When there are no words

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

This short proposition concludes Ludwig Wittgenstein's (1889-1951) philosophical masterpiece Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

With this statement Wittgenstein did not mean what we commonly say, that if you don't have anything important to say you’d better remain silent, but rather that there are aspects of reality that cannot be expressed in language and must therefore remain unspoken. 

Indeed. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that words cannot express the magnitude of the devastation that we have been witnessing since Tuesday night.

As it happens, one part of our portion today is about the limits of language, the inability of expression.

Jacob is dying. He therefore gathers his children in order to share his last words with them.

“And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.”

The term Acharit Hayamim, is translated here (King James Version) to “last days,” however this Hebrew term is commonly translated to “The end of days.”

This is curious. It may seem that here Jacob is about to share an “end of days” prophecy with his children.

However, strangely enough, when the chapter continues, Jacob’s words to his children have nothing to do with prophecy; rather, he enhances and highlights personality traits in each of his children and blesses them accordingly.

This strange inconsistency was explained by Rashi as if the Shechinah (the divine presence) simply left him before he had gotten to share it and he “began to speak of other things.”

Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz however suggests that when he was about to speak the prophecy, he simply was unable to, because one cannot describe what cannot be described — that sometimes it is not a matter of finding the right words, because the right words simply don’t exist.

This suggestion of Steinsaltz is the exact core of the argument of Wittgensteins’s revolutionary work.

Wittgenstein’s main claim is that our language is limited when it comes to our ability to describe reality, and therefore our understanding of reality itself is limited as well.

While philosophers before Wittgenstein theorised endlessly about “what is” (Ontology) or about “what we know there is” (Epistemology) Wittgenstein pivoted towards a completely different philosophical inquiry, simply saying that all theories are merely a reflection of what we are able to express.

“What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What expresses itself in language we cannot express by means of language.” 

This rather confusing quote from the Tractatus simply means that while there are aspects of our reality that we can simply and accurately describe, there are also concepts like (math, values, ethics); if these concepts are impossible to describe through language using words which describe our reality, they are meaningless.

For example, we can reflect upon the logical concept by which 3 plus 3 equals 6, but where does the concept of 3 actually exist in reality? Or the concept of “right?”

After all, language is something which developed organically by humans based on their experiences and was not thrust upon us one day in a holy grail... Conversations using terms which do not reflect our experiences such as “the meaning of life” are therefore deemed meaningless.

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” he writes, and later: “The sense of the world must lie outside the world…”

While Wittgenstein thought that he figured out all philosophy and stopped writing after the Tractatus (only to decades later, write a critical response to his own work,) his argument is nothing new when it comes to Jewish thought. The first volume of the Rambam’s Guide for the Perplexed deals almost entirely with unpacking limited language which attempts to describe God (the essence of reality), acknowledging its limitation and suggesting to only investigate the essence by stating what it is not. 

One way or another, reality can be shown to us, but not necessarily described by us and therefore understood by us.

Here in this column I have written many words that Wittgenstein would label meaningless. He would suggest that after reading a column such as this you should discard it like a ladder you just climbed on to reach somewhere and then kick it back down. 

I have no words to describe the devastation around us, nor do I wish to understand it. Like Jacob, my inability to find words, brings me to communicate with you what I can and not what I cannot.

Let us spare our words at this time and the words we are able to find, let us use wisely. Let us come together in deed and in love and try to embrace the most essential thing we can never put into words. And that is faith.