Distribution Automatique

Friday, July 8

Love Is Not A Feeling

"504. Love is not a feeling. Love is put to the test,
pain not. One does not say: "That was not true
pain, or it would not have gone off so quickly!"
........................

"656. To be ashamed of a thought. Is one ashamed
at the fact that one has spoken such-and-such a
sentence in one's imagination?
Language is variously rooted: it has roots, not a single
root. [Marginal note: ((Remembering a thought,
an intension)) A Seed.]"

*Zettel*
Ludwig Wittgenstein
(cited below)

Could not Wittgenstein have spoken of love in the same
way: in terms of seeds, intensions and roots?

So much of Wittgenstein's thought is at the boundary
between philosophy and psychology. He is moving
towards a developmental theory of language and
and experience. Love is a word for an experience,
and an experience may be much more gradual
and complex in its development than a feeling. Wittgenstein
is noting the rootedness of words, using an analogy to the
rootedness of an experience. One might go further then, and
say: love (like words) has a
development: seed, intension, conviction, committment.
He keeps pointing out how often people overlook
the intervening details, at the same time he notes
how thought can fly.

For example:

"81. Really one hardly ever says that one has
believed, understood or intended something
"uninterruptedly" since yesterday. An
interruption of belief would be a period of
unbelief, not e.g. the withdrawal of attention
from what one believes- e.g. sleep.
(Difference between 'knowing' and 'being aware
of.}"