tractatus poetico-philosophicus
Thomas suggested re-writing the Tractatus by replacing certain words/concepts with other words/concepts. Below is a list of replacements made so far, and the beginning of a first draft. Find the entire document here. So far, most of the replacements are Thomas' suggestions (many from past conversation). I added a few that seemed to make sense given some of the other changes, such as thing=desire and sign=gesture.
object = subject
world = history
fact = action
logic = poetry (logical = poetic)
state of affairs = political situation
thought = feeling
concept = emotion
proposition = strophe
thing = desire
represent = present
picture = projection
sense = emotional sense
sign = gesture
philosophy = poetics
fact = action may be the most problematic. It defines poetry as an action (which I'm ok with, I suppose) but also produces odd phrases like "the action that such-and-such exists means that . . ."
Any revisions to the replacement list? Any Additions?
Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the feelings that are expressed in it--or at least similar feelings [...]
1 History is all that is the case.
1.1 History is the totality of actions, not of desires.
1.11 History is determined by the actions, and by their being all the actions.
1.12 For the totality of actions determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.
1.13 The actions in poetic space are history.
1.2 History divides into actions.
1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while every desire else remains the same.
2 What is the case--an action--is the existence of political situations.
2.01 A political situation (a state of desires) is a combination of subjects (desires).
2.011 It is essential to desires that they should be possible constituents of political situations.
2.012 In poetry no desire is accidental: if a desire can occur in a political situation, the possibility of the political situation must be written into the desire itself.
2.0121 It would seem to be a sort of accident, if it turned out that a situation would fit a desire that could already exist entirely on its own. If desires can occur in political situations, this possibility must be in them from the beginning. (No desire in the province of poetry can be merely possible. Poetry deals with every possibility and all possibilities are its actions.) Just as we are quite unable to imagine spatial subjects outside space or temporal subjects outside time, so too there is no subject that we can imagine excluded from the possibility of combining with others. If I can imagine subjects combined in political situations, I cannot imagine them excluded from the possibility of such combinations.
7 Comments:
Hello Jay! Wonderful to see this thing comming together.
I'll have at this some more later today. Thanks for pushing this line. I feel like I'm finally trying out an idea I've been carrying around for a long time.
A few suggestions. (As you can imagine, I feel my body contorting under the weight of your replacements.)
thing = person
belief = desire
cause = reason
past = future (& future = past)
Thus,
5.1361 We cannot infer the events of the past from those of the present.
Desire for the nexus of [historical] reason is superstition.
This is because there are no historical facts, only acts. (5.1361 could be read "Belief in the nexus of [worldly] causes is a superstition." I.e., neither causality nor rationality is "in (world-historical) experience".)
facts = acts
perception = action (perceive = enact)
sensation = motivation
sense = motive
Thus,
3.1 In a proposition a feeling finds an expression that can be enacted by our motives.
proposition = proposition
(scientific representation = political representation)
remark = strophe
philosophy = poetry
(The tracatatus is not really philosophy but a kind of "philosophics" a philosophical schema. "Philosophy" is described at 6.53 on "the correct method", which, in our shadow tractatus would read: "The correct method in poetry would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e., propositions of cultural politics--i.e. something that has nothing to do with poetry. . .")
PS. Anyone know what happened to Blue Revisions (Laura's blog?)
Also,
It would have to be logico-poeticus (perhaps patho-poeticus)
The poetico-philosophicus would be the superposition of BOTH works.
Also,
1 History is everything that happens, or is "on the case"
The totality of acts.
More later.
Okay, two sections I just worked through (hope this doesn't throw you off your trail; it's just my intuitions passing over the same problem). Check this out, it's f'n spooky:
1 History is all that happens, everyone that is on my case. [Nicht was der FALL ist, aber was PASSIERTS . . . not what falls to the world but what passes through history . . . ]
1.1 History is the totality of acts, not of people.
1.11 History is determined by the acts, and by their being all the acts.
1.12 For the totality of acts determines what happens, and also what does not happen.
1.13 The acts in empathic time are history.
1.2 History divides into acts.
1.21 Each item can happen or not happen while every other person remains the same.
2 What happens--an act--is the existence of passages.
2.01 A passage (a flow of people) is a combination of subjects (people).
2.011 It is essential to people that they should be possible constituents of passages.
2.012 In passion [pathos] no-one is accidental: if a person can enter a passage, the possibility of the passage must be inscribed in the person itself.
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5.61 Language pervades history: the limits of history are also its limits. So we cannot say in language, 'In history this came to pass, and this, but not that.' For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot happen, since it would require that language should go beyond the limits of history; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well. We cannot feel what we cannot feel; so what we cannot feel we cannot say either.
5.62 This proposition provides the key to the problem, how much justice there is in socialism. For what the socialist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said , but makes itself manifest. History is our history: this is manifest in the act that the limits of language (of that language which we together understand) mean the limits of our history.
5.621 History and life are one.
5.63 We are our history. (The microchasm.)
5.631 There is no such person as the object that feels or entertains realities. If we wrote a book called History as we found it , we should have to include a report on our body, and should have to say which parts were subordinate to our will, and which were not, etc., this being a method of relegating the object, or rather of showing that in an important emotional sense there is no object; for it alone could not be mentioned in that book.--
5.632 The object does not belong to history: rather, it is a limit of history.
5.633 Where in history is a metaphysical object to be found? You will say that this is exactly like the passing of the hand and [or through] the manual field. But really you do not touch the hand. And no one in the manual field allows you to infer that it is touched by a hand.
5.6331 For the form of the manual field is surely not like this
[I want to see this picture!]
5.634 This is connected with the act that no part of our experience is at the same time a priori. Whatever we touch could transpire other than it does. Whatever we can prescribe at all could be other than it transpires. There is no a priori order of people.
5.64 Here it can be seen that socialism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure idealism. The other of socialism recedes to a horizon without intention, and there remains the ideality co-ordinated with it.
5.641 Thus there ideally is an emotional sense in which poetry can talk about the other in a non-sociological way. What brings the other into poetry is the act that 'history is our history'. The poetic self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which sociology deals, but rather the metaphysical object, the limit of history--not a part of it.
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Deconstruction was never this much fun, Jack. Thanks. Sleep well.
Note to 5.641
Maybe try
"there is, ideally, an affective sense . . ." or ". . .pathetic sense . . ." (in an unloaded sense of that word)
I agree, Jay, that FACT and ACTION are a problem; but remember that ACTION is a nominalization, the state of being for a verb in language. So, I can accept it as not meaning FACT as ACT. ACTION has no action, in other words; neither do facts.
I am most troubled by your use of WORLD and HISTORY, and I do believe that a thought isn't equivalent to a feeling.
I think what this list does is to flatten the possibilities of the text by enforcing a linguistic interpretation that carries into the textual matter its own distinct rules and associations. In other words, you have limited the possibilities for interpretation. I read Wittgenstein as refusing such limits.
I also have a real problem with logic=poetry. I did begin the conversation with a note about poetry being the other in his discussion: spirit as represented by thought. Poetry is not Logic.
I do agree with "state of affairs=political situation" and can see a concept as an emotion. But to read a poem as a proof is absurd.
Thomas is dragging this conversation into his dissertation topic, which if I am correct is about two things: using homologies to know concepts. So to get at the state of affairs for Thomas seems to be a matter of making differences samenesses. I reject this. I find homogeneity to be a rather poor political and cultural form. And I think I agree with Holderlin and Heidegger that the poet is a person who makes the difference between subject and object apparent.
Thinking recedes from its matter and in its withdrawn state of thinking (dwelling on the matter at hand, no doubt) it is faced with the oblivion of difference. Now this isn't Wittgenstein; it is Heidegger. But this oblivion is the case for Wittgenstein.
Obviously I am pretty opinionated today, please take no offense. But I am going to have to get back on track with this in a different way at Dagzine; I simply cannot go in this direction: philosophy is not poetics. My initial posts and my attempts at interpretation have been to show that a conjunction brings the two together, Philosophy and Poetics. They are together both at once, the one becoming the other, the other becoming the one.
I take it back. Remove "passage", put "situation" back (but drop "political", and use only for "scientific", "politics" for "science", etc.)
You had:
2 What is the case--an action--is the existence of political situations.
2.01 A political situation (a state of desires) is a combination of subjects (desires).
I had:
2 What happens--an act--is the existence of passages.
2.01 A passage (a flow of people) is a combination of subjects (people).
2.011 It is essential to people that they should be possible constituents of passages.
I now propose:
2 What happens--an act--is the existence of situations.
2.01 A situation (a flux of people) is a combination of subjects (people).
2.011 It is essential to people that they should be possible constituents of situations.
I think what confused me here was need for a passage between things and people, states of affairs and situations, as it were. This passage is not going to be on one side or the other, however. It is constitutive of the poetico-philosophical nexus, or the aperture of the projection we talked about the earlier.
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