Wittgenstein’s distinction between saying and showing can be seen, very simply, in how we raise our children. It is important. I hold it in mind at all times.
We say many things to our children: we need to, to draw attention – ‘Look where you’re going!’ – to encourage – ‘Good [insert action here]-ing!’ – and to instruct – ‘Not that cupboard!’ And then there are the many and various educational ‘pointings’: ‘green ball’, ‘dog’, ‘one’, etc.
In all this saying, we show more than we realise. We don’t just introduce colours but show the concept of ‘colour’; we don’t just introduce rules but show the importance of them; we don’t just encourage but show our interest.
It wouldn’t work the same way if we decided to only say all these things. Picture the parent saying ‘I am interested in you and in what you are doing’ while they are not looking at the child because they are busy with something else: what is shown, here, is more powerful than what is said.
Picture us trying to explain, in words suitable for toddlers, the concept of colour. It is difficult to explain this concept to full-grown human adults using anything but a highly technical language. And yet, if we make use of the concept in the presence of a toddler, again and again, using simple statements that are not about ‘the concept of colour’ but only about particular instances of colour, they come to learn it without any difficulty, as we all did.
No one is seriously troubled by the concept of colour. This is because no one seriously struggles to use it. Here ‘everything is all right’.
Now, too, we understand our feeling that once we have a sign-language in which everything is all right, we already have a correct logical point of view.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus, 4.1213
But it is different with fear and care: people are troubled by these things, and here it is because everything is not always all right. This is where ethics begins.
The distinction between saying and showing isn’t extraordinary. You probably have some natural understanding of it in how you teach and learn. To expect someone to learn how to hit a tennis ball, for example, by only words and saying, as if from a text book: it is silly. You would go on a court and say only ‘like this’. You would show how it’s done, naturally. You would only use words to explain something about this to someone who already knows what they’re doing: then it is a conversation that shows more than is said (the uninitiated would not be able to follow it).
The distinction between saying and showing isn’t extraordinary, but the application of it to the problems of philosophy is. What Wittgenstein says is that many problems in philosophy are the product of trying to say what should be shown; really, what cannot be said and can only be shown. And he shows this, in his early work, by saying what he says is ‘nonsense’, thus showing how little is achieved when these problems are solved. But because of all that, and the confusion it caused, it gets very complicated. For that reason it’s easily overlooked; which is a shame, because it’s not that complicated.
There are few cases I can think of where the distinction between saying and showing is more relevant than that of ethics. (Though writing is an obvious candidate, as is philosophy.) And yet, it is often not focussed on here, principally because Wittgenstein’s work has tended to be claimed (quite reasonably, given what he says) by the philosophy of language: in our English-speaking philosophical tendency to specialise, this excludes it from serious application to other fields. But if only these philosophers had understood the reflection of form in content and content in form that we see in Wittgenstein’s work – if only they’d looked to what he shows rather than what he says – then they would understand why he said his work was fundamentally ethical in nature, even though he only seems to speak about logic and language.
I say ‘be careful!’, meaning it only to have the effect of drawing her attention to something she is about to bump into; but what do I show? That the world is a dangerous place, full of things that can hurt you, and, what’s more, that you need me to point them out.
If I do this again and again, her picture of the world becomes a picture of threat and dependence: the world is something in which to ‘be careful’ and she needs me to help her navigate it. This forms her form of life, as a fearful and dependent thing. Do either of us want that?
But if I don’t caution, and draw her attention to threats, she will likely come to harm: we don’t want that either.
If two propositions contradict one another, then their structure shows it; the same is true if one of them follows from the other. And so on.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus, 4.1211
This is now an ethical question: to what extent should I draw my child’s attention to the dangers of the world?
If I answered this question only with reference to what I said, and ignored what I show by saying it, I might get a very different answer. Forget about the cumulative effect of forming her ‘picture of the world’ and look only to the function of the sentence: to prevent her from coming to harm. There is an obvious duty for me, here, as her parent, to prevent harm if I can. And if I can, by saying ‘be careful!’, then it seems I ought to say as much.
How many times do we fall into things that we did not intend by looking in a limited way?
A stereotype: a parent who encourages their child to play a musical instrument. They intend it to be supportive, but by their relentless encouragement they form in the child a concept of the importance of playing music. ‘This matters.’ To whom does it matter? If you are not careful, and don’t allow the child the freedom to find their own way, they might come to form the concept of playing music as being ‘something that really matters to my parents’. And against that background they are just as likely to resent and rebel as to flourish.
In our overly-eager attempts at virtue we often do precisely what we do not want to do. It’s better to avoid this if we can.
Answer the ethical question, then, with reference to what is shown as well as what is said. I want to prevent her from coming to harm, yes, and that requires certain clear sayings, sometimes. But I also want her to be calm and happy and to find her own way. For this, words are not enough. Simply telling someone to ‘be calm’, over and over again, is liable to produce the opposite effect, especially if it comes from a place of agitation. ‘Don’t panic!’
How do I show my daughter that the world is not fundamentally a place to be feared? One option seems obvious: I show her that I am not afraid. I show her that I am untroubled. I go about our business calmly, and she sees this, and that goes some way to forming her picture of the world.
I’m sure I fail a lot: that is my nature. And it can be overdone: if she falls over, as toddlers do, I don’t make a fuss, and so neither does she; but if she really falls over, then it’s right to make a fuss otherwise it seems as if you don’t care.
An answer emerges: it is a balance. ‘Nothing too much’, as the Ancient Greeks would say. Aristotle would be more specific: what is virtuous is found in the happy middle between the two extremes of excess and deficiency.
I try to find this balance, cautioning only when really necessary, remaining silent when possible. It isn’t easy to walk that tightrope; often I fall into over-caution, as is my nature. But since I know this about myself, and don’t particularly want my child to inherit my errors, I work against it. Aristotle knows that, and I should know it too: the virtuous happy middle is different for all of us, as our natures and circumstances are different.
Virtue […] is a settled disposition of the mind determining the choice of actions and emotions, consisting essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us.
[…]
By the mean of the thing I denote a point equally distant from either extreme, which is one and the same for everybody; by the mean relative to us, that amount which is neither too much nor too little, and this is not one and the same for everybody.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
And of course this isn’t true only for the parent but also for the child. A nervous child might need more of a counter-balancing show of confidence in them; a reckless child probably needs more caution.
There is a notional ‘perfect’ ideal here, but it is only a notion: it is not something that exists for anyone except as a guiding principle.
I repeat that for emphasis: it is not something that exists.
How do we come to understand something that doesn’t really exist? We can’t point at it, like we can a green ball or a dog. Our understanding of ethics is more like our understanding of the concept of colour. It is an abstract thing. Here we have a distinct task that saying can’t achieve.
What cannot be said, can be not said.
Wittgenstein, Diary note (1916)
What can be shown, cannot be said.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus, 4.1212 (1921)
Ethical reality does not exist in the way that an object exists; it is real in the way that logical form is real. Plato would say it is the ‘idea’ of goodness: it exists in the realm of ideas and not in the realm of physical things. There are no ethical objects. This is why the distinction between saying and showing is so important here.
I can test your understanding of objects by asking you to point out one particular object among many. But can I test your understanding of pointing by asking you to point out ‘pointing’ and not something else? Why ask you to point out ‘pointing’ and not something else, when simply pointing at anything will show me that you know what you’re doing.
I can test your understanding of ethics by asking you to make a moral judgement: ‘Point out something good.’ But what happens if I ask you to point out goodness itself, as Socrates would? You can point (as it were) only to the pointing, and in that show what you already know but might have forgotten.
It is similar with the concept of colour. I can test your understanding of colour by asking you to point out one particular colour among many, as I might with a toddler. But how would I test your understanding of the concept of colour? Pointing at colours is all there is. There’s no need to ask you to explain it as well. You show it in what you do. And we teach it in what we show.
‘If I don’t show my views on justice in words, I do so by my conduct.’
Socrates, as remembered by Xenophon
Examples are as close as we get to ethical objects: things we can look at and point at and say ‘there is a good thing’. But the ethical reality is always more than is contained in any one example, just as the concept of colour is always more than is contained in any one colour. You can easily point to a colour, but you can’t so easily point to the concept of colour; you can easily point to a good parent, but you can’t so easily point to the concept of good parenting.
These are only pictures. As Wittgenstein might say, they are sketches of a landscape, approached from different directions, often badly drawn and showing the defects of the drawer. If you work to filter out the better from the worse you might get a sense of the landscape, but that’s all.
If we’re lucky we have some good examples and we can point to them as some kind of guide. But even then they would be their examples and not ours. It would be different for us, because all children are different and all parents are different and all circumstances are different. Every day is different. It’s not a remarkable thing to say that the world is a very different place from when we grew up: social media didn’t exist; climate change was a distant prospect; music was good and young people were rebellious. It’s different now.
Any parent must face the world anew. In that way they are in the same boat with their child. We do what we can to be a good navigator.
tobybetenson.com 