מקוריות אדמתית: אינטלקטואליזם יהודי ואתיקה טרנסצנדנטית בפילוסופיה של ויטגנשטיין

“I am not a religious man, but I cannot help seeing every problem from
a religious point of view.” In this remark, Wittgenstein actually defines
his general stance of exteriority, relevant to every aspect of his life. This
essay aims at manifesting Wittgenstein’s stance of exteriority in three
complementary aspects, offering a conclusive picture of his image and
work:
(1) His personal identity, in which exteriority is linked to his view of the
essence of the “Jewish mind,” including his own work and originality.
I will show that the central trait of the Jewish mind, in his view, is
its incapacity for genuine originality: the Jewish intellectual can only
produce “retrospectively,” striving to clarify the original ideas of other
minds, and thus creating a “comprehensive picture” of their theory.
Wittgenstein also calls it “the originality of the soil”; this includes
Freud’s and Wittgenstein’s own work.
(2) Philosophy, conceived not as a doctrine but as an exterior act of
clarification - a clarification, projected on other theories, of the border
between what-can-be-thought and what-cannot-be thought.
(3) Transcendental ethics, or “what is higher” (Höheres), as what
supernaturally “lies on the other side” of the borderline of the world.