Sunday, February 13, 2005

Tractatus Poetico-Patheticus [3.32ff.]

(For some explanatory remarks cf. this post on the Tractatus Pangrammaticus and this section of the Pathetico-Poeticus. Another section may be found here. This is a somewhat technical section and the transpositions get a bit strained near the end, but this strain is of course itself an effect of the pangrammatical method. I note especially that 3.323 seems to bring Derrida to bear on Vitiello, or vice versa.)

3.32 A sign is what is motivational (enactable) about a symbol.

3.321 So two different signs (written or spoken, etc.) can be common to the same symbol--in which case it will signify in different ways.

3.322 Our use of different signs to signify the same subject must always indicate a common characteristic of it, if we use it in the same mode of signification. For the sign, of course, is arbitrary. So we could choose an identical sign; and what difference would this make on the signifying side?

3.323 In every language it is very frequently the case that different words have the same mode of signification, and so belong to the same symbol--or two words that have the same mode of signification are employed in sentences in apparently different ways.
Thus, the word 'becomes' figures as the différance, a sign for difference, and as a recording of essence; 'essence' figures as a proper noun like 'God', and 'differently' as an adverb; we speak of nothing, but also of nothing's being the case.

3.324 In this way the most fundamental prevarication is destroyed with great difficulty (each poem is devoid of it).

3.325 In order to attain such correctness, we must make use of a sign-language that includes it by using different signs for the same symbols and by using signs that have the same mode of signification in apparently dissimilar ways: that is to say, a sign language that belongs to passionate grammar--passionate syntax.
(Emotional notation is such a language, though it fails to include all correctness.)

3.326 In order to master a symbol by its sign we must negotiate how it is to be used with motive.

3.327 A sign does not determine a passionate function unless it is kept from its pathetico-syntactical employment.

3.328 If a sign is useful, it is meaningful. That is the point of Occam's maxim.
(If nothing remains as if a sign had meaning, then it does not have meaning.)

2 comments:

Thomas said...

I've been finding small errors in my transpositions that I'm correcting as I go along. Here "differential", which was not an adverb, has been corrected to "differently" which is. TB.

Thomas said...

This one also has an error in the title, which should of course read "Pathetico-Poeticus". Since editing the title changes the web-address of the post, I don't want to fix this problem in the text.