![]() But this task cannot be reduced to just policing. For an important task of the Zen philosopher is to police the border between the factual and the non-factual, between the sayable and the non-sayable, between the contingent and the necessary. This, Wittgenstein admits, would not feel like doing philosophy (1978, 6.53). According to this view, philosophy’s proper role would seem to consist in policing the border between what can, and what cannot, be said. Limited to saying what can only be said in the ‘propositions of natural science’, the philosopher’s other task is to demonstrate to anyone who tries to say something metaphysical ‘that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions’ (1978, 6.53). But Wittgenstein has already said that ‘Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences’ (1978, 4.111). ![]() ![]() This is the sense of ‘saying’ in Wittgenstein’s usage. ![]() For only that which can be demonstrated to be either true or false-that is, the factual-can be expressed in propositional form. Note that the injunction ‘to say nothing except what can be said’ seems to reduce philosophy to natural science. something that has nothing to do with philosophy – and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. What does Zen look like when approached as a philosophical practice? What does doing philosophy look like when approached as a Zen practice? My suggestion is that both look something like what Wittgenstein, towards the end of his Tractatus, describes as ‘the only strictly correct’ method in philosophy (Wittgenstein, 1978, 6.53). My claim is that koan Zen is a philosophical practice that is akin to Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy, especially with regard to the limits he places on philosophical discourse. Perhaps the best known example of a koan, at least outside the world of Zen, is Hakuin’s Sekishu or ‘One Hand’ koan, often inaccurately translated into English as ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ Koan Zen, with its emphasis on ‘sudden enlight-enment’, presents a strong contrast with another Zen practice called shikantaza or ‘just sitting’. By ‘koan Zen’ I refer to that practice in certain schools of Zen Buddhism that consists in meditating on, under the guidance of a master, the apparently nonsensical statements and stories known in the Zen tradition as koans or ‘public cases’. In this paper I hope to show that koan Zen represents a commitment to something like Wittgenstein’s ‘correct method in philosophy’ (Wittgenstein, 1978, 6.53). I attempt to illustrate this through discussion of a number of koans that serve as reminders that the philosopher (and Zen master) should say nothing except what can be said. Where Wittgenstein enjoins silence in the face of the unsayable, a silence that allows the metaphysical to show itself, koan Zen calls for concrete demonstrations of that which cannot be captured in rational discourse. Neither, however, represents a rejection of the metaphysical. Each rules metaphysical speculation out of bounds. Both koan Zen and Wittgenstein’s method set limits to the reach of philosophical discourse. In this paper I hope to show that this resemblance is especially evident when we compare the Zen method of koan with Wittgenstein’s suggestion, towards the end of his Tractatus, about what would constitute the only correct method in philosophy. 283–292 Koan Zen is a philosophical practice that bears a strong family resemblance to Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy.
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