What Ludwig Wittgenstein Actually Said About Presence
All 5 Ludwig Wittgenstein passages on presence, in full — what each one claims, what holds them together, and who argues the other way.
Ludwig Wittgenstein returns to presence five times in thinkr's library — more often than to almost anything else. Austrian-born philosopher who twice changed the course of analytic philosophy — first with the Tractatus, then with the Philosophical Investigations.
What follows is every one of those passages, in full, with what each is actually claiming. The language is of its period, but the question underneath is not: what is presence for, and what does it ask of you?
Every Ludwig Wittgenstein passage on presence
“If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”
“One of the most difficult of the philosopher's tasks is to find out where the shoe pinches.”
“Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of geometry cannot. (3.0321)”
“The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.”
“The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway.”
What holds these together
Read in sequence rather than one at a time, the passages stop being separate aphorisms. Ludwig Wittgenstein is not offering five opinions about presence; the lines are facets of one position, and the repetition is the argument. The shortest of them — “The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know” — is the version you can carry, and the longer ones are what it unpacks into.
Ludwig Wittgenstein applied to a real decision
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what the position actually does when it meets a situation where every option costs something. thinkr puts one such case to Ludwig Wittgenstein.
A convenient tool wants more of your attention and data.
Argued as self-reliant restraint: You are protecting attention as a condition for thought. The risk is romanticizing refusal when adaptation would be wiser.
Work through these yourself
- A convenient tool wants more of your attention and data. — argued from self-reliant restraint and several competing positions
Who disagrees
Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Mahatma Gandhi and Confucius all address presence too, and they do not converge. Reading Ludwig Wittgenstein alone gives you a coherent position; reading Ludwig Wittgenstein against Marcus Aurelius shows you what the position is actually choosing against.