At 00:43 11/12/98 -0800, Ken Hanly wrote: > I didn't realise that Wittgenstein had any influence on Sraffa. I >though the influence was the other way around. Sraffa sort of woke >Wittgenstein from his dogmatic slumbers. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein >holds that all language, to communicate, must have a certain logical >structure. An ideal languages would make this structure transparent >whereas it is obscured in ordinary language. Symbolic logic basically >gives you the form of this structure without any content. (Wittgenstein >developed truth tables independently of the mathematician Post. >Wittgenstein thought they gave you a picture of "logical space".) >Wittgenstein was explaining his ideas to Sraffa and Sraffa made a gesture >of contempt. I gather that it is a movement of the hand under the chin >that Italians use. Sraffa said: What is the logical structure of that? >Strangely enough , since he usually didn't pay attention to criticism, >this really impressed Wittgenstein. He said to himself. Shit. Maybe it >doesn't have a logical structure. Here I thought I had solved the basic >problems of the philosophy of language and have been saying THIS MUST BE >SO when any idiot, even an economist, can see it AINT SO. ___________________ Wittgenstein did not see Sraffa as an "idiot" or "an economist". Let me give you just two quotations, one from Preface of *Philosophical Investigations* and second from von Wright's 'Biographical Sketch' of Wittgenstein. "For since beginning to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I have been forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book. I was helped to realize these mistakes--to a degree which I myself am hardly able to estimate--by the criticism which my ideas encountered from Frank Ramsey, with whom I discussed them in innumerable conversations during the last two years of his life. Even more than to this--always certain and forcible--criticism I am indebted to that which a teacher of this university, Mr. P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly practised on my thoughts. I am indebted to THIS stimulus for the most consequential ideas of this book." (L.W) "Of great importance in the origination of Wittgenstein's new ideas was the criticism to which his earlier views were subjected by two of his friends. One was Ramsey, whose premature death in 1930 was a heavy loss to contemporary thought. The other was Piero Sraffa, an Italian economist who had come to Cambridge shortly before Wittgenstein returned there. It was above all Sraffa's acute and forceful criticism that compelled Wittgenstein to abandon his earlier views and set out upon new roads. He said that his discussions with Sraffa made him feel like a tree from which all branches had been cut." (von Wright) So simply it was not just Sraffa's well known 'Sisilyan gesture' that caused it all. Now, why I'm reading Wittgenstein, when the influence seems to be other way round? It is because Sraffa's writings, and particularly PCMC, is like music with full of silences. The silences are part of the music, and cannot be 'understood' without a good understanding of the silences. On the face of it, PCMC has a family resemblence with TRACTATUS, but once you begin to listen to the silences the ground starts to shift. I think the nature of shift in Wittgenstein's thought would be able to help us understand Sraffa's silences and the nature of his project much better. As far as who influenced whom is concerned, I think when two outstanding minds indulge in friendly intellectual discussions for many years it would be foolhardy for anyone to think that the influence would be a one way avenue. I don't know much about Wittgenstein's "antisemiticism", but his friend Sraffa was a jew. Cheers, ajit sinha
