help me explain ludwig wittgenstein's definition of philosophy when he said, "philosophy is I know not what"

Question

Just began a philosophy class, it's my first home work.

Answer 1

I'snt he just saying that he doesn't know what philosophy is? Not a very good philosopher then, is he? Imagine if a post man or a bus driver had that attitude!

Answer 2

Why do people keep asking this question? Are you all in the same class? Anyway...

Wittgenstein is most likely referring to the limits of knowledge, moreover the limits of philosophy.

At the end of the Tractatus he says (paraphrasing) 'of that which we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent'

I've always thought this quite a Kantian point, in that it is highlighting the limits of human knowledge. However, at that point Wittgenstein hadn't read much aside from the works of Frege and Russell

Philosophy is i know not what because as a subject it is concerned with the limits of human knowledge and tries to push beyond them. In doing so it loses any concrete relations and thus becomes impossible to describe.

Think of it in these terms - physics is the scientific study of the physical world, philosophy is i know not what.... get it?

Answer 3

The point of the assignment is to get you to start thinking about things most people never bother to think about. The traditional definition of philosophy is "the love of wisdom." Can you define love? Keep in mind (as Wittgenstein would) its uses: love my dog, love my old sneakers, love my country, .... How about wisdom? Is it the same as knowledge? How is that different from faith, from belief, from intuition? Perhaps Wittgenstein's point is that, as some have said, philosophy begins when you start to wonder about something, when you begin to think about what it is, how it works, how it fits into everything else you know. Philosphy, in a way, is depth perception (the brain turns 2 different pictures of the world, one from each eye, into a single picture with the added dimension of depth) -- you see the world one way, I see it differently, what must the world really be like if we're both telling the truth about our experience.

Hope that gets you started. Remember, philosophy is work YOU do with your own beliefs, not just a "subject" to study.

Answer 4

The key to philosophy is to realize that not only are there usually infinite answers to logical problems, but that not one of them may be right. By admitting defeat, but allowing yourself to keep an open mind about answers, you can understand that you cannot be right. For that matter, you cannot be wrong. In philosophy, there is no yes or no, no right or wrong, no black and white. Philosophy is trillions of shades of grey that open one's eyes to a world unknown. This statement sounds yearning of the Buddhist mantra, realizing that with everything you learn, you must learn that that is in fact wrong. All you can know is that you don't know anything. In the long run, you can never know an absolute truth. But in all honesty, figure this out on your own, because if this is your homework assignment, you need only three words for the CORRECT philosophical answer: I don't know. Make sure you type it out and everything so that your teacher knows this is your answer. Guaranteed "A".

Answer 5

He states that the world consists entirely of independent, simple facts out of which complex ones are constructed. Language has as its purpose the stating of facts by picturing these facts. Thus an informative statement pictures a state of affairs as a sketch pictures furniture in a room. The nature of the picturing relationship cannot be stated because it is not a fact or an object, it can only be shown

Answer 6

sounds like he's a pretty poor philosopher. Philosophy is about the love of wisdom and knowledge. Anyone who claims they "know not what" is not trying very hard.

Knowledge is a part of yourself, so to your mind it appears as a vacant hole, as blackness, nothingness, but in reality it is the subconscious mind that is unlimited in comparison with the conscious mind.

Afterall, if you know things by being conscious of them, how is it possible for you to know the subconscious?

Answer 7

He meant that philosophy is hard to define. Read a bit about him on line, and you can throw in some of his lines to support your statement for your homework.

Answer 8

Any object of philosophy is essentially unknowable except in Afflatus.

Answer 9

Don't bother studying this, it is a waste of time. Philosophy is to science what porn is to sex, a cheap and pale simulation of something that is beyond their reach to comprehend. Philosophy cannot tell you what is, it can only tell you what is not, and to a very great degree. They know where it is, not what it is. All it can do is to bring you up to a more educated level of ignorance.

Answer 10

philosophy is lived differently by different people
we cannot generalizse it so we cannot give a definition of it