Wittgenstein had long been troubled by his inability to appreciate the greatness of Shakespeare. In 1946, for example...

Wittgenstein had long been troubled by his inability to appreciate the greatness of Shakespeare. In 1946, for example, he had written:

>It is remarkable how hard we find it to believe something that we do not see the truth of for ourselves. When, for instance, I hear the expression of admiration for Shakespeare by distinguished men in the course of several centuries, I can never rid myself of the suspicion that praising him has been the conventional thing to do; though I have to tell myself that this is not how it is. It takes the authority of Milton really to convince me. I take it for granted that he was incorruptible. - But I don't of course mean by this that I don't believe an enormous amount of praise to have been, and still to be, lavished on Shakespeare without understanding and for the wrong reasons by a thousand professors of literature.

>One of the difficulties he had in accepting Shakespeare as a great poet was that he disliked many of Shakespeare's metaphors and similes: "Shakespeare's similes are, in the ordinary sense, bad. So if they are all the same good - and I don't know whether they are or not - they must be a law to themselves.

Why didn't Wittgenstein like Shakespeare?

Other urls found in this thread:

orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf
elizabethanauthors.org/nietzsche3.htm
youtube.com/watch?v=tY1ezMyRV9w
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Leo Tolstoy, 1906: "I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium... Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself, I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the "Henrys," "Troilus and Cressida," "The Tempest", "Cymbeline", and I have felt, with even greater force, the same feelings,—this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent merits,—thereby distorting their esthetic and ethical understanding,—is a great evil, as is every untruth."

More Wittgenstein:

"I could only stare in wonder at Shakespeare, never do anything with him . . .

"Beethoven's great heart" - nobody could speak of "Shakespeare's great heart" . . .

I do not think that Shakespeare would have been able to reflect on the 'lot of the poet.'

Nor could he regard himself as a prophet or as a teacher of mankind.

People stare at him in wonderment, almost as at a spectacular natural phenomenon. They do not have the feeling that this brings them into contact with a great human being. Rather with a phenomenon."

"It may be that the essential thing with Shakespeare is his ease and authority and that you just have to accept him as he is if you are going to be able to admire him properly, in the way you accept nature, a piece of scenery for example, just as it is.
If I am right about this, that would mean that the style of his whole work, I mean of all of his works taken together, is the essential thing and what provides his justification.
My failure to understand him could then be explained by my inability to read him easily. That is, as one views a splendid piece of scenery."

Orwell identifies Tolstoy's chief quarrel with Shakespeare as "the quarrel between the religious and the humanist attitude towards life." The exuberance with life that characterizes Shakespeare, his interest in everything, the poetic brilliance - the very qualities for which people tend to admire Shakespeare - are precisely the qualities that make him unendurable to Tolstoy, who preached austerity and whose "main aim, in his later years, was to narrow the range of human consciousness. One's interests, one's points of attachment to the physical world and the day-to-day struggle, must be as few and not as many as possible." Since Shakespeare's attitude to life threatens Tolstoy's, Tolstoy is incapable of enjoying Shakespeare and mounts an assault on him in order to try to ensure that others cannot enjoy him either.

I dig this.

>Since Shakespeare's attitude to life threatens Tolstoy's, Tolstoy is incapable of enjoying Shakespeare and mounts an assault on him in order to try to ensure that others cannot enjoy him either.

Sounds like this board

Chekhov also wrote about this. He said that, in comparison to the rest of his Russian contemporaries, Tolstoy wrote like an adult, whereas the rest wrote like children. But as Shakespeare wrote like an adult too, so Tolstoy despised him. He saw Shakespeare as a rival figure that threatened his possition as the greatest authority in literature.

>Shakespeare's similes are, in the ordinary sense, bad
>doesn't give examples

hmmmmm

Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool
orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf

I see parallels between Orwell and Nietzsche's thinking in regard to "the quarrel between the religious and the humanist attitude towards life." Then there is the fact that Tolstoy was influenced by Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein was influenced by Tolstoy and, to a lesser extent, Schopenhauer. And how Nietzsche's philosophy is a reaction against Schopenhauer. Then there are the attacks on Tolstoy from Nietzsche and on Nietzsche from Tolstoy. It seems like there is a fundamental psychological split here with Wittgenstein, Tolstoy, Schopenhauer's philosophy, Christianity on one side and Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Schopenhauer's personality, humanism on the other.

Did old Fred ever write about Shakespeare?

'lol shakespeer sux' is high school tier
everyone feels that way about him at some point

he's great. he literally INVEMTED the human beang

Maybe all of this is only of interest to me because I feel like I have been split between two contradictory attitudes and comparing these people and finding the Orwell essay gave me the words to explain the confusion I felt. I think some "existential crises" might really be similar confusions, not having a consistent attitude. I guess it's just a question of the attitude you have towards life.


EDGAR Away, old man; give me thy hand; away!
King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en:
Give me thy hand; come on.
GLOUCESTER No farther, sir; a man may rot even here.
EDGAR What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all: come on.
GLOUCESTER And that's true too.

Nietzsche on Hamlet:

>In this sense the Dionysian man has similarities to Hamlet. Both have had a real glimpse into the essence of things. They have understood, and it now disgusts them to act, for their actions can change nothing in the eternal nature of things. They perceive as ridiculous or humiliating the fact that they are expected to set right a world which is out of joint. The knowledge kills action, for action requires a state of being in which we are covered with the veil of illusion. That is what Hamlet has to teach us, not that really venal wisdom about John-a-Dreams, who cannot move himself to act because of too much reflection, too many possibilities, so to speak. It’s not a case of reflection. No! The true knowledge, the glimpse into the cruel truth overcomes every driving motive to act, both in Hamlet as well as in the Dionysian man. Now no consolation has any effect. His longing goes out over a world, even beyond the gods themselves, toward death.

elizabethanauthors.org/nietzsche3.htm

Why does Chesterton like Shakespeare, then, if Shakespeare is so anti-Christian?

So we have an Austrian and Russian who doesn't like Shakespeare. To be sure, Shakespeare is amplified by his reputation, beyond all reasonable expectations. Although, Mark Antony's "Cry Havoc!" and "Friends, Romans, Countryment!" speeches, are amazing, in "Julius Caesar". Perhaps because they fall into my own personal historical interests.

Not exactly one of his most noteworthy plays, but with insurmountable moments, nonetheless.

More from that Nietzsche quotation:

>Now no consolation has any effect. His longing goes out over the world, even beyond the gods themselves, toward death. Existence is denied, together with its blazing reflection in the gods or an immortal afterlife. In the consciousness of once having glimpsed the truth, man now sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of being; now he understands the symbolism in the fate of Ophelia; now he recognizes the wisdom of the forest god Silenus. It disgusts him.

>Here the will in in the highest danger. Thus, to be saved, it comes close to the healing magician, art. Art alone can turn those thoughts of disgust at the horror or absurdity of existence into imaginary constructs, which permit living to continue. These constructs are the Sublime as the artistic mastering of the horrible and the Comic as the artistic release from disgust at the absurd. The chorus of satyrs in the dithyramb is the saving fact of Greek art. The emotional fits I have just described play themselves out by means of the world of these Dionysian attendants.

youtube.com/watch?v=tY1ezMyRV9w

Orwell describing what he means by "the quarrel between the religious and the humanist attitude towards life:

>Tolstoy was not a saint, but he tried very hard to make himself into a saint, and the standards he applied to literature were other-worldly ones. It is important to realize that the difference between a saint and an ordinary human being is a difference of kind and not of degree. That is, the one is not to be regarded as an imperfect form of the other. The saint, at any rate Tolstoy's kind of saint, is not trying to work an improvement in earthly life: he is trying to bring it to an end and put something different in its place. One obvious expression of this is the claim that celibacy is ‘higher’ than marriage. If only, Tolstoy says in effect, we would stop breeding, fighting, struggling and enjoying, if we could get rid not only of our sins but of everything else that binds us to the surface of the earth — including love, then the whole painful process would be over and the Kingdom of Heaven would arrive. But a normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on earth to continue. This is not solely because he is ‘weak’, ‘sinful’ and anxious for a ‘good time’. Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. Ultimately it is the Christian attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic, since the aim is always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana. The humanist attitude is that the struggle must continue and that death is the price of life. ‘Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all’ — which is an un-Christian sentiment. Often there is a seeming truce between the humanist and the religious believer, but in fact their attitudes cannot be reconciled: one must choose between this world and the next. And the enormous majority of human beings, if they understood the issue, would choose this world. They do make that choice when they continue working, breeding and dying instead of crippling their faculties in the hope of obtaining a new lease of existence elsewhere.

>Often there is a seeming truce between the humanist and the religious believer, but in fact their attitudes cannot be reconciled: one must choose between this world and the next.
Maybe they can be reconciled if people view life after death as another form of life rather than eternal peace.

Great Nietzsche quote, user. Thanks.

This "new lease of existence elsewhere" is anti-life if its within life but if it's after death then it's more of an extension of life.

So, then, why does Chesterton like Shakespeare?

There is probably a life-denying way of being a Christian and a life-affirming way of being a Christian.

By religious he means a particular kind of religious so Chesterton could be another kind. Or maybe he likes the prose and could overlook minor details or not notice them. Or maybe the divide doesn't really exist.

Time to trigger the Orthoboos: what if Orthodoxy is life-denying and Catholicism is life-affirming?

I feel like there is a grain of truth to what Orwell is saying but there is another perspective that would make more sense.

Because he's not very smart.

That reminds me of how Schopenhauer contrasts the Old and New Testament:

>The contrast which the New Testament presents when compared with the Old, according to the ecclesiastical view of the matter, is just that existing between my ethical system and the moral philosophy of Europe. The Old Testament represents man as under the dominion of Law, in which, however, there is no redemption. The New Testament declares Law to have failed, frees man from its dominion,6 and in its stead preaches the kingdom of grace, to be won by faith, love of neighbor and entire sacrifice of self. This is the path of redemption from the evil of the world. The spirit of the New Testament is undoubtedly asceticism, however your protestants and rationalists may twist it to suit their purpose. Asceticism is the denial of the will to live; and the transition from the Old Testament to the New, from the dominion of Law to that of Faith, from justification by works to redemption through the Mediator, from the domain of sin and death to eternal life in Christ, means, when taken in its real sense, the transition from the merely moral virtues to the denial of the will to live. My philosophy shows the metaphysical foundation of justice and the love of mankind, and points to the goal to which these virtues necessarily lead, if they are practised in perfection. At the same time it is candid in confessing that a man must turn his back upon the world, and that the denial of the will to live is the way of redemption. It is therefore really at one with the spirit of the New Testament, whilst all other systems are couched in the spirit of the Old; that is to say, theoretically as well as practically, their result is Judaism — mere despotic theism. In this sense, then, my doctrine might be called the only true Christian philosophy — however paradoxical a statement this may seem to people who take superficial views instead of penetrating to the heart of the matter.

I'm sure it's not so black and white and you could come from the Bible denying life or affirming life based on something in your makeup.

Damn, ol' Fred N. was patrician as fuck.

>"the quarrel between the religious and the humanist attitude towards life."
The labels here don't matter, you could call the religious attitude attitude x and the humanist attitude attitude y and define them by Orwell's definition here
>Tolstoy says in effect, we would stop breeding, fighting, struggling and enjoying, if we could get rid not only of our sins but of everything else that binds us to the surface of the earth — including love, then the whole painful process would be over and the Kingdom of Heaven would arrive.
There really is a divide here because life is breeding, fighting, struggling, enjoying and loving. But life could also be asceticism, forcing yourself to stop breeding, fighting, struggling, enjoying and loving. So it is really a matter of degree and values. It's possible to have a moderate position in regard to asceticism.

are you fucking retarded? literally every autistic high schooler pretends shakespeare is the greatest; maybe noone will deny he's boring as shit but even fucking donuts will argue with you if you say macbeth is a pile of dogshit

>the whole painful process would be over
That is the real enemy of life (Heraclitus: Nothing endures but change.) and probably has something to do with Nietzsche's emphasis on the eternal return.

I am pretty sure somewhere Nietzsche lays out two different types of asceticism, one good (with a purpose) and one bad (in itself with no purpose).

To be fair, I think this was during the period when Tolstoy was disillusioned by *all* fiction. Not too surprising that he'd hate the Bard.

Well, the Christian response would be that one cannot have the New Testament without the Old. One must travel through the Law to get to Grace. Perhaps the Bible ought to be viewed as a kind of map for the progression of a believer's life. Just throwing things out there.

OP is going to bed. Goodnight, friends.

Orwell was a faggot materialist though.

>It is remarkable how hard we find it to believe something that we do not see the truth of for ourselves.

Jesus...

>non-anglos reading Shakespeare

Wasn't Tolstoy a bit of a materialist too, though? His Christianity was sincere, but as I recall, it was unorthodox. He rejected the Church, for instance.

Fuck off, Yank.
>non-Englishmen will never understand Shakespeare

>Orwell
Wew lad.

>even ironically looking down your nose at Orwell

Catholics have remnants of buying forgiveness (they confess in private), for Orthodox it's to the community. In that Orthodox is probs more life affirming as you have to take the end result of your will rather than hiding it in a Priest and his box.

Plenty of Scots in the RSC

he was aspect-blind to it.

this can be linked as a reject of Schopenhauer "Will" by explaining that only a man febble enough to be manipulated by the will doesn't kill himself

>this thread is about literature
>we are discussing literature

>inability to appreciate
>like

imagine someone who loves chocolates and then for some reason loses sensibility in his tongue.

does he stop liking chocolates? can he dislike them? how about someone born in that condition?

Dislike of Shakespeare is common among stupid men who nevertheless feel special and important.

Wittgenstein was a lot smarter than you.

All he has to his name is a reputation.

he did, he describes him as a wild genius somewhere, i think for Brutus in Julius Caesar

Nietzsche liked him.

He's the same with nihilism. He criticizes life denial in all of its forms. If you live an ascetic life in pursuit of some particular worldly goal (for example forsaking certain pleasures in order to concentrate on others) that is noble. If you live an ascetic life in pursuit of heaven or because someone told you that was right, that's slavish and contemptible.

A lot of people look at Nietzsche and see someone who's opposed to rules when nothing could be further from the truth. living 'freely' is the dream of women, it is the last man. A higher type of man creates his own rules and is able to hold himself to them.

Same reason why he considered suicide the most patrician way to die. Once you've done what you set out to accomplished in life there's no point in twiddling your thumbs and waiting for death to take you. Ending your life on your own terms is the ultimate expression of willfulness which is why Schopenhauer repeatedly cautioned against it and why Nietzsche embraced it.

I'm conflicted, I want to buy the narrative of Shakespeare being bawdy and commonplace for its time period, just to be a contrarian douche. Yet when I actually read the plays the plot is interesting, the verse is good and the characters seem quite deep

for the same reason he made a house no one could live in,
or made a book no one could understand,
or failed to properly teach anything to any of his students,
or failed to achieve his 2nd book.

he never learned empathy, which is the base on which any human creation can be shared and thus completed.

you can like both lads :)

Goddamn why can't all of lit be like this thread. This is some hot shit.

This reminds me of what is, to me, the line at the heart of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Brodie is going on about one of her fanciful visions of how to solve the world and the protagonist girl has the thought that goes something like, "she felt no urge to solve the world, she wanted only that those hungry children she had seen in the street could eat."
Which is to say it's not so much the religious attitude versus the humanist attitude, it's more the authoritarian attitude versus the humanist. The idea that there is a right way, that there is a solution for all of this, versus the idea that there is no right way, only better ways.
Of course Christianity most often lends itself toward the authoritarian, but not always as the existence of Chesterton proves.

cause we'd get burnt

good post ty

jesus christ this is has played a part in a deeper understanding of my OCD and the way in which I sublimate it and renew my invigoration for life despite the depression it sends me into.
Jesus Christ!
Thank you Veeky Forums! I love you

Hardly.

I would argue that Christianity contains both impulses equally, given that Christ encompasses both impulses. After all, Christ is the King, the ruler of all time and space, but he's also the least and lowest, the hungry, the poor, the sick. "Whatsoever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

Now, the trouble is that humans have a hard time encompassing both elements. They gravitate towards either the authoritarian or the humanitarian, and they fashion their own Christ in that image. But the actual Christ is too big to be pinned down that way--I think.

Eat shit, moron.

>materialist
>rejected the church

Wouldn't that make him even less of a Materialist? Like, almost a Gnostic or something?

>>non-Englishmen will never understand Shakespeare
Neither will the English if they don't start printing copies in Arabic.

He was an ultra-high functioning autist, kind of like Kant.

Top bants

Reminds me of a passage from Bertrand Russell:

>Cultivated people in eighteenth-century France greatly admired what they called "la sensibilité", which meant a proneness to emotion, and more particularly to the emotion of sympathy. To be thoroughly satisfactory, the emotion must be direct and violent and quite uninformed by thought. The man of sensibility would be moved to tears by the sight of a single destitute peasant family, but would be cold to well-thought-out schemes for ameliorating the lot of peasants as a class.

>what if Orthodoxy is life-denying
But we all know it is

“The world” is the general name for all the passions. When we wish to call the passions by a common name, we call them the world. But when we wish to distinguish them by their special names, we call them passions. The passions are the following: love of riches, desire for possessions, bodily pleasure from which comes sexual passion, love of honor which gives rise to envy, lust for power, arrogance and pride of position, the craving to adorn oneself with luxurious clothes and vain ornaments, the itch for human glory which is a source of rancor and resentment, and physical fear. Where these passions cease to be active, there the world is dead…. Someone has said of the Saints that while alive they were dead; for though living in the flesh, they did not live for the flesh. See for which of these passions you are alive. Then you will know how far you are alive to the world, and how far you are dead to it.”

-St Isaac the Syrian .

10/10

If you view this life as merely a momentary travel to the eternal life then I'm not sure how those things are life-denying.

>if you dare to have your own opinion on something we view as great, you must be dumb
psued detected

He was approaching Shakespeare wrong. Shakespeare wasn't a poet or a visionary. He was a storyteller, a bard. The purpose of his work is to entertain.

>tfw i've been dead my whole life

gotta admit, Schopenhauer sounds smarter than what Veeky Forums memes lead me to believe

Never, ever trust memes to tell the truth.

>Including love

I see no evidence in anything Tolstoy wrote that he would encourage anyone to do away with love.

Just stop reading Shakespeare and you can be as contrarian as you want

>for the same reason he made a house no one could live in
what?

he had some weird theory about doors and windows being a "spook"

Shakespeare was just a storyteller. His poetry is cringy and shitty.

...

>Rudolf Carnap never read IJ
fucking dropped

new related thread

Wittgenstein may have been trying to copy Tolstoy.

Tolstoy wrote a well-known piece criticising Shakespeare and Wittgenstein had great admiration for Tolstoy's work.

>doesn't like him
>still reads his entire corpus several times
He was just bullshitting, the absolute madman. Writers love to be special snowflakes.

Tolstoy sounds like a huge faggot.

no discernible talent

7/10 for effort

what do you mean by authoritarian here ?

you make it sound like anarcho/libertin peoples care more about others than authoritarian peoples

Nietzsche actually ranked Shakespeare beneath Goethe.

His reasoning was twofold:

1) He wrote plays (i.e. for theatre) - the most plebeian and democratised of art forms that requires the least amount of imagination from its audience.

2) Following on from this, the fact that he wrote for plebeians AND patricians seemed to bug Nietzsche. Goethe, by contrast, wrote for patricians alone.

>Goethe, by contrast, wrote for patricians alone.
Goethe wrote a poem for his syphilitic willy.

Faust, widely considered Goethe's masterpiece, is a play. Goethe also wrote Werther, a huge hit beloved by plebs and patricians alike.
Shakespeare > Goethe, only Germans disagree.

spoken like a true pleb. enjoy the world of the factory, where ideas are as unreachable as stars

I think I remember him writing something about Bacon obviously being shakespeare

>Goethe wrote a poem for his syphilitic willy.

Yes, and Mozart wrote to people saying that he'd shit on their faces.

A patrician can make anything patrician.

>tfw nietzche never got to die at the right moment OR watch us hold his golden ball
;___________;

>faust is a play
>this is what plebs believe

lmao

also goethe sorta disavowed werther desu