So where is it that W says that we cannot know God using reason, but that we can know God experientially? — Pussycat
6.432
How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world. — T
Wie sich alles verhalt, ist Gott. Gott ist, wie sich alles verhalt
God is how all things stand, how it is all related (NB 1.8.16)
To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning (NB 8.7.16) — NB
There are two godheads: the world and my independent “I”. (NB 8.7.16) — NB
Being happy means being in agreement with the world (NB 8.7.16)
Living in agreement with the world is living in accord with one’s conscience, which is the voice of God.
I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: “I am doing the will of God” (NB 8.7.16) — NB
This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it
springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.
Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something ... What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense
Now instead of saying “Ethics is the enquiry into what is good” I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into what is valuable, or, into what is really important, or I could have said Ethics is the enquiry
into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right way of living. I believe if you look at all these phrases you will get a rough idea as to what it is Ethics is concerned with. — Lecture
Now when this is urged against me I at once see clearly, as it were in a flash of light, not only that no description that I can think of would do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I would reject
every significant description that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the ground of its significance. That is to say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions were not nonsensical because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that their nonsensicality was their very essence. For all I wanted to do with them was just to go beyond the world and that is to say beyond significant language. — Lecture
Now perhaps some of you will agree to that and be reminded of Hamlet's words: "Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." But this again could lead to a misunderstanding. What
Hamlet says seems to imply that good and bad, though not qualities of the world outside us, are
attributes to our states of mind. But what I mean is that a state of mind, so far as we mean by that a
fact which we can describe, is in no ethical sense good or bad.
And now I must say that if I contemplate what Ethics really would have to be if there were such a science, this result seems to me quite obvious. It seems to me obvious that nothing we could ever think or say should be the thing.
And similarly the absolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs, would be one which
everybody, independent of his tastes and inclinations, would necessarily bring about or feel guilty
for not bringing about. And I want to say that such a state of affairs is a chimera. No state of affairs
has, in itself, what I would like to call the coercive power of an absolute judge.
Then what have all of us who, like myself, are still tempted to use such expressions as 'absolute good,' 'absolute value,' etc., what have we in mind and what do we try to express? Now whenever I try to make this clear to myself it is natural that I should recall cases in which I would certainly use these expressions and I am then in the situation in which you would be if, for instance, I were to give you a lecture on the psychology of pleasure.
Here he is starting to attack also the "thinking" mode of being ethical, besides the "saying" ... But this left people with believing that it's ok if we cannot speak of the ethical, because we can think of it, and also act upon this thinking ... — Pussycat
Well here he is trying to also bring down this castle, the last fort, the last resort of the ethical man. — Pussycat
So Ethics is no science for W — Pussycat
And similarly the absolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs
And I want to say that such a state of affairs is a chimera.
It is therefore when and because we feel good with ourselves, pleasurable, that ethical thinking and saying springs. — Pussycat
And there, in my case, it always happens that the idea of one particular experience presents itself to me which therefore is, in a sense, my experience par excellence and this is the reason why, in talking to you now, I will use this experience as my first and foremost example.(As I have said before, this is an entirely personal matter and others would find other examples more striking.) I will describe this experience in order, if possible, to make you recall the same or similar experiences, so that we may have a common ground for our investigation. — Lecture on Ethics
So I see here W argue in favour of amorality, just like Nietzsche, the opinion that ethics is non-existent, in thinking or in saying, in this world or beyond. — Pussycat
Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts; as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water and if I were to pour out a gallon over it. — Lecture on Ethics
I believe the best way of describing it is to say that when I have it I wonder at the existence of the
world. And I am then inclined to use such phrases as 'how extraordinary that anything should exist'
or ‘how extraordinary that the world should exist.'
I will mention another experience straight away which I also know and which others of you might
be acquainted with: it is, what one might call, the experience of feeling absolutely safe. I mean the
state of mind in which one is inclined to say 'I am safe, nothing can injure me whatever happens.' — Lecture on Ethics
This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it
springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the
absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But
it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply
and I would not for my life ridicule it. — Lecture on Ethics
You have completely missed the point. The “ethical man” has nothing to do with either what is said or thought to be ethical. — Fooloso4
I would like to jump into the reading group. About where is the group in terms of section in the text? — SapereAude
This has already been addressed. It is not a matter of what he says or thinks, but of what he does, how he lives. — Fooloso4
6.374
Even if all that we wish for were to happen, still this would only be a favour granted by fate, so to speak: for there is no logical connexion between the will and the world, which would guarantee it, and the supposed physical connexion itself is surely not something that we could will.
6.41
The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no
value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value.
If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens
and is the case is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.
6.422
So our question about the consequences of an action must be unimportant.—At least those consequences should not be events. For there must be something right about the question we posed. There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself.
(And it is also clear that the reward must be something pleasant and the punishment something unpleasant.)
6.43
If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. — T
Being happy means being in agreement with the world (NB 8.7.16)
Living in agreement with the world is living in accord with one’s conscience, which is the voice of God.
I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: “I am doing the will of God” (NB 8.7.16) — Notebooks
I would like to jump into the reading group. About where is the group in terms of section in the text? — SapereAude
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