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The Formal Structure of Metaphysics and
The Importance of Being Earnest |
Jeremy Barris
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This
article was first published in Metaphilosophy
39.4-5 (2008): 546-570 and is here republished by kind permission of the
author. There may be small differences in grammar and style between this
version and the published text. Jeremy
Barris teaches in the Philosophy Department, Marshall University, Huntington,
West Virginia. |
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Abstract |
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This article considers how the formal structure of
metaphysical thought is displayed in Oscar Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest. One frequent aim of metaphysics is
to understand the world as a whole. We cannot gain such a global vantage
point without separating ourselves from all the particular meanings things
have for us within the world. But we start within the world, and so can only
proceed on the basis of those particular meanings. Consequently we can only
separate ourselves from them if they work to cancel themselves in
favor of the global understanding. When the separate range of meanings is
established, however, it and the world it aims to understand no longer have
any meaning for each other. Metaphysics therefore succeeds by establishing
and canceling its relevant meaning, all at once. This self-canceling moment
or process of thought constitutes a grasp of the world as a whole. It also
allows different understandings of reality as a whole to recognize and so
enter into dialogue with each other. The climactic moments of The
Importance of Being Earnest are structured as a map of this
insight-granting process of the self-cancellation of a global range of
meanings. That is, they express the formal structure of metaphysical thought. |
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Keywords:
metaphysics, Wilde, pluralism, humor, contradiction |
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In this article, I try to show that the climactic
moments of Oscar Wilde=s The Importance of Being Earnest are structured
in a way that displays the formal structure or logic of a central type of
metaphysical thinking. I do not aim to show that the play is
metaphysics, or that it justifies this formal structure as appropriate
to metaphysics, but only that it parallels and displays this structure in its
own way. |
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In the first section I shall sketch what I mean by the
formal structure of this type of metaphysics. In the second section, I shall
show how the play maps this structure. As my discussion of the play proceeds,
I shall explain further details of the corresponding structure or process of
metaphysical thought, and try to justify these details as truly
characterizing metaphysics. |
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1. A Preliminary Sketch of the Formal Structure of
Metaphysics |
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One well-represented aim of metaphysics is to account
for the world as a whole. While not all metaphysics pursue this aim, for
those that do it is a familiar insight, in a variety of philosophical
perspectives B among others, ordinary language, pragmatist, Wittgensteinian,
existential B that metaphysics, in trying to account for the world as
a whole, has to use language in a way that is different from any of its
particular applications within the world. Karl Jaspers, for example,
notes, in connection with his own philosophical work, that AFor the clarification of . . . the Encompassing, we have
used words and concepts which had their original meaning for definite things
in the world; now however they are used to go beyond the limits and are not
to be understood in their original sense . . . @ (1997, 111). That is, the language of metaphysics does
not share the meanings of language as used in any context within the world.
In other words, it is meaningless with respect to the entirety of our
familiar language. When metaphysics succeeds, then, in providing an account
of the world as a whole, it makes itself entirely meaningless and so irrelevant
to anything we might mean in any language but its own by what it accounts
for. |
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A well-known extreme version of this idea is that
metaphysical language, or attempted talk from a vantage point on reality as a
whole, simply has no meaning at all.[1] As will become clear, this is not what I am proposing
here. |
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On the other hand, it is also true that metaphysical
grounding and explanation arrives at its language through the use of
our familiar language. It transforms our familiar language into its own,
produces its own language on the basis of familiar language. Consequently familiar
language itself goes through a process in which it makes itself
meaningless and irrelevant. As Jaspers comments, Atranscending thought . . . in its form of thinking the
unthinkable . . . always seems to be canceling itself@ (1997, 112). |
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We can conceptualize this as an all-embracing circle of
meaning becoming two, entirely separate all-embracing circles of meanings,
wholly closed off to and irrelevant to each other. In this respect, the
process by which metaphysical thought establishes itself is exactly analogous
to the process by which globally different standpoints would have to relate
to each other=s sense.[2] |
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Metaphysics, in this context, has the structure of two
globally different domains of meaning, meaningfully interacting with each
other. By Ameaningfully interacting@ I mean relating to each other specifically with respect
to each other=s meanings: in contrast, for example, with simply
ignoring what the other has to say and dealing with that other by means of
unilateral force. Because these are global domains of meaning, they
are the ultimate contexts in which questions about and concepts of reality
and truth have their sense. They therefore give the most basic structure of
anything we might mean by anything, including what we might mean by reality
and truth themselves.[3] |
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And since metaphysics in our sense has precisely the
structure of meaningful interaction between globally different circles of
meaning, the formal or essential structure of metaphysics in this sense, its
logic, is the same as the formal or essential structure, or logic, of
meaningful interaction between globally different circles of meaning. |
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As I try to show in the main body of the paper, the
climactic moments of The Importance of Being Earnest display the
formal structure or logic of meaningful interaction between globally
different circles of meaning. (In fact, the play does not deal with genuinely
global circles of meaning, but, as I shall show, it works with the
interactions between different circles of meaning in a way that nicely
parallels and so displays the structure of the process that occurs when the
differences are global.) This is worth exploring and laying out in its
own right, and in this respect the logic I explore here may be of interest
even to those who do not pursue the type of metaphysics I claim that it
characterizes, or who, for that matter, do not accept that claim. But, while
the play is concerned with interacting circles of meaning, and not with
reality and truth each as a whole, the formal structures of the two concerns
are the same. As a result, in displaying the formal structure of this
interaction of “meaning circles,” Wilde also displays the formal structure of
metaphysics in the sense of an account of the world as a whole. |
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Returning to this structure or logic: in fact, we can
only speak of a circle of meaning when there is another circle to contrast with
it. In other words, it is not at first the case B or not at first correctly expressed to say B that a circle of meaning becomes two circles. Until the
second circle is there, there is no sense to speaking of any circles at all.
(This is not to say that we cannot talk about our meanings, but that
we cannot genuinely speak about meaning as a complete whole or Acircle,@ which would be in comparison, say, with a kind of
meaning wholly different from the entirety of our meanings. We would not know
what we meant there by the phrase, Awholly other kind of meaning.@) Consequently, it is only at the moment when two
contrasting circles of meanings occur, when the new set of meanings has
become established, that we can say, retrospectively, that our familiar
language constituted one set of meanings among possible others, rather than
simply constituting meaning as such, period. |
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Before metaphysics succeeds, then, we have an absolute
range of meanings, with nothing meaningful to be Arelative@ to. Similarly, within the new circle, because it
is a circle by virtue of being all-embracing, alternative Ameanings@ simply do not exist. Consequently within the new circle
we also have an absolute range of meanings, the only meanings there can
conceivably be. But at the point of transition between no circles and two
circles, or at the point at which two such circles try to communicate with
each other, we have a moment of relative meanings and so of relative truths.
(For example, if an Aristotelian comes to understand a Leibnizian, before
going about making the decision as to which is right, she will need, if she
does not want to beg the question by deciding which is right in advance, to
be able to think of this page both as truly not extended in space but a
coordination of size-less, mutually independent monadic perceptions, each aware
of the entire universe, and also as truly extended in space and composed of
an organic integration of impercipient form and matter, neither containing in
itself any relation to most of the rest of what surrounds it. These
interpretations of the Asame@ thing will then be relative to the respective
metaphysical frameworks.) But, again, the moment we can conceive these
circles as circles at all (and this is the same moment as the moment
of transition or attempted communication), they are, being circles, closed
and so absolutely meaningless and irrelevant to each other. As a result this
is a relation between, a relativity of, two absolute meanings and
truths. |
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This is, of course, a paradox, involving a
contradiction. But it is a paradox that, for the reasons I have been giving,
I believe accurately describes the situation of global metaphysics.[4] As a result it is a paradox that metaphysics needs to
accept and work with. On the necessity of this paradox, see also notes 2 and
4, and on the formal admissibility of contradiction, see note 8. |
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This paradox has certain inescapable consequences. As I
have argued, the circles of meaning have absolutely nothing to do with each
other, and yet also can be in relation to each other. This paradox is
resolved, as I have noted, in that the circles cancel themselves as
soon as they emerge as relatable circles. That is, because these circles can
only be said to exist by contrast with each other, and yet as soon as they
exist are absolute and meaningless to each other, they come into existence at
the same moment and for the same reasons that they become meaningless to each
other. In other words, they can only be said to come into existence at the
same moment as they can no longer be meaningfully contrasted, and
consequently also can no longer be meaningfully said to come into existence.
Again, then, the moment at which metaphysics, and also mutual recognition of
globally different standpoints, succeeds, it cancels the meaning of the
process by which it was established or grounded, and also cancels its own
meaning for and relevance to the world (or, more precisely, cancels the
meaning of the different standpoints for each other). |
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The result, and the value, of this self-canceling kind
of thought is that we then have access to a type of insight that was
not available to us before.[5] This self-canceling moment of thought is itself a grasp
of reality itself as a whole, or, for example, of truth itself as a whole, or
sense or meaning themselves as a whole.[6] It also leaves us with a new global understanding of
all the particulars of our world: we see them all as they are in a
certain light. And it can enable us to recognize different global
understandings of these particulars. In doing these things, it renews our
appreciation of the world (or reality, or life) in general, and it allows
dialogue between different global understandings. We cannot gain such global
appreciations and understandings without this global and so
self-canceling separation of ourselves from the particular understandings of
things with which we start. |
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Another result is that we get a deeper, more
thoroughgoing kind of objectivity than is available, say, to the sciences. (I
take radical shifts in scientific frameworks to be the results of
philosophical, and specifically metaphysical, thinking undertaken by
scientists. But if we take this kind of thinking to be properly scientific,
then my discussion will apply to that particular kind of scientific thinking
as well as to global metaphysics in the context of philosophy.) At this
level, because our thinking can cancel itself, it can, so to speak, get
itself out of its own way, and leave the world it thinks about entirely free
of its own effects and possible distortions. |
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Because this process by which metaphysical thinking gets
itself out of its own way departs entirely from our familiar meanings, so
becoming irrelevant to anything we might mean by what it accounts for, and
then also cancels its own meanings, it makes itself entirely redundant,
entirely unnecessary. In other words, it is a purely artificial activity. But
its pure artificiality, its self-cancellation, is precisely what allows us to
gain and establish insights into the nature of reality itself as a whole.
That is, this artificiality is the basis for our sense of nature in general.
And that grasp of the sense of the nature of reality in general is the
context in which all particular insights into reality get their own sense.
Consequently this pure artificiality is not only a legitimate kind of
justification, but is also the kind of justification on which all others
ultimately depend. |
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Metaphysics, then, just as it is traditionally
understood, sets out both to establish and express the truth of things more
deeply and fully than other forms of knowledge do, and to be itself more
fully established as true, as revealing its objects without distortion, than
other forms of knowledge are. |
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A central feature of the self-canceling moment of
metaphysical thought is a moment of undecidability of meanings. Both sets of
incompatible meanings apply and do not apply to the same (and therefore also
not the same) thing in the same respect and at the same time. For example,
there is the Asame@ page understood simultaneously in the Leibnizian and
Aristotelian frameworks, which I briefly discussed above. Each construal of
the page depends on its own independent framework of meanings, Aristotelian
or Leibnizian, as will any contrasting construal: and there is no page
we can speak of Aoutside@ of this kind of framework, to make any of them the
right or wrong one. For that matter, even Arightness@ itself only has meaning and so is only decided within the
context of a framework of sense. It is important to note, however, that
rightness does have its specific meaning within a framework and
so, when the framework=s criteria are sufficiently clear in a given case, is
decided there. Consequently B and this is just another way of expressing the same
paradox we have been discussing B each construal is right or wrong depending on which
framework one is drawing on, and each is right and wrong when one is
drawing on both frameworks simultaneously. (On the legitimacy of this kind of
formulation, see, again, notes 2, 4, and 8.) But this moment of
undecidability, like everything else in this context, cancels itself, in this
case into two entirely separate and so decidable, incompatible sets of
meanings. |
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(It follows, for the reasons I have given for this
account of global metaphysics, that the historical record of actual
metaphysical systems needs to be understood as a collection of this kind of
wholly separate and incompatible sets of meaning, which nonetheless also
interact with each other in a self-canceling confusion of meanings. For
extended discussions of existing metaphysical and global philosophical
systems in a similar light, see Collingwood (1940) and Hall (1960).) |
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Because this process or logic involves a partly
unintelligible moment or phase of self-contradiction and undecidability of
meanings, both the insight in which it consists and the knowledge or
recognition of it itself cannot be purely conceptual. But this unintelligible
phase is part of the logic by which the nature of meaning in general (among
other global Anatures@) is made graspable and is established. It must
therefore have some kind of graspable relation to intelligible concepts. I
suggest that this is a kind of knowledge or insight characterized by an
awareness that the whole of things includes the questions about the sense
of the whole of things, so that an insight into the whole is partly
these questions, the lack of insight and intelligibility. It is,
perhaps, an insight characterized by a sense of the insecurity and
impermanence of its own meaning. |
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And I suggest that one of the ways in which this grasp
occurs is as the impact of the contradictions of certain kinds of humor. I
shall try to show that one of these is Wilde=s. |
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More specifically, I shall argue that the climactic
moments of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest are structured as a
kind of detailed map of this insight-granting process of the
self-cancellation of a global range of meanings. That is, as I said at the
start of the paper, I shall try to show that they express the formal
structure or logic of metaphysical thinking. |
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2. The Importance of Being Earnest and the Formal
Structure of Metaphysics |
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The plot so far is as follows. When Jack Worthing is in
London, he pretends that his name is Ernest. But when he is in the country,
with his ward, Cecily Cardew, he pretends he has a wicked brother Ernest who
lives in the city. While in London, Jack has fallen in love with Gwendolen
Fairfax, and she has accepted him. But she loves him for his name, Ernest. He
therefore returns to the country to undo the pretense, by declaring his
fictional brother dead and having himself re-christened Ernest. |
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Meanwhile, his friend Algy, having discovered Jack's
secret, and wanting to meet Cecily, has already arrived at Jack's country
home. He passes himself off as Ernest, Jack=s fictional brother. But he finds that Cecily is already
in love with him, because of his name, Ernest. He therefore also arranges to
be re-christened Ernest. |
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While Jack and Algy are off making their christening
arrangements, Gwendolen arrives at the country home looking for Ernest, the
name by which she knows Jack. There she meets Cecily, of whose existence she
has so far been unaware, and for whom the name Ernest refers to Algy. |
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The scene is therefore set for the kind of situation I
have described in connection with metaphysics: two different general understandings
of things (so general that they also give the meaning and nature of
our relation to truth itself: I shall return to this shortly), in the context
of which the same words B in this case, a name B can only mean completely unrelated things. While this
is not a global difference in understandings, it will be enough to
parallel and so to exhibit the structure of the process that occurs when the
differences are global. As I mentioned at the start of the paper, my
aim here is not show that Wilde=s play is metaphysics, or that it justifies
this formal structure as appropriate to metaphysics, but only that it shares
and displays it. |
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As the discussion of the play proceeds, however, I shall
explain further details of the corresponding structure of metaphysical
thought itself, and try to justify these details as truly characterizing
metaphysics, and there I shall do so in the terms that are appropriate
to global thinking. In fact, at first I shall need to give much more
metaphysics and much less Wilde, in order to establish the details of the
philosophical context. But, if the reader will bear with me, that proportion
will gradually change as the discussion continues. |
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I should remind the reader here that, as I discussed
near the start of the previous section, because we are dealing with global
domains of meaning (or elements of the play that share their ways of
functioning), we are dealing with what gives the most basic structure of what
we might mean by anything, and this includes what we might mean by reality
and truth themselves. (In this connection, also see note 3.) And, since
metaphysics in our sense is the account of reality and truth themselves, each
as a whole, and has, as I argued, precisely the structure of meaningful
interaction between globally different circles of meaning, the formal
structure of metaphysics in this sense is the same as the formal structure of
meaningful interaction between globally different circles of meaning. As a
result, while the play is concerned with interacting circles of meaning and
not with reality and truth each as a whole, when it displays the formal structure
of the interaction of meaning circles it also displays the formal structure
of metaphysics in the sense of an account of the world as a whole. |
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I should note again, too, that the formal structure of
meaningful interaction between globally different circles of meaning is worth
exploring and laying out in its own right, so that the logic I explore here
may be of interest even to those who do not pursue global metaphysics, or who
do not accept my characterization of it. |
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The stage is set, then, to display the structure of
metaphysics, of the self-canceling movement that occurs between mutually
exclusive global ranges of meaning. |
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Gwendolen enters: |
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Cecily
(advancing to meet her): Pray let me introduce myself to you. My name
is Cecily Cardew. |
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Gwendolen: Cecily Cardew? (Moving to her and shaking hands.)
What a very sweet name! Something tells me that we are going to be great
friends. I like you already more than I can say. My first impressions of
people are never wrong. |
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Cecily:
How nice of you to like me so much after we have known each other such a
comparatively short time. Pray sit down. |
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Gwendolen (still standing up): I may call you Cecily, may
I not? |
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Cecily:
With pleasure! |
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Gwendolen: And you will always call me Gwendolen, won't you? |
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Cecily:
If you wish. |
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Gwendolen: Then that is all quite settled, is it not? |
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Cecily:
I hope so. (Wilde 1966a, 361-362) |
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Gwendolen immediately and fully presents her position,
and an initial, clear relation between their standpoints is established. This
is a decidable relation: there is no apparent conflict of meanings to
make the two positions mean incompatible things by the same terms. |
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This initial relation, however, is based on a
misunderstanding of basic terms which are not yet explicitly relevant. As I
discussed in the previous section, the meaning of terms is established by the
relevant framework(s) of sense within which the terms occur, and in this case
the relevant frameworks are not yet recognized. As a result each position
here wrongly understands something as it is given meaning by the other=s framework of sense. In fact, this kind of misunderstanding
is logically unavoidable in the relation of positions (Acircles@) with wholly mutually exclusive ranges of meanings.
They do not initially have access to meanings other than their own, and so
can only take the other position=s meanings as the same as their own. It follows that the
establishment of their true relation requires the movement, not
simply from ignorance to knowledge, but also from unavoidable or well-founded
misunderstanding to knowledge. Initial misunderstanding, then, is a
valid and in fact logically necessary part of the process of
establishing knowledge of wholly unfamiliar ranges of meaning. |
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Because this misunderstanding is logically necessary in
establishing truth, a positive relation to truth, as conceived by the right
understanding, is part of its meaning. Certainly, at the very least,
it and the relevant truth strictly entail each other. That is, the
misunderstanding, as it stands, captures an element of the relevant
truth, or in other words, is, as it stands, in some way also true.
I shall return to this point to justify it in more detail as the discussion
proceeds. |
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Now, throughout this process, both when the
misunderstanding is in force and when the true relation is known,
there are two disparate positions, each the locus of a range of meanings
incompatible with that of the other. And in the case of positions that
consider and account for the whole of things, there is no Aoutside@ standpoint to offer a neutral set of meanings.
Consequently, if we are genuinely considering the relation between the
standpoints, and not simply ignoring one in favor of the meanings of the
other, the terms that occur in the interaction or relation between the
positions can only be understood throughout in terms of both,
incompatible sets of meanings. That is, these terms can only be understood
throughout in ways that are simultaneously both wholly true in
the one context and wholly false in the other. (That individual terms,
including names, can be true or false in this context, rather than simply
being applied in different ways, follows from the all-embracing character of
each range of meanings: they each exclude even the possibility of any
applications of terms that fall outside their all-embracing range.) |
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But when the true relation is known, when the
misunderstanding is no longer in force and it has been established that the
two sets of meanings are separate, the truth and falsity of the grasp of the
terms can be sorted out into the two different standpoints. These
incompatibly valued understandings are then each limited to a context for
which the other understanding and its context literally have no meaning and
so no relevance. In this sense, the understanding of the terms is, at that
point, decidably both true and false. In contrast, when the
misunderstanding is still in force, no separation between the two sets of
meanings has been established. At that point the grasp of the terms is
therefore undecidably both true and false. But at that point it has
also not been established that there is an issue of different meanings
at all, so that this undecidability is only implicit. |
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The required movement to establish the true relation of
the two standpoints, then, is in fact from an understanding of the terms that
is, not simply false, but implicitly and undecidably both true and false, to
a knowledge which is not simply true but explicitly and decidably both true
and false. Or, more fully expressed, it is a movement from the terms= initial implicit undecidability but explicit or clear
decidability, to their full and explicit but separate and incompatible
decidabilities. As will shortly become clear, in this process the initial
implicit undecidability is transformed into two decidabilities precisely by,
and in its own activity in bringing about, the becoming explicit of the
difference between the two positions. |
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Now, the initial explicitly decidable relation, the
clear relation between the positions and terms that is not yet explicitly
based on a misunderstanding, is a result of exactly the same relation of
positions that ultimately makes each understanding of the relevant terms both
decidably false and decidably true. This initial clear and decidable
relation, then, despite being implicitly based on a misunderstanding, is
again, as it stands, in some sense partly simply (decidably) true. |
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The movement from unavoidable or well-founded
misunderstanding to knowledge occurs through a shift from one range of
meanings to another. More specifically, it will become clear below that once
the movement from the initial clear decidability begins, the implicit
misunderstanding gradually becomes explicitly relevant to that initial
relation, but that because it is an implicit dimension of what that
relation itself is, as it becomes relevant it transforms the explicit
meaning of that relation. But the original explicit meaning of the
relation is in some sense true as it stands. Consequently, in
transforming the initial explicit meaning of the initial relation, the
misunderstanding becomes relevant to the initial relation as the initial
relation truly was not when the misunderstanding was only implicit. The
relation=s original meaning
is not just more fully expressed in being made explicit, but really is not
the same meaning.[7] |
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Because, then, the
treatment of the issue shifts to a semantic area that will allow correction
of the misunderstanding, the misunderstanding, while corrected, is not
simply corrected. The corrective shift in semantic area also
transforms the meaning of the issue so that it is not what the
misunderstanding is correcting any more. The correction itself retroactively
changes the meaning of what it was supposed to correct, so that it really passes
it by. The correction of the misunderstanding necessarily proceeds by
establishing a new misunderstanding, a misunderstanding of the
misunderstanding itself. |
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But this retroactive transformation of the meaning of
the initial relation between the standpoints is a stage of this overall
process of thought that itself happens in stages. And in the context of a
metaphysical or global understanding, it is logically necessary that it do
so. For an all-embracing standpoint, there simply is no meaning that
is not already available to it, that it does not already include or that
cannot be constructed from its current range of meanings. Consequently, if a
different standpoint offers it a term with a meaning wholly unrelated to any
of its own, it cannot register that meaning as a meaning. It can only
register it as a series of deflections and distortions of its current
meanings by the other standpoint, until those meanings are sufficiently
re-worked and re-directed to produce the new meaning. Similarly, although
contradictions and undecidabilities endemic to its own meanings can
set up the conditions to produce a new meaning, not yet available to it, it
also cannot initially register that new meaning, but only the
progressive re-working and re-directing of its meanings that those conflicts
produce. |
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And, in this stage just as in the overall process, it is
again necessary that this process reach the point where the global standpoint
re-works its initial understanding of the very issue itself, the
meaning that it first understood the issue to have. In other words, it is logically
necessary that the movement from misunderstanding (or, within a single
global standpoint, from a sense-disturbing conflict of meanings) to knowledge
(or to reestablishing sense) involves a shift of semantic areas, and so also
a misunderstanding of the misunderstanding itself. The standpoint cannot
resolve the instabilities in its meanings until it has reached their source
in the wholly new meaning. And, as a global standpoint, it can only reach
that source by re-working all its relevant meanings. But these include
those involved in the whole process it has gone through in re-working its
meanings. For that re-working itself occurs in the context of the position=s available meanings, and so is just a change among
those available meanings. Consequently the issue cannot be resolved until the
whole process of resolving it, itself, including the meaning of the
very issue that motivated that process, has been re-worked, and in fact
canceled in favor of the wholly new, unrelated meanings. |
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Now, the standpoint=s first attempts to re-work the issue=s initial meaning can still only be in terms of the
meanings already available to it, can still only be constructed from its own
meanings. This is not yet the point, then, at which the wholly new meaning
itself, and so the misunderstanding of meanings, have become explicit. But,
still, the point at which it re-works the issue=s initial meaning into a different one of its own
meanings (and not just into a variation or distortion of a single meaning),
is the point where it can become recognizable that a difference in meaning
is what is at stake in this particular issue. |
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This moment is reflected in The Importance of Being
Earnest by a retroactive re-working of the meaning of the initial
relation between Cecily and Gwendolen. And the stages of the process are also
reflected in this re-working. |
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First, the misunderstanding becomes explicitly relevant
to the current, ongoing relation between the positions and terms,
without yet having any explicit significance for understanding the way the
relation began, and also without yet being explicit itself. (It has explicit
effects, but the cause of those effects is still hidden from view.) |
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Cecily:
Yes, I am Mr. Worthing's ward. |
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Gwendolen: Oh! It is strange he never mentioned to me that he had
a ward. How secretive of him! He grows more interesting hourly. I am not
sure, however, that the news inspires me with feelings of unmixed delight. (Rising
and going to her.) I am very fond of you, Cecily; I have liked you ever
since I met you! But I am bound to state that now that I know that you are
Mr. Worthing's ward, I cannot help expressing a wish you were B well, just a little older than you seem to be B and not quite so very alluring in appearance. In fact,
if I may speak candidly B |
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Cecily:
Pray do! I think that whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should
always be quite candid. |
|
Gwendolen: Well, to speak with perfect candour, Cecily, I wish
that you were fully forty-two, and more than unusually plain for your age.
Ernest has a strong upright nature. He is the very soul of truth and honour.
Disloyalty would be as impossible to him as deception. But even men of the
noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence
of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less than Ancient History, supplies
us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so,
indeed, History would be quite unreadable. |
|
Cecily:
I beg your pardon, Gwendolen, did you say Ernest? |
|
Gwendolen: Yes. |
|
Cecily:
Oh, but it is not Mr. Ernest Worthing who is my guardian. It is his brother B his elder brother. |
|
Gwendolen (sitting down again): Ernest never mentioned to
me that he had a brother. |
|
Cecily:
I am sorry to say they have not been on good terms for a long time. |
|
Gwendolen: Ah! that accounts for it. And now that I think of it I
have never heard any man mention his brother. The subject seems distasteful
to most men. Cecily, you have lifted a load from my mind. I was growing
almost anxious. It would have been terrible if any cloud had come across a
friendship like ours, would it not? Of course you are quite, quite sure that
it is not Mr. Ernest Worthing who is your guardian? (362-363) |
|
Gwendolen is completely reassured, but on the basis of a
complete misapplication of the name AErnest@ as Cecily is using it. Cecily proceeds on the basis of
the misunderstanding, however, and, as a result, the effects of the term=s misapplication become further developed. |
|
Cecily:
Quite sure. (A pause.) In fact, I am going to be his. |
|
Gwendolen (inquiringly): I beg your pardon? |
|
Cecily
(rather shy and confidingly): Dearest Gwendolen, there is no reason
why I should make a secret of it to you. Our little country newspaper is sure
to chronicle the fact next week. Mr. Ernest Worthing and I are engaged to be
married. |
|
Gwendolen (quite politely, rising): My darling Cecily, I
think there must be some slight error. Mr. Ernest Worthing is engaged to me.
The announcement will appear in the "Morning Post" on Saturday at
the latest. |
|
Cecily
(very politely, rising): I am afraid you must be under some misconception.
Ernest proposed to me exactly ten minutes ago. (Shows diary.) |
|
Gwendolen (examines diary through her lorgnette carefully):
It is certainly very curious, for he asked me to be his wife yesterday
afternoon at 5.30. If you would care to verify the incident, pray do so. (Produces
diary of her own.) I never travel without my diary. One should always
have something sensational to read in the train. I am so sorry, dear Cecily,
if it is any disappointment to you, but I am afraid I have the prior claim. |
|
Cecily:
It would distress me more than I can tell you, dear Gwendolen, if it caused
you any mental or physical anguish, but I feel bound to point out that since
Ernest proposed to you he clearly has changed his mind. |
|
Gwendolen (meditatively): If the poor fellow has been
entrapped into any foolish promise I shall consider it my duty to rescue him
at once, and with a firm hand. |
|
Cecily
(thoughtfully and sadly): Whatever unfortunate entanglement my dear
boy may have got into, I will never reproach him with it after we are
married. (363) |
|
And as a result of this development of the
misunderstanding=s effects, in turn, Gwendolen becomes outraged, and
moves to re-define their relationship. |
|
Gwendolen: Do you allude to me, Miss Cardew, as an entanglement?
You are presumptuous. On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a
moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure. |
|
Cecily:
Do you suggest, Miss Fairfax, that I entrapped Ernest into an engagement? How
dare you? This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see
a spade I call it a spade. |
|
Gwendolen (satirically): I am glad to say that I have
never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely
different. (363-364) |
|
Now Cecily is also outraged, and also moving to
re-define their relationship, on the basis of the same misunderstanding. |
|
Gwendolen: You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though
I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am
known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness
of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far. |
|
Cecily
(rising): To save my poor, innocent, trusting boy from the
machinations of any other girl there are no lengths to which I would not
go. (365) |
|
And at this point the misunderstanding (still without
yet having become explicit itself) also becomes explicitly relevant to (has
explicit effects on) the initial relation between them. That relation
itself comes to have meant something different. It comes to have been
a different clear and decidable relation: |
|
Gwendolen: From the moment I saw you I distrusted you. I felt
that you were false and deceitful. I am never deceived in such matters. My
first impressions of people are invariably right. (365) |
|
The tone of Cecily=s response also eliminates the meaningfulness of any
earlier sentiments of friendship: |
|
Cecily:
It seems to me, Miss Fairfax, that I am trespassing on your valuable time. No
doubt you have many other calls of a similar character to make in the
neighbourhood. (365) |
|
The initial gestures of friendship remain in content
exactly as they were. But because the context or criteria for their meaning
have changed, they now retroactively become, not gestures of friendship, but
false versions of those gestures: defenses or guardednesses or manipulations. |
|
The clarity of
the initial relation itself allows and encourages a development to a new set
of issues. This development results in the explicit relevance to the
positions= current relation,
of the (itself still implicit) misunderstanding involved in the initial
relation. And this relevance then brings about a shift from the new set of
issues back to an explicit awareness of the relevance of the (itself still
implicit) misunderstanding to the initial relation. And, in turn, in virtue
of this explicitness of the misunderstanding=s relevance, the initial relation is retroactively
shifted from having been what it was. |
|
The initial relation between Cecily's and Gwendolen's
positions in its old meaning was clear and decidable, and that initial
relation in its new meaning is also clear and decidable. But these two
relations are incompatible. And the initial relation must be understood in terms
of both meanings. For at this point both simply are parts of
the situation, of the relation between positions, we are trying to
understand, and in the context of a global understanding there is still no
neutral range of meanings to justify a decision to invalidate one meaning in
favor of the other. |
|
In fact, in that context, the old meaning in each
position is what has produced and justified the new, corrected
meaning, and it and related meanings alone have done so, since in a
global standpoint there are no other, neutral meanings. Consequently whatever
truth the new meaning has is based entirely on a process governed by the old
and related meanings. That is, it only has whatever truth it has if the old
meaning is, in some sense, also true, as it stands. In other words,
this is a kind of Liar=s Paradox. |
|
And this paradox applies equally when the process has
gone far enough to eliminate the misunderstanding altogether and establish
the wholly unqualified true meaning of the contested term for each position.
Again, then, as I argued earlier, the corrected or misunderstood meaning is a
logically necessary part of the establishment of the true meaning, and so as
it stands captures some element of the truth, or in other words is in
some sense also simply true, as it stands. |
|
During the transition from the initial
decidability to the later decidability, when the misunderstanding became
explicitly relevant to the ongoing situation (that is, not yet to the
initial situation), the meanings exchanged between Cecily's and Gwendolen's
simultaneous positions were undecidable. These meanings applied
simultaneously to the same thing without a neutral meaning to allow a
decision between them. But now that the misunderstanding is also explicitly
relevant to the initial situation, the undecidability is also located
in B partly shifted or
displaced to B the meanings in the sequential relation between
the earlier version of the initial decidable relation between their positions
and the later version of the initial decidable relation between their
positions. |
|
This means that the undecidability of meanings B or, more precisely, an undecidability of a different
set of meanings that is its effect B now occurs within each position. When the
undecidability of meanings was located between the positions, they had
no access to the contrasting meaning that produced it, and so could not
recognize that an undecidability of meanings, and so a misunderstanding
between equally valid but incompatible meanings, might be at issue. But now
an undecidability that is explicitly relevant to the conflict between them
occurs within them, where they can recognize it as an undecidability,
or, in other words, as a contradiction that is true.[8] As a result, they can for the first time recognize that
the meanings on which the conflict turns might themselves be conflicted, in a
way that would not only require a change among familiar meanings, but a
change that those meanings cannot cope with, that they are not sufficient to
produce. |
|
That is, the positions now for the first time have the
resources of meaning, first, to conceive that their relevant range of
meanings might not cover the whole possible range of meanings, but
that, instead, entirely unfamiliar meanings might be in some unfamiliar way
conceivable. Second, because the undecidability is also explicitly relevant
to this particular conflict, they can also recognize that this kind of
possible unfamiliar meaning might be what is at issue in this case. They have
taken another step towards coming to recognize the other position=s meaning, and so making the misunderstanding itself
explicit. |
|
Let me stress that, until the process has reached this
point, there is literally no meaning, for a global standpoint, to the idea of
a meaning beyond its range. In other words, it is not that the standpoint
came to recognize something it was simply missing before, but that there
was nothing meaningful for it recognize before. It is only as a result of
the process of moving towards the unfamiliar meaning that this meaning comes
into existence for the standpoint. And since the standpoint is global,
covering the world and meaning as a whole, this is the same as saying that
the meaning simply did not exist before. |
|
But, on the other hand, once the new meaning is
conceivable, the range of meanings that excluded it is not global any more.
As a result there is no longer any meaningful context in which the new
meaning did not exist before. In other words, like the meanings on
either side of any of the undecidabilities here, the global standpoint=s meanings before they correct themselves are true
as they stand, and the meanings of the corrected standpoint are also
true as they stand. |
|
Consequently, although these stages of the movement
towards metaphysical knowledge or knowledge of different global standpoints
cancel themselves, the truth they have is not qualified. It is either the
wholly exclusive truth or wholly canceled as simply having no meaning.
And at the moments of transition between the relevant ranges of meaning it is
both. At these moments it is either explicitly and decidably both true
and false, or implicitly and undecidably both true and false. |
|
All of these sets of alternatives, however, only occur
in the context of establishing or considering the difference between two
ranges of meaning, each existing as a global whole of meaning in its contrast
with the other. And this means that they really all occur as parts of
the moment (any of the moments) of transition, and in fact as stages of it.
For just as the whole conflict between these alternatives of meaning
and truth has no meaning for the old global range of meanings, as we move
into a new global range the old range and with it the whole conflict lose all
meaning. |
|
This whole process, then, including all the
stages and distinctions and conflicts of truth I have discussed in it,
ultimately and necessarily cancels itself into meaninglessness. Even discussion
of the process, including my own, cancels its meaning, since discussion of it
is itself metaphysical, dealing as it does with vantage points on the whole
of things, and so itself necessarily consists in a transition between global
ranges of meaning. |
|
But each of these stages of the process is again fully
meaningful as soon as one returns to re-engage in its part of the
establishment of metaphysical insight. And what truth it has is then again
the unqualified and exclusive truth. |
|
To return, then, to our discussion of the development of
the process. We have now reached the point at which the initial meanings,
through the stages of their mistaken, a-logical, non-sequitur- and
tangent-guided interaction with each other, have brought about their own
re-working, until each has itself come to open the possibility that it needs
to be replaced by a wholly unrelated meaning, a meaning for which it itself
is meaningless. That is, they have begun to cancel themselves, each in favor
of a wholly new meaning. |
|
And consequently they are now in a position to take that
final step and establish explicitly what the relevant new meaning is. |
|
Enter Jack. |
|
Gwendolen (catching sight of him): Ernest! My own Ernest! |
|
Jack:
Gwendolen! Darling! (Offers to kiss her.) |
|
Gwendolen (drawing back): A moment! May I ask if you are
engaged to be married to this young lady? (Points to Cecily.) |
|
Jack
(laughing): To dear little Cecily! Of course not! What could have put
such an idea into your pretty little head? |
|
Gwendolen: Thank you. You may! (Offers her cheek.) |
|
Cecily
(very sweetly): I knew there must be some misunderstanding, Miss
Fairfax. The gentleman whose arm is at present round your waist is my
guardian, Mr. John Worthing. |
|
Gwendolen: I beg your pardon? |
|
Cecily:
This is Uncle Jack. |
|
Gwendolen (receding): Jack! Oh! |
|
Enter Algernon. |
|
Cecily:
Here is Ernest. |
|
Algernon (goes over to Cecily
without noticing anyone else): My own love. (Offers to kiss her.) |
|
Cecily
(drawing back): A moment, Ernest! May I ask you B are you engaged to be married to this young lady? |
|
Algernon (looking round): To what young lady? Good
heavens! Gwendolen! |
|
Cecily:
Yes! to good heavens, Gwendolen, I mean to Gwendolen. |
|
Algernon (laughing): Of course not! What could have put
such an idea into your pretty little head? |
|
Cecily:
Thank you. (Presenting her cheek to be kissed.) You may. (Algernon kisses her.) |
|
Gwendolen: I felt there was some slight error, Miss Cardew. The
gentleman who is now embracing you is my cousin, Mr. Algernon Moncrieff. |
|
Cecily
(breaking away from Algernon):
Algernon Moncrieff! Oh! |
|
The two girls move towards each other and put their arms
round each other's waists as if for protection. |
|
Cecily:
Are you called Algernon? |
|
Algernon: I cannot deny it. |
|
Cecily:
Oh! |
|
Gwendolen: Is your name really John? |
|
Jack
(standing rather proudly): I could deny it if I liked. I could deny
anything if I liked. But my name certainly is John. It has been John for
years. |
|
Cecily
(to Gwendolen): A gross
deception has been practised on both of us.
(365-366) |
|
The difference in meanings between Gwendolen's and
Cecily's positions, and so the incompatibility between them, is finally
clarified. |
|
And this in turn resolves the sequential
undecidability within their positions, between the earlier and later
meanings of their initial relation. Where the implicit undecidability between
the positions had earlier been shifted or displaced into the explicit,
sequential undecidability within them, the conflicted meanings
responsible for those undecidabilities are now separable into the explicitly
established contexts of differently-meaning positions that produced them. As
a result the conflict is now shifted back again to the now explicit, decidable
clash in meanings between them. |
|
The problem was an unrecognized incompatibility of
simultaneous positions. It became a recognized sequential incompatibility.
And this in turn allowed it to become a recognized or understood simultaneous
incompatibility. |
|
And, consequently, the initial relation between the
positions is now re-established in its first meaning of mutual understanding,
but this time on the basis of each position=s understanding of the key terms each in its separate
region of meaning. That is, the truth of the positions’ initial relation
too is now fully and explicitly established, and as being exactly as it
initially explicitly stood, as a mutual understanding. The
misunderstanding, then, is no longer relevant, either implicitly or
explicitly, even to that first understanding of the initial relation
between the positions. The misunderstanding has utterly canceled itself,
retroactively, by its own efficacy. As a result the entire process that it
produced, and that culminated in the new understanding, has lost all meaning.
It is as though nothing relevant to the relation between the positions had
ever been understood otherwise than it is in the new understanding. |
|
Gwendolen: My poor wounded Cecily! |
|
Cecily:
My sweet wronged Gwendolen! |
|
Gwendolen (slowly and seriously): You will call me sister,
will you not? (366) |
|
In fact, because the truth of the initial relation
between the positions has been established as it stood, it now turns
out to be the case that that initial relation never did involve a
misunderstanding. That is, it is now the case that there never was the
misunderstanding that set the whole process going. Now, this emerges on the basis
of the misunderstanding, so that the misunderstanding and its process also
retains its truth. But in this post-process stage, in this new region
of meanings, that truth literally has no meaning. It is now retroactively,
even though also for the first time, the case that the misunderstanding
between the positions never meaningfully existed. |
|
This absurd cancellation of the very existence of the
issue, by virtue of the existence of that issue, is just another
expression of the fact that we are describing the transition or relation
between (at least) two entirely separate regions of meaning that, each being
all-embracing, also cover all the same or Asame@ things. Consequently, it
is necessarily the case that all the meanings involved in this transition or
relation are replaced by different meanings, including the meaning of the
misunderstanding of meanings itself as a misunderstanding. And, again,
on the far side of the process, when one moves into the context of a new
all-embracing range of meanings, it is necessarily the case that anything
outside that range, including the process that got one there (and that
therefore occurs outside the range), loses all meaning, and so all meaningful
existence. At that point there literally is no meaning to the idea
that things were ever understood otherwise. |
|
Now,
however, the new meanings having been established, it is possible to explore
those meanings, and on their basis to proceed in directions that could not
have been anticipated in the context of the old range of meanings. And the
key term that carried the formerly misunderstood meaning, and so structured
or organized the whole process of thought that brought us to this point, is
now present only as empty verbiage, as an entirely artificial concern (that
is, no longer as importantly or metaphysically artificial), as simply
trivially tangential to anything meaningful in the relations between the
positions. (In the case of metaphysics proper, in contrast with relations
between globally different positions in general, this might be the relations
either between metaphysical and everyday meanings or between different
metaphysical positions.) |
|
Cecily
(rather brightly): There is just one question I would like to be
allowed to ask my guardian. |
|
Gwendolen: An admirable idea! Mr. Worthing, there is just one
question I would like to be permitted to put to you. Where is your brother
Ernest? We are both engaged to be married to your brother Ernest, so it is a
matter of some importance to us to know where your brother Ernest is at
present. |
|
Jack
(slowly and hesitatingly): Gwendolen B Cecily B it is very painful for me to be forced to speak the
truth. It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such
a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of
the kind. However, I will tell you quite frankly that I have no brother
Ernest. I have no brother at all. I never had a brother in my life, and I
certainly have not the smallest intention of ever having one in the future. |
|
Cecily
(surprised): No brother at all? |
|
Jack
(cheerily): None! |
|
Gwendolen (severely): Had you never a brother of any kind? |
|
Jack
(pleasantly): Never. Not even of any kind. |
|
Gwendolen: I am afraid it is quite clear, Cecily, that neither of
us is engaged to be married to any one. |
|
Cecily:
It is not a very pleasant position for a young girl suddenly to find herself
in. Is it? (366-367) |
|
The play then presents a suitable phase of adjustment to
and consolidation of the startlingly new meanings and understandings. |
|
Gwendolen: Let us go into the garden. They will hardly venture
to come after us there. |
|
Cecily:
No, men are so cowardly, aren't they? |
|
They retire into the garden with scornful looks. |
|
Jack:
Pretty mess you have got me into. |
|
Algernon sits down at tea table and pours out some tea. He
seems quite unconcerned. |
|
What on earth do you mean by coming
down here and pretending to be my brother? Perfectly monstrous of you! |
|
Algernon (eating muffin): What on earth do you mean by
pretending to have a brother! It was absolutely disgraceful! (Eats
another muffin.) (367) |
|
Now, given the recognition that two sets of meanings are
at issue, it is not only that a new, differently-meaning position has
become meaningful, but also that this self-canceling process of relating
incompatible meanings, itself, has been brought into relation to meaning.
Consequently it is not just new meanings that are available to each
standpoint, but also the possibility of a different kind of relation to
meaning, a different kind of understanding, one distributed
simultaneously across different and mutually exclusive contexts of meaning.
And this kind of understanding, as a result of its being distributed in this
way, is also one that can reflect on the conditions and possibilities of
meaning themselves. |
|
And in this kind of context, where the pertinent
meanings are established and distributed between their separate contexts of
meaning, and (as a result) their possibilities can also be reflected on, the
formerly troublesome key term or terms themselves can now come to function
differently. They are no longer a problem for understanding and responsible
conduct. Instead, they can be used without difficulty for their original
simple purposes, in the full knowledge of the interaction or compresence of
incompatible ranges of meaning. |
|
Gwendolen and Cecily
(speaking together): Your Christian names are still an insuperable
barrier. That is all! |
|
Jack
and Algernon (speaking
together): Our Christian names! Is that all? But we are going to be
christened this afternoon. |
|
Gwendolen (to Jack):
For my sake you are prepared to do this terrible thing? |
|
Jack:
I am. |
|
Cecily
(to Algernon): To please
me you are ready to face this fearful ordeal? |
|
Algernon: I am! |
|
Gwendolen: How absurd to talk of the equality of the sexes! Where
questions of self-sacrifice are concerned, men are infinitely beyond us. |
|
Jack:
We are. (Clasps hands with Algernon.) |
|
Cecily:
They have moments of physical courage of which we women know absolutely
nothing. |
|
Gwendolen (to Jack):
Darling. |
|
Algernon (to Cecily):
Darling! |
|
They fall into each other's arms (371-372) |
|
As is the way of such transformations of meaning
generally, the category confusion in the term AErnest@ has produced a transformation of attitude and
concomitant practices that reconstitutes this confusion itself into a simple
separateness and simultaneity of meanings. That is, the problem of
incompatible meanings has itself become the answer, the true clarity of
single, exclusive meanings it was originally thought to be. |
|
This occurs not by eliminating the incompatibilities,
but by acknowledging them, as they stand, together, as the (self-canceling)
given on whose basis one can proceed. |
|
After the christenings, the situation at the end is
exactly as each position independently took it to be at the beginning. That
is, nothing has changed. And this is exactly what one would expect in the
case of all-embracing standpoints, in which alternatives to, and so changes
of, the range of meanings with which they start can simply have no meaning.
Problems and resolutions can only meaningfully occur within the
existing range of meaning, and simply nothing occurs outside that range. As
Wittgenstein writes, if something alters the world, it cannot alter Awhat can be expressed by means of language. In short the
effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to
speak, wax and wane as a whole@ (1961, 72, prop. 6.43). |
|
And so, in the end: |
|
Lady Bracknell: . . . My nephew, you seem to be displaying signs of
triviality. |
|
Jack:
On the contrary, Aunt Augusta. I've now realised for the first time in my
life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.
(384) |
|
|
|
3. Conclusion |
|
Aristotle makes the following comment in his Poetics: |
|
Poetry is something more
philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history; for while
poetry is concerned with universal truths, history treats of particular
facts. By universal truths are to be understood the kinds of thing a certain
type of person will probably or necessarily say or do in a given situation;
and this is the aim of poetry, although it gives individual names to its
characters. (1965, 43-44) |
|
That is, Aristotle argues that the fictional or
artificial, what does not or need not express any actual circumstance of our
world, is better suited to expressing universal truths than are accounts of
actual circumstances. Universals, in his view, however, are also what
alone express the nature and truth of actual things: they describe the
essences of the things. There is a hint in Aristotle, then, that the
artificial, what has or need have no relevance to the specific meanings of
any particular, actual circumstances in our world, is what gives us access to
the essential truth of those actual circumstances. |
|
As Wilde wrote, AOne should always be a little improbable.@ For, Aif one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to
be found out@ (1966b, 1205). |
|
|
|
References |
|
Aristotle. 1965. On the Art of Poetry. In Classical
Literary Criticism: Aristotle Horace Longinus, translated by T. S.
Dorsch, 29-75. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. |
|
Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words.
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|
Barris, Jeremy. 2005. AOscar Wilde=s Artificiality and the Logic of Genuine Pluralism.@ Contemporary
Justice Review 8, no. 2: 193-209. |
|
Blackburn, Simon, and Keith Simmons, eds. 1999. Truth.
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Bradley, F. H. 1999. AOn Truth and Copying.@ In Truth, edited by Simon Blackburn and Keith
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|
Bremer, Manuel. 2005. An Introduction to
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Collingwood, Robin George. 1940. An Essay on
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Davidson, Donald. 1984. AOn the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.@ In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation,
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Engel, Pascal. 1991. The Norm of Truth: An
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Hall, Everett W. 1960. Philosophical Systems: A
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Jaspers, Karl. 1997. Reason and Existenz: Five
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Johnstone, Henry W., Jr. 1978. Validity and Rhetoric
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Russell, Bertrand. 1956. AThe Philosophy of Logical Atomism.@ In Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901-1950, edited
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|
Wilde, Oscar. 1966a. The Importance of Being Earnest.
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London & Glasgow: Collins. |
|
C. 1966b. APhrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young.@ In Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, edited by
Vyvyan Holland, 1205-06. London & Glasgow: Collins. |
|
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical
Investigations, 2nd ed., translated by G. E. M. Anscombe.
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|
C. 1961. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
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Paul. |
|
C. 1980. Culture and Value, translated by Peter
Winch, edited by G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman. Chicago, Il.: The
University of Chicago Press. |
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