It occurred to me in thinking about how I tend to worship certain individuals in the history of philosophy, that it’s always a nice idea to make explicit that in idolizing a certain person we are appreciating their context and foundations in general, as in their histories and the people and ideas that influence them as well.
In this particular case, it is not Wittgenstein that interests me in particular, although he is interesting, it is the articulation and the setting up of these linguistic problems, the elegance and the structure that is somehow inelegant and unstructured. It is not as though Wittgensteinian ideas are necessarily made new or ‘discovered’ by Wittgenstein, but that they are so clearly defined and called attention to.
This goes with most relationships that we have. The people I enjoy I care about for their contexts, and what makes them persons, the things they do and do not do, be them good and/or bad.
It’s interesting how we often forget that our practices inform our character, and merely the fact that I am a sister, mother, husband, son, friend, lover, etc. logically named in the universe, it does not grant me the benefits or social context merely because I am named as such.
There are conditions that follow being someone’s something, however that relationship will always end up, or at all times must be considered as, being unconditional. The relationship then has conditions, but those conditions would never be broken, and that is what’s interesting about heroes.
They could but never would.
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