Wednesday, November 14, 2007

5.61 Logic fills the world; the limits of the world are also its limits.

We therefore cannot say in logic: In the world there is this and this, not that.

That would precisely [nämlich] seem to presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities and this cannot be the case, since otherwise logic would have to be beyond the limits of the world; when it could consider precisely [nämlich] these limits from the other side too.

What we cannot think, we cannot think; we therefore also cannot say what we cannot think.

Marie McGinn (p. 255) points out that there is a sense of climax here, of the limits of thought having been drawn, which in the foreword Wittgenstein said was the aim of the book.

My comment: From my world to the world. Is there a difference? Are the limits of logic the limits of language? The last sentence seems to rule out important or significant truths that cannot be said.

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