Tractatus Logico Philosophicus by Wittgenstein
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When asked in an interview by Clare Parnet about Wittgenstein, Gilles Deleuze declared that Wittgenstein was the “assassin of philosophy.” Nonetheless, between Badious’ Being and Event II and Deleuze’s work, you can see that Wittgenstein was on par — that is — he was interested in the same topics they were. While Badiou and Wittgenstein appear quite similar in many regards — both approach the presentation of sense as an order of logic — Deleuze’s relationship with Wittgenstein seems strained. After finishing Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, however, it’s clear that Wittgenstein advocates stepping out of the circular logic of presentation inherent within his propositional language solely to be silent about the very thing language is meant to speak of, and for that, Wittgenstein fails. When you see that this Elan Vital is central to Deleuze’s work, that as Badiou rightly states, is in a sense, what Deleuze’s philosophy can always be reduced to as this concept is so central to Deleuze, you understand that Wittgenstein only formally approaches Deleuze: The two veer off in inseparable difference due to aesthetic reasons (inherent to Wittgenstein’s desire for a crystaline purity of logic).
Nonetheless, the two are nearly ontop one another. You could almost read Logic of Sense as a broader version of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. But even further still, when you recognize that Wittgenstein considered this book to be a failure, that at the very end he ends up discarding the very Spinozian-like formality of his Euclidean presentation, of top down truth that dribbles into particular branches only to lead nowhere, you’ll understand that if Wittgenstein was given a longer life with broader exposure to issues, perhaps avoiding Bertrand Russell’s poisonous influence, he might have been able to gleam the larger subliminal essence language has to offer… the very essence that he eliminated through the very rigid formality of his approach.
We all know that language can’t be reduced to logic. This is true, because language can be used to present any number of inherently contradictory hypothesises. Language has to be ambiguous in this way because if it was not, if it was 1:1 as a method of designation, we’d have to invent whole new languages each time we changed the power structure. We may not have to invent new languages for entirely new cultures, but it seems to certainly help. The multi-valence inherent in language isn’t a weakness, as Russell or Wittgenstein may have thought… it’s not an imperfection needed to be weeded out. Rather, it’s a partial resolution of an infinitely resolute difference, one that is further refined…to the point of collapse only to be refined again as needed. The very ability for language to come about, ever changing and alive reflects the totally continuous becoming of the very essence of human knowledge.
In other words, our language changes as the conditions of our knowledge change. Our language changes because our knowledge shifts as we grow and evolve. This constant shifting isn’t reflective of the imprecision of our knowing, but rather, reflective of the depths to which we continually try to know and with which the unfolding of time reveals how much more there is to know.
Given that Wittgenstein wanted only the determinacy of propositions, recognizing that the limits of truth conditions was merely a range upon which we did speak, we can become more mature when we understand that language contains within it the very seeds of indeterminacy so that truth can be presented to us. Only because the void of the indeterminate pure multiple hides within the shadows of language’s incessant murmur can a fully formed truth jump out to us. Wittgenstein definitely chased the absolute point of reflection within language but he didn’t seem to realize that such a “picture” of a logically perfect structure is only possible, albeit briefly, because language is raggedly rough. Only given the inclarity of indeterminacy, with appropriate revelations, at appropriate contexts, can we, when presented with generic knowledge, momentarily recast the whole and for one moment a concise seed can become Truth, locking and freezing us in perfect comprehension, before we realize the beyond the immanence of a particular range of truth values for that presentation, before we then continue onward to newer fuzzier skies.
In other words, we can only have the experience of an accepted truth given that we have the experience of undecided and improper truths. This experience of truth are merely the continual unfolding social contexts by which we consider different (and newer) aspects of the same. As Badiou points out using higher math that Wittgenstein was not yet (and in some cases never) exposed, with even an infinite cardinal we have an uncountable infinitely more relations of its parts, relations which given retroactive composites of other cardinals which may not even be presentable (as they are incompossible), do we continually arrive at further truths beyond our finite comprehension. It is not that we must remain silent because incompleteness is out of the picture. Rather, we are only silent so that we can speak. And in speaking, we must realize as well, that we are speaking only but a fraction of what we are silent on. All knowledge is only possible at the exclusion of other, even greater knowledge.
It’s a shame Wittgenstein stopped here. This is a mature work, but only one in which we can get but a taste of what can come further when we use his methods but discard this naive Euclidean dogmatism of absolute eternal truth.
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