When, in philosophy, there is a difficult issue, whose difficulty is not due to the depth of the issue, or not merely, but also to the fact that there is actually an entangled huddled knot of issues, which are hard to separate and untie, and especially when those issues pertain to the mystical, and the religious, and the ethical—when this happens in philosophy, there is a temptation (if not a tendency) to imagine that the mystical is a property of the entanglement itself. Some might thus want to keep the knot, for fear that untying it would destroy the depth and that something of importance will be lost. This is depth through muddle, mysticism through confusion. – A bad idea.
Something of this sort happens often when people approach the cluster of ideas Wittgenstein had in the Tractatus with regard to ethics, and the limits of sense, and solipsism, and the mystical, and the end of philosophy. And what I want to do is not so much to separate, but to note a couple of threads in this cluster, which I think should be separated.
In the Notebooks, Wittgenstein makes a distinction between the thinking and willing subjects: 5.8.16: “The thinking subject is surely mere illusion. But the willing subject exists.” He uses the term ‘thinking subject’ in Tractatus 5.631. And the discussion he has in the 5.6s is separated from the discussion he has in 6.37-4 about the will, and again from the discussion in 6.423, and 6.43. – I think this indicates that he maintained some distinction between the thinking and the willing subjects in the Tractatus—that he was treating them as separate, or separable, issues.
Commentators anyway don’t usually make much use of the distinction. They lump the two subjects—willing and thinking—together into one subject: they often call it ‘the metaphysical subject’ (a term that Wittgenstein uses in 5.633, 5.641, but not in the 6s), and they distinguish this metaphysical subject from the psychological, empirical, subject. Russell did this in the introduction, and Hacker follows in Insight and Illusion; but even Michael Kremer does this in ‘To What Extent is Solipsism a Truth?’
I suspect that this lumping together of the two issues—(a) the considerations regarding the limits of meaning or the philosophical confusions regarding those limits, connected to the thinking subject, and (b) the problems regarding the meaningfulness of moral propositions, connected to the willing subject—I suspect that lumping them together is, among other things, a residue of a conception of the limits of meaning as borders; a conception that Wittgenstein battled. That is, the two issues are lumped together, I suspect, because in the background there is a single picture that guides and confers a formal unity on the discussion: most commonly, a picture of a domain of meaning with borders that we cannot cross.
Another, perhaps stronger, reason for this lumping may be the strong intuition regarding the unity of the self: we don’t have two of them, but only one, and it is hard to believe Wittgenstein thought different. But, in response, the whole question here is what it means to have a single self; what is the unity of the self. I suggest that investigating these two selves is, among other things, investigating the unity of the self: the sort of unity it has. By lumping the two issues together, we are running the risk of assuming, rather than looking at, what unity the self has. – Anyway, what we need is to look: look at the two cases.
So, why is the distinction between the thinking and willing subject of interest? – Suggestion:
Putting the empirical subject aside, the distinction between the willing and the thinking subject echo the Kantian distinction between theoretical and practical forms of judgment. That is, it is a distinction between kinds of mind—mindedness, making things intelligible, making them thinkable, owning the world in thought and language.
But for Wittgenstein the distinction between kinds of mind is really VERY deep. Wittgenstein does not understand the distinction between theoretical and practical in the way Kant does. First, I think it is fair to say that for Wittgenstein to think is to act (thinking is a verb); and in this sense thinking is very much part of the practical. So far, then, we don’t have the distinction that Wittgenstein is interested in—not yet. The distinction begins to emerge when we see that for Wittgenstein acting (thinking included) has nothing to do with the willing subject. The willing subject for Wittgenstein is not the one who acts. She is rather the one who changes the limits of the word—makes the world happy/unhappy.
We encounter the willing subject, for instance, when a certain course of action, apparently available, suddenly strikes us as impossible—as if it has been withdrawn from logical space. In other cases, a certain course of action may appear as encompassing the whole available space, and people say: ‘I can’t act differently.’ Simone Weil, I think, talks of the willing subject when she says: “Men can never escape from obedience to God. A creature cannot but obey. The only choice given to men, as intelligent and free creatures, is to desire obedience or not to desire it” (The Love of God and Affliction, 129). If the thinking subject is the limit, the willing subject is the one who determines where those limits are. (Or perhaps, the willing subject is the thinking subject turned on itself?)
Still—and this is the most confusing bit—the description of the activity of the willing subject hopelessly, nonsensically, but also necessarily, piggybacks on meaningful language. It makes use of language whose grammar is one of describing things that happen in the world, of actions, as if such language can capture what the willing subject does—as if the willing subject does something, acts.
Another related thought:
In the Tractatus Wittgenstein seems to be more ambivalent about the existence of the thinking subject then about the existence of the willing subject. About the thinking subject he says in 5.631: “The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing.” But in 5.641: “There is therefore really a sense in which the philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I.” As I understand this, the thinking subject is not one more thing with which to make contact. As such it does not exist. Rather, the thinking subject is the maker of contact. It exists in thinking, not in being thought of: it is the limit, it is transcendental. It is subject, not object. It thus disappears every time we try to think or say something about it, as a thumb disappears when we try to catch it. Or again, the thinking subject does not stand in an external, but in an internal relation to things: Thinking of things is not a matter of capturing them from the outside, but of animating them as if from their midst.
To go back to the willing subject, the point is that this set of issues mentioned in the last paragraph does not present itself again when Wittgenstein comes to the discussion about the willing subject in the 6.4s. By the time he gets to discussing that, he has moved on to other issues. In other words, for Wittgenstein the non-existence of the willing subject as a thing in the world is different from the non-existence of the thinking subject as a thing in the world. Of both subjects we cannot speak: both do not require that we speak of them to reveal themselves; both are subjects not objects. But unlike the thinking subject, the (need to talk of the) willing subject does not disappear as a result of the philosophical argument. (And this is connected to a distinction between different kinds of effects that nonsense may have on us, which Cora Diamond makes in ‘Ethics Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.’) As a corollary, the overcoming of the thinking self and the overcoming of the willing self are two different achievements—even if not entirely separate: the one, I suspect, is a necessary metaphor for the other.
Something of this sort happens often when people approach the cluster of ideas Wittgenstein had in the Tractatus with regard to ethics, and the limits of sense, and solipsism, and the mystical, and the end of philosophy. And what I want to do is not so much to separate, but to note a couple of threads in this cluster, which I think should be separated.
In the Notebooks, Wittgenstein makes a distinction between the thinking and willing subjects: 5.8.16: “The thinking subject is surely mere illusion. But the willing subject exists.” He uses the term ‘thinking subject’ in Tractatus 5.631. And the discussion he has in the 5.6s is separated from the discussion he has in 6.37-4 about the will, and again from the discussion in 6.423, and 6.43. – I think this indicates that he maintained some distinction between the thinking and the willing subjects in the Tractatus—that he was treating them as separate, or separable, issues.
Commentators anyway don’t usually make much use of the distinction. They lump the two subjects—willing and thinking—together into one subject: they often call it ‘the metaphysical subject’ (a term that Wittgenstein uses in 5.633, 5.641, but not in the 6s), and they distinguish this metaphysical subject from the psychological, empirical, subject. Russell did this in the introduction, and Hacker follows in Insight and Illusion; but even Michael Kremer does this in ‘To What Extent is Solipsism a Truth?’
I suspect that this lumping together of the two issues—(a) the considerations regarding the limits of meaning or the philosophical confusions regarding those limits, connected to the thinking subject, and (b) the problems regarding the meaningfulness of moral propositions, connected to the willing subject—I suspect that lumping them together is, among other things, a residue of a conception of the limits of meaning as borders; a conception that Wittgenstein battled. That is, the two issues are lumped together, I suspect, because in the background there is a single picture that guides and confers a formal unity on the discussion: most commonly, a picture of a domain of meaning with borders that we cannot cross.
Another, perhaps stronger, reason for this lumping may be the strong intuition regarding the unity of the self: we don’t have two of them, but only one, and it is hard to believe Wittgenstein thought different. But, in response, the whole question here is what it means to have a single self; what is the unity of the self. I suggest that investigating these two selves is, among other things, investigating the unity of the self: the sort of unity it has. By lumping the two issues together, we are running the risk of assuming, rather than looking at, what unity the self has. – Anyway, what we need is to look: look at the two cases.
So, why is the distinction between the thinking and willing subject of interest? – Suggestion:
Putting the empirical subject aside, the distinction between the willing and the thinking subject echo the Kantian distinction between theoretical and practical forms of judgment. That is, it is a distinction between kinds of mind—mindedness, making things intelligible, making them thinkable, owning the world in thought and language.
But for Wittgenstein the distinction between kinds of mind is really VERY deep. Wittgenstein does not understand the distinction between theoretical and practical in the way Kant does. First, I think it is fair to say that for Wittgenstein to think is to act (thinking is a verb); and in this sense thinking is very much part of the practical. So far, then, we don’t have the distinction that Wittgenstein is interested in—not yet. The distinction begins to emerge when we see that for Wittgenstein acting (thinking included) has nothing to do with the willing subject. The willing subject for Wittgenstein is not the one who acts. She is rather the one who changes the limits of the word—makes the world happy/unhappy.
We encounter the willing subject, for instance, when a certain course of action, apparently available, suddenly strikes us as impossible—as if it has been withdrawn from logical space. In other cases, a certain course of action may appear as encompassing the whole available space, and people say: ‘I can’t act differently.’ Simone Weil, I think, talks of the willing subject when she says: “Men can never escape from obedience to God. A creature cannot but obey. The only choice given to men, as intelligent and free creatures, is to desire obedience or not to desire it” (The Love of God and Affliction, 129). If the thinking subject is the limit, the willing subject is the one who determines where those limits are. (Or perhaps, the willing subject is the thinking subject turned on itself?)
Still—and this is the most confusing bit—the description of the activity of the willing subject hopelessly, nonsensically, but also necessarily, piggybacks on meaningful language. It makes use of language whose grammar is one of describing things that happen in the world, of actions, as if such language can capture what the willing subject does—as if the willing subject does something, acts.
Another related thought:
In the Tractatus Wittgenstein seems to be more ambivalent about the existence of the thinking subject then about the existence of the willing subject. About the thinking subject he says in 5.631: “The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing.” But in 5.641: “There is therefore really a sense in which the philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I.” As I understand this, the thinking subject is not one more thing with which to make contact. As such it does not exist. Rather, the thinking subject is the maker of contact. It exists in thinking, not in being thought of: it is the limit, it is transcendental. It is subject, not object. It thus disappears every time we try to think or say something about it, as a thumb disappears when we try to catch it. Or again, the thinking subject does not stand in an external, but in an internal relation to things: Thinking of things is not a matter of capturing them from the outside, but of animating them as if from their midst.
To go back to the willing subject, the point is that this set of issues mentioned in the last paragraph does not present itself again when Wittgenstein comes to the discussion about the willing subject in the 6.4s. By the time he gets to discussing that, he has moved on to other issues. In other words, for Wittgenstein the non-existence of the willing subject as a thing in the world is different from the non-existence of the thinking subject as a thing in the world. Of both subjects we cannot speak: both do not require that we speak of them to reveal themselves; both are subjects not objects. But unlike the thinking subject, the (need to talk of the) willing subject does not disappear as a result of the philosophical argument. (And this is connected to a distinction between different kinds of effects that nonsense may have on us, which Cora Diamond makes in ‘Ethics Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.’) As a corollary, the overcoming of the thinking self and the overcoming of the willing self are two different achievements—even if not entirely separate: the one, I suspect, is a necessary metaphor for the other.
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