Samuel Beckett, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the I

在阅读维特根斯坦的《逻辑哲学论》时，贝克特指出：“形而上学的主体不属于世界，而是世界的边界。”维特根斯坦说：“我面对每一个对象，但不是我。”这预示着贝克特说：“在你的有生之年，你能对自己说‘我’吗？”贝克特学者很少承认维特根斯坦的观点。然而，这种联系对传记、哲学和遗传学方法有着至关重要的影响。它以这样一个命题开始：对于维特根斯坦来说，“I”是“我们语言中最具误导性的表征技术”之一——贝克特的《无名者》（Unnamable）是“一条鲱鱼”——煽动人们寻找一个缺失的指涉物。对两者来说，它都导致了消灭自我的必要性；维特根斯坦认为，不可避免地，“我们会看到，之前的表象对事实来说并不重要”，这是贝克特的《我和同伴》的基础。这些相似之处仍未阐明。除了单纯的亲密关系之外，这个项目将展示贝克特对维特根斯坦的晚期兴趣如何与他整个作品中对I的描述的转变相吻合。这将定位维特根斯坦的重要性，同时质疑这种晚期发展如何挑战/发展他早期的，更广为人知的，哲学影响。最后，探讨贝克特如何成为维特根斯坦的重要批评家之一。

Reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Beckett marked: 'The metaphysical subject doesnot belong to the world but is a boundary of it'. Wittgenstein expanded, 'I confront every object but notthe I', prefiguring Beckett's, 'Could you ever say I to yourself in your lifetime?'Beckett scholarship has seldom acknowledged Wittgenstein's I. The connection, however, has crucialimplications for biographical, philosophical, and genetic approaches. It begins with the proposition thatthe I is among 'the most misleading representational techniques in our language', for Wittgenstein - 'toored a herring' for Beckett's Unnamable - instigating a search for an absent referent. It leads, for both, tothe necessity of the I's elimination; inevitably, Wittgenstein argued, 'we'd see the previousrepresentation wasn't essential to the facts', the idea underpinning Beckett's Not I and Company. Theseparallels remain unelucidated.Beyond mere affinities, this project will demonstrate how Beckett's late interest in Wittgenstein coincideswith a shift in the I's depiction across his oeuvre. This will situate Wittgenstein's significance whilequestioning how this late development challenges/develops his earlier, better known, philosophicalinfluences. Finally, it explores how Beckett becomes one of Wittgenstein's important critics.