Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

PHILOSOPHY AS A GUIDE TO LIFE?
philosophy itself. We find his early writings to be of a special charm with a mystical and
religious flavour worth reconsidering. This part of Wittgenstein's writing is perhaps a
little surprising to the uninitiated who regard him primarily as a rigorous analytical
philosopher. We would however point out that his remarks on happiness, ethics etc.
may not be of much practical use to the common man seeking happiness or wondering
how to behave, because Wittgenstein's extremely condensed marmoreal remarks often
relate to an abstract philosophical plane.(Glock 1996)
Wittgenstein was a pious man in search of a religion. During the trauma of war
experience, he felt like resigning to God's will. He found Christianity to be the only safe
way to happiness. (Glock 1996) However he did not believe in a personal God or the
dogmas of any particular religion. Religion coalesced for him with ineffable mysticism
and God with Meaning of Life. [NB 11.6.16] Some of his writings related to our topic, in
this period may be quoted:
Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is. (TLP 6.44)
The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In this world everything is as
it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value - and if there were, it
would be of no value [TLP 6.41]
The good life is the world seen sub specie eternitatis. The usual way of looking
at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them, the view sub specie
eternitatis from outside. [NB 7.10.16] The contemplation of the world sub specie
eterni is its contemplation as a limited whole. The feeling of the world as a limited
whole is the mystical feeling [TLP 6.45].
..the man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence ...who no longer
needs to have a purpose except to live. That is to say who is content.
The solution of the problem of life is to be seen in the disappearance of the
problem. [NB 6.7.16]
To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of
life. .. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.
I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said : good or evil do not exist.
[NB 8.7.16]
The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy [TLP 6.45].
I keep on coming back to this! simply the happy life is good , the unhappy bad
And if I now ask myself : But why should I live happily, then this of itself seems
to me to be a tautological question; the happy life seems to be justified, of itself,
it seems that it is the only right life. [NB 30.7.16]
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