Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

PHILOSOPHY AS A GUIDE TO LIFE?
subscribes to the venerable idea that eternal life belongs to those who live in the present
[TLP 4.311] Happiness is attained by forsaking both hope and fear. The way to escape
the temporal character of human existence is to be content with how the world is , which
is beyond the control of the human will. [TLP 6.373]. (Glock 1996)
Conclusion
Modern analytical philosophy is a rational discourse on problems of language, truth,
knowledge etc. It has very little to say about how we should live or what we should
believe. Wittgenstein, the foremost analytical philosopher of our times, has written
extensively on what he thought the nature of philosophy to be. His later writings say little
about guiding a common man's life. Also Wittgenstein's ethics, being transcendental and
inexpressible, cannot be compared to what we normally understand under ethics and
morals , injunctions about what is good, how to behave. By contrast, his early writings,
the Tractatus and Notebooks, reveal a deeply religious nature with a mystic reverence
for the existence of the world. Here we find his thoughts on meaning of life, happiness,
contemplating the world sub specie aeterni. He also says how one can be happy in a
miserable world : by a detached spirit and an acceptance of the world as it is without
trying to change it. It is the life which sees the world sub specie aeterni and is content
whatever might be.
Eastern philosophy, such as much of Indian philosophy, is largely different in nature
from Western philosophy although both aim for knowledge. Most of Indian philosophy
being close to religion we find in it ample guidance on how to live , what to believe, how
to attain liberation from the sorrows of earthly life.
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