(It is kind of strange to write a post when one's blog is password-protected and one knows exactly who has the password (assuming they haven't shared).)
I presume that the aphorism of Lichtenberg's most often cited in contemporary Anglophone (at last, a legitimate use for the term) philosophical discussion is the one about the cogito and "es denkt" (though there are many others of interest even on similar themes), which begins thus:
Wir werden uns gewisser Vorstellungen bewußt, die nicht von uns abhängen; andere glauben wir wenigstens hingen von uns ab; wo ist die Grenze? Wir kennen nur allein die Existenz unserer Empfindungen, Vorstellungen und Gedanken. Es denkt, sollte man sagen, so wie man sagt: es blitzt.
We become aware of certain representations, which do not depend on us; others believe that we at least depend on ourselves; where is the boundary? We are acquainted only with the existence of our sensations, representations and thoughts. It thinks, one should say, as one says it thunders. (Hollingdale's translation, incidentally, does not include the first two sentences and does not indicate that it has excluded anything.)
And even there what discussion one encounters seems often to take the third sentence quoted as the only one. Thus Parfit in Reasons and Persons takes Lichtenberg straight, but also suggests that Lichtenberg will have a problem; he must "explain the unity of a person's life in an impersonal way". McDowell, on the other hand, in "Reductionism and the First Person", takes Lichtenberg to be ironic:
On this understanding [Parfit's], Lichtenberg is fundamentally Cartesian in the sense I have suggested; he accepts that "consciousness" has its content in a way that requires no context … but it is quite doubtful that we can really conceive thinking as a subjectless occurrence, like a state of the weather, and Lichtenberg's aphorism is much more pointed if we read him as exploiting that fact. … The aphorism goes through the motions of expressing that idea, but we cannot be meant to take it simply in our stride. The point of the aphorism, on this different reading, is to question the basic Cartesian conviction that "consciousness" is self-contained …
Ok. But there's more to the aphorism. Here's how it ends:
Zu sagen cogito, ist schon zu viel, so bald man es durch Ich denke übersetzt. Das Ich anzunehmen, zu postulieren, ist praktisches Bedürfnis.
To say cogito is already too much, as soon as one translates it with "I think". To assume, to postulate the I is a practical necessity.
One may at this point wonder: a necessity for whom? But one may also wonder why this part of the aphorism gets no representation in its invocations. (Obvious exception: Günter Zöller's "Lichtenberg and Kant on the Subject of Thinking.")
Recent Comments