Philosophical Investigations 100-150

102. The strict and clear rules of the logical structure of propositions appear to us as something in the background--hidden in the medium of the understanding. I already see them (even though through a medium): for I understand the propositional sign, I use it to say something.
103. The ideal, as we think of it, is unshakable. You can never get outside it; you must always turn back. There is no outside; outside you cannot breathe.--Where does this idea come from? It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off.

107. The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement [purity of logic]......The conflict becomes intolderable; the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty.--We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!
108.* We see that what we call "sentence" and "language" has not the formal unity that I imagined, but is the family of structures more or less related to one another.
109. * We must do away with explanation, and description alone must take its place. [W is anti-theory.].....Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
114. One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the thing's nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it.
115. A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. [I noted this passage mainly because of my newly acquired interest in the field of visual studies. What does it mean for "picture" to be used in the sense that W is using it? Both in replacement of a word something like "concept" and simultaneously as a metaphor and an actuality?
119. The results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense and of bumps that the understanding has got by running its head up against the limits of language. These bumps make us see the value of the discovery.
122. A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words.
126. Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.--Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us. One might also give the name "philosophy" to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions. [That bolded section has some very interesting implications it seems to me.]
127. The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose. [Here comes "reminder", and therefore "remember" all over again. We know everything already if we can view or see it, but we must create signs to (re)member.]
139. What really comes before our mind when we understand a word? Isn't it something like a picture? Can't it be a picture?
140. What is essential is to see that the same thing can come before our minds when we hear the word and the application still be different. Has it the same meaning both times? I think we shall say not.
144. I have changed his way of looking at things.

This was the most difficult section of my reading up until now. In the last part he describes how when we say someone understands something, we only "know" this via his application of it. "The application is still a criterion of understanding." But who's to say that they truly "understand"? Couldn't they be using a different method that just happens to yield the same results?


*This denotes a passage that has been marked as "significantly altered" by the translator. I mark this here also, because although I have not read W in the original German, I want to be wary of these translations specifically. In other words, don't put too much stalk in these sections.