Sunday, September 30, 2012

Oh, I think it would be understandable, anyway






     As long as I continue
     to come across questions
     in more remote regions
     which I can't answer, it
     is understandable that I
     should still not be able
     to find my way around re-
     gions that are less remote.
     For how do I know that
     what stands in the way
     of an answer here is not
     precisely what is preventing
     me from clearing away the 
     fog over there?












Ludwig Wittgenstein
Diaries, 1948
Culture and Value
G.H. von Wright, editor
Peter Winch, translation
op. cit.





2 comments:

  1. wittgenstein, of course.
    and could it be that Wit is named from this source?
    B

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  2. Yes I think it likely that "Wit" has never been taken in any cerebral sort of vein, in the last 75 or so years, without some deep suspicion of inadequacy in the essay, because of our Viennese expatriate. Thus the elegance of Wit's reputation and the dread of its severity, but at the great loss customarily associated with such esteem, of a broad and almost juvenile streak of even more brilliant ditziness in the same unapproachably handsome fount of whatever you may be looking for at the time. This would have made for a difficult life, don't you suppose, under the best of circumstances, even without cultivating the envy of Bertrand Russell?

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