In the first chapter of the thesis, I give a description of such an experience through examples, also from Diamond's idea of "difficulty of reality". In light of the latter phrase, the experience of the world "as such" is only possible because we are already in language. We are now close to the topic of the thesis, namely the experience of limitation.
The aim of the thesis is to explore a different concept of meaning, which can support the ethical dimension of language and show how an experience of limitation can make us aware of it22. This is what the "good exercise of the will" constitutes in the Tractatus, and this is what "sublimation".
PART ONE
Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: a Cavellian methodological perspective
It seems that the expression of thoughts should not be understood in the way common sense speaks (which takes the expression for granted), but as something more or different than that, which can explain its value. This mutual exclusivity (not having similar thoughts leads to not understanding) can help us see what is at stake if expressing thoughts is valuable. In the case of philosophy, we need to be cured of our tendency to abandon ordinary language and detach ourselves from the current conditions of what we say, to seek a place beyond it.
Already in the Tractatus, the goal of philosophy is not to give a list of true statements about the world38 (this is science's goal) but it is to work with one's self, a way to live one's life to change. These are questions that can be said to concern both philosophy and psychoanalysis as conceived in the aforementioned.
Experience of limitation
This is the temptation of transcendence that you find at the end of the Tractatus. Tarkovsky's description can also be considered a combination of the two experiences that Wittgenstein discusses: wonder at the existence of the world and absolute certainty. But how can we understand such an absolute certainty or an absolute value of the existing world.
Because we see now that we have used describe the experience of being amazed at the existence of the world by saying: it is the experience of seeing the world as a miracle. But it is meaningless to say that I wonder about the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing."64.
PART TWO
Possibilities of meaning in the Tractatus
- Friedlander's interpretation From ontology to everyday language
- Logic and meaningfulness
- Justifying Vagueness Analysis as a tool for clarity
Formal possibilities are possibilities of the form of the fact, namely possibilities suitable for being a fact. While the general form of a proposition and the logical constant of negation are provided by Wittgenstein (a priori, through logic), the forms of elementary propositions are left to the application of logic. The form of fact is what Wittgenstein calls logical space; it is the space of possibilities that fits the facts.
We said that the shape of the object is its combination possibilities with other objects. This approach tries to keep the notion of familiarity in a semantic context, in the sense that I can become familiar with the shape of the object through familiarity with the names. There would be further facts as to the nature of the objects constituting the state of affairs.
But let's continue to elaborate on the shape of the object before we come to any final conclusions. The difference between object form and fact form can be seen in the difference between pictorial and logical form in the narrative of painting82. This fact (expressive meaning) is conditioned by the form of the proposition which is its background.
So it is presented through the general form of the propositions it characterizes.), b. 94 “Propositions of logic describe the scaffolding of the world, or rather represent it. The connection between representatives and the subject "in the world" is undoubtedly one of the most mysterious parts of Wittgenstein's theory.”109.
It is not the deep level of the world that allows sounds to be red or not, but it is the context of labeling. Rather, it means that the shape of the body (the body of meaning) will show itself in the way we use our propositions.
The “real” aspect of meaning in Lacan's work
- Overview
- On the notion of the Real Method of approach
- The groundlessness of meaning
- The peace of the evening: when “the world borders on speaking to us”
To do this, I will examine the notion of the real in terms of what we call the groundlessness of meaning. Truth constitutes one of the three orders introduced by Lacan, the other two being the symbolic and imaginary. I will return to the pre-symbolic and post-symbolic character of the real to consider them separately.
Lacan finds an excellent example of the material part of the signifier in the word connections that Rat Man makes (for example, the word bridges Raten-Ratten and Spielratte-Ratten). I will make use of Eyers's distinction because it allows us to understand the relationship between the real aspect of the signifier and the level of meaning. In his “Instance of the letter in the Unconscious,” Lacan indeed describes signifiers as having them.
Eyers considers the real in terms of the difference between a signifier in isolation and a signifier in relation. We are now able to understand that the notion of the Real describes the groundlessness of meaning. This relates to both aspects of the real, the real part of the signified and the real part of the signifier.
Meaning is always expected but at the same time it is always inscribed in the field of the Other. This is also where the question of the relationship between meaning and the real is posed. This is something that must be made as clear as possible: there is no meaning of the Real or in the Real194.
And it is all the more pointed, insofar as the very notion of the real excludes meaning. In the calm of the evening, there is both a presence and a choice between everything that surrounds you.
PART THREE
Ethics in language
- The miracle called language/Being in agreement with the world The good exercise of the will: a significant world for me
- Back to the running-up-against-the-limit
In NB, he writes that "good and evil are somehow related to the meaning of the world (Sinn der Welt)". In contrast to the empirical subject (the human body), which is part of the world and therefore can be represented as a fact, the thinking subject is not in the world. This is clear: it is impossible to make a will without already performing the act of will.
There is actually a way of talking about the self, a way of saying that "the world is my world" without this implying any kind of ownership (either through thought, experience or will). The actions as a whole form an attitude towards the world, and this is why Wittgenstein says in the passage quoted above that the will is the subject's attitude towards the world. 251 “The subject does not belong to the world: it is rather a limit to the world.
The world of a happy man is different from the world of an unhappy man.” Good or bad use of the will changes the boundaries of the world, not the facts of the world. A world that is larger (for me) is a world that has meaning (for me), and in this sense the recovery of meaning is tantamount to a good exercise of the will.
Here we see another aspect of the world that has meaning: being in harmony with it. Then you could say that bad exercise of will simply boils down to not agreeing with the world. On the contrary, accepting the groundlessness of meaning corresponds to accepting the world as independent of my will.
The life of knowledge is the happy life in spite of the miseries of the world.” Wittgensteinian "sin", the bad exercise of the will, is not a specific action, and has no specific-propositional content, it is primarily an attitude towards the world.
Ethics of the Real
- Between facts and transcendence The tragic dimension of psychoanalysis
1. Returning to the meaning of my actions: the two ethical ordinances Ethics of the real in the symbolic. Insofar as Freud's position constitutes progress here, the question of ethics must be articulated from the point of view of man's location in relation to reality."293. Speaking of the ethics of psychoanalysis, I chose a word that, to my mind, was no accident.
Moreover, as we saw in the previous chapter on Lacan, the real aspect of the signifier is not even the level of nonsense, but rather it is a level of what Lacan calls ab-sense. To take it a step further, this return to the meaning of action entails, in Lacanian terms, a question of my desire. The fact that we want is an effect of the signifier or of the fact that we are speaking beings.
It should therefore not surprise or trouble the reader that I read the fundamental absence of the object of desire as coterminous with the groundlessness of meaning. The absence of the Thing-in-itself is in fact the absence of a stable ground for meaning. As is the case with every Lacanian concept, desire is an effect of language, of the fact that we are speaking beings and cannot be properly understood otherwise.
They are both functions of substitution, but their difference lies, as Lacan says, in the way they treat the absence of the signified (the absence of being). Creon is treated by Lacan as someone who has abandoned the question of desire as such, one who acts only in the name of the order of goods (the order of what is useful, in other words the order of facts). We can then claim that it is this bad exercise of the will that creates Antigone's allure for some (perhaps even for Lacan himself to a certain extent).
