12-25-2017, 05:36 AM
maybe animals do have a concept of death. but it’s unimportant here. the animal/spirit duality is metaphorical. the animal is, let’s say—to use nietzschean terminology—active. abstraction is reactive, and self-reactive, at any rate. i shouldn’t like this to be a promotion of idealism à la berkeley. i’m not saying death isn’t a “matter of fact”. but it’s conceptual presence is something different. it acquires certain unique qualities as it passes through abstraction. francis bacon once said that he wanted his paintings to look as if a human being had passed between them, leaving a trace like a snail leaves its slime. it might be said that the abstract passes through existence this way, leaving its slime on everything. etc. or, more correctly, when objects of experience pass through abstraction, etc.
i would recommend reading wittgenstein, despite your reservations. i am not sure if he was arrogant or not, but he was, apparently, “difficult” to get on with. he was supposedly very intense. he was one of those kind of geniuses. the intense kind. the kind you wouldn’t invite to a dinner party.
anyway, the Tractatus Philosophicus is a slim book, and these 7 propositions are its backbone. it makes no sense to try to unpack them as they are presented here, without also going through the sub-propositions.
also, circular or not, the last is definitely paradoxical.
having said all that, these are just trivialities. the poem is what it is. and what it isn’t is a philosophical treatise. it is, itself, the antithesis of some of the ideas it’s alluding to (a bit like the Tractatus itself).
i would recommend reading wittgenstein, despite your reservations. i am not sure if he was arrogant or not, but he was, apparently, “difficult” to get on with. he was supposedly very intense. he was one of those kind of geniuses. the intense kind. the kind you wouldn’t invite to a dinner party.
anyway, the Tractatus Philosophicus is a slim book, and these 7 propositions are its backbone. it makes no sense to try to unpack them as they are presented here, without also going through the sub-propositions.
also, circular or not, the last is definitely paradoxical.
having said all that, these are just trivialities. the poem is what it is. and what it isn’t is a philosophical treatise. it is, itself, the antithesis of some of the ideas it’s alluding to (a bit like the Tractatus itself).