Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.

The limits of language are the limits of thought, because this too cannot be illogical.

If it is true that Mahler’s music is worthless, as I believe to be the case, then the question is what I think he ought to have done with his talent… Should he, say, have written his symphonies and then burned them? Or should he have done violence to himself and not written them? Should he have written them and realised that they were worthless? But how could he have realised that? I can see it, because I can compare his music with what the great composers wrote. But he could not, because … his nature is not that of other great composers.

This means that certain things simply cannot be said.

According to Wittgenstein, such a question as ‘Does God exist?’ is not only incapable of being answered but incapable of being asked in the first place, as it is meaningless.

He refused to accept Russell’s belief in empiricism, that we can gain knowledge from our experience. In Wittgenstein’s view, knowledge was limited to logic.