Determinism & Apocolypse: the Grim Irony of Our Fortunate Fall

[Page]

Wittgenstein was invited to The Vienna Circle to present a paper, or just 
his thoughts on something. The loose topic was the unsayable, a topic dear 
to The Circle (it was important to the critical verification principle of 
the positivists) and the Wittgenstein of the *Tractatus*. Wittgenstein 
agreed to the request. He chose to read the poetry of Tagore. The unsayable, 
indeed.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: "Michael Bailey" <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>; "P-list" 
<pynchon-l at waste.org>; "Page" <page at quesnelbc.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 04, 2009 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: Determinism & Apocolypse: the Grim Irony of Our Fortunate Fall


> Imagine this reading group: The Vienna Circle philosophers----if 
> interested, easily looked up---read and discussed Wittgenstein's 
> Tractatus, his first book, TWICE when published, line-by-line-by-line.
>
> We are in a great tradition.
>
> --- On Sun, 10/4/09, Page <page at quesnelbc.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Page <page at quesnelbc.com>
>> Subject: Re: Determinism & Apocolypse: the Grim Irony of Our Fortunate 
>> Fall
>> To: "Michael Bailey" <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>, "P-list" 
>> <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Date: Sunday, October 4, 2009, 3:20 AM
>> The "earlier Wittgenstein" was a
>> positivist -- a hero of the Vienna Circle -- but he quickly
>> found himself more and more at odds with positivism. The
>> "later Wittgenstein" rejected the "earlier Wittgenstein."
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Bailey" 
>> <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 10:19 PM
>> Subject: Re: Determinism & Apocolypse: the Grim Irony
>> of Our Fortunate Fall
>>
>>
>> > Thanks for all of these elucidations.
>> >
>> > So, maybe the opposite of gnosticism is positivism,
>> sort of?
>> >
>> > "...to value more highly the little, unpretentious,
>> cautious truths,
>> > arrived at by rigorous methods, than those vast,
>> floating, veiling
>> > generalities for which the yearnings of a religious or
>> artistic era reach."
>> > (Nietzsche quote at the beginning of _Postivism_ by
>> Richard von Mises)
>> >
>> > I'm not going to pursue this, at least until I've
>> learned the argument,
>> > but based on what I know so far Pynchon's books are
>> more positivist in nature,
>> > (Wittgenstein swam in the positivist stream, too,
>> didn't he?) and
>> > depictive - and critical -
>> > of Gnostic phenomena...
>> >
>> > but I could easily enough be getting that wrong, so
>> never mind
>> >
>>
>>
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>>
>>
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>
>
>
>


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