Sunday, November 1, 2009

What do I know about God and the purpose of life?

The following was written in the trenches of the First World War, part of it on the Carpathian Front. It was recorded (dated 5.7.16) in the war-time diaries of Ludwig Wittgenstein, then attached to a garrison artillery regiment of the Austrian Army.

What do I know about God and the purpose of life?
I know that this world exists.
That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field.
That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning.
That this meaning does not lie in it but outside it.
That life is the world.
That my will penetrates the world.
That my will is good or evil.
Therefore
that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world.
The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God.
And connect with this the comparison of God to a father.
To pray is to think about the meaning of life ...