g no book to read. Indirect, indeed.The authors share the common assumption that the nature of their conclusions demands that they convey those conclusions by indirect methods. For Kierkegaard, any casual listing of his ideas about subjectivity and the self would be taken objectively – the very opposite of his intentions for writing them. Therefore, through alter egos, stories and irony he attempts to draw the reader into a nonintellectual grasp of the material as it relates to the individual. For Wittgenstein, nearly any attempt at discussing the logical form of ‘what cannot be said’ results in a contradiction. By abiding by his stringent conclusions where possible, and committing the same mistakes he criticizes others for when necessary, he manages to say both too much and not enough. Both authors creatively use indirect methods to advance their ideas when those ideas have to be shown, rather than said.In another vein, both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein spent much of their writing concerning the limit of thought, as applied to their respective fields. What exactly is the limit of thought? For Kierkegaard, it involved the point at which no further rational analysis of religious concepts can take place, and the individual must accept that logic ceases to apply to non-rational ideas in religion. The significant moment in this realization comes with the ‘leap of faith’ toward God, which can have no justification. Most of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is taken up with the notion that there exist limits of thought and language beyond which discussion is literally nonsensical. In it, he carefully describes what he considers to be the logical structure of the world and how that structure necessarily imposes limits on any language used to picture it. A careful examination of particular aspects of their ideas concerning the limits of thought will no doubt further our understanding of both.For the purposes of helpin...
