In the manuscript material left by Wittgenstein there are numerous
notes which do not belong directly with his philosophical works al-
though they are scattered amongst the philosophical texts. Some of
these notes are autobiographical, some are about the nature of philo-
sophical activity, and some concern subjects of a general sort, such as
questions about art or about religion. It is not always possible to separate
them sharply from the philosophical text....
Some of these notes are ephemeral; others on the other hand—the
majority—are of great interest. Sometimes they are strikingly beautiful
and profound. (Culture and Value, Foreword, my emphasis)Here von Wright seems to be following Wittgenstein’s own lead that “phi-
losophy” shades into “poetry” and vice versa. But how and why? Some early
entries in Culture and Value (see 2–7) may be apropos:
Each morning you have to break through the dead rubble afresh so as
to reach the living warm seed.A new word is like a fresh seed sewn on the ground of the discussion.When we think of the world’s future, we always mean the destination
it will reach if it keeps going in the direction we can see it going in now;
it does not occur to us that its path is not a straight line but a curve,
constantly changing direction.Each of the sentences I write is trying to say the whole thing, i.e. the
same thing over and over again; it is as though they were all simply
views of one object seen from different angles.The thread that runs through these aphorisms and propositions is on the
need for what Gertrude Stein had already called, in her “Composition as Ex-
planation” (1926), beginning again and again. Truth is not something that can
be uncovered; it can only be rediscovered, day after day. The value of breaking
through the dead rubble each morning and in viewing each object from as
many angles as possible is that one keeps one’s mind open, that conclusions
are always tentative, and that the process of discovery is always more impor-
tant than any particular end result.
Not a straight line but a curve, constantly changing direction. Theoretical
formulation, generalization, moral injunction: these, for Wittgenstein, are
Wittgenstein on Translation 67