Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “mystical” inclinations can primarily be characterised by his wish to move beyond facts and beyond the empirical. From the following passages on facts, values, logic and ethics alone, readers can also see how Wittgenstein profoundly influenced the logical positivists and philosophers generally. After all, Wittgenstein’s words were published in 1921 — years before the value-fact distinction was debated in detail. (Although the distinction dates back to G.E. Moore and, before him, David Hume.)
Eddy M. Zemach (1935–2021) was an Israeli philosopher who was born in Jerusalem. In the following essay, I shall rely on Zemach’s article ‘Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of the Mystical’.
With Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, it’s always helpful to quote those philosophers who’ve explained or interpretated this work because without such help, it’s virtually impenetrable. That said, I’m not taking Zemach’s interpretation to be right or wrong, simply helpful.
In terms of the word “mystical” in the title. The basic point is that Zemach only accepted the word “mystical” (i.e., as it applies to Wittgenstein) if that word is interpreted in the way he personally interpreted it. In Zemach’s own words:
“[W]hat Wittgenstein says about ‘the mystical’ depends heavily on what he says about logic, objects, logic and language; that any interpretation which brings in ‘mystical’, alien doctrines and concepts to clarify Wittgenstein’s intentions totally misses the mark.”
To repeat. Zemach accepted (what he took to be) Wittgenstein’s notion of “the mystical”. He didn’t accept those many other “mystical” ideas and concepts which have been shoehorned into the Tractatus. Zemach made this very clear when he told his readers that he didn’t believe that
“this part of the Tractarian philosophy is to any extent ‘mystical’, or that it can be separated from the main part of the philosophy of the Tractatus”.
Despite the following essay’s reliance on Zemach’s paper, the problem is that it doesn’t contain a single criticism of Wittgenstein. Indeed, Zemach follows Wittgenstein’s own line lock, stock and barrel. So much so that it seems that Zemach believed that Wittgenstein was expressing his very own views — perhaps in a better and more insightful way. Moreover, Zemach wanted to show his readers what Wittgenstein really meant. (Zemach wrote: “[ ] Wittgenstein was again misinterpreted by his followers.”)
This highlights one big problem with Wittgenstein’s work: that most of the “scholars of Wittgenstein” are also “followers of Wittgenstein”. Thus, even when, say, the philosopher Bob Hale highlights the possibility that following a Wittgensteinian line on meaning would be disastrous, he does so as a fan.
Wittgenstein on Facts
There are many things which Wittgenstein believed are outside the world. Take the (seemingly) bizarre statement that “factuality is not a fact”.
Firstly, Zemach told his readers that “the form of all facts, i.e., factuality, is not a fact, it is not in the world”. It’s true that not many people would take factuality itself to be a fact. (Not many people would accept the way that Zemach/Wittgenstein took factuality either.)
Thus, many people would say that the statement “The sun is bigger than the moon” is a statement of fact. However, is the statement of that fact itself a fact? Is the factuality of the sun being bigger than the moon something more than the fact itself? Well, surely it must be, because if it weren’t, then different facts wouldn’t share anything. In order for different facts to share their factual status, they must share factuality. After all, the fact that the sun is bigger than the moon is very different to the fact that Keir Starmer is the British Prime Minister. Yet both are facts.
Zemach broadened all this out. He told his readers that the form of all facts (factuality) is “the limit of the world of facts”. (It isn’t clear why Zemach used the word “limit” here because he doesn’t explain it.)
According to Zemach’s Wittgenstein, not only is the form of the facts (or factuality) not a fact in the world, we also need to comprehend “the ‘fact’ that there are facts”. As can be seen, Zemach uses scare quotes around the word fact. So there are facts in the world. Is that itself a fact?
Zemach continues (referring to Wittgenstein’s propositions 4.126–4. 1273):
“But such a ‘fact’ about facts is obviously a formal concept, which cannot be named or described.”
If this fact about facts is a “formal concept”, then perhaps Wittgenstein should have stayed clear of using the word “fact” in the first place. It’s hard to take all the facts as itself a fact. Then again, one can be fairly free and easy with this word, as many philosophers have been.
Zemach himself gets around all this by bringing up Wittgenstein’s distinction between what can be described and what is ineffable. (“What can be shown but not said.”) He stated that “the factuality of the universe is not effable, though it is exhibited by the facts”. So here it can said that the factuality of the universe isn’t really fact-like. Nonetheless, it is exhibited by the facts. The facts (even all of them taken together) are concrete, but their factuality is ineffable.
Wittgenstein on Value
According to Zemach’s Wittgenstein, “value is outside the world of facts”. Many philosophers would accept this. However, they wouldn’t also be happy with the phrase value is outside the world.
Zemach’s Wittgenstein acknowledged that we can “endow[] a fact with value”. Yet fact and value are still two different things. Thus, it’s a fact that Jim saved John’s life. And that fact can be endowed with value. On a more mundane and less ethical level, the fact that the universe did (or did not) begin with a big bang has a certain instrumental value for scientists and others.
Zemach’s Wittgenstein added the point that the endowment of value “upon a hitherto unimportant fact, cannot be said to ‘change’ the fact”. So a fact isn’t changed by our psychological attitude toward it.
Zemach again clarified (or interpreted) Wittgenstein’s position when he said that “values are not facts”. He continued:
“Facts may have value, but, so it seems, value is what is other than fact. That a fact has a value is not a formal ‘fact’ about this fact, since a value cannot be a given feature of a fact. If whatever is in the world is a fact, values cannot be in the world.”
Here it can be seen that Wittgenstein claimed that “values cannot be in the world”. Instead, they’re in the “willing subject”.
Wittgenstein on the Willing Subject
Isn’t the willing subject in the world? Where else can he or she be? After all, from a physical perspective, the willing subject resides in the psychology of the human being, and the psychology of that willing subject is dependent on his physical brain. Thus, the brain is most definitely in the world.
It follows from this that values are in the world too. After all, it’s willing subjects who have values. And willing subjects are in the world.
The words “boundary of the world” are interesting too. It was said earlier that subjects are part of the world. They’re only at its boundary in the loose sense that each subject only has access to the world via his own experiences and mind. So, in one sense, the word “boundary” is an acceptable metaphor.
Perhaps the words “in the world” are poetic. Perhaps they’re also mystical.
Value can be tied into the world in that “[t]he willing I, the value-endower, cannot exist in the world which is nothing but the totality of facts”. This means that the willing I is not itself a fact (just as values aren’t facts). Wittgenstein himself expressed this literally in his proposition 8.7.16:
“My will enters into the world completely from outside as into something that is already there.”
Can any x enter into the world from outside the world? Where was Wittgenstein’s “will” before its entered into the world?
Am I being too literal-minded here?
Is this poetry?
Mysticism?
Wittgenstein on Good and Evil
It’s already been said that Wittgenstein attempted to take value out of the world (or at least out of the world of factuality): he did the same with good and evil, as well as with goodness and badness.
The most radical interpretation of Wittgenstein’s position was given by Wittgenstein himself. In proposition 2.8.16, he wrote:
“Good and evil only enter through the subject. And the subject is not part of the world, but a boundary of the world.”
It’s true that many people — and not only religious people — believe that good and evil are in the world. They see evil and good as “forces” or properties which have an objective status. And even in the cases of acts and people which and who are deemed evil, such things are still in the world. In other words, many people wouldn’t like the Wittgenstein’s idea that good and evil are simply projected outward by the willing subject.
Similarly, Zemach’s Wittgenstein stated that “goodness or badness cannot be qualities of the world”. So what are they? They’re “qualities of the willing subject”. So here again what we deem to be good or bad may be part of the world. However, the “qualities” of goodness and badness themselves aren’t part of the world. They’re “project[ed]” onto the world by the “willing subject”.
This logic has a radical conclusion. It means:
“What is good and evil is essentially the I, not the world.”
It is the I who projects good and evil onto the world. Good and evil don’t exist in the world as metaphysical facts. Not only are good and evil not part of the world, “the subject is not a part of the world” either. Instead, the subject is a “presupposition of its existence”.
Yet even if there is the psychological projection (not necessarily in the psychoanalytic sense) of good and evil onto the world, then that still doesn’t mean that the projector “is not part of the world”. The world may be something for the subject. Yet the subject is still part of the world. What else can the subject be part of?
In terms of the subject being the “presupposition of its existence”, this may simply mean that the world has no existence unless it is experienced as having an existence. This brings on board Wittgenstein’s solipsistic side. (More of which later.)
Logic and Ethics
Zemach stated that there are “two transcendental theories: logic and ethics”. Thus, in the 1920s, neither science nor logical positivism were deemed to capture logic and ethics. In simple terms, there is nothing factual or empirical about logic. Similarly, there is nothing factual or empirical about ethics. Indeed, in proposition 24.7.16, Wittgenstein tells us that “[n]either treat of the world, but are the transcendental conditions of the world”. In other words, we cannot treat of the world without logic in that everything we say about the world must abide by at least a modicum of logic. But does that make logic a condition of the world itself? Perhaps Zemach’s grammatical construction “treat the world” simply refers to what we think, say and write about the world. Indeed, perhaps we don’t even have a world without what we can think, say and write about it.
Zemach also stated that logic and ethics enable us to make “sense” of the world. And that seems to be the case if we bear in mind what’s just been said about logic (if not ethics).
What Zemach said next is incredible:
“For logic, the sense of the world is its inalterable form: God.”
If God = the sense of the world, then the sense of the world = God.
As is often the case in philosophy, this seemingly nonsensical and categorical stance may begin to make sense once we find out what Wittgenstein actually meant by the word “God”. In any case, Wittgenstein was simply using the word “God” in his own peculiar way.
In Wittgenstein’s 1914-to-1916 Notebooks (according to Zemach at least) we have “a simple identification of God and World”. Now how many people realised this when they first read the Tractatus? Indeed, even if a reader knows some context to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, these words may still not be interpreted in that way. Perhaps even most of the followers of Wittgenstein didn’t always realise this.
All that said, Wittgenstein was tapping into a pantheistic, Spinozian or monist tradition here.
Immediately after stating that God is the sense of the world, Zemach then says that “ethics [] is the willing subject”. This doesn’t make sense. Or, rather, it probably wouldn’t make sense to readers unless they were already aware of Wittgenstein’s definitions of the words “God” and “ethics”.
Wittgenstein’s Solipsism
Wittgenstein himself (in proposition 5.63) wrote: “I am my world.” You couldn’t have a more solipsistic statement than that. Zemach explained (or interpreted) this statement by saying that “the experiencer of facts in the world is identical with the world as a totality”. Here again, there may not be a world for the experiencer without he/she experiencing it.
Subjects need to experience the world in order for the world to mean something to them. Yet that doesn’t mean that they’re “identical with the world”. Indeed, even if every fact of the world, as well as every experience of the world, comes care of the subject’s mind (or consciousness), then that still doesn’t establish an identity between the subject and world.
Zemach clarified Wittgenstein’s solipsism by saying that “the I as a metaphysical subject is the entire world”. Thus, there’s nothing more “real” than the “thinking subject”. The thinking subject is more real than the world because the world only exists because he or she experiences it (as real). The reality of the world, then, is dependent on the reality of the subject. In fact, it’s easy to conclude from all of Wittgenstein's Tractarian positions that the world has no reality without the subject.
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