Ludwig Wittgenstein summed up the results of his investigation in the seminal work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus thus: "Whatever can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."
While the statement appears to support a sort of blind positivism, where only facts have meaning, and values are nonsense, to interpret Wittgenstein's statement in this manner and leave it at that is to underestimate him as a philosopher, and to deprive him of depth as a human being.
This is not a statement of a cynical positivist. Rather, this is the statement of a man who feels - who knows - that the things that are most important to human beings - pathos, telos, ethos - are beyond language and beyond reason. Wittgenstein also knew that what cannot be said can be shown - in other words, it can be lived.
And so at some point, once we've become sick with asking questions and hitting dead ends, we get on with the task of living. Living out our feeling for the fellow man, our common goal, and our human values.
...some secrets should remain as secrets because they do not have any answers, and there are questions the answers to which it is better no one knows.- Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033
Nietzsche wrote that knowledge kills the action. When we are young we think we know. As years go by, we learn that we know nothing. After a few disasters, we do what it takes to 'build new little habitats...new little hopes'.
Not knowing 'the good' can motivate us to strive towards it and to live it - carefully, silently, deliberately...resolutely.
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