Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Christianity

Wittgenstein would frequently encouraged students to take up more tangible vocations. He considered the ethical reality of every day as what was important, that when we see that our everyday common life is all there is, then we have found the true religion. 

One of my pupils, on my advice, has gone to work at  Woolworths, now that is the sort of thing you should do, try and get a job in some large store where you will meet ordinary people.   Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sea of Faith with Don Cupitt.

Youtube lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HZvPMjKKB0&ab_channel=VictorGijsbers

What is the use of studying philosophy if all it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some obstructed question of logic. If it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, or worse make more difficult to say honestly anything about our lives.

The trouble of it is, that thinking of these things is not thrilling, but down right nasty, so, God grant the philosopher insight into what lies in front of everyone's eyes. Not how the world was, is, or will be,  for that is incomprehensible and will remain mystical, but to use the philosophy to construct a law for how to best select the next moment, a practical guide for the next step.  

Wittgenstein describes an avenue  based on truth, accepting only what is non mystical,  a reduction to "just the facts."  An essential task, yet almost impossible when the observer faces a reality he can only see through a probabilistic lense.   

https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/mcgill/370/winter2004/wittgenstein-tractatus.htm#x1-4700010.4

Wittgenstein starts with a concept called a "case" which is similar to mathematical postulates;  

1. The world is everything that is the case.*

1.1  The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

 2    What is the case -- a fact -- is the existence of states of affairs.

   states of affairs are produced by arrangements of objects:

2.0272 The configuration of objects produces states of affairs.

2.03  In a state of affairs objects fit into one another like the links of a chain.

2.04 The totality of existing states of affairs is the world.

 Without a class of simple objects, it would be impossible to picture the world --

 We can only see the world by being honest with the words that describe the elemental facts "objects" which make up larger assertions. A case is a statement made of facts " objects". It is then the assertions based on facts "states of affairs" that make up our world. In other words, our world is made from the proper use of language.   

At issue is the fact that most of the concepts we have going around this world are false. The real world is not made of careful logical thought, but of a variety of nonsense that is taken as fact either by faith, or by simple ignorance.

2.02 Objects are simple.

2.021 Objects make up the substance of the world. That is why they cannot be composite.

Explains that the words used as "objects"  are elemental and can not be broken down into other parts.

2.0272 The configuration of objects produces states of affairs.

 Sentences, statements or propositions are the product or an arrangement of true, and basic words.

3.332 No proposition can make a statement about itself, because a propositional sign cannot be contained in itself. ...        

This is an attempt to create a rule that avoids the errors of logic such as the "barbers paradox", I think we should just accept we have conditions in logic that are false.

For me this ends my investigation of his Tractatus, the rest may be true but only because we agree to say it is so. We can say that propositions are made of elemental objects but we can never say there is a way of making the propositions true, other than by agreement. The best we can do is say a proposition is probably,  true, false, or more acceptable than another.

We should say we are human, that language is how we describe the world,  and that although we are clever, we can never be absolutely certain about anything. Human existence should be as truthful as possible, yet know we live in an environment of speculation, ignorance, dogma, humor and theater.       

5 Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions

6.1 The propositions of logic are tautologies

6.51 Skepticism is not irrefutable, but palpably senseless, if it would doubt where a question cannot be asked. For doubt can only exist where there is a question; a question only where there is an answer, and this only where something can be said.

6.52 We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.

6.521 The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem. (Is not this the reason why men to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear, could not then say wherein this sense consisted?)

6.522 There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.

6.53 The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other the would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy but it would be the only strictly correct method.

6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me  finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

7  Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

What about religion and logic

Wittgenstein comes to his Tractatus, through the study of logic and set theory, and basiclly concludes the obvious, that language is made of words and that these words are what represent reality for us. On the other hand, the Platonic/Christian understanding is that the words of Christ, called the logos, are metaphysical and were there from the begining of time. These words are the truth and how we can know God.

For Wittgenstein the Christian Logos is a proposition, yet I would suggest if may fall more into the catagpgory of " Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." 

 I would agree that there is much about the Bible that falls into the category of "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." 

I would also say that the proposition, "when we see that our everyday common life is all there is, then we have found the true religion," is also true. Our everyday commom life is not such a bad thing, and our religion should be able to make it better.   

Since we will have religion like it or not, lets simplify this religion, lets also simplyfy our lives, this way if we do find our propositions are false there will be less of them.  

What could be more logical than to reduce our lives to few objects and true propositions which we can derive through the experience of our own reality. This is not to say that history, science, and philosophy are not of great value, but that their focus should be on the simplest aspects of human existence.   

“An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein

Religion must an explanation of the unknown, along with rules for living simply, and existence dedicated to a life long pursuit of understanding.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. Henry David Thoreau 

To live simply, to renounce the prompt and vanities of this absurd  world, to live un-abstracted from the system of social modes, constraints and obligations, this must be the task of religion. Just think of what that would really involve, or who of us today even thinks of doing such a thing. Yet, simplicity and awareness is the ideal and all we could ever ask of a messiah. 

The apostle Paul said, "I die daily", for each day brings a fresh rock to push up a hill, the recognition that we live so far from an ideal, that suffering is the status quo, that only ignorance or death will bring bliss. Perhaps we can say only pity can believe in the resurrection. Why would be so selfish to ask Christ to return, to repair a world we break each day. In this ridiculous concept of good and evil we are what is evil, without us evil is unimaginable.      

Some day in some future religion will be devoid of Priest or Minister, I think one of the things you and I must learn is that we live without the consolation of a Church. Some day in some future religion will be the society we live in, there will be no need to teach anything, for it will be obvious. Society will have been repaired, simply living in such a community will complet the task of a virtuous life.  Some day we will enjoy all aspects of living,  look forward to death, and have no further complaints.                

Christianity is a doctrine or theory about what has happened, and will happen to the human condition. It is a description of something we hope will actually take place at some future point in human evolution.  

We can not deny reality is unpleasant, that ignorance is not bliss and that we can imagine a better condition. So we await the apocalypse, which means revelation, that which is uncovered, or in  Greek  literally "to pull the lid off something"  There is a truth, a guide book, words and propositions that are currently unknown which can be uncovered and if practiced will improve our situation.   

 This uncovering can only come about if you firmly rest your weight on earth, live simply, face the tangible aspects of life, and repair what is broken.