reading a biography....

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
21

I finished “Walter Kaufmann” the other day and within minutes, started
a biography about Wittgenstein…“the Duty of Genius” by Ray Monk…

this book confirmed something I had learned earlier this year,
that Wittgenstein considered himself an ethical thinker, in fact,
he called himself a “Religious thinker” as late as 1920… indeed, he
asked about the requirements to become a priest in 1925…
a few years after, after he published his book, “Logical-philosophical Treatise”
in 1921…

and in thinking about this, after reading the biography of Kaufmann
and within the last year a biography of Heidegger… one realizes
the commonality between these three philosophers…
religion and a religious understanding of the universe…

Kaufmann returned to his religious base, time after time after time…
Heidegger was called and considered himself to be a “Catholic philosopher”
as late as 1921… only a few years before he came out with “Being and Time” in
1927…as one reads “Being and Time” replace the word “Being”
with the word “God” and the book makes far more sense…“Being and Time”
is a religious book with “God” as its centerpiece…God being called “Being”…
(Kaufmann being born in 1921 had his engagement with the religious
during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s)

so these three philosophers who wrote philosophy, had as their main engagement,
being the religious/ethical…

this religious/ethical engagement with philosophy in three major philosophers,
should tell us about what the primary engagement of the 20 and 21st century
philosophy has been about… the ethical/religious…

and why? because we don’t have a universal, transcendental theory of ethics or
of religion…this failure has allowed the “acts of evil” we so associate with
the 20th century… the two World Wars, the Holocaust, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb,
the rape of Nanking, Abu Ghraib prison, the My Lai massacre,
among other acts of dehumanization of human beings…
that allows us to devalue human beings as being less then money or private property…
and people wonder why life is value so cheaply among people when society itself
devalues and dehumanizes human beings…

our failure to advocate or push for an “ethical” life comes from our failure to
have an ethical theory of any kind…everything is “ad hoc” which means
not permanent or just for that particular situation…

why just today, we had the United States Senate refuse to hold an investigation into
the events of Jan, 6, 2021… when it held 10 investigations into Benghazi… and what was
the difference? With Benghazi it was an political attack on Hilary Clinton,
and the Jan. 6 investigation would be about the GOP attempting to
overthrow the government…Benghazi had nothing to do with the deaths
of United States personal… as a real investigation should have been concerned with…
politics before lives… as is the GOP refusal to hold a Jan. 6… investigation, politics
before people… no wonder we devalue and dehumanize people… we put
politics and money and private property before people’s lives…

The GOP stands for nothing… what values would you considered to be GOP values?

small government? that bit the dust during the Raygun administration,
Less taxes? only to the billionaires and millionaires,… average people have to
pay more taxes because of the free ride the GOP gives to the 1% of this country…

todays GOP has become a cult following… nothing more…
it stands for nothing…hence the GOP is a practitioner of
the modern day nihilism/dehumanization/devaluation of human beings…

One might ask, Kropotkin, you mentioned Religion…
isn’t religion about bringing value into people’s life?

let us take the Catholic Church… and its unwillingness to hold
its Church priests accountable for being Pedophiles…
if the church will not hold itself accountable, then how can it believe itself
to be anything but another practitioner of nihilism, dehumanization,
devaluing human beings for its own benefit…
if the church protects its priests for actions that dehumanizes and devalues
other human beings, we cannot believe that church will practice uplifting
and honest values that brings back people from being devalued or being
dehumanized…

There is no modern organization that preaches values
that makes the human being/life of greater value then money/profits/
fame/material goods…

do you want to put your energy into a world or any organization in the world,
that devalues/dehumanizes human beings? I don’t… and why should I?

to put energy into a world or an organization that devalues me or dehumanizes
me? why would I do that? may as well ask someone to slit your throat…

but what are the options? that is what we must create… to work our way into a future
that doesn’t devalue or dehumanizes me or other human beings and once that is done,
we can expand our values into preventing devaluing other life, animals, plants,
sea life… all life… all life must hold value… if we are to successfully
reach what it means to become human…it is never about what was or what is,
it is about what will be… and we can choose what will be… if we had the
courage to make that decision…

Kropotkin

22

In Wittgenstein came across an interesting bit…

“… The Mathematician, on Brouwers view, is not a discoverer but
a creator: mathematics is not a body of facts, but a construction of the
human mind. With all these points Wittgenstein was in agreement,”…

What does this viewpoint do for the many who hold, like Pythagoras,
that the planets and stars move according to mathematical equations…

if we discover mathematical equations, then this makes sense, if we
create mathematical equations, then the Pythagoreans theory makes less
sense… how do the star follow mathematical equations if they are made, created
by mathematicians?

Plato for example held that all our knowledge is knowledge that we have already
learned and have forgotten and this might hold to be true if we discover or more
correctly rediscover those equations…but if we create them, as Wittgenstein
believed, then how does the natural world which seems to have mathematical
basis come about if we create, create mathematical equations, not rediscover them?

Kropotkin

23

From Wiki:

A concern with language was central to Kraus’s outlook, and he viewed his contemporaries’ careless use of language as symptomatic of their insouciant treatment of the world. Viennese composer Ernst Krenek described meeting the writer in 1932: “At a time when people were generally decrying the Japanese bombardment of Shanghai, I met Karl Kraus struggling over one of his famous comma problems. He said something like: ‘I know that everything is futile when the house is burning. But I have to do this, as long as it is at all possible; for if those who were supposed to look after commas had always made sure they were in the right place, Shanghai would not be burning’.”[19]

K: in this incident, we can see Wittgenstein understanding that the
discussion about language was really a discussion about ethics…

what Kropotkin? How in god’s name do we get ethics from language theories like
the one Wittgenstein wrote about?

The point is if the language we use is meant to deceive or lie or steal or cheat,
that language is us… we use the language and if the language is unethical,
then we are unethical…if the language is truthful, honest, virtuous, then
the person using that language is truthful, honest, virtuous…
it is not only our actions that must be ethical but our language must be too…

language is not just reflection of who we are, it is who we are…our language is
us and the path to ethical actions begins with ethical language… honest, truthful,
virtuous…and that is why Wittgenstein thought he was an ethical writer dealing with
language… language is ethics…if you tell a little white lie, what does that say about
you, ethically?

if you want to consider yourself an ethical person, then your language must also
be ethical… hence people like UR and observe are not ethical people…
the language they use is dishonest, unvirtuous language…in their use of language,
they lie, steal, cheat and dishonestly use language…

if our language is unethical, then we are unethical…that is the entire point of
Wittgenstein language theories…ethical theories are language and actions
put into use…

Kropotkin

24

so after 7 straight day of work, finally have a day off…
and so here I am…

In thinking about Wittgenstein language theories being ethical, about this question
which haunts the 20th and 21st century, that there is no universal/transcendental
ethical/moral theory that we can live by…god is dead and as Nietzsche noted,
that means the morals that was created by the Catholic church, also was dead…
if we don’t have/use ethical theories based upon the religious, then what do we
base our ethical theories on? Nietzsche realized that the death of god also meant
the death of our universal/transcendental theory covered by the morals created in
the bible…so Nietzsche tried to create a new moral/ethical theory by which we can
live by…the idea of the Ubermensch and the eternal reoccurence are ethical idea’s…
an attempt to create a new universal/transcendental theory of ethics/morals…
and we all know what happened to poor old Nietzsche…but think about it…
it is slightly bonkers to attempt to create an entire new ethical/moral theory by
yourself…I am sure you wake up and say to yourself, you know what self, I am
going to create an entirely new universal ethical/moral theory, today…
and then spend the rest of your live trying to create an entirely new ethical/moral
theory…the nuthouse can’t be that far away at that point…

and as part of any new universal/transcendental theory of ethics/morals,
one such consideration must be about what is the role of honesty in our lives…
as it was a consideration of Wittgenstein in his language theory… how are we
to be honest in our language? For if we are dishonest in our language, we are
dishonest people… pure and simple…language doesn’t reflect us, it is us…

but the real question becomes, who is brave enough, have courage enough for
an honest evaluation of the honestly of our language?

People lie and most of all, they lie to themselves…who is honest enough to
begin an examination of our language to see if it is truthful? and if our language
is dishonest, then we are dishonest… simple enough…which leads us to
what the existentialist worked out, which is the concept of being authentic…
If I am not truthful through my use of language, then how can I be authentic?

our understanding of being authentic relies on our very honesty… if we are not
honest and truthful, we are not being authentic…if we use language to hide
who we are, then how is that being authentic? the path to authenticity lies with
being honest and truthful to thou and to oneself…both in language and in actions…

but as someone we know would say, let us bring this down to earth…
let us talk about someone here on ILP to better understand this being
authentic and truthfulness…the best example is the Joker, or whatever
sock puppet he/she is using these days…reading between the lines, one
realizes that the Joker is really just playing a role…being dishonest with
who they are, lying to both themselves and, and to us, the faithful readers
of ILP…the Joker has adopted a role, a persona that they use to convey
a dishonest and untruthful viewpoint… he/she/it is being inauthentic…
not honest or truthful…and all of modern society is playing a role…
the writers of history in the 22nd century will note that that
“modern condition” is one of playing roles… we play at being
citizens and workers and husbands and fathers and sons and brothers…

if we are playing roles, then we are not being authentic… how does
play acting become authentic? and until we become who we are, by
not playacting but by being who we are, at work, as citizens, as in
being fathers, sons, brothers, husbands… so on…

the modern world with its emphasis on seeking profits, forces everyone
to have roles in order to achieve what is important in the modern world,
profits…as long as we have to playact in the business world, we are not
being authentic…we are being dishonest and untruthful when we playact
as being workers… the modern world forces us to be dishonest and untruthful
in its pursuit of profits/wealth…the very essence of the modern world is
to be unauthentic…we spend day after day after week after year after year,
playacting/playing a role in the modern world… no wonder being dishonest
and being untruthful is so easy to us…that is how we earn a living for
40 years… by being dishonest/untruthful…unauthentic…
we spend 40 years playing a character/roleplaying in the business world/the
modern world… for the two are the same, the business world and the modern world
are the exact same thing… there is no difference between the two…

as we are being, fundamentally, dishonest by playing roles/ being a character in
our lives and our jobs… we are hiding behind the roles/characters we play,
day in day out…the dichotomy between the roles we play and the real us,
creates this unreal, deceitful, artificial, insubstantial world we live in…
we are disconnected, alienated from ourselves and other people because
we are forced into artificial roles that deny our basic and essential self…

an example is my role as checker in a grocery store and the me, the real me…
I cannot be me, in any real sense because the established goal is to make profits,
to make money and the real me at the checkstand, might, might turn people off
enough to force them to go to another store… I must play a role, a character to
help the store create profits/money…and the store, under the jackboots of
corporate America, tells me what to say, where to stand, how to dress,
when to take my breaks and lunch… every aspect of my working life is dictated
by corporate America and all they care about is making profits/money…

I am disliked by the managers because I won’t “play” the game of being a
worker bee…I must follow the rules or lose my job… I must scan the produce,
I must ask for donations, I must ask about the latest buzz trend in corporate
America, which this week is asking for people to buy PPE equipment and then
donating it to some group… it is an easy way to make profit as the cost of
the equipment, mask, sanitizer, one pair of gloves comes to roughly $4.00 bucks
and we charge $5 bucks, thus every kit sold is $1.00 profit… and that is the goal,
to make the profits, not to help anybody actually…
and because I refuse to ask anybody to buy these rip offs, I am being daily
threatened with being written up and then fired… where is the authentic
self that I have in this demand to make profits? Gone with the wind…

how do I stay true to the real me, in the face of this corporate demand for
profits? which is another way of asking, how do I stay authentic to myself,
when I am forced to peddle crap on to the store customers?

one solution I have come up with, is to sell these things at a much lower price,
say, $3.00 and have the company lose money every time they sell one of these things…
thus I can say, yes, I have sold 8 of them, but at a loss…costing the company
money…I have toyed with this, but haven’t done it yet…

so how does one stay ethical/moral in the face of corporate America demands
for profits? how does one hold onto being authentic when at every point,
the corporation relentlessly demands a checker to be dishonest to reach the
avowed goals of profits? every time I make the corporation some profits,
I demean and dehumanized/devalue myself… what is the cost of being
authentic given that I will be fired if I do hold to being authentic?

take my situation and apply it to your situation…
and see if by hold to the company line, you devalue
and dehumanize yourself…which is the opposite of
being authentic…

give the inauthentic nature of the modern world, how do we hold to
being real/authentic?

who has the courage to explore what it means to be human given
that modern experience that forces one to be inauthentic, in its
pursuit of profits/money…

who dares to seek honesty and being authentic given the weight of
the modern world attempt to dehumanize and devalue all human beings?

to buy into capitalism is to buy into the dehumanization and devaluation
of all people… for the goal of capitalism is to get people to buy things…
that very act of buying things devalues and dehumanizes us…

and we return to the very first point which is the question of
ethics/morals…how do we create an universal ethical/moral theory that
doesn’t devalue us like capitalism devalues us as human beings?

indeed, how do we finish what Nietzsche started?

Kropotkin

25

as I think about it, perhaps we might, might think about ethics/morals as a new
tune…I’m spitballing here so be patient…

the goal of language, is to find/be truthful, honest… because we are our language
and if our language is dishonest, untruthful, then we are dishonest, untruthful…
so by holding to honest, truthful language, we are engaging in ethics/morals…

but let us extend this a bit…let us think about aesthetics… concern with
beauty or the appreciation of beauty…

so what is beautiful? might I suggest this: beauty is found when something/someone
is honest, truthful… beauty is found in the authentic nature of something…
I can’t say this is some original thought, but hay, little of what we hold to be
true is original…language that is truthful and honest is beautiful… that is
why we hold certain writers and poets to be beautiful writers… one such example is
Walt Whitman’s “leaves of grass”…its honesty and truthfulness is its beauty…or said
another way, beauty is found in honesty and truthfulness…
beauty is equal to honesty/ truthfulness…Artists that move us and drives
our dreams write, paint, act, musically engage us with their honesty and truthfulness…

and so what about other aspects of our life… we can also see in philosophy,
the basis of beauty in philosophy as being in its honesty and truthfulness…
“true” philosophy is honest and truthful… Which is why we cannot, cannot
hold to Kantian philosophy as being true or honest because it is written to
hide and distort by its use of language… read a page of “Critique of Pure reason”
it is unreadable crap… but it looks profound because it hides behind its language…

the philosophers we hold to are the philosophers who are honest and truthful…
like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are the best examples…they are two seekers of
the truth… whatever that truth may be… we can hold Wittgenstein as another
seeker of the truth…he was trying to find a new path in ethics by understanding
the language we use…

so where else can we see honesty and truthfulness in branches of philosophy?

we have the 7 branches of philosophy… I have touched on a couple…other branches
are Metaphysics, logic, epistemology, and political philosophy…

Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regards to its methods,
validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes
justified belief from opinion…in other words, Epistemology is the search for
the truth about what we hold to be true…do we hold justified beliefs or
do we just hold opinions? this search is the search for the truth about what
is the methods, validity and scope of knowledge…so epistemology is the
search for truth and honesty in what we know…in knowledge…

the next point will be about political philosophy…

if we are to hold to true/honest political philosophy, then we must amend what
we call democracy to be a corporatocracy… today in America, we have

“government of the corporation, for the corporation, by the corporation”

and we should be honest and truthful and admit this current state of
affairs… instead of pretending we have a democracy, which is

“government of the people, for the people, by the people”

the American democracy fell during the 1960’s and 1970’s, when
we believed, truly believed in that old saying…

“What is good for GM is good for the country”

replace GM with corporations, and we have a true, honest representation of
America today…

and in the pursuit of profits, corporations do not actually care if the country is
a democracy or a dictatorship as long as profits are made… it is irrelevant to
a corporation what the form of government is, as long as the corporation can
dictate, hold the government to uphold the ideals of the corporate world…

and the problem today is simple, we have an dichotomy in America…

we claim to be a democracy but in reality we are something else…
and thus America itself is alienated, disconnected from itself…
and until we can find a truth that we can hold to and act upon,
we shall be alienated and disconnected from our country and our fellow
citizens…

the fact is we are untruthful and dishonest because we pretend to be
a democracy and we are not, not anymore…

democracy can be the most honest, truthful political institution we can possible
create but it has to be a democracy, a true democracy… unlike what we
have today… we can find the search for ethics/morality in our political
systems if we can hold to the values of a democracy…

“government of the people, for the people, by the people”…

not the values of the dehumanization of profits or money…which are corporate values…

want to seek beauty and truthfulness in political theory… have the political
values be the values we actually claim to have… instead of being like today’s world,
where we claim to be a democracy and we are something else…

the ethics/morals of society can be engaged with if, if we engage with them
honestly and truthfully…we can have authentic lives, authentic political systems,
authentic culture and an authentic society if, if we try to engage with them
with honestly and truthfulness…

Kropotkin

26

concluded Monk’s book on Wittgenstein…
and my thoughts, takeaways is this…

even as Wittgenstein grew older, his concerns become more
and more engaged in the religious/ethical…he even asked to talk
to a catholic priest about religious concerns, but not to engage
in philosophical concerns…that was his specific request, and his
friends found a priest for him to talk to about strictly religious concerns…

the great problem of Wittgenstein was this… to be able to reconcile
his homosexuality with being ethical…if society/the state/the culture all
say that homosexuality is wrong, depraved, sinful… then if one is homosexual,
what are the options? how does one reconcile this societal belief with one’s
personal belief? How does one become who they are? Wittgenstein was
reluctant to take on society and its “morals”, bans against homosexuality…

so does one follow society and avoid any aspect of being homosexual or
does one engaged in who they are, thus risking society/state/culture
condemnation? Part of Wittgenstein problem was he saw his failure/weakness
to become who he was, which is being homosexual… against your society/state/
culture demands one doesn’t engage in homosexuals…recall, that people went to
prison for acting upon their homosexual desires… Oscar Wilde for example…

our modern age is so “jaded” that we fail to realize that laws against homosexuals
were still on the books as late as the 1990’s… and is still against the law in countries
like Poland and Russia and all the Muslim countries…

and homosexuality was considered to a “mental illness” into the 1980’s,
see the DSM… “Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders”…
the official document of the American Psychiatric Association…

this conflict between being who one is as opposed to being what
society/the state/the culture wants one to be, is a motif of Wittgenstein’s
life…

and a conflict we see today… as of right now, we see this conflict being played
out over the cannabis battle going on in America today…is cannabis an evil,
that must be fought to the bitter end or do we simply accept the medical
understanding that makes cannabis a desired commodity?

does one disobey the law to engage in the private act of smoking? this engagement
isn’t as direct as the one faced by Wittgenstein, but it does give a sense of the
battle fought internally by Wittgenstein…

and as Wittgenstein grew older and became much more religious, the battle
became worse… for the “laws” of god are much more final then the laws of man…

so how does he reconcile the personal vs the religious?

If being homosexual makes one happy, then does following the “Laws”
of god, which makes one unhappy, then where does that leave us? do we do what
makes us happy or do we follow the path of god and hold onto misery
and unhappiness?

does this private battle play out over society at large? of course it does…
the progressives believe the path into the future lies with inclusion of
all, whereas the conservative believes the path into the future lies in holding
to the past where exclusion is the rule… deny and prevent that which
people need and want…in favor of some religious precepts that only
a few practice as preached…

to be blunt… the liberal says yes, the conservative says no…

so the question lies with this… what sort of universal/transcendental theory
of ethics/morality are we to live by?

we have seen in one particular case, Wittgenstein, how the current ethical theory
left him being miserable and unhappy… and we can expand this to millions of people
being made miserable and unhappy due to laws that deny them the basic right
of becoming who they are…

Kropotkin