Wednesday 25 April 2018

When reading yesterday a very worthy magazine, there came to mind the phrase (among some friends we knew) "Effing the ineffable". That is, trying to speak in words something that goes beyond words. (I probably do this in these blogs!) It's a tricky balance. The philosopher Wittgenstein famously ended his first, revolutionary, book with the line "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" (though in German). He softened this in later books however!
 The main deficiency in this sort of thinking is it's focus on words. A true connection with a person is not merely a string of words, though they can invoke deeper things: it is a state of combined being. Words can spark this, but they are not the real thing.

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