody could speak of "Shakespeare's great heart

I do not think that Shakespeare would have been able to reflect on the 'lot of the poet.'

Nor could he regard himself as a prophet or as a teacher of mankind.

People stare at him in wonderment, almost as at a spectacular natural phenomenon. They do not have the feeling that this brings them into contact with a great human being. Rather with a phenomenon.

>>6894586

he's too tall

W. was 5'6"

enlist when WWIII comes around

im sure there is a fair pool of talent here, perhaps even philosophico-literary genius

i find it fucking ridiculous that we haven't got the gall to even speak of how the Internet is molding us... i figure it'll be bright 4channers that will end up creating the discourse

>>6558360

postmodernity did much violence to our forms of life, by god