You commented:
“One line of Wittgenstein’s I've been thinking about
recently is ‘The human body is the best picture of the human soul’ - which does
almost boil down to ‘Actions speak louder than words’, at least from one angle.
I think it's interesting to bear in mind when thinking about body language and
non-verbal communication, which has been on my mind recently.”
My first thought is to think of John McDowell’s suggestion as to how to think of criteria and the dissolution of scepticism of other minds via the expressive possibilities of human behaviour. The human body is not a machine but a ‘vehicle’ for expressing human mindedness. This involves rejecting a Cartesian dualism of mind and mere lumpen bodily substance. Further, according to McDowell, we can be more certain of the ascription of mental states than mere bodily postures despite the former depending on the latter. That constellation of thoughts might provide one interpretation of ‘The human body is the best picture of the human soul’.
But the comment comes from a short chapter in part 2 of the Investigations which goes as follows.
19. “I believe that he is
suffering.” – Do I also believe that he isn’t an automaton?
Only reluctantly could I use the word in both contexts.
(Or is it like this: I believe that he is suffering, but am certain that
he is not an automaton? Nonsense!)
20. Suppose I say of a friend:
“He isn’t an automaton.” – What information is conveyed by this, and to whom
would it be information? To a human being who meets him in ordinary
circumstances? What information could it give him? (At the very most,
that this man always behaves like a human being, and not occasionally like a
machine.)
21. “I believe that he is not an
automaton”, just like that, so far makes no sense.
22. My attitude towards him is an
attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul.
23. Religion teaches that the
soul can exist when the body has disintegrated.
Now do I understand what it teaches? – Of course I understand it – I can
imagine various things in connection with it. After all, pictures of these
things have even been painted. And why should such a picture be only an
imperfect rendering of the idea expressed?
Why should it not do the same service as the spoken doctrine? And it is
the service that counts.
24. If the picture of thoughts in
the head can force itself upon us, then why not much more that of thoughts in
the mind or soul?
25. The human body is the best
picture of the human soul.
26. But how about an expression
like this: “When you said that, I understood it in my heart”? In saying which,
one points at one’s heart. And doesn’t one mean this gesture? Of course
one means it. Or is one aware of using a mere picture? Certainly not. –
It is not a picture that we choose, not a simile, yet it is a graphic
expression. |179|
Reading the start of this through the lens of a resolute
reading suggests this. In §19 it seems easy to imagine a context for the first
belief (that he is suffering). Perhaps ‘he’ is trying to hide it but
unsuccessfully. ‘Believe’ might mark an uncertain judgement to contrast with
knowing that he is. But might one thus say that one is certain that he isn’t an
automaton? There’s no doubt about that. No, that thought is nonsensical.
We have as yet no context for it.
§20 Can we imagine being able to invest “He isn’t an
automaton” with a use? It is not obvious that we could. One context is
suggested in the parenthesis. I do not think that this is ruled out, but it is
quite a specific use and hence meaning. It will not do to give “He isn’t an
automaton” an almost universal use to express a general certainty that we might
normally have.
§21 This reemphasises that a sentence needs a context to
express a thought or judgement. ‘Just like that’ it does not yet.
§22 This looks to be an attempt to describe the attitude we
have for which the uses above are attempts to express. Pro tem, perhaps this
will do.
§23 Hmm. I am confused by this. “Now do I understand what it
teaches? – Of course I understand it – I can imagine various things in
connection with it. After all, pictures of these things have even been painted.”
I’d like to say: of course I think I understand what religion teaches here and
I can imagine various things and I do know of religious pictures (of souls
etc). But do I really understand any of this? I’m really surprised LW puts this
in his own voice, not as an interlocutor to be discussed.
That said, the talk of service seems understandable. It is
the application or use of a picture that matters here. A picture might be the vehicle
to express my thought.
§24 The comparison/conditional, at least, seems to make
sense. If the former makes sense, then so does the latter.
§25 Note that he says the body is a picture. Why a picture?
Well a picture allows for some sort of indirectness in what is depicted. Think
how a body might be a picture then think how it might depict a soul.
§26 This might mean that feeling in the heart is not a
metaphor. There’s no unpacking in what way feeling is like something being in
the heart. We reach for that phrase directly. This sounds like ‘secondary
sense’ (pt” sec 11).
Given that the talk of soul occurs where it does in this, it
may thus matter that it is not ‘mind’. That the body is the best picture of the
human mind seems a good way to summarise a view of how we know of others’
minds. But, actually, I’m not sure this is the relevant link.
Here’s a further thought about the paragraph that confused
me.
§23. Religion teaches that the
soul can exist when the body has disintegrated.
Now do I understand what it teaches? – Of course I understand it – I can
imagine various things in connection with it. After all, pictures of these
things have even been painted. And why should such a picture be only an
imperfect rendering of the idea expressed?
Why should it not do the same service as the spoken doctrine? And it is
the service that counts.
The philosopher (and Freudian analyst) Jonathan Lear wrote
three or so interesting papers about Wittgenstein and idealism 40 years ago. In
one, ‘Transcendental anthropology’, he starts from the idea that there are two
movements or moods or characteristics of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophical
approach: the transcendental and the anthropological. The former we can gloss
as an inquiry into the conditions of possibility of something. For example:
judgement is possible; for judgement to be possibility there must be X;
therefore X. These concern necessity claims, usually in both senses of
necessity: ‘without which not’ but also ‘not possibly not’. It thus offers
non=-empirical, non-contingent insight into how things must be.
The anthropological is a description of human practices. It
thus looks thoroughly contingent.
Lear argues that these are in tension making Wittgenstein’s
philosophy incomplete. I’ll now turn away from Lear and offer an example (though which
Lear considers too a bit differently). You’ll recall that Wittgenstein asks how it is possible to grasp the
meaning of the word ‘cube’ in a flash given that such understanding also has
implications for its application over time and to an unlimited number of
situations. He then considers and dismisses things that might come to mind
which would explain a sudden grasp pf meaning, such as a picture or a formula.
Each would only work if correctly interpreted or applied but the rule for a correct
interpretation would itself have to come to mind as a picture or formula. And
hence there is a regress of interpretations. Neither a picture nor a formula
answers the transcendental question of how grasp of meaning is (so much as)
possible.
This can leave us in a quandary. It leads Kripke to
scepticism about meaning. There’s no such thing as meaning at least as we
previously understood that notion. But Wittgenstein himself offers this
diagnosis:
§201. That there is a
misunderstanding here is shown by the mere fact that in this chain of reasoning
we place one interpretation behind another, as if each one contented us at
least for a moment, until we thought of yet another lying behind it. For what
we thereby show is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an
interpretation, but which, from case to case of application, is exhibited in
what we call “following the rule” and “going against it”.
This is an anthropological observation. And in fact this
whole chapter of the book is littered with descriptions of how things are. See
what he says about reading:
§168. Again, our eye passes over
printed lines differently from the way it passes over arbitrary pothooks and
squiggles. (But I am not speaking here of what can be found out by observing
the movement of the eyes of a reader.) The glance slides, one would like to
say, entirely unimpeded, without becoming snagged, and yet it doesn’t skid.
These anthropological comments take their significance from
the transcendental inquiry in the context of which they sit. The result is that
we gain a kind of insight into grasp of meaning which is more than contingent.
We chart the limits of the practice.
Anyway, I was thinking of that, last evening, when thinking
about the comment about religion. I said I’m surprised he says he understands
what religion teaches about the soul:
Religion teaches that the soul
can exist when the body has disintegrated.
Now do I understand what it teaches? – Of course I understand it – I can
imagine various things in connection with it.
For one thing, the suggestion to back up the claim of
understanding – that he can imagine various things in connection with it – is such
a poor test of understanding. In the spirit of his philosophy which the
resolute reading promotes, we often think we understand things in philosophy
which, on further pressing, make no sense. We cannot make sense of the ideas
presented in what looks to be a discussion fo private language. What might have
been a clear idea isn’t ruled out as such. Rather, it wasn’t a clear idea at
all. Similarly, the metaphysical picture of how language hooks onto the world
in the Tractatus isn’t clear at all. We realise this at the end when we throw
down the ladder.
So I am surprised here that he sort of takes it on trust
that he himself knows what it would mean for there to be a soul that outlasted
the body.
But another way of looking at this is not to treat the claim
as he would treat a philosophical claim but rather as something else: something
sui generis to religion. Suppose we were to ask my young son Little
Ludwig what he had learnt at Sunday School and he tod us the claim about the
soul. Suppose we were to test him on his grasp of the theology. Perhaps being
able to imagine things would be the test. Or perhaps daubing a painting of a
body and a smaller body as a soul, with the latter floating free of a corpse.
If we take the kind of anthropological stance seriously and we apply it to Christian theology as Wittgenstein recommends we approach the Azande or the Fire Festivals, we will have to be flexible in what we take as a standard of understanding. And in this context, the most direct way to portray a human soul might indeed be a body.
