“Be sure not to be dependent on the external world, then you don’t need to be afraid of what takes place in it . . . It is easier to detach oneself from things than from people. But even that is something one must master.”
—Wittgenstein, Private Notebooks 1914-1916 (trans. Marjorie Perloff)
In Wittgenstein’s Private Notebooks 1914-1916, translated by Marjorie Perloff, one encounters early threads of thought that later coalesce in the Tractatus. These notebooks contain speculations on how Wittgenstein might express his inner life, alongside ideas rooted in an older philosophical tradition. Though encoded, they oscillate between the development of his logical work and a form of introspective self-examination.
Wittgenstein’s concerns extend beyond logic and language. His writing offers a model for living, resembling a kind of philosophical therapy. This approach finds a contemporary parallel in David Kishik’s Self Study, where he develops his concept of autophilosophy: a practice that challenges academic philosophy by drawing closer to imaginative expression. As Perloff notes, the German verb dichten—usually translated as “to write poetry”—encompasses all forms of imaginative writing, including fiction and drama. Kishik’s book is part of a larger project, To Imagine a Form of Life, which I intend to trace through his earlier works.
This week also brought a first reading of Miklós Szentkuthy’s Towards the One & Only Metaphor. Szentkuthy’s writing combines observation and abstraction, merging pragmatic and symbolic modes of thought. His approach to language and perception suggests a method of seeing that sustains itself without resolving into systems or conclusions.