Remarks on the Relentless Honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein

Personality disorders and emotional biases are something that does not evaporate at the higher levels of cognitive ability, as far as I can see. Whereas the main philosophical subject of my first book (Yorick) was the prison of subjectivity and the downsides of principium individuationis, the subsequent (and considerably less successful) ones have been about breaking the flesh prison and transcend personality to get an unbiased look at the world – they followed immediate bodily urges headed towards transcendence, quite painful ones, like my chest breaking open due to high internal pressure (i.e. there are internal states that are truly (and universally) meaningful and that cannot be philosophised away as a (mis)reading of Wittgenstein might imply). The transcendent mind is the honest. Yesterday when I started writing this note and wrote most of the subsequent paragraphs I intented to write about honesty in intellectuals e.g. Freud and, more significantly, Marx, both strong and determined and humanistic Aufklärer who however also were mystifiers and fanatics due to their emotions i.e. dishonest, but now I don´t feel like doing that at great length and in general I do not like it to be overly critical of others, not least I wanted to write about the biases and dishonesty of their followers which lies in that they have a (usually above average-penetrating) insight into a fragment of society which they then mistake as a glorious insight into the whole and want to spill it over the whole and they aren´t good at distinguishing descriptive from normative shit, etc., however it came to my mind recently that politics is an arena where forces (motivated by various interests) clash anyway, not a sphere of harmony and stability of reason: it is agonal, history, at large, a somehow mitigated chaos anyway, it is just that the Absolute Mind will be a somehow detached observer of that all. (That politics is agonal is something Marx said and where he clarified something, however he mystified it when he reduced it to the primacy of class struggle and when he said that the stupid proletariat is the locus of absolute truth; I wanted to say that it is, on the whole, amazing how a person as intelligent and seemingly sober as Marx who could generate powerful insights on the one hand could be so blind to the shortcomings and the reductionism in them on the other hand … probably because of this he became a much less productive intellectual in the second half of his life; there are assumptions that the elderly Marx ruminated a lot about whether his framework wasn´t somehow too simplistic and for instance he ruminated in a conversation about the possibility that it wasn´t class struggle as the supposed prime mover of history but rivalries between nations, but nowhere he systematically elaborated on that (and other stuff) and he does not even seem to have systematically thought about that (and other stuff); he had written the voluminous Grundrisse within months because he anticipated a crisis of capitalism and wanted to have a theoretical framework ready, the crisis came indeed but, however, was not an indication of a final cataclysm of capitalism, thunderbirds in the sky, as he had thought/hoped, but just a cloud that passed; in the latter part of his life he endlessly wrote on Capital (and could not complete it, though much of its content is already contained in the Grundrisse), whereas in his former years he had ejected profound writings on a somehow annual basis; maybe Marx did not want to weaken the worker´s movement by casting doubt on Marxism, but what seems more apparent is that Marx was actually incapable of doing that; I need to closer investigate this and somewhere in the future will write on Marx.) The friendly Zen masters teach us that out of 10.000 people who want to reach true Satori, 3 or 4 will finally do (which however does not invalidate Satori as an ideal that gives orientation and triggers aspiration and where convergence to it is fractal-like anyway: Should the Transbodhidharma come, also Bodhidharma will look a bit stupid, etc.). Perfect Satori, realisation of Absolute Mind/Master Intellect/Omega Mind or Cosmic Consciousness, as R.M. Bucke calls it, is something individuals like Laotse or (according to Bucke) Shakespeare or Balzac have achieved, however (according to Bucke) Walt Whitman was the first one in history who did not „succumb“ to Cosmic Consciousness as a somehow supreme instance (and then founded a religion or cult, or made unearthly things next to the most rational ones, like Pascal), but made it, well, instrumental and a tool for himself. If I am correct that was what I was thinking as well when fantasising about the #whitelodge. I am aware that this paragraph, because of its density, unelaboratedness and excessive jumping between disciplines, will be a bit unintelligible to people (at the first reading, but exegesis is, of course, possible) but I don´t fucking care and I just do what I like.

Shortly after Wittgenstein had withdrawn from philosophy and became an elementary school teacher in Lower Austria he wrote to Russell that he´s under the impression that the people of rural Austria are even worse than anywhere else (Russell, however, tried to calm him and replied that he thinks that they are just as bad as anywhere else). It has been noted that Wittgenstein beated his pupils when he lost his nerves with them. He tried to be constructive with them, however. When they had a hiking day and walked through the woods and a child became scared of the scenario, Wittgenstein approached him and said: „Hast du Angst? Dann musst du nur ganz fest an Gott denken.“ After Wittgenstein turned into philosophy and had gone to Cambridge again, he became himself ethically anxious and ruminated about his „sins“ because he was such an ethically conscious person. („What are you thinking about?“, someone would ask him. „Logics, or your sins?“ „Both“, Wittgenstein would reply.) The following Christmas holidays, when he had been in Vienna again, he took the uncomfortable trip over the Wechsel (a four hour trip in the midst of winter) to offer his sincere apologies to the girl he had brutally beaten years before. Meanwhile a woman, she replied with an indifferent „ja, ja“, and Wittgenstein had to take another four hour trip back home (over the Wechsel). Such was Wittgenstein. – When Wittgenstein gradually died from cancer he wrote in a letter to a friend that he was not fond about good news that his health had become better again after the first bad diagnosis, since he „did NOT have the wish to live much longer“, because, although he wasn´t very old physiologically, he had an „old soul“. Some years later when his doctor told him the end is finally close, he replied: „Good!“ His last words on his death bed, before he lost consciousness, were: „Tell them I´ve had a wonderful life.“ Such was Wittgenstein.

As I prepare to write a note about Marcel Duchamp I have just read Calvin Tomkins` biography (now for the, I guess, fourth time) and there it is mentioned that gallerist Sidney Janis was very fond of Duchamp, as he found that Duchamp was nearly the only artist he had ever met who had the „inner security“ to tolerate vastly different viewpoints and approaches as well and who was interested in art and artists very different from himself as well – as Sidney put it, he did not consider it necessary to „defend“ his own approach all the time (the other only artist he had ever met to be like that was Mondrian). I reiterate: (According to Janis) Duchamp and Mondrian were the only two artists who had such a quality of „inner security“, which I, a worm, would not have expected to be associated with great security, honesty or bravery at all but just a natural human quality. (I also want to write a note about Mondrian because 1) his wonderful, soaring in higher regions-name 2) the harmony of his spheres 3) because in Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts edited by Walther it is noted that of all the De Stijl artists who all wanted to reach harmony, Mondrian was the only one to actually achieve it.) – Note however that artists and people in general are usually not as bad as their reputation, quite frequently they are quite ok and when you meet them personally they are nicer than their behaviour on the internet would imply.

Wittgenstein is acknowledged as being the only philosopher who has developed two different philosophies in his lifetime (as a matter of honesty). However, I do not find it outer space to develop a (seemingly) different philosophy every week. I guess if the Hegelian Absoluter Geist is realised, there will be only one philosophy, it will be a consciousness over all the other philosophies, and it will be fully identical to itself. (Whether the realisation of the Absolute Geist pays off is something I don´t know though.)

P.S.: There is an early portrait of Wittgenstein at age 1. The physiognomy is already very impressive.

The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein

Rationality, Hyperrationality and Metarationality

Rationality means someone acts according to reason, i.e. thinks about cause and effect, adequacy of means and ends, intersubjectivity, a favorable outcome that is understandable for anyone not deluded (i.e. somehow according to the Kantian categorial imperative). It means you are not (immediately) slave to (blind) emotions. There are different and somehow distinguished types of reason (and e.g. postmodernism and critical theory, in their attempt to liberate us, probably have denounced natural forms of reason as alienations („instrumental reason“, „culture industry“ , etc) or inflated our notion about the heterogeneity of reason too much (but that is not as much a problem as anti-postmodernists are inclined to think)). Max Weber distinguishes between wertrational (value-rational) and zweckrational (goal/instrumental-rational), where zweckrational means orientation towards a rational outcome and wertrational means acting and reasoning in a rational way according to values (which, themselves, are not rationally investigated). Other types of action are, says Weber, emotional/affective action and traditional action (which are not rational). Rationality will be the dominant thinking mode of the somehow intelligent person. How much a person can distinguish himself from the downsides of Wertrationalität is a matter of psychology. Whereas strict Wertrationalität makes the stubborn fanatic, complete ideological/emotional unbiasedness is rarely ever there among humans, and, irrespective of what Western or Eastern enlightenment (KantHegelMarxetc vs. TaoZenShankaraetc) propose, there are probably no thoughts that are not based or come in with emotions at any rate.

Hyperrationality means permanently adjusting his worldview and actions to that what the sober rational insight demands. The hyperrational person will have insight and (at least a rational) access to that that is wertrational, zweckrational as well as affectual and traditional, and overview over the grand scheme and over the fabric of society which means that in his understanding of society (i.e. of the great heterogeneity) the hyperrational person will be flexible, fluid, experienced and quick. In order to execute hyperrational understanding over complex problems (i.e. problems to which there are, opposed to complicated problems, no definite solutions) a high crystallised intelligence is necessary (that will be accumulated via a vivid fluid intelligence). Hyperrationality means a higher level of awareness than mere rationality and, at least concerning the intellectual insight, less stubbornness, but does not rule out stubbornness due to emotional reasons. High intelligence means someone is likely to draw correct rational/logical conclusions from assumptions, however this does not mean the assumptions are correct, their selection can be heavily ideologically biased, and that high IQ persons have the same petty political opinions (or petty understandings in many other domains) and use the same weak rationalisations to justify their emotional or tradition-based choices as persons with a very low IQ is quite frequently the case. The probable downside of hyperrationality are detachedness from the living world and missed opportunities, but that need not be the case.

The genius is commonly perceived as an eminently or hyperrational person who seemingly also has access to the irrational (respectively to the abstractions of the irrational and to the aesthetic realm). They develop their rational concepts by asking themselves questions like how it would be if one travels along a ray of light, or they test their hypotheses by putting a blunt needle in their eye or endanger their eyes because of gazing into the sun. While such questions (and actions) are not actually irrational, they are not likely to come to the mind of a person who has a purely rational epistemology and way to look at things. It is difficult to sort out the true nature of that (and probably it is not one thing only), but the genius thinks eminently intuitively as well as counterintuitively and (apparently) paradoxical, and, in a way, ultradialectic, as he throws up many ideas and then tries to illuminate them from all different angles, with not much propensity to favour a specific angle over others (while on the other hand usually being extremely value-oriented concerning a universe that makes sense, which made Newton a theological alchemist and Einstein opposing quantum mechanics, i.e. somehow stubbornly irrational). It is as if the genius can see into an additional dimension that is invisible to others, obviously due to capability of making plethora of (counter/intuitive) associations to any given concept (which, in a genuine way, is no necessary quality of mere intelligence and convergent thinking, but of creativity and divergent thinking, respectively, as Cooijmans calls it, associative horizon). However, it usually turns out that the genius just sees what is so obvious and rational that other people, due to their indoctrinations, don´t see it, because he brings back a very basic rationality to the perspective (that gravity is a force and means curvature is, upon reflection, actually quite obvious). Let us say the basic/dominant way of thinking of the genius is metarationality.

Spirituality, Mysticism and Religion

More recently I purchased CDs with Masses by Orlando de Lassus, Hymns and Songs of the Church by Orlando Gibbons, some cool CDs from the Harmonia Mundi label with music for Epiphany and for Corpus Christi, and some other early music. I attended Christmas Mass at the Russian Orthodox Church this year and got me some CDs with respective music, I occasionally listen to Renaissance music on the internet and years ago I bought a CD with works by Thomas Tallis (motivated by the Fantansia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams, which is very beautiful). Apart from the ethereal vibration of that kind of music, resemblant to that of Scelsi, I was always attracted by the sacral, though I am not actually a religious person and not exactly a believer. But I seem to have always liked gravitas and sincerity, and the mix of sublime and the celestial as well as piety and humility, specifically expressed in such a kind of music. It gives me a sense of the gravitas and sincerity, the depth of the world – with, however, the deep ground not being a hostile or nihilistic abyss, but something that cares and protects, unobtrusively, even if that is only a mirror image of myself amidst cosmic indifference. Think of darkness in a late november evening, there is a cabin in the woods where inside there is a subtle light that illuminates and warms. That is the religious deep ground of the world.

Spirituality means a heightened and intimate intellectual/ethical/emotional attachedness to the world, somehow resulting in transcendence of personality and a transcendent perception of the world. There is a notion of a certain amalgmation of subject and object/world, respectively with the transcendent (God, infinity, nature, Tao et al.). It should bring about tenderness and familiarity with all that exists. A spiritual disposition can exist in a person per se and need not be something difficult to achieve; spiritual attachedness can be to anything, there is also superstitious or occult spirituality, or it can be a tool for a person´s narcissism.

Mysticism on the one hand refers to a deep (and very sincere) connection to the world, but to (aspects of) a world that is not immediately there but that are concealed, mysterious, deep and profound. The true mystic experience is considered to be a matter only for a very elevated mind, the mystic´s path usually involves pain, profound life experience and some sort of asceticism. Mysticism also refers to the unio mystica, i.e. the becoming one with God or with the supreme or primal instance of existence (e.g. infinity or Tao). It is not as plebeian as „mere“ spirituality, but maybe invokes false sense of grandiosity and megalomania. Mysticism involves some potential for obscurantism and diverse hallucinations, or it can be a tool for a person´s narcissism.

Religion etymologically refers to „careful consideration“ and devotion to the commandments. Unlike spirituality and mysticism it primarly refers to awe and deep respect for a higher instance that is forever out of our reach, and that is, finally, intangible. Although I am not exactly a religious person I referred elsewhere that I appreciate the idea of gravitas involved in that sentiment and that, although not exactly a believer, I like the idea of thinking of an instance that is forever more intelligent and better than myself and considering what it might say to me and how the instance would judge me, somehow like Kierkegaard´s jubilation about the idea that „against God we are always in the wrong“. Religion is a means for imposing power of a ruling class over people and also a means for giving an identity to people and a collective. Holding on to religious beliefs may be primarily based on lack of creativity and need not change or elevate a person very much (i.e. a paranoid person will have a paranoid understanding of religion, an anxious person an anxious one; good and altruistic persons will see it as an amplifier of goodness and altruism, etc.), or it can be a tool for a person´s narcissism.

To truly experience spirituality, mysticism or religion i.e. to increase attachment to the world and establish communication with the horizon of the world (i.e. the transcendent), it needs to involve the fundamental aspects of spirituality, mysticism and religion. Spirituality, mysticism and religion is a kind of trinity. Einstein´s „Cosmic Religion“ (based on awe for the sublimal depth and harmony of the universe and the quasi-sanctity of the truth-seeker) is like that and an expression of the extreme „mystical“ immersion and empathy of Einstein´s scientific mind and may be the expression of a religious sentiment in a modern, scientifically enlightened age, and gives a sense of how correct balance of the individual and the (horizon of) the world can be achieved, and, bearing that in mind, on rare occasions even be transcended: Extremely sophisticated and pure individuals like Sufi mystics Attar of Nishapur or Bayezid Bastemi are even in the position to argue and express anger (however: not revolt) against God, due to his shortcomings, occasionally they win the argument, occasionally they lose.

I see the spirituality/mysticism/religion trinity as a kind of sun before me, however it shrinks to a shining sun (or white dwarf) in my hand, maybe I move along, there are other planets surrounding me as well, but that one is, of course, important.

Metaphysical Note about Extreme Metal

More recently I purchased the following CDs:

  • Abyssal: Antikatastaseis
  • Adverserial: D.E.N.A.T.B.K.O.N.
  • Mitochondrion: Archaeaon
  • Pyrrhon: Growth Without End
  • Sarpanitum: Blessed Be My Brothers
  • This Gift Is A Curse: All Hal The Swinelord

I welcome it that after a period of stagnation there are fresh and fruitful developments in extreme metal again! While extreme metal bands of former generations like Morbid Angel or Meshuggah sounded like if they came from another planet, bands like Abyssal, Pyrrhon or Mitochondrion sound as if they directly came from the depths of outer space (maybe from close to the region where Azathoth dwells). I call this progressive. Within those song structures we have nice chaos invocation and abstract beauty amalgamated with uncanniness giving an impression of the sublime. It gives you a sense of place – of belonging and forlornness. Of your attachedness and your seperatedness in the universe, etc. It´s a borderline, exurbia and edge phenomenon; look at how ambiguous it is and how much enigmatic meaning it carries, permanently shifting the Great Frontier! It´s metaphysical.

What I always liked about extreme metal is that it definitely confronts you with other, strange worlds (that aren´t so strange after all and for instance the occasional lyrics about Satan etc. are much more realistic and less phony than the love songs you hear on the radio). – It is both strange and surreal, and hyperrealistic and more human than human. It adds a (or multiple) dimensions to your perception. It confronts you with that that is the other and that that is unexpected. It unites the hemispheres.

„WESTERN“ METAPHYSICS

Let us, ideally, say that the „Western“ mind is analytical, scientific. It is about isolating and analysing things to gain rational knowledge about the thing, with the possibility (or the permanent horizon) to get to know the „thing in itself“. It strives for knowledge to manipulate things and transform civilisation via technology. It is concerned with the possibility of solid knowledge.

„EASTERN“ METAPHYSICS

Let us, ideally, say that the „Eastern“ mind, exemplified e.g. in the metaphysics of Zen, is more about getting to know and experiencing the faculty of perception and rationalisation itself. It is about dissolving the subject and amalgamating it with the object world, into a state of (for the sake of simplicity) productive mimesis. However, this state will involve serenity and sedateness, an acceptance of a certain resistance of things against manipulation and an acceptance of fate. It is concerned with the possibility of solid awareness.

UNPRODUCTIVE SYNTHESIS

Bhagwan says, people in the East have soft, fragmentary egos, and they are able to surrender and devotion (Hingabe) easily – yet their surrender is not very deep: it remains superficial. People of the West have strong and solid egos, and they are resistant towards surrender and spirituality. He concludes that a person that synthesises East and West may become something that is really interesting and transformative, but that is difficult.

„Eastern“ metaphysics somehow was designed as a pacification from unproductive upheaval and turmoil in a pre-scientific age i.e. when things could not fundamentally be changed. „Eastern“ metaphysics does not „solve“ the metaphysical problems but dissolves them, but unfortunately may also dissolve physics respectively the scientific mind, and its relaxedness may result in apathy, the insight that some things cannot be changed may make people forget to try to. The „Western“ metaphysics of the rational mind may lead to a tunnel vision and feelings of estrangement and disconnectedness from a greater whole, a disrespect for „soft“ sciences and arrogance. The „Eastern“ downside is being unscientific, the downside of the „West“ is being soulless. From a sociological point of view, Eastern societies are collectivist societies whereas Western societies are individualistic societies (with both easily abhoring each other or finding each other uncanny, although the productive synthesis includes the better elements of both).

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE OVERMAN (PRODUCTIVE SYNTHESIS)

It is said East and West are very different and difficult to unite. They are respective others. However, if you approach the other you can gradually internalise it. The trick is not to make the other a toy of your ideology and accomodate it to you, but to take it serious. The full internalisation of the man´s world is the overman. It can also be described as the so-called unitary consciousness where all forms of life, where reality, dream, fiction, time, space, matter unite into a single, fluid, penetrating experience, where contours of individualities do not dissolute but become osmotic. The analytical mind is not pacified but intensified and empowered. There is not perfect exchangeability of background and motif as you have it in the vision of Zen, rather a fractal geometry of the universe, i.e. where the „deep structure“ can be progressively revealed and calculated and where there is no stubborn resistance against „inconvenient“ truths or discoveries, since nothing is truly „inconvenient“.

By permanently approaching and confronting the other, you increase your experience and widen your perception. By trying to integrate the other and internalise it, you widen your intellect and your personality, and you reduce your indoctrinations and your ego (if, however, you don´t have much of an ego in the first place). You transcend personality into the transpersonal and become open space. It is very profound.

Meaning of life – and meaning in general – lies in establishing connections (and pathological/endogenous depression means inability to establish true connections to anything). By connecting to the other, the most wide-ranging and permanently evolving connectivity is possible. Overmen usually appear „otherworldly“ (whereas they are also the most realistic persons) because they primarily relate to the other and to their respective counterpart (Socrates and Kierkegaard talked to anyone in the streets, T.W. Hickinson noticed that obscure Emily Dickinson was very aware and concerned about him as her counterpart, Shakespeare is hardly tactile as an individual but rather seems a transpersonalised consciousness over the tapestry of life, Wittgenstein, Kafka and Beckett were also very concerned about others including the possibility of self-sacrifice, etc.). Therefore, they include otherness and the Great Other in themselves and therefore they carry and execute the so-called divine law in themselves. They appear „alien“ as nothing is alien to them. And why? Because they actually relate to the other!

 

(Written 2015-2017)

Postsciptum: If you think this is stupid and esoteric wait for the various Postscripts to the Metaphysical Note about Extreme Metal which shall appear over time since of course I am able to discuss Kripke and Quine as well, as well as Gadamer and Ricoeur et al.

Prelude to the Metaphysical Note about Extreme Metal