Whereof we cannot speak
Way back when, as a student at Pearson College near Victoria, I encountered a book that would change my perspective permanently. It was by the precocious philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, it bore the inelegant title "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus," and it was an unlikely bridge between (roughly speaking) Western rationalism, and Eastern mysticism.
It's been a long time since I read the Tractatus, but I remember that it begins with the provocative and profound statment "The world is composed of facts, not things." I also remember that the arguments are laid out like the sections of a software manual: main points are numbered 1 through 7, while their respective discussions are designated by decimal points. Hence, there might be a section 6.1 which elaborated on 6, a 6.1.1 which went into further detail on 6.1, a 6.1.2 which gave a further elaboration on 6.1, and so on. Given that it was written around the time of the first world war, it seems pretty forward-thinking by today's standards.
But what affected me most about the Tractatus, which is extremely literal and deliberate in every way, was that it used the ladder of logic to reach a place in which logic no longer held sway. Wittgenstein pointed out that certain understandings do not stem from deduction; rather, they are "made manifest." Moreover, he noted that the existence of that which logic cannot explain or describe, "what is mystical." And he concluded with a bold and beautiful statement, "Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must pass over in silence."
Which brings me to the crux of the matter. I agree with (what I understand of) Wittgenstein, whole-heartedly and reverently. Logic can't touch the ineffable. That's what makes it ineffable. And indeed, beyond our radically subjective lives, wherein everything is filtered through our concsiousness, our sensory input, our emotional chemistry, and our memories, pretty much everything is ineffable.
Yet as an artist I feel my job has to do with sensing that, exploring it, expressing it in my way. It would be lofty to suggest that doing so benefits the world. I'll settle for saying that it feeds my soul.
But in any case, I believe that music and art and the written word waft the scent of the ineffable into the halls and cubicles of ordinariness. I believe that creation can be glimpsed and hinted at intuitively. I believe we can share little morsels of communion with the divine. But is doing that just trying to say what cannot be spoken? Is it only a disturbance of the critical silence to which Wittgenstein referred?
I think not. I think what we do as artists is to point to the existence of the ineffable, usually implicitly, by expressing the poignant limitations of the human condition. We try to say what is, and the open-minded listener or viewer or reader is led, perhaps, to that indescribable vastness of what-is-beyond-what-is.
About this, we can say only, it is, because it must be, as a corollary of our own limited and experiences. "I think, therefore I am; I am limited to this thing that is thinking; therefore, that which is not me thinking, is...?" We can say that it is, but we can't say what it is.
We can give the divine, the ineffable, the inexplicable, the unknowable a name, a name like "God," and we can sing, dance, sculpt, paint, write the glory of the name among the pains and perils and gifts and glories of our own experience.
But what God is... about that, we can say nothing.
Is that not the profoundest peace of all?
It's been a long time since I read the Tractatus, but I remember that it begins with the provocative and profound statment "The world is composed of facts, not things." I also remember that the arguments are laid out like the sections of a software manual: main points are numbered 1 through 7, while their respective discussions are designated by decimal points. Hence, there might be a section 6.1 which elaborated on 6, a 6.1.1 which went into further detail on 6.1, a 6.1.2 which gave a further elaboration on 6.1, and so on. Given that it was written around the time of the first world war, it seems pretty forward-thinking by today's standards.
But what affected me most about the Tractatus, which is extremely literal and deliberate in every way, was that it used the ladder of logic to reach a place in which logic no longer held sway. Wittgenstein pointed out that certain understandings do not stem from deduction; rather, they are "made manifest." Moreover, he noted that the existence of that which logic cannot explain or describe, "what is mystical." And he concluded with a bold and beautiful statement, "Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must pass over in silence."
Which brings me to the crux of the matter. I agree with (what I understand of) Wittgenstein, whole-heartedly and reverently. Logic can't touch the ineffable. That's what makes it ineffable. And indeed, beyond our radically subjective lives, wherein everything is filtered through our concsiousness, our sensory input, our emotional chemistry, and our memories, pretty much everything is ineffable.
Yet as an artist I feel my job has to do with sensing that, exploring it, expressing it in my way. It would be lofty to suggest that doing so benefits the world. I'll settle for saying that it feeds my soul.
But in any case, I believe that music and art and the written word waft the scent of the ineffable into the halls and cubicles of ordinariness. I believe that creation can be glimpsed and hinted at intuitively. I believe we can share little morsels of communion with the divine. But is doing that just trying to say what cannot be spoken? Is it only a disturbance of the critical silence to which Wittgenstein referred?
I think not. I think what we do as artists is to point to the existence of the ineffable, usually implicitly, by expressing the poignant limitations of the human condition. We try to say what is, and the open-minded listener or viewer or reader is led, perhaps, to that indescribable vastness of what-is-beyond-what-is.
About this, we can say only, it is, because it must be, as a corollary of our own limited and experiences. "I think, therefore I am; I am limited to this thing that is thinking; therefore, that which is not me thinking, is...?" We can say that it is, but we can't say what it is.
We can give the divine, the ineffable, the inexplicable, the unknowable a name, a name like "God," and we can sing, dance, sculpt, paint, write the glory of the name among the pains and perils and gifts and glories of our own experience.
But what God is... about that, we can say nothing.
Is that not the profoundest peace of all?
Labels: art, God, ineffable, Pearson College, sublime, Tractatus, Wittgenstein
posted by David Newland at 31.3.06
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