Archaic Christianity

Wittgenstein was a 20th century linguist, and because of my interest in linguistics I have wanted to read some of this works for a while. This particular book is on epistemology. It should not be surprising that a linguist would dabble in this area, because linguistics and epistemology have much in common. Wittgenstein asks many insightful questions, like how do you know your hand is a hand, a tree is a tree, or that the earth existed 150 years ago? I am serious...and so is he. He is dealing with the very difficult task of, philosophically, creating a clear and undeniable bridge between our thoughts and the external world.

The book is made up of hundreds of short statements. There is some topical coherence to them, but it often seems disjointed. My favorite thought in the book is as follows (statement 185):

It would strike me as ridiculous to want to doubt the existence of Napoleon; but if someone doubted the existence of the earth 150 years ago, perhaps I should be more willing to listen, for now he is doubting our whole system of evidence. It does not strike me as if this system were more certain than a certainty within it.

What he is saying is that sometimes it is often easier to attack a worldview or body of knowledge at its core, doubting the system as a whole, than to attack a single fact within it. In his example, it would be ludicrous to doubt the existence of Napolean if we maintained our modern view of world history because we have so much evidence for his existence. There is so much that surrounds it, buttresses it, that to doubt it would be silly. That is unless you bring into doubt the whole system, because the parts that the system holds together may not be of any help in defending the system itself. I think it is a good point, and can be applied broadly.

One great thing about the book (at least the edition linked to below) is that it is a diglot, German and English on facing pages. I love diglots. I wish there were diglots of all foreign works.

Overall, I think the book was okay. It was not as coherent or useful as Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and sometimes was not terribly pleasant to read. If I do read it again, I will have to read some of the works of G. E. Moore, whom Wittgenstein interacts with frequently. If epistemology is your cup of tea, it is a good book to read. Otherwise, I cannot say I recommend it too highly.