Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus And Iceberg Analysis
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory.
There are remarkable similarities between the structure and purpose of the early Wittgenstein’s philosophy (specifically as seen in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and the writing style of Ernest Hemingway. Both seem to represent meaning in life, ethics, and values in their writing precisely by making apparent their absence.
Wittgenstein in a letter to Ludwig von Ficker : “The book's point is an ethical one. I once meant to include in the preface a sentence which is not in fact there now but which I will write out for you here, because it will perhaps be a key to the work for you. What I meant to write, then, was this: My work consists of two parts: the one presented here …show more content…
In a way, these are seen as obstructing or inauthentically hiding what makes itself apparent (what Wittgenstein will call the “mystical” and what Hemingway will leave the reader to ascertain for themselves). Much like the positivistic streak of the Tractatus, the narrator here only believes in the concrete, material, names of places and numbers that say more than any patriotic bilge. As Hemingway says “...the names of places were all you could say and have them mean anything”. Anything that isn’t picturing a state of affairs doesn’t seem to be saying anything much at all. Or as Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus 6.421 ¨It is clear that ethics cannot be …show more content…
Engelmann sent Wittgenstein a poem “Count Eberhard’s Hawthorn” “...the story of a soldier who, while on crusade, cuts a spray from a hawthorn bush; when he returns home he plants the sprig in his grounds, and in old age he sits beneath the shade of the fully grown hawthorn tree, which serves as a poignant reminder of his youth. The tale is told very simply, without adornment and without drawing any moral” (150) (monk). Of the poem Wittgenstein states: “Almost all other poems (including the good ones) attempt to express the inexpressible, here that is not attempted, and precisely because of that it is achieved) (150) “And this is how it is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be- unutterably- contained in what has been uttered!”
There are remarkable similarities between the structure and purpose of the early Wittgenstein’s philosophy (specifically as seen in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and the writing style of Ernest Hemingway. Both seem to represent meaning in life, ethics, and values in their writing precisely by making apparent their absence.
Wittgenstein in a letter to Ludwig von Ficker : “The book's point is an ethical one. I once meant to include in the preface a sentence which is not in fact there now but which I will write out for you here, because it will perhaps be a key to the work for you. What I meant to write, then, was this: My work consists of two parts: the one presented here …show more content…
In a way, these are seen as obstructing or inauthentically hiding what makes itself apparent (what Wittgenstein will call the “mystical” and what Hemingway will leave the reader to ascertain for themselves). Much like the positivistic streak of the Tractatus, the narrator here only believes in the concrete, material, names of places and numbers that say more than any patriotic bilge. As Hemingway says “...the names of places were all you could say and have them mean anything”. Anything that isn’t picturing a state of affairs doesn’t seem to be saying anything much at all. Or as Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus 6.421 ¨It is clear that ethics cannot be …show more content…
Engelmann sent Wittgenstein a poem “Count Eberhard’s Hawthorn” “...the story of a soldier who, while on crusade, cuts a spray from a hawthorn bush; when he returns home he plants the sprig in his grounds, and in old age he sits beneath the shade of the fully grown hawthorn tree, which serves as a poignant reminder of his youth. The tale is told very simply, without adornment and without drawing any moral” (150) (monk). Of the poem Wittgenstein states: “Almost all other poems (including the good ones) attempt to express the inexpressible, here that is not attempted, and precisely because of that it is achieved) (150) “And this is how it is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be- unutterably- contained in what has been uttered!”