Monday, May 29, 2006

Wittgenstein and St. Isaac of Nineveh

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.54


Thus knowledge is the ladder on which a man ascends the height of faith, but which he does not use any more when he has reached faith. For now we know little out of much and we understand little out of much. But when perfection has come this little becomes useless.
St. Isaac of Nineveh: Ascetical Homiliy 51

1 comment:

byron smith said...

A position that Wittgenstein himself later threw away...