“Can one learn this knowledge? Yes; some can. Not, however, by taking a course in it, but through ‘experience’. ― Can someone else be a man’s teacher in this? Certainly. From time to time he gives him the right tip. ― This is what ‘learning’ and ‘teaching’ are like here. ― What one acquires here in not a technique; one learns correct judgments. There are also rules, but they do not form a system and only experienced people can apply them right. Unlike calculating rules.” ― Wittgenstein
1. The problem with the objective stance (where Reason is thought to reside) is it supposes man might subtract himself from experience. It supposes he might uncover what is truthful by not being a part of it. Indeed, the idea of scientific objectivity goes against the idea of engagement in the world (even of there being a world ― there are only components and causal relationships). Truth, the objective man surmises, exists solely with man and his special vantage point upon the world: from beyond it. Man attempts to make himself world-less, without direct experience in the world, studying it from afar, and in doing so he claims to know it.
2. This leads him to undermine the question of how to live. One who can truly ask this question is one who begins by examining the idea of how he is worldly. Only when man can grasp his worldliness can he begin to ask in what manner he should act in the world.
9. By being reasonable man risks losing the world.
12. One begins to grasp at truth when one stops looking for the formula. Indeed, it is where systematic description begins to fail. It is as if he were trying to retell a dream ― the chasm between the dream images and feeling, and the words he uses to recount it is vast. He feels in recounting the dream the limitation of his language, its insufficiency.
16. His technological inventions show him the correctness of his scientific method. He believes that the same reasonableness he uses to control the world may be put to use in his own life. But this same method when applied to himself entirely misses the mark. Problems and method pass each other by.
22. Poets and religious men disappeared at the same time.
1. The problem with the objective stance (where Reason is thought to reside) is it supposes man might subtract himself from experience. It supposes he might uncover what is truthful by not being a part of it. Indeed, the idea of scientific objectivity goes against the idea of engagement in the world (even of there being a world ― there are only components and causal relationships). Truth, the objective man surmises, exists solely with man and his special vantage point upon the world: from beyond it. Man attempts to make himself world-less, without direct experience in the world, studying it from afar, and in doing so he claims to know it.
2. This leads him to undermine the question of how to live. One who can truly ask this question is one who begins by examining the idea of how he is worldly. Only when man can grasp his worldliness can he begin to ask in what manner he should act in the world.
9. By being reasonable man risks losing the world.
12. One begins to grasp at truth when one stops looking for the formula. Indeed, it is where systematic description begins to fail. It is as if he were trying to retell a dream ― the chasm between the dream images and feeling, and the words he uses to recount it is vast. He feels in recounting the dream the limitation of his language, its insufficiency.
16. His technological inventions show him the correctness of his scientific method. He believes that the same reasonableness he uses to control the world may be put to use in his own life. But this same method when applied to himself entirely misses the mark. Problems and method pass each other by.
22. Poets and religious men disappeared at the same time.
41. How unfortunate that his religious belief has been limited to appeals made during hardship. The man who loses his child to accident laments, “Everything happens for a reason.”
42. It is as if the man said, there is a reason for this and I summon God to provide it. Surely it did not happen accidentally, or by bad luck. This mystery shall be solved. The child was too important. There is the assumption that despite the horror of the child’s death it will finally in the future lead to something better. The child will be redeemed. The father will look back at the child’s death and say “That is why it happened.” The man’s appeal is to reason and not to God.
45. What is religious is only a placeholder until a reasonable explanation can be made.
49. The difference of this age from another is in the following statements: “Everything happens for a reason” and “Everything happens by the grace of God.” The former implies the reasonableness of God’s plan, that it can be made clear by men. The latter leaves it all to God: what is mysterious to men is accepted as mysterious.
57. The inability to explain cruelty and suffering brings into existence the gods. The gods dwell in this place of mystery. It is where reason cannot go.
63. The Muslims are a more religious ― and stronger ― people because of their comfort living within God’s mystery. They feel no need to explain their suffering.
88. What of the time when explanation began and ended with the gods? When a man who was physically blinded was understood to truly see?
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