Long, long, long before even Wittgenstein's grandparents had a twinkling in their eye, Zen masters said pretty much the same thing about their words being usefu

Long, long, long before even Wittgenstein's grandparents had a twinkling in their eye, Zen masters said pretty much the same thing about their words being useful get you started on the path towards enlightenment but needing to be eventually overcome and discarded to reach it. Unfortunately, I don't have a direct quotation from them handy. However, the Taoists have expressed similar sentiments in the Tao Te Ching (from 300+ BC): The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao Much of what Wittgenstein has to say in the Tractatus is just run of the mill mysticism[1] and negative theology[2]. It's quite ironic that the "anti-mysticist" logical positivists[3] (and their heirs, the analytics[4]) would latch on to him of all people as some kind of prophet. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_theology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_theology [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivists [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy