Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes on Knowledge
Wittgenstein's two great works present radically different epistemologies. The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) presents the picture theory of meaning: a proposition is a logical picture of a possible state of affairs, and the limits of my language are the limits of my world. The Philosophical Investigations (1953, posthumous) repudiates the picture theory in favor of the doctrine of language-games: meaning is use within the rule-governed practices of human forms of life, and philosophical confusion arises when we abstract terms from the language-games that give them their working sense. On Certainty develops a hinge-epistemology: certain bedrock propositions function not as empirical claims to be tested but as the framework against which testing is possible.
Quotes
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“The world is everything that is the case.”
Original German: Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist . -
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. -
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Variant translations: | The limits of my language stand for the limits of my world. | The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for. | Original German: Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt. -
Attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein:
“A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about.”
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“Don't think, but look!”
§ 66 -
Attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein:
“We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.”
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Attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein:
“It is in language that an expectation and its fulfilment make contact.”
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“What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.”
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. -
“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache. -
“I work quite diligently and wish that I were better and smarter. And these both are one and the same.”
In a letter to Paul Engelmann (1917) as quoted in The Idea of Justice (2010) by Amartya Sen , p. 31 -
“On his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , in a letter to Ludwig von Ficker (1919), published in Wittgenstein : Sources and Perspectives (1979) by C. Grant Luckhard”
You won't — I really believe — get too much out of reading it. Because you won't understand it; the content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn't strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of t -
“It is necessary to be given the prop that all elementary props are given." This is not necessary because it is even impossible . There is no such prop! That all elementary props are given is SHOWN by there being none having an elementary sense which is not given.”
Notes of 1919, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : The Duty of Genius (1990) by Ray Monk -
“"I never believed in God before." — that I understand. But not: "I never really believed in Him before."”
Culture and Value(1980) | p. 53e -
“If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no reason to judge him; but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud .”
Personal Recollections(1981) | Conversation of 1930 -
“It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.”
Personal Recollections(1981) | p. 96 -
“To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.”
Notebooks 1914-1916 | Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e -
“But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"”
Philosophical Investigations(1953) | § 504 -
“206. If someone asked us 'but is that true?' we might say "yes" to him; and if he demanded grounds we might say "I can't give you any grounds, but if you learn more you too will think the same."”
On Certainty(1969)