Scan barcode
janthonytucson's review against another edition
4.0
Odd book TBH. Found the comments on Mendelssohn to be quite humorous actually.
mattshervheim's review against another edition
5.0
Full of collected thoughts, marginalia, and assorted ponderings, Culture and Values gives a glimpse into how Wittgenstein's mind works, as well as his views on music, Christianity, philosophy, his own work, and of course language. This book gave me a whole new appreciation for what you might call the literary genre of remarks. Wittgenstein's careful brilliance in an open-ended format is richly stimulating. Consider this remark from 1937:
"The horrors of hell can be experienced within a single day; that's plenty of time."
What are we to make of this sentence? It's remarkable for its balance and power, but what does it mean? Is it biographical, perhaps a reference to a dark day in Wittgenstein's life? Is it theological? Philosophical? Is he talking about this world or the next? Perhaps he's addressing our perception of time? The lack of context leaves an openness which invites the reader pick up the sentence, to feel its weight in hand, to examine it from all sides, and to build one's own thought with it. Put a different way, it's a thought without a conclusion, a building block rather than a building.
I particularly enjoyed reading Wittgenstein's thoughts on Christianity, which are surprisingly frequent. Certainly, Wittgenstein spent more time studying and thinking about Christianity, and at a deeper level, than any of Christian apologetic critics who decry linguistic relativism have spent understanding him.
I'd be remiss not mention how carefully Wittgenstein approaches his work. He often states an argument, then immediately counters himself. He seems to constantly self-analyzing and always guarding against self-deception, summed up in this line from 1947: "Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie." (Same, Wittgenstein, same.)
Finally, several of my favorite remarks from the book:
"Everything ritualistic (everything that, as it were, smacks of the high priest) must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten.
Of course a kiss is a ritual too and it isn't rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as genuine as a kiss."
"Put a man in the wrong atmosphere and nothing will function as it should. He will seem unhealthy in every part. Put him back into his proper element and everything will blossom and look healthy. But if he is not in his right element, what then? Well, then he just has to make the best of appearing before the world as a cripple."
"What would it feel like not to have heard of Christ?
Should we feel left alone in the dark?
Do we escape such a feeling simply in the way a child escapes it when he knows there is someone in the room with him?"
"Early physicists are said to have found suddenly that they had too little mathematical understanding to cope with physics; and in almost the same way young people today can be said to be in a situation where ordinary common sense no longer suffices to meet the strange demands that life makes. Everything has become so intricate that mastering it would require an exceptional intellect. Because skill at playing the game is no longer enough; the question that keeps coming up is: can this game be played at all now and what would be the right game to play?"
"The horrors of hell can be experienced within a single day; that's plenty of time."
What are we to make of this sentence? It's remarkable for its balance and power, but what does it mean? Is it biographical, perhaps a reference to a dark day in Wittgenstein's life? Is it theological? Philosophical? Is he talking about this world or the next? Perhaps he's addressing our perception of time? The lack of context leaves an openness which invites the reader pick up the sentence, to feel its weight in hand, to examine it from all sides, and to build one's own thought with it. Put a different way, it's a thought without a conclusion, a building block rather than a building.
I particularly enjoyed reading Wittgenstein's thoughts on Christianity, which are surprisingly frequent. Certainly, Wittgenstein spent more time studying and thinking about Christianity, and at a deeper level, than any of Christian apologetic critics who decry linguistic relativism have spent understanding him.
I'd be remiss not mention how carefully Wittgenstein approaches his work. He often states an argument, then immediately counters himself. He seems to constantly self-analyzing and always guarding against self-deception, summed up in this line from 1947: "Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie." (Same, Wittgenstein, same.)
Finally, several of my favorite remarks from the book:
"Everything ritualistic (everything that, as it were, smacks of the high priest) must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten.
Of course a kiss is a ritual too and it isn't rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as genuine as a kiss."
"Put a man in the wrong atmosphere and nothing will function as it should. He will seem unhealthy in every part. Put him back into his proper element and everything will blossom and look healthy. But if he is not in his right element, what then? Well, then he just has to make the best of appearing before the world as a cripple."
"What would it feel like not to have heard of Christ?
Should we feel left alone in the dark?
Do we escape such a feeling simply in the way a child escapes it when he knows there is someone in the room with him?"
"Early physicists are said to have found suddenly that they had too little mathematical understanding to cope with physics; and in almost the same way young people today can be said to be in a situation where ordinary common sense no longer suffices to meet the strange demands that life makes. Everything has become so intricate that mastering it would require an exceptional intellect. Because skill at playing the game is no longer enough; the question that keeps coming up is: can this game be played at all now and what would be the right game to play?"
rheckner's review against another edition
4.0
(4.5) Reading this helps me to come to a more holistic understanding of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Will have to reread many times.
kylegarvey's review against another edition
4.0
Were music to ever not be ridiculous and disposable, we should have to make it so to save us some work in disposing of it.
Reliability remains today so unreliable, as if relying on something is even itself subject to circumstance. "I can rely on him" spits out the word "rely" as something redoubtably foreign as opposed to "I can"'s and "him"'s natural bases in verifiable experience.
If I were Wittgenstein, I would have zombied up out of the ground in 1977, when G.H. von Wright was about to publish Vermischte Bemerkungen, and snatched the manuscript right out of his hands, croaking (can zombies croak?) "Miscellany is meant to stay miscellaneous!", and scattering all the pages everywhere.
(But this would be terribly avoidable, seeing as a virus of sufficient strength to awaken the corpse didn't exist in that year exactly.)
But I'm not Wittgenstein, seeing as I speak barely more than a basic snatch of German, and am not a great philosopher, though I should certainly have a "sense of purpose" to be him. Enough to capitalize on all of it? For purposes of very foolish imitation and mockery?
Almost like senses of purpose can utterly replace all other senses, like of smell. Zombies might smell very unpleasant, and be rudely snatching and scattering pages always.
One of Mendelssohn's 1837 piano concertos (2 in d Op. 40) has always struck me as one of his finest.
Reliability remains today so unreliable, as if relying on something is even itself subject to circumstance. "I can rely on him" spits out the word "rely" as something redoubtably foreign as opposed to "I can"'s and "him"'s natural bases in verifiable experience.
If I were Wittgenstein, I would have zombied up out of the ground in 1977, when G.H. von Wright was about to publish Vermischte Bemerkungen, and snatched the manuscript right out of his hands, croaking (can zombies croak?) "Miscellany is meant to stay miscellaneous!", and scattering all the pages everywhere.
(But this would be terribly avoidable, seeing as a virus of sufficient strength to awaken the corpse didn't exist in that year exactly.)
But I'm not Wittgenstein, seeing as I speak barely more than a basic snatch of German, and am not a great philosopher, though I should certainly have a "sense of purpose" to be him. Enough to capitalize on all of it? For purposes of very foolish imitation and mockery?
Almost like senses of purpose can utterly replace all other senses, like of smell. Zombies might smell very unpleasant, and be rudely snatching and scattering pages always.
One of Mendelssohn's 1837 piano concertos (2 in d Op. 40) has always struck me as one of his finest.
More...